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Stiglitz: A New Agenda for Global Warming
Submitted by
CalculatedRisk on Tue, 07/11/2006 - 1:16pm (53 comments)
in 2002 and 2003 I told my students in High School that global warming/climate change would be one of the most significant challenges they would face in their future.
I must have had the gift of a prophet- and even I am shocked by the rapidity that global warming is progressing, especially in the Arctics and sub arctic regions of the world.
The global warming debate is over?! Did I miss something. We know far more about the stock market--which was built and is controlled by man--and yet we can't predict what will happen in the stock market tomorrow. How many billions have been spent trying to do so; yet, we are to believe these climatic models trying to predict the state of the environment 50 to 100 years from now? I would be more willing to bet that 50 to 100 years from now we will have developed nano-robots that will be able to scrub CO2, or any other bad chemical for that matter, out of the atmosphere. Seems to me that we should be pouring billions into something productive like nano research instead of stopping something that may or may not be a problem far into the future.
The consensus seems to be that global warming, especially this big surge in the 03-06 timeframe(which seriously reversed the 90's/early 2000's cooling trend) is more "natural" than man-made, but the 'un-natural' surge in the 2000's warming is "enhancing" the flux to unsubstainable levels effecting the planet in periods not seen before.
I would argue major reductions in these poisonous emmissions give off would be beneficial more than just for "global warming".
Stiglitz proposes to bell the cat. Just exactly how does he propose to collect these fines from the Chicomms who are building a new coal fired generating plant every week? Say he does manage to extract the cash. Where pray tell will the mnoey be spent? In the Sierra Nevadas where the plant emissions are causing harm? Oh yeah, that'll sit well with Bejing. Oh I know, hospitals in China to deal with respiratory ailments. Yup, foriegn interventionism will please them no end as well.
Scott, yes apparently you've missed something. The debate has ended - it's now time for policy action.
I suggest reading this recent post from meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters: The Climate Change Consensus
. As Dr. Masters noted: "The media are fond of trying to report both sides of an issue, so in the name of journalistic fairness, the public is receiving a highly skewed view of the scientific debate on climate change. In many cases, the opposing views presented by the media are from fossil fuel industry-funded "think tanks" that routinely put out distorted and misleading science intended to confuse the public.
...
In summary, there is an overwhelming level of scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.
...
I would like to see the media sharply reduce their coverage of the contrary views of such think tanks as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, George C. Marshall Foundation, and scientists such as S. Fred Singer of SEPP. Getting one's climate science information from these sources it similar to getting one's news from a tabloid newspaper. Sure, some of the stories are true, but a lot of the material is of questionable quality, to say the least. The media should focus on getting their scientific information from leading scientists who regularly publish in the peer-reviewed scientific literature."
The entire post is worth reading. The scientific debate is over - now we move on to determine the correct policy response.
Best Wishes.
Robert, Stiglitz proposed that each country could spend the money as they see fit. Stiglitz offers several suggestions (see paper), I excerpted this one: "each country could keep its own revenues and use them to replace taxes on capital and labor"
Best Wishes.
That's it, taxes, taxes, taxes!
Also, the debate on global warming is not over. I am beginning to resent all you high minded intellectuals "declaring victory" over us small minded individuals so we "can move on" with your HUGE GOVERNMENT solution.
Maybe you should take a meteorology class from an unbiased college professor, as I did at the University of California of all places. You might actually find out how little we know about our climate.
Imagine this, although I know it is impossible, of just how massive the universe is. There are more galaxies than grains of sand we have on this earth. Connect this thought process to our climate. Yes! that is how little we actually know in a comparative sense.
Also, please equivocate how the earth has had periods in the past million or so years when the temperature was much warmer, yet we had no man made emissions?
I am sure you are on the phone with your personal climatoligist now asking how this could be? Maybe dinosaur flatulence?
