The Truth, Still Inconvenient

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anitram

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You can read a lot about this testimony, but I post Krugman because he injected some amount of humor in his column.

So the joke begins like this: An economist, a lawyer and a professor of marketing walk into a room. What’s the punch line? They were three of the five “expert witnesses” Republicans called for last week’s Congressional hearing on climate science.

But the joke actually ended up being on the Republicans, when one of the two actual scientists they invited to testify went off script.

Prof. Richard Muller of Berkeley, a physicist who has gotten into the climate skeptic game, has been leading the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, an effort partially financed by none other than the Koch foundation. And climate deniers — who claim that researchers at NASA and other groups analyzing climate trends have massaged and distorted the data — had been hoping that the Berkeley project would conclude that global warming is a myth.

Instead, however, Professor Muller reported that his group’s preliminary results find a global warming trend “very similar to that reported by the prior groups.”

...

His climate-skeptic credentials are pretty strong: he has denounced both Al Gore and my colleague Tom Friedman as “exaggerators,” and he has participated in a number of attacks on climate research, including the witch hunt over innocuous e-mails from British climate researchers. Not surprisingly, then, climate deniers had high hopes that his new project would support their case.

You can guess what happened when those hopes were dashed.

Just a few weeks ago Anthony Watts, who runs a prominent climate denialist Web site, praised the Berkeley project and piously declared himself “prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.” But never mind: once he knew that Professor Muller was going to present those preliminary results, Mr. Watts dismissed the hearing as “post normal science political theater.” And one of the regular contributors on his site dismissed Professor Muller as “a man driven by a very serious agenda.”

Of course, it’s actually the climate deniers who have the agenda, and nobody who’s been following this discussion believed for a moment that they would accept a result confirming global warming. But it’s worth stepping back for a moment and thinking not just about the science here, but about the morality.

For years now, large numbers of prominent scientists have been warning, with increasing urgency, that if we continue with business as usual, the results will be very bad, perhaps catastrophic. They could be wrong. But if you’re going to assert that they are in fact wrong, you have a moral responsibility to approach the topic with high seriousness and an open mind. After all, if the scientists are right, you’ll be doing a great deal of damage.

But what we had, instead of high seriousness, was a farce: a supposedly crucial hearing stacked with people who had no business being there and instant ostracism for a climate skeptic who was actually willing to change his mind in the face of evidence. As I said, no surprise: as Upton Sinclair pointed out long ago, it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

But it’s terrifying to realize that this kind of cynical careerism — for that’s what it is — has probably ensured that we won’t do anything about climate change until catastrophe is already upon us.

So on second thought, I was wrong when I said that the joke was on the G.O.P.; actually, the joke is on the human race. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/opinion/04krugman.html?_r=1
 
Evidence against interest is a very strong thing. It makes no difference to the "sceptics" who will deny regardless of the evidence and it's true that the joke is on all of us.

There are a lot of people who simply don't care about the truth or reality and will follow their ideology to very nasty places. Simply looking at any climate change threads on this forum highlights that mentality.
 
Climate change is something that should only enter the purview of politics in a bipartisan manner. Legislation should be enacted based upon the scientific consensus.
I don't understand what the purpose of denying climate change is if you are a pundit! What is the endgame? To try and slow innovation? To give people a (possibly false) sense of security? To promote bad habits?

Even if current climate change models were proven incorrect, would that mean that we should all breath a sigh of relief and scrap all the progress made over the past couple decades? No! Obviously not. Regardless of how much scrutiny these predictions and theories can withstand, we still need to proceed with cleaning up our act.

Now, it is the obligation of those in the scientific community to challenge peers. People get mad cred for debunking and disproving the results of a study. The end results are more robust theories. But, I get the feeling that some people get the wrong impression from these intra-scientific debates.
 
Profit from the status quo until nothing can be done and then keep profiting until you're dead and don't have to deal with the consequences.
 
Profit from the status quo until nothing can be done and then keep profiting until you're dead and don't have to deal with the consequences.

Exactly.

And preserve your God-given right to drive a Hummer in an urban setting.
 
Prof. Richard Muller of Berkeley, a physicist who has gotten into the climate skeptic game, has been leading the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, an effort partially financed by none other than the Koch foundation. And climate deniers — who claim that researchers at NASA and other groups analyzing climate trends have massaged and distorted the data — had been hoping that the Berkeley project would conclude that global warming is a myth.

Instead, however, Professor Muller reported that his group’s preliminary results find a global warming trend “very similar to that reported by the prior groups.”

The Republican Party are going to put satirists out of work.

:lmao:
 
I just think it's hilarious that the GOP's star witness (climate change skeptic) researcher for those hearings had to bail on them because his data came back as very similar to the work of many other teams.

