Oh, Gee -- a professor of history has taken a poll of all of the "scientists she knows", and they all agree that Global Warmiing is REAL!

And Kevin Drum, whose only exposure to science was a self study course in applied pharmaceuticals (an ONGOING self study course), begs to agree.

Did you ever hear the expression, "You don't have the math?"

And you wonder why I think you're a moron?

Is there a link?

Did the WSJ cite any articles to refute Oreskes?

Hey, Norman, can you?

Did you ever hear the expression, Norman, "You don't have a brain?"

This is pretty uncontroversial among science-studies people. The continental-drift example illustrates the Khunian idea that new theories triumph when defenders of old theories die off. Unfortunately, in the case of global warming, we might not have the luxury of waiting that long.

At the time Robert Oppenheimer died, the scientific consensus was that his theory predicting black holes was wrong, and even an embarrassment to his friends. The overwhelming evidence in support of his theory came after he had died.

Meanwhile, the evidence from the satellite earth surface tempreature data is that the earth is warming at a rate of 1.5C per century. And the National Academy of Sciences estimated the cost of CO2 sequestration at $0.3 per gallon of gasoline.

Warming is a true problem, but not a tragedy or disaster.

If the global warming believers would quit screaming and whining and rally behind the solutions, we might be able to accomplish something.

Being from Oklahoma, I keep writing Senator Inhofe about global warming, but so far all I get back are out of date comments about the Oregon Petition.

Jake

Garamond:

That's Kuhnian, but yeah ...

Classic conflict in the midst of a paradigm shift.

Same thing allegedly happened (at least based on Watson's account, which we now know may have been biased) with the defenders of Rosalind Franklin's X-ray crystallographs of DNA, as they ran up against a model that didn't appear to flow from them ...

Bob

Two years ago, Naomi Oreskes published a widely cited piece in Science that reviewed a large sample of journal articles on climate change published between 1993-2003. Her conclusion: not a single paper refuted the position that the earth is warming and humans are largely responsible.

Wrong again Kevin. Science magazine is a liberal "scientific" magazine prone to hysteria. JASON LEE STEORTS of National Review has already their false "science" and the myth that Antarctica's ice cap is melting.

Link

"Those numbers sound impressive, but the chances of the ice caps' fully melting are about as high as the chances of Time's giving you an honest story on global warming. The truth is that there's no solid evidence supporting the conclusion that we've locked the ice caps in to a melting trend. Let's look at Antarctica and Greenland in turn.

About Antarctica, University of Virginia climate scientist Patrick J. Michaels is direct: "What has happened is that Antarctica has been gaining ice." He explains that there has been a cooling trend over
most of Antarctica for decades. At the same time, one tiny portion of the continent - the Antarctic Peninsula - has been warming, and its ice has been melting. The peninsula constitutes only about 2 percent of Antarctica's total area, but almost every study of melting Antarctic ice you've heard of focuses on it."

republicrat, I agree with your assessment except in this - there are no solutions possible until those in power accept reality. Which event is unlikely until 09 at the earliest and an underwater Miami at the latest.

Jake

Why does Cheney's "one percent" doctrine apply to non-existential threats, like Iraq, but not to actual problems that actually threaten (Western) civilization?

Is it because there are no cronies to hand anti-climate-change contracts to? Naw, that couldn't be it.

If the global warming believers would quit screaming and whining and rally behind the solutions, we might be able to accomplish something.

"republicrat" touches on a more subtle truth here. What he and global warming denialists are ultimately angry about is the fact that every time climate scientists have been challenged about their claims, they have relentlessly, clearly, and unequivocably shown, time and time again, they they are correct and the non-scientist creationist-sympathizing right-wingers who deny global warming are wrong.

A better strategy might not be to show that the scientists are overwhelmingly in the right here. It may be a better strategy to come up with a means of convincing a group of MBAs, WSJ editorialists and AEI "fellows" that they were the ones who came up with ideas about the reality of global climate change and they they were the ones responsible for scientists addressing the issue.

When scientists respond to challenges about their research by "scremaing and whining" with their evidence, data, and peer-reviewed papers, it just builds resentment among those who are unable to provide such things.

I remember that as a boy we visited Glacier National Park to see the glaciers. Recently we visited to see the pretty landscapes--the Glaciers not so much.

"Today, Oreskes takes to the LA Times to tell us that, in reality, "the consensus stands":"

Since when did consensus become scientific fact?

And I suppose mountains are created by stress transmitted through 1000's of kilometers of rock. Good thing buldozers don't know about your "scientific laws"!

Next you'll be telling us about your crazy "gravity" again that makes the wandering lights in the sky follow orbits the shape of robin eggs, makes people stick to all sides of a sphere (even the bottom), and can crush all of existence in a point.

Can you tell me again what part of the bible you find ridiculously unbelievable.

In his WSJ column, Lindzen writes:

More recently, a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words "global climate change" produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.

(my emphasis)

Ok now, let's do some math. 928 articles, 913 with abstracts, that leaves 15 without. Of those 15, "only" 13 explicitly endorsed the consensus. That leaves exactly two. So now, do I trust this guy who not only can't subtract, but writes in a nationally published paper without checking his math? In a word, no.

Al's comment is very instructive about the way conservative activists think. Science magazine is not in the politics business; it's not like they are endorsing candidates or anything.

But by accusing the source of being "liberal," and then producing a counterpoint from a house scientists in one of the conservative organ-grinders (the Nationals Review, which does endorse candidates), then suddenly global warming becomes another political issue to be debated, rather than a provable reality.

Since when did consensus become scientific fact?

There is no such thing as “scientific fact”, there are observations (which are “facts” in the narrow sense of “so-and-so observed X reading on instrument Y”) and there are scientific theories: hypotheses explaining past observations and having shown utility at predicting new observations.

A consensus around a particular theory is as close as there is to a “scientific fact” about anything not simply observed in the past.

If we wait for the predicted harms of global warming to be “fact” rather than scientific consensus, it will, by definition, be too late to do anything to prevent their realization.

Richard Lindzen's WSJ op-ed can be found here.

"Did the WSJ cite any articles to refute Oreskes?"

Since she is the one making a claim, the burden of proof is for her to prove it correct. However, all she has to offer is consensus, not solid scientific fact.

A historical example will help to make the point. Just because the consensus at one time agreed the Earth was flat, it did not mean it was actually so.

Republicrat: so a $0.30/gal gas tax would solve everything?

FF, the entire basis of the right-wing denialist argument when it comes to human-caused climate change is that this claim is "controversial." Oreskes specifically addressed the claim from the right-wing fringe by showing that it is not "controversial" and is in fact the consensus.

"If we wait for the predicted harms of global warming to be “fact” rather than scientific consensus, it will, by definition, be too late to do anything to prevent their realization."

Sort of like the "population bomb"?

"If the global warming believers would quit screaming and whining and rally behind the solutions, we might be able to accomplish something.
Posted by: republicrat on July 24, 2006 at 12:33 PM |"
If the scientists were to "rally behind" ANY "solution" that might actually work, the deniers would then be able to claim, legitimately (as they now do illegitimately), that the scientists were overreaching their brief, and engaging in politics rather than science.
It is not the job of science to argue for any political or social action. It is the job of science to come up with testable hypotheses that explain the known facts and observations, and then to adjust and modify the hypotheses when they either succeed or fail to have predictive value.
This limitation -- coupled with the natural tendency of scientific writers to hedge their communications very carefully (since "hypotheses" are just that; provisional and always subject to further adjustment or disproof) -- makes it easier for non-scientists to make bogus claims such as "there's debate and disagreement," and even "it's a hoax." Since the typical reader isn't in a position to distinguish carefully-hedged scientific writing from political and commercial propaganda, the powers that be can keep bamboozling the public long after the scientific consensus has largely solidified.
It would help if the MSM weren't owned by the very entities whose profitability is threatened by the changes that will be required to deal with the reality of GW.

Although it seems at least some of the wingnuts have moved from "it's not happening" to "it's not a serious problem" -- baby steps are still steps -- mostly these comments seem to illustrate how nearly impossible these people make governance, under any type of administration.

Sooner or later, likely sooner, the pendulum will swing back, and the Democrats will be in power again. Depend on these folks to scream bloody murder at every opportunity, over every issue real or imagined, even in support of complete fabrications.

They're like spoiled children. They need to be ignored.

Meanwhile, the evidence from the satellite earth surface tempreature data is that the earth is warming at a rate of 1.5C per century.

This is a popular minimization technique used by people who conveniently fail to discuss the effects research suggests are likely from warming on that scale, but just want to rely on the fact that 1.5K (or 1.5°C) doesn't sound all that significant intuitively.

This is a novel approach that the conservatives have taken now: they even brand the scientists as liberals if the results of their research in some way impede the conservative agenda or puncture the sacred conservative myths. Not only mentally deranged commentators like Al here, but many other more popular conservative propagandists.

Just because the consensus at one time agreed the Earth was flat, it did not mean it was actually so.

yes, and the conservative establishment was dead wrong then, too.

Wrong again Kevin... JASON LEE STEORTS of National Review has already their false "science" and the myth that Antarctica's ice cap is melting.

That Steorts article didn't survive 2 minutes before being discredited:

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/25/national-review-warming/

Anyone who thinks the ice caps aren't melting are living on a steady diet of conservative urban myths.

Since she is the one making a claim, the burden of proof is for her to prove it correct. However, all she has to offer is consensus, not solid scientific fact.

A historical example will help to make the point. Just because the consensus at one time agreed the Earth was flat, it did not mean it was actually so.

There never was a scientific consensus on that; by the time the scientific method was articulated, it was well-established that the Earth was round and, indeed, reasonable calculations had been made of its size thousands of years previously.

Now, its quite true that it is possible for a scientific consensus to be inaccurate; however, a scientific consensus is the product of a state where the consensus model predicts new observed facts well and there is no seriously competing model. There is simply no basis for arguing that the consensus model is wrong without providing the kind of verifiable evidence which would wreck the consensus.

"FF, the entire basis of the right-wing denialist argument when it comes to human-caused climate change is that this claim is "controversial." Oreskes specifically addressed the claim from the right-wing fringe by showing that it is not "controversial" and is in fact the consensus."

Constantine, I don't really care what the "right-wing" argument is. I simply wanted to know when did consensus become a scientific fact?
How can you fix a problem if you don't know the facts, if indeed there was a problem in the first place?

