Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Klaustrophobia on October 25, 2012, 03:58:24 pm
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does this mean we can toss al gore in jail when the world isn't flooded out?
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Interesting question, though a little quirky. When is one able to decide that the world isn't "flooded out"? How much sea level rise would have to occur to say otherwise? And why Al Gore? Why not all the scientists who actually study this subject? They should be punished for being wrong, too.
Just FYI, the data (http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/ostscienceteam/scientistlinks/scientificinvestigations2008/miller/) shows that sea levels are rising by about 3mm per year (and accelerating) because of the combined effects of thermal expansion and melting land ice. The science says it is expected to continue to rise (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sea+level+rise+projections&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47) in the future and pose significant problems for low-lying developed areas. A collapse of ice sheets in Greenland and/or Antarctic would raise it even more drastically (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=sea+level+ice+sheet+collapse&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C47&as_sdtp=), which is what Al Gore was pointing out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Truth#Scientific_basis).
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Well, Gore was somewhat sleazy by pretending that the Antarctic was something in the "pipeline" to melt. It isn't. 3mm per year amounts to 30cm per century. Is this really something we should worry? Are people really unable to run from the seas' gigantic speed at 3mm * tan (shore inclination) per year?
Sea level rise not accelerating. http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2012_rel1/sl_ns_global.pdf
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does this mean we can toss al gore in jail when the world isn't flooded out?
Does it mean we can toss those who denied man made climate change in jail if it ever is proven?
Although by that point maybe we'll have to toss them in Thunderdome instead. :p
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does this mean we can toss al gore in jail when the world isn't flooded out?
Does it mean we can toss those who denied man made climate change in jail if it ever is proven?
Although by that point maybe we'll have to toss them in Thunderdome instead. :p
the latter would be more fun
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By that time, Tina Turner wouldn't be as sexy though. #wildguess
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Well, Gore was somewhat sleazy by pretending that the Antarctic was something in the "pipeline" to melt. It isn't. 3mm per year amounts to 30cm per century. Is this really something we should worry? Are people really unable to run from the seas' gigantic speed at 3mm * tan (shore inclination) per year?
Sea level rise not accelerating. http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2012_rel1/sl_ns_global.pdf
Why are you looking at a 20 year trendline when we have data (http://www.garnautreview.org.au/img/chp4/Figure%204.3_fmt.jpeg) that goes back over a century?
Did you read through any of the papers from my prior links?
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The data in your graph shows a steady non-accelerating rate for over 80 years. The usual reason why I look to 20, 30 year old graphs is because that is the time where the first projections / predictions were made. Predicting the past is easy, I tend to watch if they can actually predict what has gone since the date they made their models.
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Uh... explain to me... what do they use as the reference point for those? How do they know that it's the water which has risen, and not that the land is sinking? Esp. in the era before satellites?
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That's a huge literature material, Aardwolf. Many techniques were developed over the decades, and thousands of readings recorded. There are some doubts to a degree to some decades' worth of data, but any controversy over these matters is about very subtle, small variations. Notice that watsisname's graph involves several different techniques and aggregators, and they pretty much agree.
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The data in your graph shows a steady non-accelerating rate for over 80 years.
You are correct, a linear trendline drawn from 1930 though 2012 is a good fit to that particular time interval. But you are still being selective in your analysis. Let's try some different perspectives:
The trendline on the 20-year graph you linked is 3.1 +/- 0.4 mm/yr.
The 20th century rate is half of that.
The rate for the interval before then is even less.
The best fit for the whole set is an exponential function.
Science says this trend will continue (http://www.susfish.com/images/background/Climate%20Change/ipcc_sealevel_future.jpg), and is why I asked if you've been keeping up with the literature.
The basic point here is that in any examination of a trend with fluctuations, it is possible to pick specific time intervals and draw trendlines that appear to contradict the overarching theme. I see this all too often with people claiming that "the earth hasn't warmed since 1998", or "there isn't a problem in the arctic because it's freezing up so rapidly this winter". They are bad statistical arguments, and they completely miss the bigger picture.
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Am I the only one who finds it funny that the same person who started a thread complaining about lay people completely misunderstanding science and having a go at someone based on that flawed understanding is now the person doing it?
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No. No you are not.
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The data in your graph shows a steady non-accelerating rate for over 80 years.
