Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

We are constantly working on ways to make coal use environmentally friendly because there is so much of it and it is both efficient and affordable. Already there are scrubbers on our refineries and factories making and using petroleum products that pollute extremely little or not at all. Natural gas, properly used, is a relatively clean form of energy and they're constantly working on ways to make that more environmentally friendly too.

Of course we could all go back to wood burning stoves and wax candles, but somehow I think that might produce its own problems.

Even if we did dam all the rivers and put wind farms on every available square foot of space, I don't think we would produce more than a fraction of the energy needs in this country and/or in most countries.

You bring up a good point - 'technology we now have.'

If clean energy is something that Americans are looking to have, there isn't any reason why we shouldn't be subsidizing the research and development for the technology, and yet we don't spend more than a pittiance on it.

I think all the time about the real failure we have of uniting ourselves as a nation for common causes. I don't care for Bush, but if he came forward with a plan to make America the leader in renewable energy - not just for environmental reasons, but also because it has the potential to be a very profitable industry in the long run, and getting on top of it now is far better than letting others do so - and asked everyone to contribute time, money, and personal work to the project, we could accomplish amazing things. But they won't do it, for various reasons....

I have been quite happy to see the recent advances in coal burning technology and nuclear technology to make the plants cleaner and safer; in particular pellet-style nuke reactors (which have an almost zero chance of meltdown due to the design) and the bio-cleansing of coal emissions seem promising. A proper approach to our future energy needs will definately need to include both of these.

Cycloptichorn

Hmm, not exactly; 30k wind turbines would supply the equivalent to our current electricity production in the US and wouldn't use up 2% of the available land space. The energy needs of automobiles are another matter, but hopefully electric cars will be improved before to long... there have been many advances in battery technology in the last 10 years that could easily help automobiles out.

Cycloptichorn

All good points Cyclop, though I prefer seeing the government give tax incentives and other incentives to private industry to do the R & D. The government itself swallows up so many resources in bureaucracy, inefficiency, and stupidity, I trust private industry to get the most bang for the buck spent. Once they get flat out subsidies though, they have to do things the government way. In my opinion, that's not good plus they have less incentive to reach their goal.

Well, there are two types of research to take into account here: theoretical and applied.

Applied research is what private industry does - engineering problems. They take well-tested theories and find new and innovate ways to make them better, smaller, faster, cheaper, more efficient. This leads to little jumps, progressive ones (which can be marketed to consumers - better computers every couple of years, better cell phones, etc) but very rarely to brand-new ideas and directions.

Theoretical research is the process of trying out things to see what does and doesn't work in the process of breaking down and building new theories. This is incredibly important, as it advances the body of science as a whole in the particular field of study and eventually leads to the new theories which are in turn used to produce new products. The only problem with this is that in order to test the robustness and soundness of theories - a neccessary step before large amounts of monies can be invested in the creation of new products - you have to spend a lot of time trying to disprove old theories and find new ones. None of which ever lead to profitability.

In truth, we require a mixture of the two types of research in order to keep advancing a particular line of knowledge. Renewable energy needs both companies trying to find cheaper and more efficient ways to utilize our current theories and technology, and also new theories as to different ways we could construct energy gathering devices completely. One is small steps, the other large leaps; the small steps are more solid, and yes, as you pointed out, less wasteful; but it is the large leaps which lead to truly paradigm-shifting techonolgies.

Therefore it is important to fund theoretical research through the government if you wish for the science to move forward, because companies - who need to go to the investor at the end of the year and justify every decision they make from a profit standpoint - simply don't have the ability to fund long-term theoretical research projects. The University system, however, has the ability to do this, the manpower to do this, and simultaneously it educates those who move on to private enterprise to take advantage of their new ideas in a more physical, engineering way.

Cycloptichorn

There's no reason that private industry couldn't fund the universities which it does anyway and give it an incentive to do so, and it will on an even larger scale than it does now. But it is a misnomer to think private industry isn't doing a huge amount of theoretical research as well. The pharmaceutical companies, for instance, are doing this on a large scale and on a continuing basis.