The scientific community has to convince the electorate that the debate is over before it really is. With Fox news, the WSJ and the Republican party on the other side, they have their work cut out for them. The senate environmental subcommittee apparently issued a press release recently declaring that Gore's movie was based on discredited research (the senator from Exxon is the chair). The scientific debate may be over, but the political one hasn't even gotten rolling yet.
And another thing. These same egghead scientists are probably the grandsons and granddaughters of the legendary doctors of old that thought bleeding people was the way to go! Everyone then "just knew" it was the right thing do.
Yeah, they should of just censored those that disagreed with the bleeders.
Jack, Stiglitz is arguing for cutting some taxes (on capital and labor) to offset the taxes on emissions. So your taxes comment is incorrect.
Sestina, I can tell from some of the comments on this thread that your point is correct. Even though there is 'overwhelming scientific consensus on human-caused climate change' - there is still a political debate.
I'd like to see a debate on the best policy - but we still need to get over the misinformation campaign. I'm reminded of Sting's song:
"Believe me when I say to you I hope the Russians love their children too."
I'd hope the people at Fox (and other misinformation centers) love their children too. It doesn't take that much effort to discover the scientific community has reached a consensus.
Best Wishes.
P.S. I don't consider this a political post. This is an economic post on how to deal with the externality of pollution.
The debate is not one of scientific merits, it is a political one. I agree with Jack.
The science of climatology is not understood with any precision at all to be forecasted on geologic timescales. Just see how often the local weather is forecast wrong only a few days in advance.
It is just another excuse for more government control over the world population. I am constantly amazed by the number of people that eat this stuff up and don't realize the extent of what the government solution will be to fix the perceived problem.
That the climate changes over time is self evident. What is not is a direct link with human activity and whether any miniscule change in future Co2 emissions will accomplish anything meaningful without condemning the world to poverty.
The debate is not one of scientific merits, it is a political one. I agree with Jack.
The science of climatology is not understood with any precision at all to be forecasted on geologic timescales. Just see how often the local weather is forecast wrong only a few days in advance.
It is just another excuse for more government control over the world population. I am constantly amazed by the number of people that eat this stuff up and don't realize the extent of what the government solution will be to fix the perceived problem.
That the climate changes over time is self evident. What is not is a direct link with human activity and whether any miniscule change in future Co2 emissions will accomplish anything meaningful without condemning the world to poverty.
CR-
The LA Times has a page of the average temperature and rainfall in Los Angeles for the last 100 years recently. There was absolutely no discernible pattern. Multiple years of drought sush as 60-61 or 2000-2002 followed by huge years of rain. I have read some of the "scientific" studies and none that I have seen presents statistically robust data. I challenge you to post a paper that has valid statistics showing global warming
Ah yes. Global warming. A global govt. with tax authority and presumably the military force to back it up. An eventual ban of all private land ownership in the name of purity. The worldwide socialist revolution under a new guise.
CR: dont think you're alone, a number of other level-headed sites seem to have targeted by the Young Republicans lately. just ignore them.
This might help:
The Real News About Mann-Made Global Warming - TCS Daily
Let's not make this topic political, but agree that the science is still a longs ways off from being settled.
Reasonable Guy, I posted this article because it offers a suggested economic proposal. I'd prefer a debate on the merits of Stiglitz' proposal.
I understand the concern about government intervention - but intervention is required when there is a clear market failure. The visible foot, if you will. I can't imagine a clearer market failure.
As far as the debate on the science, I don't think this is the place. I'd be happy to have that debate somewhere else - the evidence is overwhelming, so I don't think the debate would last very long!
Best Wishes.
CR,
I love your site and look to it on real estate and other economic matters of fact and evidence. Please don't let your ego get in the way of hard science vs. emotions.
Stiglitz proposes a solution to a problem that may not exist. What market failure? There has been no market in pollution over the last century. There have been recent limited attempts, but if man-made global warming is proven and a threat, it is a failure of government as a "tragedy of the commons" issue. Precisely the antithesis of market failure.
Best wishes to you...