You are correct, a linear trendline drawn from 1930 though 2012 is a good fit to that particular time interval. But you are still being selective in your analysis. Let's try some different perspectives:
The trendline on the 20-year graph you linked is 3.1 +/- 0.4 mm/yr.
The 20th century rate is half of that.
So what. You are also being selective. You simply start the analysis in one point when I start in another. You say, it is best fit by an exponential function. I say, it is best fit by two linear functions. Both models work.
I know very well that some papers argue that the trend will accelerate (using the expression "Science says" is a reification of a much more mundane process of guesstimating the future). However, it has not since those projections were made.
The basic point here is that in any examination of a trend with fluctuations, it is possible to pick specific time intervals and draw trendlines that appear to contradict the overarching theme. I see this all too often with people claiming that "the earth hasn't warmed since 1998", or "there isn't a problem in the arctic because it's freezing up so rapidly this winter". They are bad statistical arguments, and they completely miss the bigger picture.
The big picture is, according to the IPCC, that man-made climate change has only affected the second part of the twentieth century. If this is true, then you cannot bring stuff from more than a century ago and argue that the "best fit" is an exponential curve (let's not pretend this isn't just a naive model of yours). You must see what has happened since this effect was established to be non-trivial. And that means the trend is amazingly linear. To deny this is to deny basic empirical assessments. Just use your eyes.
Am I the only one who finds it funny that the same person who started a thread complaining about lay people completely misunderstanding science and having a go at someone based on that flawed understanding is now the person doing it?
Where did I complain that lay people misunderstand science? Where was my understanding flawed? All I see from you is badly informed sarcasm, nothing of good coming out of it. You should be feeling bad.
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Your every post drips with examples where you, someone who isn't a climate scientist, claims that people who are climate scientists are wrong based on your limited understanding of climate science.
How is this different from the judge in the Italian case ignoring all the seismologists who said you can't predict an earthquake and instead acting based on his limited understanding of seismology?
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Just stop with hashtags
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Where did I complain that lay people misunderstand science? Where was my understanding flawed? All I see from you is badly informed sarcasm, nothing of good coming out of it. You should be feeling bad.
Your whole original post was about lay people misunderstanding science as being some type of crystal ball. You're currently seeing it as a crystal ball that looks different depending on how one looks at it. The reality is that a huge majority of people in the field agree that climate change is caused by people http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html). And here you are pretending that the Earth is too big for humanity to drastically effect "like it's 1250".
EDIT:
I am not saying by the way, that you're any more tending to bias than anyone else. I am saying that this would appear to be a bias blind spot for you. I wonder if it's just this that you doubt the bulk of science on?
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The big picture is, according to the IPCC, that man-made climate change has only affected the second part of the twentieth century. If this is true, then you cannot bring stuff from more than a century ago...
Um. Have you even read the IPCC reports? Any of them? (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml#.UI-84Ges-dI) Here, let me directly quote the results of WG1 (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html) for you.
Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years (see Figure SPM.1). The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.
The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved since the TAR, leading to very high confidence[7] that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W m–2
So yes. I can bring in the data from more than a century ago, because mankind has been fundamentally altering the thermodynamics of the Earth since over a century ago.
Also, regarding your earlier comment:
3mm per year amounts to 30cm per century. Is this really something we should worry? Are people really unable to run from the seas' gigantic speed at 3mm * tan (shore inclination) per year?
Perhaps you might benefit from reading about the impacts of sea level rise (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sea+level+rise+impact&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47&as_ylo=2000&as_yhi=2012).
The SREX Report (http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/) has excellent material on it, too.
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This whole subject of doubt about climate change and sea level rise reminds me of when Anthony Watt's of "wattsupwiththat?" made a post about Arctic sea ice extent continuing to expand (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/02/artic-sea-ice-extent-update-still-growing/) during the spring and after the usual beginning of melt season. And the jist of his post is to say "What's up with that? If the earth is warming, why is the ice still freezing so late in the year? Look! It's almost above average!"
Heck, I'll stop paraphrasing and just directly quote him:
While this event isn’t by itself an about-face of the longer downward trend we’ve seen, it does seem to suggest that predictions assuming a linear (or even spiral) demise aren’t holding up.
Yeah. Well... look how 2010 ended up (http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/10/Figure2.png). Now look at the whole trend (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html). A trend which has not failed to continue.
What was that about the "predictions assuming linear or [accelerating] trend not holding up", Mr. Watts?
