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

But we need not worry about droughts. Our resident moron, Occom Bill, says we can just desalinate.

Hay! How about that? Desalinating ocean water is using a reusable resource: ocean water.

Maybe we can lower the level of the ocean if we can convince enough people to urinate far away from shore!

Naaah! That won't work. That idea is just as nutty as Al Gore's ideas. The H2O in urine evaporates and some of it will probably precipitate back into the oceans.

I don't care which side of Obama's ummmm energy/save the planet plan you come down on, this is funny:

And so is this (besides being correct):

ican's "scientific" quote :



"up in the air" and "probably not " - those scientific explanations even i can understand .
wouldn't it have been more straight-forward (perhaps even honest) if he had just said : "i don't know" ?
hbg

I think he does know what the evidence shows, but he is acknowledging that the evidence is not conclusive. Certainty is a very big word with any scientist. You will find scientists who disagree that the evidence points to global warming; you will find scientists who agree that the trend supports global warming; you will find scientists who will say that the evidence does not support global warming being a serious problem, etc., but you don't find many people calling themselves scientists who will say that there is absolute certainty.

Ican, not claiming to be a scientists, has described himself as a 'probable-ist'. I think any scientists worthy of the name is a 'probable-ist' in any area of science for which there is uncertainty. And there is a lot of uncertainty within the global warming, especially the AGW debate.

An expert's 'probably' or 'up in the air' in a field of his/her expertise carries a whole lot more weight that the same terms used by you and me.

The only thing I know for certain is that I don't know anything for certain.

Probably there exists no one who knows anything for certain other than they know for certain they don't know anything else for certain. Probably there are many who refuse to acknowledge that they certainly do not know anything else for certain. :wink:

THE DISSENTS OF THE SCIENTIFIC DISSENTERS

CORRECTION

The only thing I know for certain is that I do not know anything ELSE for certain.

i would say that "ordinary" people (those that are not scientists) would have said : "i don't really know , but my guess is , my gut instinct , my belief is ... ... " .
would have been a lot easier to understand , I BELIEVE :wink: .
hbg

Well obviously I wouldn't say it that way.

I have what I think is probably a good reason for saying: The only thing I know for certain is that I do not know anything else for certain. My reason is based on my bet that anything else that I or other people may believe, is based on my and their subjective or objective judgments about relative probabilities. That is, I bet my and their judgments are based on what I and they think is most probably true or false.

By the way, I'm a retired electrical engineer and a semi-retired flight instructor.

Well yes, your manner of speaking would be different as is mine. I generally say "I don't have a clue" to acknowledge lack of information and 'gut instinct' for me might come out as "I would lay odds that......" or in the case where something has not yet been determined, I would likely says "It's anybody's guess. . . ."

"I don't really know" however would be inaccurate from a scientists who really knows a lot. "Probably" is not the same thing as 'gut instinct' or 'best guess'. "Probably" suggests that the proponderance of evidence comes down on a specific side. It's like saying that the Giants will probably beat the Steelers when they are ahead by three touchdowns, but we can't know for certain until game is over. "Up in the air' is as good a phrase as any to express that nothing is decided yet.

The excerpt posted by Ican is like all the others. None reflect the entire theory, thought process, or analysis of any of the scientists, but are excerpts to illustrate a point of view expressed by each. I don't have a clue where he made those particular remarks, but I certainly don't think even a brilliant scientists has to be stuffy in his manner of speech in order to be credible.

THE DISSENTS OF THE SCIENTIFIC DISSENTERS

THE DISSENTS OF THE SCIENTIFIC DISSENTERS

Those who oppose the proposition of man-made global warming are outside the mainstream scientific thought. They make up a small percentage of the overall scientific community involved in environmental issues. The head scientist at NASA recently spoke to this.

Really? Would that scientist be James Hansen who has received big bucks as an IPCC spokesperson, making speeches, and working with the Goddard Institute that receives contributions from a lot if not all wacko encironmental groups? The same James Hansen who was an advocate for the global cooling impending ice age theory of the 1970s and who has been as equally discredited in his opinions re global warming now? At least he has on this thread. The same James Hansen who claimed he was being gagged by the Bush administration even as he went on 60 Minutes to tell all? (People who have really been gagged would appreciate such freedom to speak.)