As an egghead scientist, I'd like to let Jack and Reasonable Guy know that there is plenty of debate by scientists on global warming. Scientists are discussing everything from cloud physics to the effect of black carbon on albedo. These are improving our basic understanding of a very complex problem, and there is still a huge amount of improvement in our treatments of various aspects of the problem. However, the basic science on global warming has been well understood since Max Planck described blackbody radiation. Greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation; this enhances the radiative forcing on our planet. There are a whole bunch of feedback mechanisms that have varying degrees of uncertainty which make it difficult to predict the magnitude of temperature change that will occur. Unfortunately for global warming skeptics, debating how much temperature rise will occur is not the same as debating whether temperature will continue to rise.
Here's the level of certainty for this problem. There are things I'm certain enough to bet 10 dollars on, my car on, or my life on. This is something I would bet my car on.
OK....there is no debate? Check out these scientists-
The Earth is warming but the cause is unknown
Scientists in this section accept the observations of rising temperatures, but conclude it is too early to ascribe any cause to these changes, man-made or natural.
* Richard Lindzen, MIT meteorology professor and member of the National Academy of Sciences: "We are quite confident that [the] global mean temperature is about 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago [but] we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future..." [1]. But against this, he also said if all else were kept equal, the increase in carbon dioxide should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed [WSJ: June 26, 2006; Page A14]
* Robert C. Balling, Jr., director of the Office of Climatology and an associate professor of geography at Arizona State University: "At this moment in time we know only that: (1) Global surface temperatures have risen in recent decades. (2) Mid-tropospheric temperatures have warmed little over the same period. (3) This difference is not consistent with predictions from numerical climate models." [2]
[edit]
The Earth is warming but mostly due to natural processes
Scientists in this section accept the observations of rising temperature, but conclude that natural causes may be more to blame than human activities.
* William M. Gray, Colorado State University: "This small warming is likely a result of the natural alterations in global ocean currents which are driven by ocean salinity variations. Ocean circulation variations are as yet little understood. Human kind has little or nothing to do with the recent temperature changes. We are not that influential." Mr. Gray, who has worked in the field for 50 years, has labeled global warming "one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people." [3][4]
* Willie Soon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: " there's increasingly strong evidence that previous research conclusions, including those of the United Nations and the United States government concerning 20th century warming, may have been biased by underestimation of natural climate variations. In other words, natural factors could be more important than previously assumed". [5]
* Sallie Baliunas, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: "[T]he recent warming trend in the surface temperature record cannot be caused by the increase of human-made greenhouse gases in the air". [6]
* Frederick Seitz, retired, former solid-state physicist, former president of the National Academy of Sciences: "So we see that the scientific facts indicate that all the temperature changes observed in the last 100 years were largely natural changes and were not caused by carbon dioxide produced in human activities." [7]
* Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist at the Hebrew University
Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on his blog, asserts "about 2/3's (give or take a third or so) of the warming should be attributed to increased solar activity and the remaining to anthropogenic causes". His opinion is based on some proxies of solar activity over the past few centuries. [8]
Fred Singer, president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project: has changed his position from "The earth is not warming significantly" (paraphrase) [9] to "The Earth currently is experiencing a warming trend, but there is scientific evidence that human activities have little to do with it" [10].
Bob Carter, researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia. Dr. Carter says, "The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown." [11]
Tim Patterson [12], paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada. Dr. Patterson states, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?" [13]
Jan Veizer, Professor Emeritus, University of Ottawa, writes: "At this stage, two scenarios of potential human impact on climate appear feasible: (1) the standard IPCC model that advocates the leading role of greenhouse gases, particularly of CO2, and (2) the alternative model that argues for celestial phenomena as the principal climate driver. ... Models and empirical observations are both indispensable tools of science, yet when discrepancies arise, observations should carry greater weight than theory. If so, the multitude of empirical observations favours celestial phenomena as the most important driver of terrestrial climate on most time scales, but time will be the final judge." (In J. Veizer, "Celestial climate driver: a perspective from four billion years of the carbon cycle", Geoscience Canada, March, 2005. [14])
CR is absolutely right - the debate is only from the oil industry propaganda machine. Here's more information on the use of carbon content in ice cores as evidence:
Feature Articles
and
Paleoclimatology: Climate Close-up : Feature Articles
and explaining the evidence here:
Paleoclimatology: Explaining the Evidence : Feature Articles
Stiglitz has gone one beyond in offering some solutions. It is time to look at solutions now rather than reacting to a crisis, which appears to be the only way humans historically attend to problems.