I do not want to wait for all the predictions of climate change and sea level rise to be realized. We as a species should be taking serious action, and we should have started doing so decades ago.
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Your every post drips with examples where you, someone who isn't a climate scientist, claims that people who are climate scientists are wrong based on your limited understanding of climate science.
How is this different from the judge in the Italian case ignoring all the seismologists who said you can't predict an earthquake and instead acting based on his limited understanding of seismology?
I did not say that "climate scientists are wrong". Will you stop putting words into my mouth please? I'm merely expressing my unimpressed stance on their sea level rise alarmism. Which is, if you check the actual data rather than witch hunt me, rather calm and unalarming (thank goodness).
The difference, even if I were saying nonsense, is that I'm doing so in a public forum where there is no practical consequence at all but a trivial informal conversation. I am not, due to my alledged ignorance, not putting someone to jail. If I were to do so, believe me I would read (at least skim!) every ****ing piece of scientific literature regarding the matter. To do otherwise would be utterly inhuman and barbaric.
Your whole original post was about lay people misunderstanding science as being some type of crystal ball. You're currently seeing it as a crystal ball that looks different depending on how one looks at it. The reality is that a huge majority of people in the field agree that climate change is caused by people http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html). And here you are pretending that the Earth is too big for humanity to drastically effect "like it's 1250".
EDIT:
I am not saying by the way, that you're any more tending to bias than anyone else. I am saying that this would appear to be a bias blind spot for you. I wonder if it's just this that you doubt the bulk of science on?
"Lay people" =/= Judge putting people to jail for 6 ****ing years. Don't confuse the two. The judge has no right to play the "lay people" card if he is throwing people's lives into the garbage like that.
I have different "beliefs" regarding the multiple claims of many fields. Some things I am fully ready to accept for the evidence is so strong. Some others not that willing. As an example, denying that the act of smoking causes cancer is asinine in this time and age. However, to be skeptical of the much weaker claim of second hand smoke is not in the same ballpark at all. The problem then becomes very suspicious when politics enters the arena and politicians claiming to be "saving our health" embark on a crusade against the freedom of people to smoke (I'm not even biased on that one, I actually enjoy the fact that I do not have to breath other people's smoke as I just hate it, however the political method here is frightening to me).
Regarding CC, my views are only "confrontational" in the sense that I dislike being spoon-fed politically correct views on it, so instead of reading editorials, I'd rather see plain data. Plain data tells me that it is more likely than not that carbon dioxide does indeed play a big role in current global warming. It also tells me that humans are still far away from understanding it and that they have probably overblown the case to a degree. I have, however, no power to put anyone in jail because I believe or disbelieve X. To put me in the same basket is silly.
The big picture is, according to the IPCC, that man-made climate change has only affected the second part of the twentieth century. If this is true, then you cannot bring stuff from more than a century ago...
Um. Have you even read the IPCC reports? Any of them? (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml#.UI-84Ges-dI) Here, let me directly quote the results of WG1 (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html) for you.
Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years (see Figure SPM.1). The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.
Again, you are not reading correctly. While atmospheric concentrations of those greenhouse gases have increased "markedly" since 1750, the IPCC strongly makes the case this has done only a nontrivial effect on the atmosphere since the second half of the twentieth century.
Here for the correct source: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-7.html
The nice pictures here celebrate what I am talking about: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-5.html
Look carefully the second one and see the decade where their models of how stuff supposed to behave without GHGs deviates from reality.
So yes. I can bring in the data from more than a century ago, because mankind has been fundamentally altering the thermodynamics of the Earth since over a century ago.
So no, you cannot.
Perhaps you might benefit from reading about the impacts of sea level rise (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sea+level+rise+impact&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47&as_ylo=2000&as_yhi=2012).
The SREX Report (http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/) has excellent material on it, too.
Those silly "reports" make the stupid assumption that our lives depend too much from the natural world we inhabit. But this is not true, and definitely should not be true in the future. Natural disasters wreck poor countries and kill thousands because they are poor, badly managed and without any kind of emergency nets, not because someone drove a SUV in northern america.
So the best way to ensure these people will suffer these natural disasters is not, as you probably think, to continue to burn fossil fuels. It is by forcing them to remain poor. And before you think I am a conspirationist here, I am not. I am merely telling you here that the economy plays a role here which is some orders of magnitude greater than the problem of 3mm per year rise of the oceans. What I am saying is that the whole conversation lacks a sense of proportion.