The evidence from the satellite earth surface tempreature data is that the earth is warming at a rate of 1.5C per century.

That was this century's rate. It assumes a steady rate of rising. But we're emitting progressively more CO2 and not all the effects of the present CO2 levels have been experienced. The IPCC is predicting an additional rise between 1.5 and 5 degrees C over the next century. Anything in that range will have serious effects.

How can you fix a problem if you don't know the facts,

Very easily; many problems have been successfully solved by reference to consensus scientific theories (which, as you note, are distinct from “facts”), sometimes even by reference to theories which have later proven to be wrong (like Newtonian gravitation.)

A scientific consensus is such specifically because of demonstrated (i.e., observed-in-fact) predictive utility.

"yes, and the conservative establishment was dead wrong then, too."

I am glad we are in agreement that a consensus shouldn't be taken all that seriously.

"...I simply wanted to know when did consensus become a scientific fact?"

If you would have paid attention in HS Science class, you would know the difference between a scientific hypothesis, theory, and fact. Then you would know how stupid your statement is. Hint...maybe you could use Google.

FF, Oreskes' work was one specifically to show that there was a scientific consensus on human-caused global climate, contradicting the claims of certain political extremists, such as President Bush. The work of the papers themseves that Oreskes refers to show that the consensus is also scientifically accurate.

No, FF, conservatives are not to be taken seriously, especially when it comes to science.

Richard Lindzen's WSJ op-ed can be found here.

And a blog post that puts that op-ed in perspective can be found here:

http://www.desmogblog.com/lindzen-keeps-it-complicated-and-the-wall-street-journal-laps-it-up

"a scientific consensus is the product of a state where the consensus model predicts new observed facts well and there is no seriously competing model."

What new observed facts? If you are talking about measuring temperature, that's been around for quite some time. The hot and cold cycles the Earth has gone through in history makes the 1.5 kelvin per century statistically insignificant.

The hot and cold cycles the Earth has gone through in history makes the 1.5 kelvin per century statistically insignificant.

Again, you're assuming a steady rate. CO2 emissions are growing.

And there are many studies that detect the "signature" of CO2 as an agent of warming:

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=3458&method=full

Freedom Fighter: there aren't any scientific facts in the sense that you are asking for. We can only get approximations. We use Newton's theory of gravity even though we know it's wrong, because we only need Einstein's more accurate theory in special circumstances. But we know that Einstein doesn't quite have gravity right either, because general relativity doesn't really fit with quantum theory, so we don't know how gravity works on very small, high-energy scales. Similarly, we don't know with 100% confidence the exact amount of warming that we'll get for a given amount of additional CO2 in the air, but at this point pretty much everyone but the guy the Wall Street Journal got to write the op-ed who isn't in the pay of an Exxon-funded think tank is confident that significant warming is taking place, and that this warming exceeds anything that's been observed for thousands of years.

cmdicely: in Columbus's day, not only did scholars know that the world was round, but they knew roughly how big it was: about 25,000 miles in circumference. They ridiculed Columbus, not because Columbus believed that the world was around, but because Columbus thought that the circumference was only about 18,000 miles. That's why he thought he could get to the Spice Islands by sailing west for a relatively short distance, and why he thought he'd reached India (or "the Indies") when he'd landed on Hispaniola.

Why is this surprising? Politicized science is the order of the day. Look at the reception Larry Summers comments got. The social scientific consensus on the importance of marriage, Fathers in the home, and the effects of divorce has been in for more than a decade. People have powerful ideological interests in standing against this consensus.
In this case the interests are more economic.

Plus it doesn’t help that the left has a ready made solution waiting in the wings that will both “solve the problem” (is there a consensus on that!) and hand vast swaths of regulatory power to the state.

As the kids say these days, "OH SNAP"

Plus it doesn’t help that the left has a ready made solution waiting in the wings that will both “solve the problem” (is there a consensus on that!) and hand vast swaths of regulatory power to the state.

We should act soon so we don't have to do that.

And at the very least we could start by stopping subsidies to fossil fuel interests. Talk about government monkeying around in private affairs.

a scientific consensus is the product of a state where the consensus model predicts new observed facts well and there is no seriously competing model

What new observed facts?

Any set of facts that are not among the universe of observation which the hypothesis is developed to explain, but instead observed later.

If you are talking about measuring temperature, that's been around for quite some time.

I'm not sure what your point is. The specific measurement results are still new observed facts, as is their correlation with other observed measurements and events.

The hot and cold cycles the Earth has gone through in history makes the 1.5 kelvin per century statistically insignificant.

The hot and cold cycles the earth as gone through in the past do not provide counterevidence to the enormous evidence that factors resulting from human action are major drivers of the current warming trend, nor do they provide counterevidence to the evidence leading to the conclusion that serious and potentially devastating consequences for human civilization can reasonably be expected if the present warming trend continues rather than being arrested by changes in the behavior driving it.

Why do people who believe in Global Warming treat is so unseriously? E.g.

1. Kyoto won't work. According to the weather model that predicts global warming, Kyoto's impact would be negliable, even if every country adopted it, which isn't remotely close to happening. Those who spend major effort promoting Kyoto are not serious about Global Warming.

2. GW as a religion: Many people boast about some way that they've changed their lives, so as to use less greenhouse gas. These are invariably trivial. Those actions make people feel moral, like going to church on Sunday. They are placating the global waring god.

3. For those who think the world can reduce its CO2 to an extent that will make a difference, the most important step would be converting to nuclear power. Wind, solar, hydro-power, etc. are fine, but they're relatively minor. They cannot replace coal and oil. Anyone who believes in the need to reduce CO2, but who doesn't actively work for the construction of new nuclear plants, is not serious.

4. The are really only two serious approaches:

-- Do research in hope of finding a practical way to reduce global warming.

-- Start building dikes to protect low-lying land.

But the really cool thing about global warming is that permafrost at high latitudes will thaw considerably, allowing us to dig up lots of additional dinosaur fossils that Satan has planted.

The hot and cold cycles the Earth has gone through in history makes the 1.5 kelvin per century statistically insignificant.

Yeah, if you're from another planet doing statistics. In that case you don't care what goes on with the climate.

At the lowest end of the scale, which the IPCC is telling us is a fairly low slice of probability, we are going to double the level of warming we're now experiencing. The high end of the scale is 10 degrees farenheit. It's hard to exaggerate the dangers that would come along that.

We should act soon

What are you proposing we should actually do? Be specific.

Ive read Lindzen's Op-Ed. Its quite a document of denial. In scientific talks Lindzen has long since stopped presenting any new evidence for his views. Its all only his personal dismissal of the evidence. When a scientist makes clear in his/her statements that no evidence could possibly change his/her opinion, the jig is up. Time to retire. Or become a dean.

According to the weather model that predicts global warming

I don't trust someone who calls a climate model a weather model to make unsupported assertions about the conclusions of either.

GW as a religion: Many people boast about some way that they've changed their lives, so as to use less greenhouse gas. These are invariably trivial.

Large changes are the sum of many small changes. It may not be ideal, but if everyone keeps making small changes that they can make to improve their impact, it helps; of course, many of the big changes require action at beyond the individual level to be effective.

For those who think the world can reduce its CO2 to an extent that will make a difference, the most important step would be converting to nuclear power.

In the very short term, perhaps that would have some transitional utility on the global warming front; of course there are both supply issues and proliferation risks that make that an undesirable course of global action, aside from the problems of other environmental risks associated with fission power. There is nothing unserious about recognizing that global warming, while a pressing issue, does not warrant ignoring the potential of solutions to cause their own grave problems.

If we wait for the predicted harms of global warming to be “fact” rather than scientific consensus, it will, by definition, be too late to do anything to prevent their realization.

Brilliant. Yes, by the time a harm actually happens, it's too late to prevent it from happening. Another pearl of wisdom from cmdicely. I didn't think it was possible for your posts to get any more vacuous, but you're outdoing yourself in this thread.

In the very short term, perhaps that would have some transitional utility on the global warming front; of course there are both supply issues and proliferation risks that make that an undesirable course of global action

What less undesirable alternative do you propose?

What does it matter? Liberals have won the debate, and changes will be made. Conservatives can be grumpy that they'll live in better conditions thank to liberal environmental activism. Poor "movement"...

/Conservative answer to global warming: Cut taxes!

Why do people who believe in Global Warming treat is so unseriously?

Everyone should take it seriously. And yes, Small efforts make you feel good but aren't the solution. The effort to do something requires coordination. And that requires umm, leadership, which is a commodity in short supply.

Kyoto was the only game in town. The conservative talking point has been that it was "flawed". Ok, maybe. But why wasn't there even an attempt to fix it? Could it have something to do with what our oil patch president thought was convenient? Hmmm.

Liberals have won the debate, and changes will be made.

Well, no. The scientific debate may be over, the policy debate is decidedly not. Largely, of course, because one side in the latter debate continues to have some success at lying about the continued existence of substantial dispute in the former debate.

Today's global warming update:

Amazon rainforest 'could become a desert'
By Geoffrey Lean in Manaus and Fred Pearce
23 July 2006
The Independent / UK

The vast Amazon rainforest is on the brink of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year.

Studies by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre, carried out in Amazonia, have concluded that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.

Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences, spinning out of control, a process that might end in the world becoming uninhabitable.

The alarming news comes in the midst of a heatwave gripping Britain and much of Europe and the United States. Temperatures in the south of England reached a July record of 36.3C on Tuesday. And it comes hard on the heels of a warning by an international group of experts, led by the Eastern Orthodox "pope" Bartholomew, last week that the forest is rapidly approaching a "tipping point" that would lead to its total destruction.

The research ­ carried out by the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole centre in Santarem on the Amazon river ­ has taken even the scientists conducting it by surprise. When Dr Dan Nepstead started the experiment in 2002 by covering a chunk of rainforest the size of a football pitch with plastic panels to see how it would cope without rain, he surrounded it with sophisticated sensors, expecting to record only minor changes.

The trees managed the first year of drought without difficulty. In the second year, they sunk their roots deeper to find moisture, but survived. But in year three, they started dying. Beginning with the tallest the trees started to come crashing down, exposing the forest floor to the drying sun.

By the end of the year the trees had released more than two-thirds of the carbon dioxide they have stored during their lives, helping to act as a break on global warming. Instead they began accelerating the climate change.