CR: As others have said, this is a good economics blog but your views on global warming are poorly defended and unconvincing.
Yes, most everyone agrees that human activities contribute to global warming, but recent environmental events (e.g. Katrina, glaciers melting, etc.) are likely the result of plain old normal variation.
Review the Little Ice Age for an example of dramatic pre-industrial climate changes. Just go back to the 1950s-1970s for widespread fears of an approaching ice age made worse by nuclear winter (which not coincidentally meshed with proto-Green anti-nuke politics).
There are plenty of Chicken Littles and plenty of ostriches with heads in the sand. Don't be either one, please.
CR,
By the way good luck trying to convince anybody (I've given up with people otherwise competent in their day jobs) -- people pay much more attention to six-sigma excellence when their livelihood depends on it. And they consider themselves instant pundits on earth climatology -- after all how can anybody tell and those scientists must want more money, right?
P.S. European countries are buying "carbon rights" from all over the world to just meet the Kyoto levels. With China, India, and Russia on the economic upswing it seems the world taxation aproach is astoundlingly naive, at best.
John,
I suggest you look at those NASA links I've posted which contrasts the recent period with ice-age records.
Reasonable Guy, There are several positives to Stiglitz proposal.
1) Each country decides what to do with the revenue. Stiglitz recommends reducing taxes on capital and labor - making the tax revenue neutral.
Of course the tax has to be uniform around the globe or oil intensive businesses will find the lowest tax - and that does not help.
2) Stiglitz suggests the tax could be decreased or increased very couple of years depending on new scientific evidence. If new evidence shows warming isn't so bad, then the tax could be lowered. If it's getting worse, the tax could be increased.
That seems prudent even for those with sincere doubts.
D_rumsfeld, I should have been born in Missouri - I'm always asking "Show me!". But now I'm convinced - and I agree with you on the certainty scale.
Jack, Fred Singer is a joke. I respect William Gray (an excellent hurricane forecaster) and I wish he would write a paper. I'm not the first to ask him to put down his objections in a research paper - unfortunately he has decided not to have his views scrutinized.
The way you make your name in science is to go against the consensus - and be correct. Anyone who writes a peer reviewed article that shows the consensus is wrong would receive high praise in the scientific community. No one has taken the challenge.
Best to all.
John, I feel I've offered very little evidence for Global Warming - so it is not surprising that you find it unconvincing. I was hoping this was an economics post ... obviously there are still some people that need to be convinced.
BR, I like Stiglitz' general approach. It solves some of the problems with Kyoto (the exclusion of the developing countries, etc.). I'm open to other solutions, but I'm glad Stiglitz took the next step in offering a policy solution. Its great that it is adjustable too - it's a framework that can adapt as new evidence is presented.
Best Wishes.
CR:
Those who make statements such as "The industry shills" or "The fossil fuel cartel" do not lend credibility to that side of the debate. It would be the same as saying "The anti-capitalist Commies that fund the pro global warming argument due to man's activities " on the other side of the coin. Both are inflammatory statements that do not merit or further the debate to arrive at consensus. There is still much debate and absolutely no "consensus" on the issue. For arguments sake, let's presume the planet is getting warmer. Next question, "What is the cause?" I have heard every possibility from man, normal cycles, the sun being hotter, etc., etc. It makes no sense to jump off the bridge and enact "global" taxes when we are unsure even if the planet is warming let alone what is causing it.