So many people don't understand how science works, that it's a continual process of review and revision of the work of others.
 
and science doesn't really care what the data means. It either is or isn't what it's trying to prove and will keep testing when new data comes in.

the problem is when humans come along and see the data they have a habit of twisting the data to fit their own needs or beliefs.

This article is great and proves how great science really is. And of course this scientist is now going to be discredited and nothing will get done.
 
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Oil & Gas: Long-Term Contribution Trends | OpenSecrets


Is anyone reaaaaallly surprised, though? nah. Keep electing these assholes to protect your "moral values", guys, while they rape your country.
 
I have lost all hope. I watched a documentary about natural gas today.

We can do this dance for decades, but in the end, the Koch Industries GOP® will win.
 
Warning about climate change is like Jor-El warning Kryptonians about the destruction of Krypton.

Nobody believed Jor-El, Krypton blows up, and everyone dies... so on and so forth, as the story goes... everybody knows.
 
Look at the up side, we can observe a mass extinction in progress, an opportunity that only comes around every hundred million years or so.
 
lets not get carried away here.
I do accept the consensus on climate change, but I do not not think talk of mass extinction or apocalypse is warranted just yet.

(besides, in a sense the history of life has been one of extinctions. i.e. 99% of all species extinct)
 
But the rate of extinction is the issue. The rate of extinction since the holocene is consistent with that observed in the fossil record for what we declare mass extinctions.
 
But the rate of extinction is the issue. The rate of extinction since the holocene is consistent with that observed in the fossil record for what we declare mass extinctions.

Point taken.

My objection was to the apparent implication in your previous post that this mass extinction was due to climate change. While there is no doubt that much stress is being placed upon some ecosystems due to global warming (Arctic climates in particular,) this current spike in extinctions has been 10,000 years or more in the making, and is due more directly to human action.
 
Don't worry. Live your life.

The sun will rise and the birds will sing.

We are not in control of anything.

We can do good deeds and that includes recycling,

but it helps to just relax.
 
I have lost all hope. I watched a documentary about natural gas today.

We can do this dance for decades, but in the end, the Koch Industries GOP® will win.

Was it Gasland: A film by Josh Fox ?

Just watched it last night. I take back everything I have said about Natural Gas being our transition/back-up fuel for solar and wind.

Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and wave generation now! We are SO fucking ourselves.
 
^ Speaking of Pennsylvania's natural gas industry,

New York Times, April 7
Pennsylvania environmental regulators said Wednesday that they were calling for waste treatment plants and drinking water facilities to increase testing for radioactive pollutants and other contaminants, to see whether they are ending up in rivers because of the growth of natural gas drilling in the state. The move follows a March 7 letter that the federal Environmental Protection Agency sent to the state, instructing it to perform testing for radioactivity within 30 days and to review the permits of state treatment plants handling the wastewater.

...The letters from federal and state regulators follow reports in The New York Times about gas industry wastewater with high levels of radioactivity being discharged into rivers and streams by sewage treatment plants that were not designed to remove radioactive materials. The state’s letter also comes almost a month after a lengthy conference call among EPA officials and state regulators, during which they discussed how to improve regulation of natural gas industry wastewater in Pennsylvania. During the call, federal regulators raised concerns about sludge, often called biosolids, from waste treatment plants receiving drilling wastewater. When wastewater is sent through these plants, some of the heavier contaminants settle out during the treatment process. Radioactive elements like radium may also settle and concentrate in the sludge, which is sometimes sold by treatment plants for use as fertilizer.

...During the conference call, EPA officials pushed state regulators to consider re-evaluating all of the permits at wastewater treatment plants that are accepting drilling waste and adding stricter standards for testing of radionuclides and other contaminants. “It’s basically out of the question,” [PA Dept. of Env. Protection official Ron] Furlan said, rejecting the idea and explaining that “it’s too resource intensive” and that industry would push back too strongly.
 
They're not taxed and they don't have to abide by regulations thanks to the undoing Dick Cheney led when he was VP. So, not only are they poisoning us, but they're poisoning us for free. As a sidenote, the PA Department of Environmental Protection has suffered huge budget cuts in recent years. Now, all PA education is facing the same kinds of cuts (it was recently revealed that the main reason Penn State is getting steep cuts is because Graham Spanier doesn't kiss enough ass - seriously, they said he wasn't "humble" enough).

Anything to get Terry Pegula some more money to donate to the GOP.
 
What contradiction?

I just recycled all my trash about an hour ago.

Took it all to my local recycling site:applaud:
Do you think it is a good idea to cut education funding in order to balance your budget in a way that keeps environmentally damaging natural gas drilling untaxed?
 
Do you think it is a good idea to cut education funding in order to balance your budget in a way that keeps environmentally damaging natural gas drilling untaxed?



I think it's a good idea to cut taxes anywhere we can.

What has "education funding" done for the United States the past forty years.

Nothing:ohmy:
 
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