The Amazon now appears to be entering its second successive year of drought, raising the possibility that it could start dying next year. The immense forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon, enough in itself to increase the rate of global warming by 50 per cent.

Dr Nepstead expects "mega-fires" rapidly to sweep across the drying jungle. With the trees gone, the soil will bake in the sun and the rainforest could become desert.

Dr Deborah Clark from the University of Missouri, one of the world's top forest ecologists, says the research shows that "the lock has broken" on the Amazon ecosystem. She adds: the Amazon is "headed in a terrible direction".

But the really cool thing about global warming is that permafrost at high latitudes will thaw considerably, allowing us to dig up lots of additional dinosaur fossils that Satan has planted.

I have also placed many more fossils under the ice in Antarctica and will manipulate several particle accelerators during the rapture to make blaspheming physicists think they've discovered the theory of everything.

I am glad we are in agreement that a consensus shouldn't be taken all that seriously.

since that's not what i said, i'm not sure how we can be in any kind of agreement. i suggest you sharpen your reading skills.

Don P posting as GOP wrote: I didn't think it was possible for your posts to get any more vacuous, but you're outdoing yourself in this thread.

And as usual you have absolutely nothing to bring to the discussion except your belligerent dishonesty and malicious ignorance, and your pathological need to prove over and over to the bloated, diseased ego which enslaves you that you are superior to others by impressing yourself with your ability to waste people's time with bullshit.

Not that it will do any good but I feel that I must correct something said earlier by republicrat:
"At the time Robert Oppenheimer died, the scientific consensus was that his theory predicting black holes was wrong, and even an embarrassment to his friends. The overwhelming evidence in support of his theory came after he had died."

This is not true. This is false. This is a lie. republicrat strings together some words that seem to make sense but have no relation to actuall reality.

First of all, black holes were first postulated by a German arty captain during WWI (whose name escapes me at the moment). Most of the theortical work was done by an Indian fellow whose name I can't spell (chandraskar (sp?)).

Republicrat makes it sound as though a CHEMIST (R Oppenhiem) was a lone voice in the wilderness talking about black holes when they were just odd predictions that people were looking for as proof of relativity.

Republicrat made up this story and just used the first name that he could think of to lend the sound of truth to it. I spit on him for lying.

Greg in FL,

Your comment was either brilliant parody, or the writings of a complete moron. It is hard to decide which.

..."and hand vast swaths of regulatory power to the state"

Because lord knows they don't have any such power now. (Hint: just because they refuse to regulate their friends or enforce environmental laws doesn't mean they couldn't.)

Given that Republicans hate philosophy and hate science (unless they are of the creationist sort) I guess its expecting way too much that they might be familiar with the most famous work on philosophy of science probably ever, Thomas Kuhn's, which explains why it is perfectly normal not to have 100% consensus.

a good political candidate would leave this argument behind (it's settled) and move on to "what are we gonna do about it?" a) prepare for massive evacuations/abandonment of low-lying areas or b) an apollo project on sea walls/levees/dikes/whatever to protect the New Netherlands. Let's start with New Orleans. This technology could be our gift to the world, a first step in making up for all that killing.

Global warming deniers are a problem. So are global warming alarmists, as our resident global warming wingnut, SecularAnimist, proves every time the issue comes up.

Here is a BBC News report from earlier this year on GW alarmism. I'll copy the SecularAnimist selective highlighting technique:

"Dr Hans Von Storch, a leading German climate scientist and fervent believer in global warming, is convinced the effect of climate change is being exaggerated....

All of the climate scientists we spoke to fervently believe global warming is being caused by human activity. Many agree there's also a major problem with alarmism. As one scientist said: "If we cry wolf too loudly or too often, no-one will believe us when the beast actually comes for dinner."

Someone wrote: For those who think the world can reduce its CO2 to an extent that will make a difference, the most important step would be converting to nuclear power.

cmdicely replied: In the very short term, perhaps that would have some transitional utility on the global warming front

On the contrary, in the very short term nuclear power has absolutely no utility on the global warming front. Even with the most aggessive possible program to build nuclear reactors and bring them online -- an effort which private enterprise and the free market will never undertake without massive government subsidies, in the amount of trillions of dollars, of all the costs and risks -- it will take decades to even begin to bring online nuclear power plants that can begin to replace some of the coal that's used to generate electricity, which is the only thing nuclear power plants can do.

And that decade(s) long buildup will consume huge amounts of fossil fuels, and generate huge amounts of GHG emissions, from the construction of the plants and from uranium mining, which will make global warming worse in the short run and not better. And although the actual operation of nuclear power plants emits little or no GHGs, the entire nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mining, reprocessing, and transportation, does emit significant amounts of GHGs, so nuclear power is not "GHG-free".

Moreover it will consume resources which could FAR more effectively -- by some estimates seven times as effectively per dollar -- reduce GHG emissions much, much sooner, by investing in efficiency and renewable energy sources like wind power and distributed photovoltaic generation.

Almost always, when someone proposes nuclear power as a "solution" for global warming, the argument immediately goes to the risks of nuclear power which are not related to global warming, e.g. radioactive contamination, power plant accidents, terrorism, proliferation, etc, and the alleged utility of nuclear power to reduce GHG emissions is implicitly accepted as proven, with the only argument being about the acceptibility of those risks.

But there is no need to accept those risks as the cost of dealing with global warming, because the premise that nuclear power is a solution to global warming -- let alone the most cost-effective solution, let alone "the only solution" -- to begin with.

Your comment was either brilliant parody, or the writings of a complete moron. It is hard to decide which.

so says Al.

oh boy. that's rich.

Don P posting as "GOP" wrote: I'll copy the SecularAnimist selective highlighting technique ...

You expect us to be impressed? They're called HTML tags, dumbass.

Global warming deniers are a problem. So are global warming alarmists

Probably an even bigger problem than those two is global warming sleepers. If enough people woke up to the problem, we might have some solutions. The objective of the denialists is not to win the debate, but to keep the sleepers sleeping. I think something similar happened with big tobacco in the 70's and 80's.

Well, no. The scientific debate may be over,...

"The scientific debate" is not over. Amoung the issues climate scientists are debating are the magnitude of the contributions to global warming from various man-made and natural mechanisms, the magnitude of warming from a given increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, and the types and magnitudes of various environmental impacts from a given level of warming.

"The scientific debate" is not over.

Among the lawyerly obfuscators and politicians it's not.

Extraordinary article on how Europe is warmed. Apparently the Gulf Stream has little to do with it, it's the Rocky Mountains,

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/51963?fulltext=true&print=yes&print=yes

The conclusion is that even if the Gulf Stream fails Europe will continue getting warmer.

ex-liberal,

the most important step would be converting to nuclear power.

Replacing current US oil consumption to nuclear would take 350 new nuclear plants. Even if we built all of them we've got fuel for at most 50 years. Nuclear is not a viable solution. It is just as stop-gap as wind, which is clean and lasts forever.

cmdicely wanted a cite for the near-uselessness of Kyoto. Here's one;

For all the burdens that any Kyoto-style treaty would place on the U.S. economy, even full implementation of Kyoto would have only a minor impact on future warming predictions, Michaels further stated. Even if the questionable global warming computer models are to be believed, the models themselves indicate that 94 percent of projected warming would still occur even if Kyoto were fully implemented. Michaels argues it is foolhardy to put such an onerous burden on an already-troubled U.S. economy for such a minor reduction in projected warming.

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=10412

Then, cmdicely says,

Large changes are the sum of many small changes. It may not be ideal, but if everyone keeps making small changes that they can make to improve their impact, it helps;

This is magical thinking. Science doesn't work that way. One has to do the math.
Full compliance with Kyopo would do very little. The kind of "small changes" cmdicely discusses would do far less than Kyoto. The sad fact is, as of today we do not have a means to halt or reverse global warming.

It's ironic. Global Warming believers tell the GW deniers to face reality. But, the GW believers aren't willing to face reality about cures.

The hot and cold cycles the Earth has gone through in history makes the 1.5 kelvin per century statistically insignificant.

The latest tactic that the anti-climate change dead-enders are resorting to is to claim, as above, "so what? The earth has gone through lots of temperature swings before." What this ignores, of course, is that these swings did not occur when we were trying to maintain a technologically advanced civilization dependent on air conditioning, the extraction of fossil fuels, etc. A 1.5 degree rise per century that is now exponentially decreasing will affect our ability to keep these technologies running, and our ability to inhabit certain areas (such as the deserts and the coastlines).

It doesn't matter to the earth what form it takes -- as long as it keeps surviving, the planet is rather neutral as to whether it exists as a molten globe of lava, an arid blasted desert with no ozone layer, an immense tropical rainforest, or covered over its entire surface by water. For us humans, though, it kind of does matter....

But there is no need to accept those risks as the cost of dealing with global warming, because the premise that nuclear power is a solution to global warming -- let alone the most cost-effective solution, let alone "the only solution" -- to begin with.

Of course nuclear power is not "the" solution to global warming. There is no one solution. But nuclear power is an important part of the solution. Nuclear power is an important tool in reducing global warming. It is especially popular in Europe, producing 78% of the electricity generated in France and 31% in Germany.

Replacing current US oil consumption to nuclear would take 350 new nuclear plants. Even if we built all of them we've got fuel for at most 50 years. Nuclear is not a viable solution.

Please substantiate these claims.

There is a lot of uranium on the planet, a lot more than 50 years supply. The trick is getting it out of the ocean.

However, even using the conventional sources, the resource can be extended by constructing breeder reactors. Of course, this creates some other problems, but it is an option that is sure to be used.

Yes, it will take decades to build the needed power plants, and it will be an ongoing operation since power consumption is certain to rise. However, wind and solar are not going to replace fossil fuels today, tomorrow, or even in 30 years, so the time factor is not as important as it might seem.

Of course, we could largely return to being an agrarian society, and give up our cars, our air conditioning, and our plasma televisions, but I don't think that is politically palatable.

GOP,

Please substantiate these claims.

I've got the book at home, I'll try to look for it. It may have been "Twilight in the Desert."

Keep in mind I said "oil consumption," which means using nuclear to generate electricity to produce hydrogen to power hydrogen cars for everyone in the US.

Each one of these steps in inefficient at best.

Now nuclear could replace some existing electricity production, but that is done mostly with natural gas these day, with some old coal thrown in. This is not such a bad idea since the natural gas is running out (the US now imports it) and it us also used to make fertilizer.