Pete in SD,
Let's say that although accidents do occur, the probability of your getting into an automobile accident is very small. Does that mean you will drive without insurance?
DeLong has said (rather often) that Vice President Gore proposed a similar proposal. Of course, Stiglitz was part of the CEA under Clinton-Gore and during their tenure, the White House actually listened to the CEA.
What about this then?
JunkScience.com -- The Real Inconvenient Truth: Greenhouse, global warming and some facts
What I always find amusing is the consistency in thought of those who believe there is no such thing as "global warming". They also tend to believe that the theory of evolution is a damn devil lie and are currently waiting for the "rapture" while watching Fox news. Ack....
And they also believe that because they took one introductory course in college, they now posess the intellectual prowess to dissect and invalidate peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals without actually reading them. This, is what I call, the "voting public".
Pete in SD,
Let's say that although accidents do occur, the probability of your getting into an automobile accident is very small. Does that mean you will drive without insurance?
BR | 07.11.06 - 9:34 pm | #
That comment is a great reflection of the level of debate: simplistic, off point, and emotionally charged to the point of political grandstanding.
No one wants to ruin the planet. Society needs to determine if recent changes in climate are human caused or natural. Then figure a solution and cost to solve it. Then determine if the cost outweighs the benefit.
Personally, I'd trade global warming for world peace and an end to poverty and disease and an education system that works. The people of the world have only so many resources to give.
Do you even know how many people die every day from malaria and other diseases?
Global warming from emissions seems likely, but is probably exaggerated. However, with or without global warming, the classic tragedy of the commons is at play with pollution. The concept of taxing pollution seems like a good one.
Those who think we should do nothing about global warming because they don't believe it's completely proven should consider Peter F. Drucker's principle of decision-making -- that the most important question to ask when making any decision is: What if this decision is wrong?
If the nature of a decision is such that there's no great harm if it's wrong, and it's easily undone, then one needn't be particularly cautious in making it. But if its nature is such that the potential harm is great, and it's not easily undone, then it demands great caution.
If we decide to take strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and then future advances in science show that the predictions about global warming were wrong, there'll have been no great harm done. We'll only have suffered slightly slower economic growth. But if we don't take strong measures and the the predictions are correct, there'll be no way to get the greenhouse gases back out of the air, and we'll be in deep trouble.
And the fact that the theories and simulation models may be inaccurate cuts both ways. They may be underpredicting future effects.
Quite the thread... used to take a stained blue dress to get them all worked up, now its just an 'Inconvenient Truth'.
Keep posting them CR. Always worth the read.
Linda,
Junkscience is exactly that--junk science. If you haven't bothered to check out some of its assertions, then you have not done any research.
I suggest you take some of those assertions--especially the one about C02 and water vapor--to
realclimate.org
and see what responses you get from climatologists in the field.
The water vapor/CO2 argument is always a favorite of the contrarians.
Try Junkscience's arguments out--see what responses you get.
I have read JunkScience's stuff; maybe you should read the responses.
Jack,
And those of you who think it is a political not a scientific issue.
It seems the responsibility is yours to check out the arguments, to make an actual effort to understand the science and the debate.
That means reading both sides.
I think the science is not refutable regarding climate change- and I may add most of the people in denial are the ones who 'swore' there where WMD in Iraq in late 2002- considering this- it might be said the political accusations are being woven by the fascist right wing in this country along with FOX News, Exxon, et al and their followers- in 10 years or less as weather becomes more bizarre- the scince kicks in and the fascists go back under their reactionary logs.
So what is wrong with developing non-greenhouse gas emitting energy sources? Nuclear, renewables, etc? Wouldn't that be a net plus given that the end of cheap oil is upon us? Seems that this is a time of opportunity as well as difficulties. The need to deny global warming is "freezing" forward movement in these fields. We are being left behind by the rest of the world in the development of alternatives and may end up as dependent on foreign energy developers as we are on oil. Never marry a position denying scientific evidence.