Would that be your 'head scientist at NASA' who says so?

If you listen to the actual scientists - the ones working with the temperature data and the computer models - the certainty is a lot less evident.

Look, it's not like this is easy and the reason that we're seeing this is that the people involved are liars. Climate study is really hard. REALLY hard. Even to approximate climate, we're already simplifying the heck out of things. Even with very simplified models, they're still hellaciously complex. They are not good predictive models. They have a crummy track record of predicting the future. To be fair, the most recent generation or two of models has hardly had time to be judged by that standard, and they've got a lot more computing power to play with than earlier models, but even they aren't spot on. That's why there's such big error bars associated with climate predictions.

Furthermore, the actual science is being made much of, not by scientists themselves, but by political activists. There's always been a certain kind of environmentalist for whom large-scale cessation of industry has been an ideal, and they gravitated to the global warming movement en masse. I'm not saying ALL of them are turn-out-the-lights wackos, of course; there are plenty of people who honestly see worries about global warming as a good method of promoting alternative energy solutions, who are genuinely worried about tundra habitats, or who own low-lying coastal property and are really worried about rising ocean levels.

The real kicker is to ask the scientists about the proposed solutions. Would the US joining Kyoto have prevented global warming, assuming projections of global warming are valid? The answer is universally "no". All parties involved agree that restrictions would have to be much more draconian to have a significant effect. Indeed, economic analysis sponsored by the UN shows that, dollar for dollar, money spent attempting to ameliorate global warming is the worst possible use of that money (that is, assuming you're dedicating it to solve a big problem; I assume they didn't study going out and buying lots of drugs and booze with it, heh.)

So why push the Kyoto treaty and similar constraints, knowing that they don't even begin to go far enough to have an effect? Simple - asking for the draconian cuts they think they really need would get the environmentalists laughed out of town. So they want to "establish a framework" for regulations, and then when those regulations don't have the desired effect (because, at the level they were instituted, they couldn't have), the regulations can be ratcheted up. At that point, the environmentalists can always ask for "just a few more cuts" because "we've already dedicated so many resources to solving this problem". And if things get warmer anyway, they can just point to "the ever-increasing urgency of the problem" to justify harsher and harsher restrictions.

At this point, there is a VERY real question about the policy dimension - not "is there going to be global warming", but "ought we do anything about it?"

We can all cheer for the energy researchers; if someone comes up with a cheap solar cell, or workable ultracapacitors, or a working fusion plant, or any one of a dozen other good ideas, then a lot of this will cease to be an issue. We'll cut our carbon emissions without a government panel telling us to. But in the absence of a technological innovation or two, it's just not likely to happen.

NASA's Hansen is highly respected and, like everyone else who speaks, is entitled to receive fees. He gets a lot less than Clinton does.

Moreover, Hansen is in line with mainstream scientific thought on global warming, and his findings and conclusions have not been successfully assailed.

BTW, the administration did try to shut him down, and he holds his job only because of the bad publicity heaped on the administration as a result of its actions.

That's pure....what's Ican's word?...MARLARKY, Advocate. For somebody claiming that he has been 'shut down' when he is giving interviews to major magazines and newspapers is ludicrous. He lost all credibility with me right there. Respected? Absolutely by environmental wackos and AGW religionists. By the majority of the scientific world that sees him as scientifically flawed and overly political on this issue, no. He refused to debate Professor Michaels of Virginia when challenged to do so re AGW. Why would he have refused? Could it be that he knows full well he could not defend his promoted theories?

The only reason he kept his job is because of negative publicity if the Bush administration fired him? Equally ludicrous, especially considering that President Bush has joined the environmental religionists on this issue. Where are your kudos for the President? (He was prevented from stating what the official government policy would be prior to the government actually arriving at one.)

Indeed, Hansen has refused to debate out-of-touch contrarians. There is nothing to gain from it. The latter essentially wing it with far-out theories lacking any scientific bases. Reputable scientists, like Hansen, eschew such a waste of time.