My argument is that private industry has more incentive to not fritter away the funds than does any government agency. So lets put the money where we'll get the most bang for our buck.

If the private industry is handing out the money to universities, why not just cut out the middleman?

If we want to set up a system where the gov't gives monies to private industries, but mandates that a certain percentage of it is spent on theoretical research, I wouldn't have a problem with that either. I am interested in end results more than the process needed to gather the end results.

I would say that the amount of money spent on theoretical research has produced a gigantic bang for its' buck in terms of scientific knowledge. We are right on the cusp of nano, bio, and genetic technologies, and that's all because of theoretical research at gov't-funded labs and universitites.

Cycloptichorn

No, what I meant is that the government would be better stewards of the taxpayer's money if they just provided incentives to private industry to do it. I don't want the government handing out monies at all if it can be done more efficiently and effectively in the private sector. I have no problem with the government providing tax incentives to make it more possible for private industry to do it, but, in most things, the less government involvement in the process the better. I do not want government telling industry HOW to do anything. I have no problem with government offering incentives for a thing to be accomplished however.

That's the thing - private industry just won't get into theoretical research. The Pharma industry that you pointed out even mines most of their research of universities that they provide grants to, and they are the exception, really.

They won't get into it because it will never turn a profit, ever. Theoretical research costs money with no return half the time, because you have to spend time trying to disprove theories as much as you spend creating new theories. Neither leads to a salable product in any time period that an investor would be interested in.

There is no evdience that private industry would be better at theoretical research than public labs and universities, and quite a bit of evidence that they wouldn't. Given the need for theoretical research, it only makes sense to fund public projects to do so. The innate Conservative need to make a profit in every single endeavor fails here, because theoretical research is by definition never going to make back the money that you put into it, so businesses are never going to get into it heavily enough to advance the field.

The gov't currently does provide monies to Universities and public labs for theoretical research; the system has worked quite well for a long time. There is no indication that increasing the level of funding will have anything other than a positive effect on the body of science and eventually will benefit every American; therefore, it is one of the best ways we can possibly spend our monies.

There is no incentive the gov't can provide that would make theoretical research cheaper and more efficient when performed by private industry than by the currently existing system.

Cycloptichorn

The pharmaceutical companies find it profitable to do the theoretical research because a new effective drug is quite lucrative for them. Other private companies are constantly doing R & D because a patent on an effective product can be quite lucrative for them. The incentive to get the most value from their dollar, however, is because that dollar is coming out of their pocket.

What incentive does a university have to produce a product or a solution so long as government monies keep funneling in while they work on it?

We'll probably have to agree to disagree on this one though.

Yeah, but Universities aren't for making products or solutions. That's the whole point. They are for figuring out new theories, which are then in turn used to create new products and solutions by those who engage in applied research, namely, corporations and private companies.

You are correct that private companies and corps do engage in a ton of R&D, but it is applied research, not theoretical. That's where the money comes from, not from the theory; but without the theoretical research, the field of knowledge itself doesn't advance at all, we just learn new ways to apply knowledge we already have.

It is a critical distinction, in that we cannot ignore the theoretical research even though the applied research has more immediate results. The long-term stuff is critical to research as well, and it has to be done in an environment where profits are not the highest priority.

As for 'government monies keep funneling in while they work on it'... I don't know if you've ever filled out grant applications for theoretical research, but let me tell you, it isn't like a cakewalk or anything. It takes a lot of work to convince the gov't to give you monies to research something... you have to get results within a pretty short time-period. The only difference is that your results may just confirm that a theory is correct, or sharpen the math on a theory, or something like that; which is super-important for making sure the theories are robust enough to make actual products out of, but won't ever turn a profit.

Cycloptichorn

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/24/AR2006112401361.html

Has this been posted?

http://spacecenter.dk/xpdf/influence-of-cosmic-rays-on-the-earth.pdf

Enter the debate now with another factor that is poorly understood and not well studied, and certainly not well reported for whatever reasons, as far as I can tell.