"I think the science is not refutable regarding climate change- and I may add most of the people in denial are the ones who 'swore' there where WMD in Iraq in late 2002- considering this- it might be said the political accusations are being woven by the fascist right wing in this country along with FOX News, Exxon, et al and their followers- in 10 years or less as weather becomes more bizarre- the scince kicks in and the fascists go back under their reactionary logs."
This diatribe makes my point perfectly.
Regarding the insurance comment, maybe we should look into obtaining such in case the sky falls. LLoyds might be agree to covering this.
Sorry, should be "agreeable" in the last sentence.
"Now that the scientific debate concerning Global Warming is over (it is over except for the industry shills)"
It is a sign of a weak position that you insult anyone who disagrees with you as an industry shill. Here's why I doubt that the debate is really over. I'm an economist, not a climate scientist, so feel free to fill in the gaps below.
First, there are probably areas of broad agreement. For example, there are probably numbers k, m, and n such that if we go back n years, most climate scientists would agree that the global mean surface temperature has increased by about k degrees celsius. Moreover, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased by about m percent over the same n-year period.
But I would suspect that the agreement breaks down once you try to interpret that correlation. Is there a generally accepted climate model that tells us how much of the temperature increase is due to the CO2 increase? If so, I would appreciate a link. But if this were an economic correlation, clever economists could construct at least superficially plausible models that would deliver any desired intrepretation of that correlation, from no effect of CO2 to explaining all of the temperature increase to CO2. We would be left with the usual task of evaluating models by means such as internal consistency, in-sample fit, post-sample prediction, etc. Is that happening in the global warming literature now?
Don't you "no such thing as global warming folks" get it? Even if you don't believe an additional couple degrees increase in this century will make much difference-staying tied to oil is not an option. There is little, if any, orogenic oil. The extraction of remaining oil will not be cheap. Easy oil is being depleted. The future is not oil or gas, it is other forms of energy. Do we want to remain bound by the countries that control the oil? Right now, the only remaining "something from nothing" energy source is nuclear. There will soon come a day when oil will far more valuable in plastics and chemicals than burning as a fuel. Perhaps these are some of the reasons why Iran is moving on nuclear power-they see the day of dry oil wells coming, and wouldn't it be better to extract the maximum cash from the world for that last oil rather than burning it up in their cars and power plants? Take the long view, oil is not the future.
"Reasonable Guy"
You posted a link quoting Roy Spencer. Here's a link describing how Roy Spencer's research has been discredited in a paper published in this year's Science.
Key Argument for Global Warming Critics Evaporates | LiveScience
Since you accuse me of simplistic arguments, you must have missed the link above a portion of which I include here for your convenience:
"When scientists started to analyze the paleoclimate evidence in the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores, they found that the record also supported Milankovitchs theory of when ice ages should occur. But they also found something that required additional explanation: some climate change appeared to have occurred very rapidly. Because Milankovitchs theory tied climate change to the slow and regular variations in Earths orbit, the scientific community expected that climate change would also be slow and gradual. But the ice cores showed that while it took nearly 10,000 years for the Earth to totally emerge from the last ice age and warm to todays balmy climate, one-third to one-half of the warmingabout 15 degrees Fahrenheitoccurred in about 10 years, at least in Greenland. A closer look at marine sediments confirmed this finding. Although the overall timing of the ice ages was clearly tied to variations in the Earths orbit, other factors must have contributed to climate change as well. Something else made temperatures change very quickly, but what?
Greenhouse Gases
Scientists are now exploring a few possibilities. First, greenhouse gases probably influenced past climates. Ice cores record past greenhouse gas levels. In the past, when the climate warmed, the change was accompanied by an increase in greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide. When scientists tried to build climate models, they could not get the models to simulate past climate change unless they also added changes in carbon dioxide levels. Though scientists arent sure why carbon dioxide levels changed, almost all believe that the shift contributed to altering the climate. Because ice cores also revealed that carbon dioxide levels are much higher today than at any time recorded in the past 750,000 years, pinning down the cause-and-effect relationship between carbon dioxide and climate change continues to be a focal point of modern climate research."