But burning our food seems to be all the rage these days, what with ethanol and bio-diesel, so I'm guessing the US will stop exporting food before it ever stops importing energy.

It is especially popular in Europe, producing 78% of the electricity generated in France and 31% in Germany.

Well la dee da, monsieur, if you love Germany and France so much, why don't you go live there, Frenchie?

There is no one solution.

Please substantiate this claim.

But nuclear power is an important part of the solution.

Please substantiate this claim.

Nuclear power is an important tool in reducing global warming.

Please substantiate this claim.

It is especially popular in Europe, producing 78% of the electricity generated in France and 31% in Germany.

Please substantiate this claim.

Oreskes & Lindzen (in his response) are using a ridiculous method to make their point. They used the search term "global climate change" to generate articles/abstracts then report the degree of consensus. They should have purged these of articles that did not directly address the question of human-induced vs natural variation climate change, then told us the level of agreement among those.

Al,

Of course, we could largely return to being an agrarian society, and give up our cars, our air conditioning, and our plasma televisions, but I don't think that is politically palatable.

It is most certain not politically possible to say such a thing, but that is the way we are heading whether we want to or not.

The US might be able to keep most of it's luxeries while the rest of the world slips back but we better be VERY careful. Do we really want disgruntled foreigners getting their hands on the output from breeder reactors?

Security versus comfort, which will win out?

cmdicely wanted a cite for the near-uselessness of Kyoto.

And you provided one from a clearly hostile source using loaded language which, stripped to its bones, tells us that Kyoto alone (which few proponents see as anything more than a step on the road to a solution) will cut 6% of predicted warming. Given that the magnitude of the potential harms resulting from warming at the predicted level, and given that they are not simply linear in degree of warming, that's actually a fairly significant result itself.

Large changes are the sum of many small changes. It may not be ideal, but if everyone keeps making small changes that they can make to improve their impact, it helps;

This is magical thinking. Science doesn't work that way. One has to do the math.

Incremental lifestyle changes increase the political viability of the necessary large-scale policy changes, they also increase the economic viability of those changes. And, on their own, they have marginal impacts around the edges on the pace of warming and the probability of catastrophic consequences. They also signal the increase in political viability, which is important to getting policymakers to actually consider the necessary changes.

The sad fact is, as of today we do not have a means to halt or reverse global warming.

Even if that were true (I'd say its not, and the problem is that the means available now to actually go that far—halt or reverse—have to a high a price to be acceptable), So what? We certainly have the means to reduce global warming, which increases the time to (1) work to mitigate the harms from those effects we cannot prevent, and (2) to develop means of either further reducing or outright halt and reverse global warming.

Since when did consensus become scientific fact?

There's a consensus about the scientific facts. This is in contrast to what the WSJ opinion page wants the public to believe. What part of this don't you get?

It is too late to completely 'fix' global warming while maintaining the lifestyles the world population currently has. Without cheap and plentiful energy we simply cannot sustain our current lifestyles.

Does that mean we should do nothing? No! Here in the US there is plenty that we can and will do.

As the price of fuel goes up we will become more efficient. We will use less AC and less heat. Face it - we've become fat and lazy. Our grandparents lived their whole lives with less, and they were good lives, too.

Tripp,

Comfort will win out.

I don't think civilization is going to collapse due to global warming, if that was your point.

If civilization collapses, it will be due to some other event- a large astroid impact, or some engineered virus. Unfortunately, the genies are out of their bottles, and try as we might, they will not be put back in.

cmdicely, you didn't like the first source. Here's liberal economist Robert Samuelson writing in the liberal Washington Post:

The practical conclusion is that if global warming is a potential calamity, the only salvation is new technology. I once received an e-mail from an engineer. Thorium, he said. I had never heard of thorium. It is, he argued, a nuclear fuel that is more plentiful and safer than uranium without waste disposal problems. It's an exit from the global warming trap. After reading many articles, I gave up trying to decide whether he is correct. But his larger point is correct: Only an aggressive research and development program might find ways of breaking our dependence on fossil fuels or dealing with it. Perhaps some system could purge the atmosphere of surplus greenhouse gases?

The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it's really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/04/AR2006070400789.html

Please read the entire column.

Al,

I don't think civilization is going to collapse due to global warming, if that was your point.

No, not civilization, world population. Is that really so hard to believe? It seems like common sense to me. I'm figuring it drops back to about 2-3 billion due to famine and disease, but mostly famine.

There's an inherent problem with Global Warming deniers.

They can't deny the physics -- that CO2 and othe "greenhouse gases" trap heat. That's demonstrable in the laboratory. Nor can they deny the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere. We can measure that directly.

Since there are models and calculations which demonstrate that the rise in temp match the postulated excess in the earth's energy budget and which are statistically significant at the 95% level, here's the problem:

If deniers want to discount the role of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in producing the rise in temps, what else is doing it?

It isn't a change in insolation. (That's on the level of hundredths of a W/m2. The change is in the 1-2W/m2.)

It isn't a change in axis or eccentricity in orbit. (Those would lead in the opposite direction toward cooling.)

It isn't ocean currents since the rise is in global temps and not simply regional ones.

What is the mechanism? It isn't meaningful in a scientific way to simply play the Monty Python Argument Game. It's put up or shut up time.

Lindzen, btw, was one of the IPCC authors. He postulated a tropical cloud cover mechanism which would keep the energy budget in balance. It didn't work out. So, realize that Lindzen -- although "shady" in his rhetorical and discursive works -- has kept entirely scrupulous in his scientific papers. You're not going to be able to go to the war horse for a ride out of town.

There's a 2nd problem that's actually more interesting a conundrum. CO2 and other greenhouse gases DO trap heat. The efficiency in trapping heat amounts to a around 1-2W/m2. If THAT isn't what is behind the rise in temps, what is essentially vaccuming that away and producing the existing rise. Deniers, if they're going to be thorough, have a 2 tier job. Not only vamoosing the effects of CO2 and greenhouse gases, they must provide an alternate vector for the current rise in temps. Good luck. Personally, I'd go with Occam's Razor here: that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are behind the rise in temps.

Finally, there's an interesting MORAL question. What do we do about what could be a catastrophic rise in temps. Ignore the human hand in it. Pretend that it's simply a natural phenomenon. What SHOULD we do -- regardless -- to mitigate what will be very nasty consequences?

Funny how the global warming deniers always take the most optimistic possible interpretation of the climate effects of man-made greenhouse gasses, and yet take the most pessimistic possible interpretation of the effect of emissions reduction measures on the U.S. economy.

We need to reduce our use of fossil fuels, not only in the hope of mitigating greenhouse effects but for many other very good reasons, such as reducing the geopolitical importance of the explosive Middle East. This is a no-brainer, folks.

The effect on the quality of our lives will be manageable. Europeans consume half the energy we do per capita, and they lead pretty darn good lives. Why don't we stop acting like a bunch of spoiled crybabies, roll up our sleeves, and do something that will make life better for future generations. If not, they will rightly curse us for our childish selfishness.

The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it's really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless.

This is silly. It can't be a moral imperative to solve the engineering problem? And since when are we helpless? Even if we have trouble with the engineering, there are tons of things we can do to mitigate our behavior. Many of them market based.

We haven't even started with even mild solutions. Why are the conservatives whining already?

shorter ex-liberal: stop trying to make me feel like a bad person for having been wrong about this issue
and let's pretend instead that there is no moral dimension to the politics of greed, pettiness, or criminal negligence.

Oh, and that only global warming deniers are facing "the reality" of the problem. (???)

shorter republicrat: stop trying to make me feel like a bad person for having been wrong about this issue and instead let's pretend like you've been ignoring non-existent solutions provided by global warming deniers to something that we're also pretending is not that big a deal.

Meanwhile, the record heat in California has caused a Stage 1 power emergency, and Europe is baking:

In Spain, nine people were reported to have died of heatstroke, while in France the number of deaths due to heat rose to 22, nearly half of them pensioners over the age of 80.

Germany reported at least five deaths over the weekend in bathing accidents as more people than usual sought to escape the sizzling temperatures by cooling off in the sea and outdoor pools.

"The summer heat is simply not abating," said meteorologist Holger Starke, predicting continued high temperatures in Germany at least until the middle of the week.

In Hanover, aviation authorities were forced to close the main runway of the city airport on Monday morning after cracks formed in the concrete because of the heat.

Germany's construction workers union IG Bau distributed sun lotion to its members working outdoors and advised them against stripping down to the waist as they often do in summer.

In the northern Czech Republic, tinder-dry conditions fuelled a forest fire over the weekend that was probably started by a cigarette in the Ceske Svycarsko national park. Firefighters brought the blaze, which scorched more than 20 hectares, under control early Monday.

Scorching temperatures and little or no rain in Poland has caused a drought which Poland's Agriculture Minister Andrzej Lepper believes will destroy around 20 per cent of this year's grain harvest.

"It is quite simply dramatic and if the weather doesn't change we will have a tragedy," Lepper told Polish Radio.

Similar predictions were voiced in Germany last week by the president of the nation's farmers association, Gerd Sonnleitner, who forecast crop losses of up to 50 per cent in the worst affected regions.

In the Balkans, where temperatures have been in the upper 30s for days, as many as 380 bush fires were recorded in the first half of July, twice as many as for the whole month last year.

High temperatures in Montenegro have also led to numerous fires, while cars, buses and trucks with boiling radiators can be seen every day on the republic's roads, Tanjug news agency reported.

Forest fires were also reported in Finland and Sweden as well as the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, where homes near the capital Ajaccio were threatened.

Nuclear power stations in several countries have been forced to cut back on output because the water they use from rivers to cool the reactors was too hot.

In Italy, low water levels in the River Po affected hydro-electric power plants, leading to power shortages in Rome over the weekend that knocked out air-conditioning and left people trapped in elevators.

"Not a disaster" indeed.

Article on how evolution is proceeding apace in the human species,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300472.html

Several changes seem related to fertility and reproduction, areas of very high relevance to natural selection. The basic protein structure of sperm may have changed in East Asians and the Yoruba; East Asians also show genetic changes related to sperm motility; and Europeans show genetic changes related to egg viability, fertilization and the female immune response to sperm.

(Click the picture and watch a lemur evolve into Stephen Jay Gould)

The motivating force in the character of Holocaust deniers is hatred, but its a hatred with an aesthetic, an extremity of social conservatism, the same motivating character of globabl warming deniers.