NASA has a nice collection of various opinions about this.

(Althought just published by your favourite opinion-maker "junkscience" that Danish report is online since 8 years already :wink: )

Eight years, okay, but I simply haven't seen much of anything about this. Whether it affects climate, I don't know, but apparently there is disagreement over this among scientists. Suffice it to say it is a factor that is not often mentioned, but one that people should recognize as another factor that is in the mix for what is going on with climate. I had not seen it mentioned here so I thought it should be.

One other observation here concerning climate, I have seen increasing reference to something that is poorly understood in terms of affecting climate. That something turns out to be "clouds" of all things. I never imagined such could affect the climate!

Seems to be due to what you read? Even the BBC, The Guardian, The Independent - juts to name those, which are attacked usually - still have reports about that online/archived.

Is this what we can expect from the new Democrat controlled Congress do you suppose? (The full text of Rockefeller's letter follows this post)

Global Warming Gag Order
Senators to Exxon: Shut up, and pay up.
Monday, December 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Washington has no shortage of bullies, but even we can't quite believe an October 27 letter that Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe sent to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Its message: Start toeing the Senators' line on climate change, or else.

We reprint the full text of the letter here, so readers can see for themselves. But its essential point is that the two Senators believe global warming is a fact, and therefore all debate about the issue must stop and ExxonMobil should "end its dangerous support of the [global warming] 'deniers.' " Not only that, the company "should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history." And in extra penance for being "one of the world's largest carbon emitters," Exxon should spend that money on "global remediation efforts."

The Senators aren't dumb enough to risk an ethics inquiry by threatening specific consequences if Mr. Tillerson declines this offer he can't refuse. But in case the CEO doesn't understand his company's jeopardy, they add that "ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years." (Our emphasis.) The Senators also graciously copied the Exxon board on their missive.

This is amazing stuff. On the one hand, the Senators say that everyone agrees on the facts and consequences of climate change. But at the same time they are so afraid of debate that they want Exxon to stop financing a doughty band of dissenters who can barely get their name in the paper. We respect the folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but we didn't know until reading the Rockefeller-Snowe letter that they ran U.S. climate policy and led the mainstream media around by the nose, too. Congratulations.

Let's compare the balance of forces: on one side, CEI; on the other, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, the U.N. and EU, Hollywood, Al Gore, and every politically correct journalist in the country. We'll grant that's a fair intellectual fight. But if the Senators are so afraid that a handful of policy wonks at a single small think-tank are in danger of winning this debate, they must not have much confidence in the merits of their own case.

The letter is so over-the-top that we also wonder if Mr. Rockefeller in particular has even read it. (He and Ms. Snowe didn't return our call.) The Senator hails from coal-producing West Virginia, where people know something about carbon emissions. Come to think of it, Mr. Rockefeller owes his own vast wealth to something other than non-carbon energy. But perhaps it's easier to be carbon free when your fortune comes from a trust fund.

The letter is of a piece with what has become a campaign of intimidation against any global warming dissent. Not only is everyone supposed to concede that the planet has been warming--as it has--but we are all supposed to salute and agree that human beings are the definitive cause, that the magnitude of the warming will be disastrous and its effects catastrophic, that such problems as AIDS and poverty are less urgent, and that economic planners must therefore impose vast new regulatory burdens on everyone around the world. Exxon is being targeted in this letter and other ways because it is one of the few companies that still thinks some debate on these questions is valuable.

Every dogma has its day, and we've lived long enough to see more than one "consensus" blown apart within a few years of "everyone knowing" it was true. In recent decades environmentalists have been wrong about almost every other apocalyptic claim they've made: global famine, overpopulation, natural resource exhaustion, the evils of pesticides, global cooling, and so on. Perhaps it's useful to have a few folks outside the "consensus" asking questions before we commit several trillion dollars to any problem.