You see, it takes more than an internet second to discredit people who have dedicated their careers to studying. But you are just interested in stringing together some rhetoric, aren't you?
Kudos to lowsmoke, for hitting the nail on the head. CR, unfortunately I have to say that your resorting to name-calling of anyone who disagrees with your position reveals its true worth. The only consensus is as follows: (1) there has been some warming (2) human activity has influenced it to a debatable degree (3) nature has influenced it to a debatable degree. Claims that the "debate is over" are greatly exaggerated.
The 'naysayers' of global warming-oh gee they become so incensed.....
I see none of these 'facists' have disputed that term- nor have they denied their distorted 'belief' of WMD in Iraq- but they stand in the face of objective science- which brought us out of the age of 'religion' and 'mysticsm' over 500 years ago- today fighting tooth and nail over the results of the 'scientific method' re: Global warming. Science- brought us cures for small pox and polio.
What has Fox News and Rush brought us?
I say to these Wing wingo nutsos who listen to FOX News and 'Rush' go back to listening to these sparkling intellects - you may yet become a brownshirt!
The need to conflate AGW agnostiscism with other issues is very weak.
The debate is far from over. There are three pieces of evidence that support the AGW conjecture. Proxy reconstructions of global temperature(which are under severe criticism for their clandestine questionable statistical methodologies), climate models known for their non-predictive abilities, and the physical fact that CO2 absorbs a certain frequency range of EMF from the sun. The consensus from scientists is based on a hazy belief, large logic jumping, questionable assumptions and dererence to authority more than anything remotely close to the scientific method.
Wow! So all those images I'm seeing of glaciers melting and ice caps on Kilimanjaro receding, and lakes in Russia's provinces disappearing -- you know, the glaciers and ice caps and lakes that have stayed at stable levels for hundreds of years until recently -- are just my lyin' eyes!
Oh, and my insurance rates that are going up because of increased storm risk? Oh that's just my lean an lyin wallet!
Put the the anti-warmers you quote back in the pockets of the industry they are peeping from and zip 'em up -- they are just an embarrassment now.
CR, thanks for your post.
Some posters have taken exception to my conclusory comment:
"Now that the scientific debate concerning Global Warming is over (it is over except for the industry shills) ..."
I think that is a fair description of the current state of the scientific debate. Outside of the scientific community the debate still rages - as evidenced by some of the comments on this thread.
The idea that using a conclusory statement makes my argument "weak" would be reasonable if I was arguing about Global Warming. I'm not. I'm discussing a policy proposal to address Global Warming.
I recommend realclimate.org
for discussions on the science of Climate change. The skeptics can post your questions / comments to scientists working in the field.
Enjoy! Best to all.
The use of use of name calling as a debate tactic is of pathetically poor intellectual caliber, and suggests a lack of valid counter arguments. I would hope that the points could be opposed on the merits of the arguments with actual counter arguments - not with grade school style insults.
I do not know enough about the science of global warming to be certain of any single answer. From the various points raised it is clear that nobody else knows for sure either. However, I do see that there is more certainty of opinion than there is certainty of fact to back those opinions.
There is much that nobody yet knows about the causes of global warming. We should be open minded and determine the real extent of each contributing cause.
There is a preponderance of empirical evidence (and peer-reviewed research), which at this point caused the public to shift opinion that global warming is manmade, and we must act to mitigate or stop it as best we can.
You can try to nitpick holes in this all day, but you can't stop people from trusting the senses God gave them. We can all see and feel the results of manmade damage ourselves right now, with our own eyes.
If we had put aside our moneyed interests and listened to science years ago, we'd have to undo a lot less damage. But to quote Upton Sinclair: 'It is hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.