Their first impression couldn't be wrong!

Holocaust deniers are more extreme though, in that the environment they are socially conservative to was one of hatred and malice, different from the popular view of the world and family life.

Jake, but not the one: there are no solutions possible until those in power accept reality.

There are two realities, and I think that they should be pushed simultaneously: (1) the warming is real; (2) the solutions are known, have known costs, and are in the process of being adopted, albeit slowly.

Pushing the solutions assists in promoting acceptance of the problem, there is no required serial order.

Instead of saying "We are doomed unless we act", say "We have the solutions, let's act now."

Note, by the way, I do not deny global warming. I assert that 1.5C per century means that we need to be persistent, NOT that we need a "Manhattan project" or a return to worshipping nature. On other occasions, I have asserted that part of global warming is induced by at least two solar cycles peaking together. That part will ameliorate itself as we work on CO2 remediation.

Funny how the global warming deniers always take the most optimistic possible interpretation of the climate effects of man-made greenhouse gasses, and yet take the most pessimistic possible interpretation of the effect of emissions reduction measures on the U.S. economy.

Hmm. But just the opposite with the Iraq war. During the runup, they had the most pessimistic interpretation of Iraq threat, and the most optimistic interpretation of what it would take to administer and nation-build an occupied middle eastern country.

Republicrat: so a $0.30/gal gas tax would solve everything?

I would like to see Pres. Clinton's idea of a tax on the carbon content of fuel be revived. However, it would have to have two improvements.

1. Based on estimates of the revenue stream, there should be a reduction in other federal taxes. I know, balancing the budget and all that, but I would not like to see a general tax increase now pushed for this reason.

2. The money would have to be earmarked for CO2 remediation projects. This has problems too.

The much-maligned Bjorn Lomborg has a project for examining the best investments of money for improving human health and prosperity. CO2 remediation does not rank highly on that list. However, people should be alerted that CO2 remediation will probably cost less than, for example, the US Navy.

qingl78: Republicrat made up this story and just used the first name that he could think of to lend the sound of truth to it. I spit on him for lying.

I did not assert that Oppenheimer originated the theory. He did study it thoroughly: either he directed PhD theses on the subject, or else his own PhD was on the subject. At the time of his death, he was a strong proponent of "gravitational singularities", but most astrophysicists didn't think there was supporting empirical evidence.

ex-liberal: The sad fact is, as of today we do not have a means to halt or reverse global warming.

That's not true. the journal Science published, and I linked to, a survey of the 17 known ways to sequester CO2, that are already in widespread use. You can find it at www.aaas.org, then following the links to science magazine and doing the search. I already posted the link twice, and I have no intention of doing it again: aaas is a permanent site and anybody can find the information that wants to. If you are not a member of aaas, you'll have to pay to download the pdf.

cmdicely: We certainly have the means to reduce global warming, which increases the time to (1) work to mitigate the harms from those effects we cannot prevent, and (2) to develop means of either further reducing or outright halt and reverse global warming.

It's nice to know we sometimes agree. however, your critic made a good point about nuclear power: a program to rapidly build a lot of nuclear power would, by itself, make the short term problem more serious. the short-term fixes include: injecting CO2 into the ground, growing more biofuels (it reduces total energy use by reducing the need for nitrogen fertilizer, when the solid waste is returned to the farms where the fuel is grown), and reforestation/afforestation. Also, saving the Amazon (see the posts by Secular Animist) is necessary (or at least useful) in the near-term.

Long-term, over the next 25 years, building nuclear power plants is a good idea, and 350 is a figure that has been supported in scientific journals.

"Meanwhile, the evidence from the satellite earth surface tempreature data is that the earth is warming at a rate of 1.5C per century. And the National Academy of Sciences estimated the cost of CO2 sequestration at $0.3 per gallon of gasoline."

It did? Cool. I came up with a similar number (36 cents/gallon) to the NAS when I researched the topic, ohh, four years back. Nice to know I was in the right ballpark.

oops, 4 posts in a row. sorry. I was just responding as I was reading. I yield the floor.

Ive read Lindzen's Op-Ed.... When a scientist makes clear in his/her statements that no evidence could possibly change his/her opinion, the jig is up. Time to retire. Or become a dean.

Or CEO for an energy company.

...GW alarmism.

I definitely have GW alarmism. He's a global danger. He alarms me to no end.

D*mn- that post at 5.40 made me want to pee. And by the time I finish, it will be 4.20 (PST). Or maybe I'm just too hot. Which, of course, would not be a result of global warming.

Is we learning yet?

Yeah, if you know some of the science, it's clear that Lindzen was being either consciously dishonest or has completely lost touch with reality. I would say it's sad, but I don't know the guy and have no reason to wish him well- I'm guessing his rich patrons have left him oversupplied in that department and that's the root of his problem.

Meanwhile, the record heat in California has caused a Stage 1 power emergency

Stage 2 as of 1300 hours today, actually.

cmdicely, you didn't like the first source.

Well, no, I just pointed out that it didn't support your argument.

The second one offers nothing at all of substance, and nothing relevant to your claims about Kyoto or otherwise. It simply says that there is an engineering problem, not anything about the state of any available responses.

Or CEO for an energy company.

Or run for president on the Republican ticket.

On my blog, I've been "debating" a staunch opponent of global warming for awhile. The total lack of scientific ignorance of the other side is truly awe-inspiring.

There's really no debate any more, and we need to preserve the deniers as a scarce national resource who will help the rest of us get more women in the future. (By being men that women don't want to go out with.)

If I could choose a "party line" for what comes next, it would be this-

Mistakes will be made- what kind do you want them to be?

Do you want it to be "Oops, we didn't build enough solar", or do you want it to be "Oops, we spilled some nuclear stuff and we can't use the water from the Mississippi for 20,000 years"?

Would you prefer government workers who don't seem to be working very hard, or Enron workers who screw the public before their company implodes and leaves millions without their savings or pensions?

You can bet the enronized corporate world will be out in full force, talking about how it's an emergency and we don't have time to call for competitive bids.

In fact, what this is gong to teach us about human nature might just make you wonder if we really should save ourselves.

cmdicely, your comment reminds of Kevin's latest post, about people interpreting articles through a lens of their prior beliefs.

That column by Samuelson couldn't be more blunt in stating that Kyoto won't work. Samuelson says,

The real truth is that we don't know enough to relieve global warming, and -- barring major technological breakthroughs -- we can't do much about it. This was obvious nine years ago; it's still obvious. Let me explain...

Unless we condemn the world's poor to their present poverty -- and freeze everyone else's living standards -- we need economic growth. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050...Just keeping annual greenhouse gas emissions constant means that the world must somehow offset these huge increases.

No government will adopt the draconian restrictions on economic growth and personal freedom (limits on electricity usage, driving and travel) that might curb global warming.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/04/AR2006070400789.html

I urge you to read the entire article.

One more point: the phrase "reduce greenhouse gas emissions" can have two meanings. One is to reduce it from what it would be without action. This sort of reduction is possilbe.

The other meaning is to reduce these emissions from the level they're at now. This is unfortunately not in the cards. Greenhouse gases are conservatively projected to double by 2050. With concerted action. the increase might be held to something under a doubling. But, the level of greenhouse gases is not going down. The best we can do is have it grow a bit more slowly.

I know that Freedom Fighter's "flat earth" post was way upthread, but I still want to point out that he's conflating scientific consensus and popular consensus. The fact is, there was never a scientific consensus that the earth was flat. Even in medieval Europe, scholars accepted the authority of Aristotle that the earth was round. The idea that they thought otherwise was a Victorian fantasy. In fact, even everyday folks -- at least those who lived near the ocean -- were well aware that the earth curved, as they could witness ships disappearing over the horizon.

This doesn't mean that the scientific consensus can't be wrong, and continental drift/plate tectonics is a good example. But if I have to get my science opinions from some place other than my own research, I'll accept a scientific consensus that's explicitly supported by at least 926 of 928 peer-reviewed articles published over a ten-year period, especially when the dissenting voice has no evidence to support its dissent.

As Jared Diamond pointed out, it's quite possible to step in and avert severe ecological consequences, but you have to do so before the problem gets completely out of hand, and at a time when many people will deny the problem. It may cost some of the political capital that President Bush boasted he possessed, but the benefits can be enormous. Would you rather have the forests of Japan, or the forests of the Indus River valley?

The issue surfaces every summer, "Damn Bob its hot".... no shit . What is new about black outs & hot weather in frikin July . Wait till next July and Damn Bob its hot again.We can only guess that in California land of fairy tales and harp music that you people get your power(electricity) from other states. No way dude can they build a power plant in our state we dont want big CORPORATE PLANTS here man yeah dude you know you know sniff sniff puff puff. Cook your asses.

cmdicely:Large changes are the sum of many small changes. It may not be ideal, but if everyone keeps making small changes that they can make to improve their impact, it helps;

ex-liberal: This is magical thinking. Science doesn't work that way.

I agree with cmdicely: everything that has been accomplished has been accomplished in many small steps.

JJ: The effort to do something requires coordination. A lot of that comes from prices. If the price of petroleum remains high, plenty of people will provide alternatives.

Virginia Dutch makes a good observation: Funny how the global warming deniers always take the most optimistic possible interpretation of the climate effects of man-made greenhouse gasses, and yet take the most pessimistic possible interpretation of the effect of emissions reduction measures on the U.S. economy.
This is one of the reasons that I think global warming believers should always emphasize known solutions with known costs.

Since when did consensus become scientific fact? On global warming and on HIV as cause of AIDS there is consensus, and there is vocal opposition to the consensus. Does it make more sense to ACT ON the consensus or the opposition? There are even people who believe that Michelson and Morely got the wrong answer, and the luminiferous aether really exists; and there are people who believe Pons and Fleischman really discovered a workable energy supply. So, ..., you going to follow the consensus or the contrarians?

smartalek: It is not the job of science to argue for any political or social action. And yet scientists do, in large numbers, argue for particular social actions. They have the same rights and responsibilities as we do.