And let's not bring the weather guy to the conversation. Any time someone makes a skeptic remark, the conversation is immediately polarized and the banana guy has to get into it somehow. What the hell.
EDIT: Thanks and sorry for the trouble, The_E.
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What evidence would convince you of a human caused global climate change?
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What evidence would convince you of a human caused global climate change?
I said:
Plain data tells me that it is more likely than not that carbon dioxide does indeed play a big role in current global warming.
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That is =/=
EDIT:
That just seems like a big about face for you, unless you're still saying that the impact will be minimal.
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Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
Evan Esar (1899 - 1995)
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. (Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.)
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)
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Statistical analysis is also how science is done IRL, so...
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That is =/=
EDIT:
That just seems like a big about face for you, unless you're still saying that the impact will be minimal.
I was speaking of sea level rise.
I'm used to be painted as a completely ignorant asshole whenever I say something minimally off the official line, with the usual one-note-liner "so you don't believe in global warming huh", so I usually avoid these conversations.
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Definitely my bad.
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Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
Evan Esar (1899 - 1995)
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. (Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.)
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)
I can't figure out whether this post is meant at face value (in which case it's totally disingenuous) or whether it's poking fun at the fact that quotes can even more easily be made to serve any point you like.
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does this mean we can toss al gore in jail when the world isn't flooded out?
No, because he has invited the internet and gave us unlimited access to pr0n. That achievement is like a going out of jail card, or should we be ungrateful ? ;)
Oh, and on the topic: global warming or not, the Dutch fight since 1000 years against the sea, the Egypt's fight since 4000 years against the dessert and most of the people who live in the mountains or at rivers have learned to live with floods and avalanches - and invited ways to counter such threads.
So the question is not the existence of global warming and who caused it, the question is the priority to fight it's causes or it's effects - and there is no alternative against fighting the effects:
Building dams against the see, create basins against floods, planting forests in the mountains, make the deserts farmland...
Even without a thread of global warming the people living at the sea, at rivers, on mountains or in deserts will have a benefit from this measures.
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I can't figure out whether this post is meant at face value (in which case it's totally disingenuous) or whether it's poking fun at the fact that quotes can even more easily be made to serve any point you like.
Not that disingenuous at face value: http://www.amazon.ca/How-To-Lie-With-Statistics/dp/0393310728
You and I both know that statistics, while useful, can be used to show whatever you want with a little intellectual dishonesty in your methodology which can be very hard to detect after the fact. Things like changing your statistical method halfway through an experiment to fit the results instead of selecting it in advance based on what your experiment is designed to measure, and then lying about it. Not saying that's what's happening in climate science, but it does make one think its worth considering the statistician before accepting the statistics they produced.
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Yeah, but that's...misusing statistics. The fact that you are looking at a statistic does not make it inherently trustworthy.
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The fact that you are looking at a statistic does not make it inherently trustworthy.
Not sure if you forgot the "un" you meant to have in there, but I think you've just re-stated my point.
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Yeah, I just forgot the 'un'.
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i'm slightly uncomfortable that i'm now the author of a "NO U" thread on global warming due to what was meant to be a joke supporting the original idea of the thread. yeah, it was a bad idea, i know. but it's done now. can't erase it.
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There's a lot to be said about statistics and a whole epistemic problem about bad science creeping in in science journals all over the place, something being accepted due to "statistically significant" finds with p values under 0.05.
This article is amazing and should be read by anyone minimally interested in science:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/
That question has been central to Ioannidis’s career. He’s what’s known as a meta-researcher, and he’s become one of the world’s foremost experts on the credibility of medical research. He and his team have shown, again and again, and in many different ways, that much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies—conclusions that doctors keep in mind when they prescribe antibiotics or blood-pressure medication, or when they advise us to consume more fiber or less meat, or when they recommend surgery for heart disease or back pain—is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong. He charges that as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed. His work has been widely accepted by the medical community; it has been published in the field’s top journals, where it is heavily cited; and he is a big draw at conferences. Given this exposure, and the fact that his work broadly targets everyone else’s work in medicine, as well as everything that physicians do and all the health advice we get, Ioannidis may be one of the most influential scientists alive. Yet for all his influence, he worries that the field of medical research is so pervasively flawed, and so riddled with conflicts of interest, that it might be chronically resistant to change—or even to publicly admitting that there’s a problem.
