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I suspect they were related... or one and the same, perhaps.

It's likely that someone linked this forum on some commie forum, which accounts for the recent influx of trolls..

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  • 4 months later...

Hmm what is The Nobel prize is given in Physics, chemistry, lit, peace, econ, and medicine. Which of these disciplines requires the ability to know about the environment and global temperature trends. That sounds like an irrelevant point. I know the guy is gone, but anyone that sees 50% of the Nobel laureates agreeing on something as being relevant to almost any point needs to reconsider the facts.

-Nate

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I know the guy is gone, but anyone that sees 50% of the Nobel laureates agreeing on something as being relevant to almost any point needs to reconsider the facts.

-Nate

Even if 100% of Nobel laureates agreed, it would still not justify the initiation of force against individuals for the purpose of "saving the environment".

There is no reconsideration necessary.

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Even if 100% of Nobel laureates agreed, it would still not justify the initiation of force against individuals for the purpose of "saving the environment".

Not to mention that it wouldn't prove anything, as it is just an appeal to authority.

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Global warming is a topic ramped with “bad science” and hidden agendas. To even think about making laws based on what is said to be known about GW is sick.

Besides it’s still cold in Michigan. Everytime I brush the snow off my car I hope global warming kicks in soon. I should just move.

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I saw The Day After Tomorrow too -- almost three months ago. I first heard about it from a Popular Science article which interviewed a professor at my university, Richard Alley (author of this book). He spoke to my class when I was in 9th grade about his work on ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, which reveal that the last 100,000 years has experienced extreme climate change, with on and off ice ages -- the last one abruptly stopping in only three years.

This seems to suggest that future climate change cannot solely be blamed on human beings; indeed, the amazon.com review of his book says Alley "contends that the unusually warm, stable climate we have experienced for the past 10,000 years is an anomaly." Nevertheless, Alley went on (in the PopSci article) to stress that we should develop clean fuels like hydrogen and nuclear, that we should reduce our greenhouse output and try not to force the climate to change.

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Nevertheless, Alley went on (in the PopSci article) to stress that we should develop clean fuels like hydrogen and nuclear, that we should reduce our greenhouse output and try not to force the climate to change.

I have not read Alley's "PopSci" article, but I have read a number of his papers in the technical journals. It is clear to me that Alley has embraced conservation as a religion, in everything from his home life to his professional judgments. There are many substantially worse, but Alley is not a good friend of rational science when it comes to the environment. He has, as Oakes intimated, however, done some interesting exploratory work.

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The latest issue of National Geographic has an article about GW but I have yet to read it.

VES

I read the editor's self-congratulatory preface in which he basically said that he was being heroic and publishing this important new story in the face of possibly losing a few subsribers who dogmatically cling to the myth that there is no global warming. Of course, global warming is hardly a new story (and a story is all that it is), and the dogmatists are the vast majority of people who believe in it without being able to provide a scrap of evidence for it. So the editor's preface is b.s. on several levels.

I then skimmed the article, but it was just the same old thing where they trot out a bunch of pseudo-scientists in a weak argumentum ad verecundiam and cite a few out of context statistics that don't prove anything anyway.

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RadCap Posted: Jun 22 2003, 01:31 PM

And they all do this in volumes man does not even come CLOSE to releasing. Take carbon dioxide for instance. Man releases maybe seven billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually, whereas the planet releases almost two hundred billion tons over the same period of time.

And then there's life itself. Living creatures are all notorious polluters. When they breathe, they pollute. After they eat, they pollute. In fact, termites alone expel about fifty billion tons of CO2 and methane each year. That's ten times more than man produces by burning fossil fuels.

These are just small, isolated examples of the overwhelming amount of pollutants the rest of nature releases. Next to them, man's pollution is insignificant.

I agree with this except the last line. It is still possible that the small proportion of CO2 we are releasing could be partly (along with various natural factors) responsible for global warming (assuming it is happening at all, which is unclear). As for whether such warming would be good or bad and whether we could or should try to stop it, I don't think there is enough information to decide.

As for how many scientists believe in or don't believe in global warming, the vast majority are not climatologists so their opinions are not relevant.

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More importantly, as pointed out in the post by Marc K. quoting RadCap, it dosen't matter... either way, men should be free to produce.

Even if that production eventually triggered an ice age that made much of the planet uninhabitable? (A remote possibility, maybe, but not impossible). How would that be different from someone's factory producing a pollutant that was harmful to other people and their property, thus violating their rights?

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As for how many scientists believe in or don't believe in global warming, the vast majority are not climatologists so their opinions are not relevant.

I do not think that is quite right. A well-trained scientist in another field may not be able to do first-hand research in climatology, nor may he be able to keep up with all the current journals in that field, but he certainly is able to read periodic review articles by experts in climatology and judge the conclusions based on the facts presented. I think it would be fair to say that, in general, the views of scientists in other fields may not be as first-handed as those by climatologists, but I would not say that their views "are not relevant."

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Even if that production eventually triggered an ice age that made much of the planet uninhabitable? (A remote possibility, maybe, but not impossible). How would that be different from someone's factory producing a pollutant that was harmful to other people and their property, thus violating their rights?