I beleive that somebody up above wrote that solar power would require too much land area to be effective. It would take a long time to build the whole solar power infrastructure, but land area is not a problem.
a. Power sheets do not absorb more than 20% of the light, so in sunny places like Mississippi and the Imperial Valley, crops can be grown under the panels.
b. one use for natural gas is the manufacture of fertilizer; solar power can substitute for this use in agricultural areas;
c. one use for electricity, especially popular in California in the summer, is for airconditioning. Solar power can meet this need entirely, by placing the PV panels on the roofs of 1 and 2 story houses;
d. PV manufacture requires electricity (some for heat) and minerals; in the region of the US between Victorville and LasVegas it will soon be economically feasible to make PV cell factories powered entirely by solar.
e.,f., ..., each niche can be powered by solar in turn. It will take a long time, but there is a long time available.
in the US, Japan, and EU, PV manufacture is doubling yearly and costs continually fall. Powering the US with PV cells is eminently practical, but it requires persistence and many small steps.

I don't know that anybody cares, but I write solutions here all the time, both for replacing fuels and for ameliorating CO2 sequestration. Starting now (actually, the process is already underway), what is needed are dedication and persistence, not genius, Manhattan projects, or breakthroughs. Those will come. But we can start with what we have already (i.e., with the president's energy plan), and proceed with continuous improvement.

ex-liberal,

I think cmdicely is right to be skeptical of the links you've provided.

You've offered a piece from the Heartland Institute. The piece links to the Cato Institute, and the Heartland Institute describes itself as an organization "devoted to discovering and promoting free-market solutions to social and economic problems."

You also cite "liberal economist" Robert Samuelson. However, the syndicated columnist you link to is a journalist who earned a B.A. in government (political science), not an economist, and for that matter, is generally described as a moderate proponent of free-market solutions. Are you're thinking of Nobel Prize and John Bates Clark Award winner Paul Samuelson, a ground-breaking mathematical economist who wrote what is possibly the single most successful economics textbook ever published?

Perhaps you're confused because Paul Samuelson wrote for Newsweek in the 1960s and 1970s? But even Paul Samuelson, while socially liberal, never demonstrated any firm preference for government intervention in markets, so I'm not sure that your characterization fits him, either.

As far as I know, Paul Samuelson has little to say about global warming, and Robert Samuelson isn't really qualified to discuss the engineering problems of proposed remedies to global warming.

With regard to Nancy Oreskes’ article on global climate change and consensus: first, here is the citation: Beyond the ivory tower : the scientific consensus on climate change. Oreskes, Naomi. Science 306(5702):1686, Dec. 3, 2004.

I just read the article. In it, she states: ”The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.
Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.”
Oreskes also gives citations to reports or positions papers by the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association of the Advancement of Science. All of these organizations agree that there is global climate change, exacerbated by increased CO2 and that humans are contributing to this rise.
Roger A. Pielke, of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, replies in Science 308(5724):952-3, May 13, 2005, that the IPCC members don’t all agree about, say, Kyoto, or what to do about global climate change, and expresses concern about the notion of scientific consensus, and that more investigation is needed. All of these concerns are undoubtedly true.
Naomi Oreskes replied to him that she realizes that 928 articles are not the entire body of literature on the subject. But I, as a librarian of 37years and conductor of thousands of literature searches, can state that Web of Science is the largest database of scientific, technical, social science, and humanities literature in the world, and includes almost all of the important journals. There are articles/position papers which deny global warming or attribute it to natural causes beyond our control. But the number is small compared to the 928 PEER REVIEWED articles Oreskes cites.
Also, she isn’t advocating a particular set of actions, but she is raising questions and concerns, and believes that the consensus is strong enough that we can start mapping strategies. She is rightly concerned about the health of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Also, I searched Web of Science with “global climate change”, restricting the retrieval to 1993-2003. I got 1254. Before those of you deniers start bloviating about this, the reason I retrieved more is that the retrieval was not limited to peer reviewed articles. This is not a limit you can choose in Web of Science. However, it is perfectly possible, though time-consuming, to then search in Ebsco’s Serials Directory to determine which journals are peer-reviewed.
I didn’t peruse the abstracts of all 1254 hits I retrieved, and yes, a few were without abstracts. Some were books, and some were editorials or replies or corrections, which do not have abstracts. I jumped around and dipped into some. I looked at around 50, and they were as Oreskes says. They were either directly about global climate change, or addressing something which can be affected by it, such as extinction or adaptation of species. All of the ones I looked at accepted that global climate change is occurring.

republicrat wrote, I agree with cmdicely: everything that has been accomplished has been accomplished in many small steps.

This many be true, but it's the converse of what I meant. Any number of things have not been accomplished, despite many small steps. The many small steps involving reduction of greenhouse gases will not lead to ultimate success (says Robert Samuelson), because the steps are unfortunately too small to keep up with the increasing use of carbon-based fuels worldwide. He (and I) hopes that a new technology may be discovered that will allow us to reduce the earth's temperature.

I would like to say something about consensus. Michael Crichton gave a lecture at MIT in 2003. He attempted to debunk scientific consensus by giving examples where consensus in the past turned out to be wrong. Yes, consensus has been wrong in the past. He rightly cites childbed or puerperile fever as an example. A physician recognized as early as 1798 that washing hands in between patients cut down dramatically on the incidence of childbed fever, but this was not widely practiced until the early 20th Century. He does give another example, that pellagra was widely considered to be bacteria-based rather than a vitamin deficiency, well into the earlier half of the 20th Century.

But he overlooks a few factors.

1. Information is much more widely disseminated today, and much more quickly. The advent of the computerized literature citation databases with Embase in 1965 and MEDLINE in 1966, meant that you could much more easily find literature on any given topic. The Internet and the availability of fulltext articles and even books, as well as Wikipedia etc., mean that people worldwide, particularly those at universities, large private corporations, and governmental agencies, have access to a HUGE amount of information, and sophisticated searchers, particularly we librarians, can quickly find terms to get people pretty much what they need, at the level of comprehensiveness needed.

2. The nature and the complexity of the investigation into global climate change is such that it is impossible for any one scientist to investigate all of the factors needing to be considered. So there is no choice to global climate change being a consensus model.

3. The investigation is worldwide. Many different factors are being considered and all sorts of measurements are being incorporated. Ice core samples from the Antarctic going back as far as 600,000 years. Tree rings samples (those from bristle cone trees are more than 4000 years old.) Satellite measurements in upper level atmospheres. Effects on shellfish in the Caribbean. Temperatures all over the globe, atmospheric, soil, sea. And much more. And these can be intergrated using the computer power we have now.

To those of you who deny this: new data are coming in all the time and are being integrated. They are reinforcing the idea of anthropogenic global climate change. They are not contradicting it. And the people (including one climatologist, Lindzen, that I know of) who deny it are all in some way being paid by the petroleum industry, and their numbers are far fewer than those who believe that anthropogenic global climate change is occurring.

As for solutions, I concur with other posting above. Solutions will be a mixture of various technologies, solar, wind, hydroelectric, carbon sequestration, etc. Nuclear is possible also if waste disposal is figured out.

A close friend did a voiceover for a show on PBS a few years ago about a plant which grows in saltwater, with very edible parts which can processed in various ways, and which produces a high grade oil which can be used as lubrication in lieu of petroleum-based products.

There are also changes we can make ourselves right now, such as our next vehicles being more fuel-efficient, taking advantage of tax incentives to add insulation to our homes, driving less, running our AC at a higher temp in the summer and our heat at a lower temp in the winter, etc., etc.

我向大家推荐:您想要了解 镀膜企业 吗？请到中国镀膜企业网来寻找镀膜企业。上海 滤光片 公司专业生产滤光片产品，欢迎选择滤光片。上海 光学镜片 公司专业生产光学镜片产品，欢迎选择光学镜片。您想要了解 鲜花 吗？请到中国鲜花网来寻找鲜花。中国 饰品 网，打造饰品领域专业搜索平台，提供全球饰品品牌公司及产品展示。不锈钢台面 网上批发市场，为您提供优质低价的不锈钢台面,丰富不锈钢台面行业资讯助您成交。冲压件/拉伸件 网上批发市场，为您提供优质低价的冲压件/拉伸件,丰富冲压件/拉伸件行业资讯助您成交。自动门 网上批发市场，为您提供优质低价的自动门,丰富自动门行业资讯助您成交。北京 楼梯 厂向广大客户提供楼梯产品及楼梯服务。北京 藏獒 厂向广大客户提供藏獒产品及藏獒服务。北京 健身器材 厂向广大客户提供健身器材产品及健身器材服务。上海 航空障碍灯 公司专业生产航空障碍灯产品，欢迎选择航空障碍灯。要想寻找贴纸相机信息请访问 贴纸相机 网，各种贴纸相机应有尽有。太阳能热水器 网上批发市场，为您提供优质低价的太阳能热水器,丰富太阳能热水器行业资讯助您成交。北京 缝编无纺布 厂向广大客户提供缝编无纺布产品及缝编无纺布服务。中国 肠衣 网，打造肠衣领域专业搜索平台，提供全球肠衣品牌公司及产品展示。北京 除垢 厂向广大客户提供除垢产品及除垢服务。北京 首饰 厂向广大客户提供首饰产品及首饰服务。中国 缝编无纺布 网，打造缝编无纺布领域专业搜索平台，提供全球缝编无纺布品牌公司及产品展示。北京 不锈箱水箱 厂向广大客户提供不锈箱水箱产品及不锈箱水箱服务。北京 厂房 厂向广大客户提供厂房产品及厂房服务。中国 家居装饰 网，打造家居装饰领域专业搜索平台，提供全球家居装饰品牌公司及产品展示。要想寻找肠衣信息请访问 肠衣 网，各种肠衣应有尽有。上海 毛刷/制刷 公司专业生产毛刷/制刷产品，欢迎选择毛刷/制刷。珠宝首饰 网上批发市场，为您提供优质低价的珠宝首饰,丰富珠宝首饰行业资讯助您成交。缝编无纺布 网上批发市场，为您提供优质低价的缝编无纺布,丰富缝编无纺布行业资讯助您成交。要想寻找LED灯信息请访问 LED灯 网，各种LED灯应有尽有。电子感应水处理器 网上批发市场，为您提供优质低价的电子感应水处理器,丰富电子感应水处理器行业资讯助您成交。鞋垫 网上批发市场，为您提供优质低价的鞋垫,丰富鞋垫行业资讯助您成交。北京 紫砂 厂向广大客户提供紫砂产品及紫砂服务。要想寻找十字绣信息请访问 十字绣 网，各种十字绣应有尽有。要想寻找首饰信息请访问 首饰 网，各种首饰应有尽有。中国 大头贴/贴纸相机 网，打造大头贴/贴纸相机领域专业搜索平台，提供全球大头贴/贴纸相机品牌公司及产品展示。

Any comments on the fact Mars appears to be warming?