Imagine if this letter had been sent by someone in the Bush Administration trying to enforce the opposite conclusion? The left would be howling about "censorship." That's exactly what did happen earlier this year after James Hansen, the NASA scientist and global warming evangelist, complained that a lowly 24-year-old press aide had tried to limit his media access. The entire episode was preposterous because Mr. Hansen is one of the most publicized scientists in the world, but the press aide was nonetheless sacked.

The Senators' letter is far more serious because they have enormous power to punish Exxon if it doesn't kowtow to them. A windfall profits tax is in the air, and we've seen what happens to other companies that dare to resist Congressional intimidation. It's to Exxon's credit that, in its response to the Senators, the company said that it will continue to fund free market research groups because "there is value in the debate" that helps promote "optimal public policy decisions." Too bad that's not what the Senators care about.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009338

The letter to ExxonMobil.

BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV AND OLYMPIA SNOWE
Monday, December 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Editor's note: This is the text of a letter Sens. Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) and Snowe (R., Maine) sent to ExxonMobil's CEO. A related editorial appears (in the immediate previous post).


October 27, 2006
Mr. Rex W. Tillerson
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
ExxonMobil Corporation
5959 Las Colinas Boulevard
Irving, TX 75039

Dear Mr. Tillerson:

Allow us to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your first year as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the ExxonMobil Corporation. You will become the public face of an undisputed leader in the world energy industry, and a company that plays a vital role in our national economy. As that public face, you will have the ability and responsibility to lead ExxonMobil toward its rightful place as a good corporate and global citizen.

We are writing to appeal to your sense of stewardship of that corporate citizenship as U.S. Senators concerned about the credibility of the United States in the international community, and as Americans concerned that one of our most prestigious corporations has done much in the past to adversely affect that credibility. We are convinced that ExxonMobil's longstanding support of a small cadre of global climate change skeptics, and those skeptics access to and influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy.

Obviously, other factors complicate our foreign policy. However, we are persuaded that the climate change denial strategy carried out by and for ExxonMobil has helped foster the perception that the United States is insensitive to a matter of great urgency for all of mankind, and has thus damaged the stature of our nation internationally. It is our hope that under your leadership, ExxonMobil would end its dangerous support of the "deniers." Likewise, we look to you to guide ExxonMobil to capitalize on its significant resources and prominent industry position to assist this country in taking its appropriate leadership role in promoting the technological innovation necessary to address climate change and in fashioning a truly global solution to what is undeniably a global problem.

While ExxonMobil's activity in this area is well-documented, we are somewhat encouraged by developments that have come to light during your brief tenure. We fervently hope that reports that ExxonMobil intends to end its funding of the climate change denial campaign of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) are true. Similarly, we have seen press reports that your British subsidiary has told the Royal Society, Great Britain's foremost scientific academy, that ExxonMobil will stop funding other organizations with similar purposes. However, a casual review of available literature, as performed by personnel for the Royal Society reveals that ExxonMobil is or has been the primary funding source for the "skepticism" of not only CEI, but for dozens of other overlapping and interlocking front groups sharing the same obfuscation agenda. For this reason, we share the goal of the Royal Society that ExxonMobil "come clean" about its past denial activities, and that the corporation take positive steps by a date certain toward a new and more responsible corporate citizenship.

ExxonMobil is not alone in jeopardizing the credibility and stature of the United States. Large corporations in related industries have joined ExxonMobil to provide significant and consistent financial support of this pseudo-scientific, non-peer reviewed echo chamber. The goal has not been to prevail in the scientific debate, but to obscure it. This climate change denial confederacy has exerted an influence out of all proportion to its size or relative scientific credibility. Through relentless pressure on the media to present the issue "objectively," and by challenging the consensus on climate change science by misstating both the nature of what "consensus" means and what this particular consensus is, ExxonMobil and its allies have confused the public and given cover to a few senior elected and appointed government officials whose positions and opinions enable them to damage U.S. credibility abroad.

Climate change denial has been so effective because the "denial community" has mischaracterized the necessarily guarded language of serious scientific dialogue as vagueness and uncertainty. Mainstream media outlets, attacked for being biased, help lend credence to skeptics' views, regardless of their scientific integrity, by giving them relatively equal standing with legitimate scientists. ExxonMobil is responsible for much of this bogus scientific "debate" and the demand for what the deniers cynically refer to as "sound science."