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Your every post drips with examples where you, someone who isn't a climate scientist, claims that people who are climate scientists are wrong based on your limited understanding of climate science.
How is this different from the judge in the Italian case ignoring all the seismologists who said you can't predict an earthquake and instead acting based on his limited understanding of seismology?
I did not say that "climate scientists are wrong". Will you stop putting words into my mouth please? I'm merely expressing my unimpressed stance on their sea level rise alarmism. Which is, if you check the actual data rather than witch hunt me, rather calm and unalarming (thank goodness).
So you're saying they're wrong about the rate. Something you keep saying despite watisname repeatedly pointing out why you are wrong. So yeah, you're saying the climate scientists are wrong.
The difference, even if I were saying nonsense, is that I'm doing so in a public forum where there is no practical consequence at all but a trivial informal conversation. I am not, due to my alledged ignorance, not putting someone to jail. If I were to do so, believe me I would read (at least skim!) every ****ing piece of scientific literature regarding the matter. To do otherwise would be utterly inhuman and barbaric.
You do of course realise that you're making a false distinction. You're basically saying that "It's okay for me to air my completely uninformed views in public because it's not important"
But when everyone does that, your uninformed ignorance becomes the uninformed ignorance of the general public which judges are affected by when they make rulings.
Or are you going to tell me that the earthquake case in Italy happened completely out of the blue with no public support for it?
Plain data tells me that it is more likely than not that carbon dioxide does indeed play a big role in current global warming.
Plain warnings of whether or not there will be an earthquake next week.
See? You're asking for a scientific impossibility and then refusing to believe anyone who won't give you that. You're doing the same thing the Italian judge you initially complained about did.
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Those silly "reports" make the stupid assumption that our lives depend too much from the natural world we inhabit. But this is not true, and definitely should not be true in the future.
Good ****ing grief, I'm just not going to bother.
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So you're saying they're wrong about the rate. Something you keep saying despite watisname repeatedly pointing out why you are wrong. So yeah, you're saying the climate scientists are wrong.
Nonsensical bull****. Please pay more attention to the literature. There's a whole wide range of views on sea level rise, and even the IPCC states that the sea level rise will be between 35cm and 60cm in a hundred years, with a lot of unknowns there discussed:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-6-5.html
If some random scientist comes to the newspapers and says that he has made a model which states there will be a rise of 3 meters (or something), he is as much as an outlier as anyone who dismisses sea level rise altogether.
And then, some random folk comes in at the middle of the conversation and says "What, do ya doubt the alarm, you're such a stoopid deniar". Facepalm.
You do of course realise that you're making a false distinction. You're basically saying that "It's okay for me to air my completely uninformed views in public because it's not important"
Not because "it's not important", but because I am not important, and conversations are something that is good, not bad.
But when everyone does that, your uninformed ignorance becomes the uninformed ignorance of the general public which judges are affected by when they make rulings.
Everyone already does it. It's called talking. Something humans constantly do. Welcome to planet Earth.
Or are you going to tell me that the earthquake case in Italy happened completely out of the blue with no public support for it?
And since when should justice be polled? What you are saying basically sums up as: we should never discuss anything because somewhere anytime will do something really stupid based on our conversations and then it's all our fault. What nonsense, Karajorma. The judge should have known better. He is a judge, not a random person on the street. He is going to destroy people's lives, not talk about stuff he believes in a party. If you aren't able to see that obvious amazingly large distinction, well then I have nothing more to say.
Plain data tells me that it is more likely than not that carbon dioxide does indeed play a big role in current global warming.
Plain warnings of whether or not there will be an earthquake next week.
See? You're asking for a scientific impossibility and then refusing to believe anyone who won't give you that. You're doing the same thing the Italian judge you initially complained about did.
I only see some really bad equivocation going around, and I'm being generous here. I was referring to going back to empirical data and calmly check it without all the emotional despair that usually comes with the alarmism. And once you do that, you see a lot of things that do not subscribe to neither the alarmist narrative nor the "denier" narrative. The truth is, as it usually has been with all the controversial topics throughout history, somewhere in the middle.
Now, I really fail to see how looking at the data and calmly and rationally assessing it equals to demand the impossible from some random scientist. It's like a complete gap in the english there that I simply am unable to parse out. I may be wrong here, so help me out, since you stated something that I read as "A therefore Z". Where's B,C,D, etc.
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To be honest, I'm out for much the same reason watisname gave up.
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Your call pilot.