I blame Bush.

The many small steps involving reduction of greenhouse gases will not lead to ultimate success (says Robert Samuelson), because the steps are unfortunately too small to keep up with the increasing use of carbon-based fuels worldwide. He (and I) hopes that a new technology may be discovered that will allow us to reduce the earth's temperature.

But, if not, our grandchildren will all just fry to death. Too bad! Sorry 'bout that, Ex-Liberal III.

Or you could try the non-brainwashed, non-suicidal, non-fucking-idiot approach: do both. Use current technology to minimize carbon fuel use, AND continue research. Of course, that would require giving up your George W. Bush Exxon Fan Club membership.

Tesla's new electric sports car debuts this month. 0 to 60 in 4 seconds, 250 miles between recharges, completely silent, carbon emissions = 0. How about we switch 85% of the US electricity grid to nuclear, the other 15% to hydro and wind, and all start driving Teslas? How far does zero automobile emissions and zero electricity-generating emissions get us in reducing carbon use?

Jerk.

"4. The are really only two serious approaches:

-- Do research in hope of finding a practical way to reduce global warming.

-- Start building dikes to protect low-lying land." -- ex-liberal

For a sense of how big those dikes will have to be, please reference the following picture of Florida:

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/121665main_FL-atRisk-SeaLvlRise_150.jpg

That's after a 1 meter rise in sea levels. The EPA's average estimate involves a 60 centimeter rise by 2100. But recent data on the melting of the Greenland ice sheet will revise that estimate significantly upwards.

How many hundreds of billions will New Orleans-style levees in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa, and Palm Beach cost?

Perhaps we should consider the cost of 1-meter levees vs. the cost of 5-meter levees around the entire state of Florida, and set that against the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

qingl78 at 2:02 PM:

"At the time Robert Oppenheimer died, the scientific consensus was that his theory predicting black holes was wrong, and even an embarrassment to his friends. The overwhelming evidence in support of his theory came after he had died."

This is not true. This is false. This is a lie. republicrat strings together some words that seem to make sense but have no relation to actuall reality.

First of all, black holes were first postulated by a German arty captain during WWI (whose name escapes me at the moment).

His name will probably escape you forever because it was John Michell in 1783, a British geologist.

The idea was promoted independently in 1796 by the French mathematician Pierre Laplace.

But Michell's and Laplace's speculations didn't entail gravitational collapse. That came after Einstein's General Theory, particularly with the work of Karl Schwarzschild.

Most of the theortical work was done by an Indian fellow whose name I can't spell (chandraskar (sp?)). Chandrasekhar

Republicrat makes it sound as though a CHEMIST (R Oppenhiem) was a lone voice in the wilderness talking about black holes when they were just odd predictions that people were looking for as proof of relativity.

Oppenheimer was a PHYSICIST.

Republicrat made up this story and just used the first name that he could think of to lend the sound of truth to it. I spit on him for lying.
Posted by: qingl78 on July 24, 2006 at 2:02 PM

You might hold back your saliva until you've had a chance to review this Wikipedia article.

ex-liberal, take it up with these scientists:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/305/5686/968

current technologies, already in widespread use, whose costs are known, will work. Improvements will obviously work better, but we don't need to wait for them. Afforestation and reforestation, in particular, are needed for multiple reasons.

that's the abstract. for the pdf you need to either pay or be a member of aaas.

Tripp:

I've got the book at home,

So you? Wikipedia says you're wrong:

"At present, economically viable deposits are regarded as being those with concentrations of at least 0.1 per cent uranium. At this cost level, available reserves would last for 50 years at the present rate of use. Doubling the price of uranium, which would have only little effect on the overall cost of nuclear power, would increase reserves to hundreds of years. To put this in perspective; a doubling in the cost of natural uranium would increase the total cost of nuclear power 5 per cent."

"As opposed to current light water reactors which use uranium-235 (0.7% of all natural uranium), fast breeder reactors use uranium-238 (99.3% of all natural uranium). It has been estimated that there is anywhere from 10,000 to five billion years worth of uranium-238 for use in these power plants [22]. Breeder technology has been used in several reactors"

"Another alternative would be to use uranium-233 bred from thorium as fission fuel - the thorium fuel cycle. Thorium is three times more abundant in the Earth's crust than uranium [25], and (theoretically) all of it can be used for breeding, making the potential thorium resource orders of magnitude larger than the uranium fuel cycle operated without breeding. Unlike the breeding of U-238 into plutonium, fast breeder reactors are not necessary - it can be performed satisfactorily in more conventional plants."

So, to summarize, nuclear fuel resources impose no meaningful restriction on our ability to replace fossil fuel power plants with nuclear power plants for electricity generation.

Now nuclear could replace some existing electricity production,

Nuclear could replace almost all electricity production. As I mentioned before, France already generates 78% of its electricity using nuclear power.

Well la dee da, monsieur, if you love Germany and France so much, why don't you go live there, Frenchie?

You're the one who seems to prefer Europe to the U.S., so I suggest you move there, Mr Stefan Stinky French Smelly Cheese No Deodorant.

cmdicely,

And you provided one from a clearly hostile source using loaded language which, stripped to its bones, tells us that Kyoto alone (which few proponents see as anything more than a step on the road to a solution) will cut 6% of predicted warming. Given that the magnitude of the potential harms resulting from warming at the predicted level, and given that they are not simply linear in degree of warming, that's actually a fairly significant result itself.

Nonsense. A 6% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2100--which is all Kyoto would achieve--would be virtually insignificant. And even that insignificant reduction is based on the assumption that every signatory to Kyoto meets its emissions reduction targets (they're already missing them). In terms of substantive reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, Kyoto is virtually worthless.

There's a consensus about the scientific facts.

No there isn't. As I said, there is no consensus about the magnitude of the contributions to global warming from various man-made and natural mechanisms, no consensus about the magnitude of warming from a given increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, no consensus about the types and magnitudes of various environmental impacts from a given level of warming, and no consensus about many other crucial scientific questions regarding global warming. That is why every significant estimate for these changes provided by the IPCC and other reputable climate science organizations is expressed as a range of values, sometimes accompanied by a range of probabilities. And with respect to some scientific questions--such as the IPCC's estimated average global temperature increase by 2100--there is so much dispute amoung scientists about the probability of various different outcomes that no probability is given at all.

cmdicely,

This is magical thinking.

Oh, the irony. Your religious beliefs are the epitome of "magical thinking." You don't get to criticize other people for "magical thinking" when your own entire belief system about life, the universe and everything is one gigantic invocation of magic.

brooksfoe,

For a sense of how big those dikes will have to be, please reference the following picture of Florida:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/121665main_FL-atRisk-SeaLvlRise_150.jpg
That's after a 1 meter rise in sea levels. The EPA's average estimate involves a 60 centimeter rise by 2100. But recent data on the melting of the Greenland ice sheet will revise that estimate significantly upwards.

The image you link to as presented is meaningless. Is there a legend or other web page describing what the color coding is supposed to represent? If the red coloration is supposed to represent land areas that would be submerged from a 1m rise in sea level, your claim is clearly false. Even Key West would not be submerged from a 1m rise. Its average elevation is over twice that, and its maximum elevation is 5m--5 times your 1m figure.

Europeans consume half the energy we do per capita, and they lead pretty darn good lives.

Europeans tend to live in small houses and apartments, in high-population-density cities designed before the rise of the automobile, in a geographically compact continent with a temperate climate and moderate seasonal temperature variations. Americans tend to live in larger houses and apartments, in low-population-density cities mostly designed after the rise of the automobile, in a large continent with wide seasonal temperature variations. For these reasons and others, Americans tend to use significantly more energy than Europeans, more energy for transportation (because of longer travel distances) and more energy for heating and cooling (because of larger temperature swings).

A 6% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2100--which is all Kyoto would achieve--would be virtually insignificant.

No. That's absolutely not true. A 6% reduction would be fabulous.

Annual increases in co2 up to the mid70s oil crisis averaged around 4%. Since then, they've averaged around 1%. (Thank you, Jimmy!) Were we to cut increases to 0 and actually go retrograde on the increase would be a miracle. James Hansen (IIRC) thinks that if we can hold the increase in temps to ~1C, we'll avoid the worst. Any kind of retrograde movement on emissions would help get us there. (Note, we've already bought and paid for around another 10-20 years of atmospheric temp increases due to the oceans, but that's not a reason to avoid action. Much less to let merely Bad News cause us to relent to Worse.)

GOP,

Americans tend to live in larger houses and apartments, in low-population-density cities mostly designed after the rise of the automobile,

You got that right. All enabled by cheap oil. The sister problem to global warming, peak oil, will change how Americans currently live just fine.

I already know some people that are cutting down on certain auto travel. When prices really start to hurt we're going to see car pools, and people looking to move closer to work to avoid car pooling. There will also be a clamor for more public transportation.

It made sense in the short run to build and live as we did when energy was cheap and plentiful, and it makes sense to adapt to new circumstances when they arise, too.

The debate about 'if' is over. Now the debate is about what to do.

Europeans tend to live in small houses and apartments,

Please substantiate this claim.

in high-population-density cities designed before the rise of the automobile,

Please substantiate this claim.

in a geographically compact continent with a temperate climate and moderate seasonal temperature variations.

Please substantiate this claim.

Americans tend to live in larger houses and apartments,

Please substantiate this claim.

in low-population-density cities mostly designed after the rise of the automobile,

Please substantiate this claim.

in a large continent with wide seasonal temperature variations.

Please substantiate this claim.

For these reasons and others,

Please substantiate what these "other" reasons are.

Americans tend to use significantly more energy than Europeans,

Please substantiate this claim.

more energy for transportation (because of longer travel distances)

Please substantiate this claim.

and more energy for heating and cooling (because of larger temperature swings).

Please substantiate this claim.

A 6% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2100--which is all Kyoto would achieve--would be virtually insignificant.

Please substantiate this claim. Be specific. Show your math.

And even that insignificant reduction is based on the assumption that every signatory to Kyoto meets its emissions reduction targets

Please substantiate this claim.

(they're already missing them).

Please substantiate this claim.

In terms of substantive reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, Kyoto is virtually worthless.

Please substantiate this claim. Be specific.

Nuclear could replace almost all electricity production.

