Newsflash: There is No Real Debate About Global Warming

by Pogie on May 30, 2006 · 496Comments2006-05-31+05%3A11%3A14Pogie

in Environment, The Media

Print This Post

Despite the claims of industry and the illusion of debate in the popular media, the facts are clear: human activity is contributing to global warming, and in a significant way.

Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed articles about global warming, published between 1993-2003, and found that not one disagreed with the consensus position that humans bear responsibility for climate change. Not one.

From the article:

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.

And, if you haven’t seen the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s ad about CO2, go check it out. It is one of the most unintentionally funny things I have seen in a long time.

Last 5 posts by Pogie

Yet Another Uncritical Look at the Montana Meth Project - July 1st, 2009
McDonald Endorses Single Payer - June 29th, 2009
The Continuing Ethics of Montana’s Premier Republican Astroturf Blog - June 26th, 2009
Justice Thomas and the 4th Amendment - June 25th, 2009
City of Bozeman’s Copy-Paste Legal Logic - June 18th, 2009

Popularity: 12% [?]

{ 2 trackbacks }

4&20 blackbirds » Blog Archive » Links…: May 31, 2006 at 10:25 am
4&20 blackbirds » Blog Archive » The Missoulian’s anti-evolutionary essay: June 2, 2006 at 2:26 pm

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Pat McCue May 31, 2006 at 11:38 am: “Carbon Dioxide. They call it pollution, we call it life.”

“We breathe it out, plants breathe it in.”

By this logic, wouldn’t plantlife be flourishing in areas where there are huge industrial factories? Something’s missing, here…

Reply
2 Jeff December 29, 2007 at 4:17 pm: The crock is one of a lack of current adversarial balance in science because of our time’s obsession with media. Real PUBLIC scientific debate on climate change has been discarded for the sake of politics and funding considerations, because, news flash: Science at the start of the 21st century has been largely politicized out of its traditional adversarial roots. Politicians and commercial interests now USE scientists for their own ends, and they pay the science bills! There is no such thing as “consensus” in real science. The great scientists in history are those who went against the grain, and fought “consensus”. Science is really ONLY hypothesis, evidence, theory, and repeatable proof, it is NOT a democracy. Sorry folks–and Al G.–but from the viewpoint of REAL and UNCOMPROMISED climate science, no solid repeatable(unrefutable)proof of anthropogenic climate change exists. There is, however, a great deal of evidence accumulating for a natural 1500 year cycle of warming that is not being reported because it would upset the commercial applecart. So what will we do with this contrary evidence? In the Major Media: Ignore It! I await the attacks; please try to include some substance, not just vitriol.

Reply
3 Pogie December 29, 2007 at 4:31 pm: I’ll just repeat this point:

Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed articles about global warming, published between 1993-2003, and found that not one disagreed with the consensus position that humans bear responsibility for climate change. Not one.

Reply
4 Jeff December 29, 2007 at 5:06 pm: I would suggest you read Fred Singer and Dennis Avery: Unstoppable Global Warming, published in 2007. Update yourself: Visit friendsofscience.ca. You are still talking about 2003, when you obviously jumped on the lefty bandwagon at the time and made up your now closed mind. Four years is a long time in experimental inquiry. What about all the more current defections among previously in-line climate scientists from the HOLY CLIMATE GRAIL of urgency(read: agenda)put out by the IPCC? Do some current research and get back to me. Think for yourself! Do some sleuthing! Don’t just buy it cuz it’s big and cool! Modern “science” has been co-opted! PROVE me wrong.

Reply
5 Pogie December 29, 2007 at 5:26 pm: You got me. I wasn’t persuaded until the 3rd exclamation point, but now I am in.

Lefty!

How could I question Fred Singer? After all, he is an electrical engineer. Oh, and he thinks second-hand smoke is fine.

This article (http://www.newsweek.com/id/32482/page/3) about global warming denial might be of interest to you:

In April 1998 a dozen people from the denial machine—including the Marshall Institute, Fred Singer’s group and Exxon—met at the American Petroleum Institute’s Washington headquarters. They proposed a $5 million campaign, according to a leaked eight-page memo, to convince the public that the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty. The plan was to train up to 20 “respected climate scientists” on media—and public—outreach with the aim of “raising questions about and undercutting the ‘prevailing scientific wisdom’ ” and, in particular, “the Kyoto treaty’s scientific underpinnings” so that elected officials “will seek to prevent progress toward implementation.”

Now that is some science for you.

Reply
6 Jeff December 29, 2007 at 7:50 pm: Sorry, the website you should visit to get my point(s) is friendsofscience.org.(not .ca) Right, Fred’s a bad oil boy who is automatically wrong about everything he writes. And btw, he’s an engineer AND a climate physicist, Professor and/or Dean of environmental sciences at three Universities through more than 20 years. There’s no science in his book at all: just lies. All those studies by other atmospheric scientists he and Avery quote are just fabrications, along with the long footnotes. Hey look, Jeffy can be sarcastic too! But enough with lazy-mindedness.
Try to get away from straw-man vitriol and engage your thinking in the current science itself: What do we say to the over 400 prominent scientists in 2007, many of whom were once aligned with the IPCC, who have broken squarely, and publicly, from the man-made theory, mostly because of more recent findings? This is all big oil, right? Damn those oil companies, messing with our experimental data.–Oh, sorry, sarcasm begets sarcasm.
So, what do we say about the .15 degree Celsius per decade rate of decline in the lower troposphere temperature recorded since January 2002, precisely at the time when the IPCC model is predicting increases? Oh, you didn’t hear about this on ABC or CNN? Denial machine indeed. Talking to the man-made camp these days is like dealing with people convinced of some religion: “Don’t make me think, please, I’m on a mission. Anyone who disagrees has a secret agenda against my faith.” The secret agenda we have here in Canada is scientific truth, un-influenced by agenda. Now, that’s a harder bandwagon to ride on, because the search for the real truth doesn’t easily provide a social award and groovy status and save-the-planet parties. Have you read, or even read of, the contents of the Oregon Petition, now signed by 19,000 American scientists protesting the bias of the UN’s policy conclusions? If you want to think with me, instead of counting exclamation points or capital letters and engaging in other worthless slinging, lets get it on. There’s a great deal of thinking yet required on this subject, and all I hear from the man-made camp is “no debate left, thinking not required, we have consensus.” I repeat as well: science doesn’t work on consensus. I’m a science historian, and I can state with a fair degree of confidence that any scientist worth his calculator will be suspicious of “consensus.” Start by answering a simple question: Do you believe in all your heart and mind that mankind is the single cause of warming, and nothing else could possibly be causing it? You might want to do a little reading first.

Reply

Leave a Comment

Subscribe to RSS

Follow on Twitter