A study to be released in November by an American scientific group will expose ExxonMobil as the primary funder of no fewer than 29 climate change denial front groups in 2004 alone. Besides a shared goal, these groups often featured common staffs and board members. The study will estimate that ExxonMobil has spent more than $19 million since the late 1990s on a strategy of "information laundering," or enabling a small number of professional skeptics working through scientific-sounding organizations to funnel their viewpoints through non-peer-reviewed websites such as Tech Central Station. The Internet has provided ExxonMobil the means to wreak its havoc on U.S. credibility, while avoiding the rigors of refereed journals. While deniers can easily post something calling into question the scientific consensus on climate change, not a single refereed article in more than a decade has sought to refute it.

Indeed, while the group of outliers funded by ExxonMobil has had some success in the court of public opinion, it has failed miserably in confusing, much less convincing, the legitimate scientific community. Rather, what has emerged and continues to withstand the carefully crafted denial strategy is an insurmountable scientific consensus on both the problem and causation of climate change. Instead of the narrow and inward-looking universe of the deniers, the legitimate scientific community has developed its views on climate change through rigorous peer-reviewed research and writing across all climate-related disciplines and in virtually every country on the globe.

Where most scientists dispassionate review of the facts has moved past acknowledgement to mitigation strategies, ExxonMobil's contribution the overall politicization of science has merely bolstered the views of U.S. government officials satisfied to do nothing. Rather than investing in the development of technologies that might see us through this crisis--and which may rival the computer as a wellspring of near-term economic growth around the world--ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years. The net result of this unfortunate campaign has been a diminution of this nation's ability to act internationally, and not only in environmental matters.

In light of the adverse impacts still resulting from your corporations activities, we must request that ExxonMobil end any further financial assistance or other support to groups or individuals whose public advocacy has contributed to the small, but unfortunately effective, climate change denial myth. Further, we believe ExxonMobil should take additional steps to improve the public debate, and consequently the reputation of the United States. We would recommend that ExxonMobil publicly acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it. Second, ExxonMobil should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history. Finally, we believe that there would be a benefit to the United States if one of the world's largest carbon emitters headquartered here devoted at least some of the money it has invested in climate change denial pseudo-science to global remediation efforts. We believe this would be especially important in the developing world, where the disastrous effects of global climate change are likely to have their most immediate and calamitous impacts.

Each of us is committed to seeing the United States officially reengage and demonstrate leadership on the issue of global climate change. We are ready to work with you and any other past corporate sponsor of the denial campaign on proactive strategies to promote energy efficiency, to expand the use of clean, alternative, and renewable fuels, to accelerate innovation to responsibly extend the useful life of our fossil fuel reserves, and to foster greater understanding of the necessity of action on a truly global scale before it is too late.


Sincerely,

John D. Rockefeller IV Olympia Snowe

Cc:
J. Stephen Simon
Walter V. Shipley
Samuel J. Palmisano
Marilyn Carlson Nelson
Henry A. McKinnell, Jr.
Philip E. Lippincott
Reatha Clark King
William R. Howell
James R. Houghton
William W. George
Michael J. Boskin
http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009337

Man caused global warming is a fact, no ifs, ands, or buts, Foxfyre. Haven't you heard its been proven beyond any reasonable doubt, and anybody that doubts it is either a liar or an idiot, and worse yet, you do not love the environment or mother earth. You hate the rest of us, as portrayed by your non-caring attitude toward the earth. If you do not change your ways, our days are numbered, so you are responsible for our possible demise. You are worse than any terrorist. Shall we send you to Gitmo?

LOL, I guess so. Some on this forum have already accused the oil companies of falsifying any science they use in analysis. So apparently if the oil companies don't capitulate to Rockefeller's demands, they're in big trouble? Suppose he'll recommend they go to Gitmo with me?