Please substantiate this claim.

As I mentioned before, France already generates 78% of its electricity using nuclear power.

This claim was never substantiated.

Oh, the irony. Your religious beliefs are the epitome of "magical thinking." You don't get to criticize other people for "magical thinking" when your own entire belief system about life, the universe and everything is one gigantic invocation of magic.

You know, I'd address how the substance of this attack was wrong, except that I wasn't the one accusing anyone of magical thinking. Maybe you need to learn to read before you rant.

My periodic reminder that the first paper describing and predicting global warming came out in 1896:

Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) and future Nobel Prize winner:
"On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground"
Philosophical Magazine 41, 237-276 (1896).

Basic logical and scientific point: Once we know of a basic causal mechanism, such as CO2 absorbing IR and thereby heating up the air, then the burden of proof is on those who doubt the likelihood of the simplest, direct outcome. That likely outcome is increasing temperatures, and doubters need to show that other factors would compensate. This point overrules other issues, like raw post-deductions from measurements in the form of squinting at noisy graphs and arguing about trends etc. Got it?

Why is denying the validity of global warming a "conservative" position?

Why is denying the validity of global warming a "conservative" position?

Because its a position of the faction that calls itself "conservative".

Because its a position of the faction that calls itself "conservative".

Conservatives are not denying that global may be happening. The world is almost always in either a cooling or a warnming cycle. Conservatives are saying the 'fact' than man is causing this warming is unproven and very likely grossly exaggerated. Further, the political attempts to solve the 'probelm', i.e. Kyoto, have been pitifully stupid. Kyoto has in fact make the problem much worse by excelerating the tranfer of manufacturing capacity to the 3rd world where no polluton controls exist.

Kyoto will go down as the absolute dumbest piece of legislation known to man in all the history of civilization.

Conservatives favor the Boy Scouts approach. Liberals of course cannot embrace anything about the Boy Scouts but they are well ahead of you. The Boy Scouts work to leave every place they've been cleaner than they found it. This explains the following from the NRO:

You won't choke on Bush policy [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

It’s a rather striking irony that, as our air grows cleaner, environmentalists’ complaints grow louder. Since 2001, they’ve been screaming that President Bush is “rolling back the Clean Air Act,” and that the resulting increase in air pollution will kill people by the thousands. Instead, every category of air pollution has fallen during the Bush years, with 2003, 2004, and 2005 showing the lowest levels of harmful ozone and particulates in the air since the monitoring of air pollution began in the 1960s.

Read our clean-air editorial today here.

Correction:

Conservatives are not denying that global warming may be happening

As I mentioned before, France already generates 78% of its electricity using nuclear power.

This claim was never substantiated.

Yes it was. It's well established. Look it up yourself. This is why the nuclear power industry is on the front edge of explosive growth. Check out the New York Times Sunday Magazine of two weeks ago. If this uber-PC rag can come out in favor of Nuclear Power you know it's coming back.

I already know some people that are cutting down on certain auto travel. When prices really start to hurt we're going to see car pools, and people looking to move closer to work to avoid car pooling. There will also be a clamor for more public transportation.

Gasoline use is up over 1.5% over last year. People are not cutting back on their driving although they are transitioning to better mileage vehicles. There is no clamor for Public Transportation. No one wants to get on a bus.

It made sense in the short run to build and live as we did when energy was cheap and plentiful, and it makes sense to adapt to new circumstances when they arise, too.

Americans will not change the American dream because gasoline is more expensive. Americans will demand and get better innovation driven in the most efficient way possible, by the market. All of our new appliances, new cars, new houses, etc., will be more energy efficient and we will start to get more power from clean coal, nuclear and other sources.

Gasoline was more expensive under Jimmy Carter and except for the morons we didn't buy death trap cars.

The debate about 'if' is over. Now the debate is about what to do.

There is no debate about what to do. The energy bill was signed over a year ago. We'll use market based solutions to increase supply and lower demand. We'll probably get over 6% of our car fuel from ethanol in a couple/few years and as much as 10% by 2012. At the same time we'll transition to higher mileage vehicles. Reagan proved something Carter never understood, markets work.

Once we know of a basic causal mechanism, such as CO2 absorbing IR and thereby heating up the air, then the burden of proof is on those who doubt the likelihood of the simplest, direct outcome.

Not so. Lots of well-reasoned claims about basic mechanisms have been "slain by ugly fact[s]".

A few more comments about the Kyoto treaty:

a. the other large industrialized nations are not going to meet their targets, not just the US;

b. two huge and growing economies were totally exempted, India and China;

c. the effects of US reforestation, were not credited to the US;

d. the US senate rejected it by a vote of 95-0.

e. more long-term good will probably be accomplished by the high cost of fuel, and by the investments in biofuels (research in more powerful yeasts and easier to digest plants). You can read about these in the journal Science, especially the articles of 2006, in your local college library.

AND a redstate/bluestate note. It appears that the red states are adopting wind, nuclear and solar power faster than the blue states. but that is a topic for another thread. I posted a link to a story about wind in Texas (land of oil!), and if we ever return to this topic, I'll post links to other stories. The blue state of California is pushing solar about as hard as it can afford to.

Let's see, if the temperature in Anarctica varies from -5 to -49 Degress F, how much ice is gonna melt? Hint: Water freezes at 32 Degress F.

rdw: Reagan proved something Carter never understood, markets work.

On any subject, rdw can be found regurgitating his scripted, programmed, mindless, robotic, fact-free right-wing boilerplate bullshit, like that hilariously inane assertion; but on no subject more so than global warming, about which he knows nothing.

Any comments on the fact Mars appears to be warming?

I blame Bush.

Posted by: Birkel on July 25, 2006 at 12:07 AM | PERMALINK

Simple, it isn't.

An easy google search for the terms "mars ice cap" or "mars warming" will show that every single story about this issue traces back to the work of a single team of scientists who compared pictures of the Martian south polar CO2 ice cap during the 2001 south polar summer with pictures of the same area from the previous Martian year.

The scientists themselves indicated that there was too little data to extrapolate long term trends.

All of the popular news articles of the time emphasized the dramatic speculations, but included the cautions.

The fact that global warming deniers have grabbed this story as evidence that global warming on earth is due to natural causes says more about their fundamental ignorance and/or dishonesty than it says about the reality of global warming.

Also note the parallels with the supposed consensus about the coming ice age in the late 70s, early 80s. That was a story that started with a few scientists describing the mechanism they believed was responsible for triggering the start of ice ages, with some of them engaging in relatively restrained speculation about the future. The stories appeared in the press with the speculations given prominent place and the caveats buried or missing. Then people with a political agenda revived and distorted the story years later.

rdw wrote: This is why the nuclear power industry is on the front edge of explosive growth.

This is simply false, and typical of rdw's many baseless and delusional claims. The nuclear power industry is stagnant. There is little growth in nuclear power production -- worldwide, less than one percent per year.

The "explosive growth" is in clean, renewable energy -- wind, solar, and biofuels -- which is growing at 25-35 percent per year.

According to Renewables 2005: Global Status Report published last November by the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century:

Technologies such as wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, and small hydro now provide 160 gigawatts of electricity generating capacity, about 4 percent of the world total ... The fastest growing energy technology in the world is grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV), which grew in existing capacity by 60 percent per year from 2000-2004, to cover more than 400,000 rooftops in Japan, Germany, and the United States. Second is wind power capacity, which grew by 28 percent last year, led by Germany, with almost 17 gigawatts installed as of 2004.

Private investors are pouring money into renewables as fast as they can. Only extremely modest government support is involved in this growth industry, and that is very often in the form of tax cuts to stimulate up-front investment.

In contrast, the "free market" won't touch nuclear power because it is an economic failure. The nuclear power industry cannot and would not exist -- not one single nuclear power plant anywhere in the world would exist or will ever be built -- without massive government (i.e. taxpayer) subsidies to cover all the costs and all the risks. What is the nuclear power industry clamoring for today, with their bogus and fraudulent claims that nuclear power is "the solution" to global warming? They are demanding trillions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, to pay all the costs and all the risks of building new plants.

Nuclear power is the epitome of a Soviet-Stalinist state-funded state-run command and control industry. It is a spinoff of the nuclear weapons industry, and a massive scam to enrich politically powerful corporations at the expense of, and with grave risks to, the taxpayers. It always has been, and it always will be.

It is very amusing that the fake, phony, pseudo-libertarian poseur rdw proclaims inanely in one post, "Reagan proved something Carter never understood, markets work", while he shills for the state-funded nuclear power industry, which, if "markets" were allowed to "work", would not exist. What a clown.

The nuclear power industry is stagnant. There is little growth in nuclear power production -- worldwide, less than one percent per year.

Growth in nuclear power is quite dramatic in India and China. Planning, if not construction, is booming in the Southern US.

The rest of your post I basically agree with. A problem here in CA is that diverse groups are blocking the expansion/creation of windfarms.

This is simply false, and typical of rdw's many baseless and delusional claims. The nuclear power industry is stagnant. There is little growth in nuclear power production -- worldwide, less than one percent per year.

Nope, it's absolutely true. That's why the libs are horrified over GWBs overtures to India which are based on the sale of Nuclear reactors and fuel to India. There had been a moratorium on cnostruction in the US for over 20 years and it is coming to an end that even the New York Times supports.

Forget solar and wind. They can't possibly replace fossil fuels for at least 50 years. They are far to expensive even loaded with subsidies. They don't produce anywhere near 4% of global power and only a fraction of what nuclear plants produce. Even the kennedy's are against wind power.

Because we now have more investment going into clean coal we can be confident that's where much future growth will come from. PA is building a massive clean coal plant and planning a number of ethanol plants. Right across the bridge in NJ a huge coal plant is planned for a site already approved in West Deptford. NJ will be one of the 1st states to go to 10% ethanol sales in gasoline. These efforts along with conservation will ensure PA uses less Oil in 2010 than today.

If in fact the clean coal plant is as successful as designed it will be the 1st of many. PA sits on mountains of coal and Democratic Governor Ed Rendell knows power plants provide well paying jobs. Ed's as liberal as they come but even libs have to deal with reality periodically.

It will also help that Canada is opening up the Tar Sands and building natural gas pipelines to their huge Northern fields. Even Russia, Iran and several other gulf states are planning a massive expanion of natural gas drilling. Solar and wind will remain in the small provence of liberal wishful thinking while the adults are working on practical solutions.