If convincing evidence could be produced then these would both be legal issues to be adjudicated by courts.

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In a report sent to Congress this week, the administration noted a recent government-sponsored study supported the view of many scientists that human action from driving automobiles to running power plants helped cause global warming.

"North American temperature changes from 1950 to 1999 were unlikely to be due only to natural climate variations," the report said.

Warmer temperatures that occurred from 1900 to 1949 were "likely due" to natural causes, the report added.

Wow. Talk about knuckling under to bad science, huh?

Very significant industrialization that could have changed the atmospheric conditions took place between 1900 to 1949. Natural causes? Nonsense. Temperature changes? Where's the proof?

That report doesn't hold up to logic at all.

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I found an excellent site Global Warming: A closer look at the numbers

Here are some quotes:

Putting it all together: total human greenhouse gas contributions add up to about 0.28% of the greenhouse effect.
The Kyoto Protocol calls for mandatory carbon dioxide reductions of 30% from developed countries like the U.S. Reducing man-made CO2 emissions this much would have an undetectable effect on climate while having a devastating effect on the U.S. economy. Can you drive your car 30% less, reduce your winter heating 30%? Pay 20-50% more for everything from automobiles to zippers? And that is just a down payment, with more sacrifices to come later.

Such drastic measures, even if imposed equally on all countries around the world, would reduce total human greenhouse contributions from CO2 by about 0.035%.

This is much less than the natural variability of Earth's climate system!

While the greenhouse reductions would exact a high human price, in terms of sacrifices to our standard of living, they would yield statistically negligible results in terms of measurable impacts to climate change. There is no expectation that any statistically significant global warming reductions would come from the Kyoto Protocol.

" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "

Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist

Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,

and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;

in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal

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On the court issue, I agree. I was just trying to point out that being free to produce does not mean absolute freedom to impose detrimental side effects on others. (I'm sure RadCap did not mean to imply that it did, but others seem to be doing so.)

On a related issue, is it essential to wait until the harm has actually occurred before going through the tort process? Or is it sufficient that there be a reasonably high probability of harm occurring? Objectivism would seem to hold the former view, but then it would seemingly be OK to drive drunk or fire a machine gun on a crowded street as long as you did not actually hit and injure anyone. The relevance of this to global warming is that if we wait until the harm actually occurs it might be too late. Our courthouses could be buried in a mile of ice!

I do not think that is quite right. A well-trained scientist in another field may not be able to do first-hand research in climatology, nor may he be able to keep up with all the current journals in that field, but he certainly is able to read periodic review articles by experts in climatology and judge the conclusions based on the facts presented. I think it would be fair to say that, in general, the views of scientists in other fields may not be as first-handed as those by climatologists, but I would not say that their views "are not relevant."

Well, maybe. But the field is so speculative and so full of political bias that I think it would be very difficult for a nonspecialist (a biologist, say) to form an informed opinion just by reading a few review articles. And I suspect most of the scientists who signed the petition opposing global warming did so on political, not scientific, grounds.

(Just as an example, my wife is an astrophysicist working mainly on extrasolar planets. She has enough trouble keeping up with that field, let alone a totally different one. I'm sure she could form an informed opinion about global warming, but it would likely take months of study.)

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On a related issue, is it essential to wait until the harm has actually occurred before going through the tort process? Or is it sufficient that there be a reasonably high probability of harm occurring? Objectivism would seem to hold the former view, but then it would seemingly be OK to drive drunk or fire a machine gun on a crowded street as long as you did not actually hit and injure anyone. The relevance of this to global warming is that if we wait until the harm actually occurs it might be too late. Our courthouses could be buried in a mile of ice!

Also, the harm would occur over thousands of years. The people causing the harm would be long dead and forgotten by the time the harm occurred. It doesn't seem that normal tort theory work very well for cases like long-term global environmental damage.

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Also, the harm would occur over thousands of years. The people causing the harm would be long dead and forgotten by the time the harm occurred.

Aha. So you think people living today should be punished for the harm they do to people who are going to live in, say, 6000 A.D.?

May I interest you in a bridge in Brooklyn that will come into the possession of my great-great-great-grandson in the year 2186? I have a special price, just for you!

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Let's make it a little more realistic: Suppose you live on a farm with a well. I dump into it a substance that will very slowly decay into a poison that 100 yrs from now (after I am dead) will kiill your greatgrandchildren. Do you have any recourse against me now (aside from charging me with trespassing)? After all, no harm has yet been done.

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Let's make it a little more realistic: Suppose you live on a farm with a well. I dump into it a substance that will very slowly decay into a poison that 100 yrs from now (after I am dead) will kiill your greatgrandchildren. Do you have any recourse against me now (aside from charging me with trespassing)? After all, no harm has yet been done.

Can the law really require such omniscience? If dumping the substance was not illegal at the time I don't see how the original dumper (or his estate) could be held liable.

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Well, yes, that is a problem.

But we do have many laws that are based on preventing probable future harm rather than waiting for the actual harm to occur. Drunk driving laws are a good example, or to be more extreme you are not allowed to fire a machine gun at random on the street. Should all such laws be abolished?

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