@enoch
@newtboy
@Stormsinger
@speechless


31,487 American scientists say you and your belief in man made global warming via CO2 is Bullshit.

9,029 PhD;
7,157 MS;
2,586 MD and DVM; and
12,715 BS or equivalent academic degrees.
Most of the MD and DVM signers also have underlying degrees in basic science.

All of the listed signers have formal educations in fields of specialization that suitably qualify them to evaluate the research data related to the petition statement. Many of the signers currently work in climatological, meteorological, atmospheric, environmental, geophysical, astronomical, and biological fields directly involved in the climate change controversy.

http://www.petitionproject.org/index.php

PS suck my dick.

No, but replacing one relatively ineffectual steward of the environment with one that proudly proclaims "I'm not a scientist" while also spending much of his time claiming he somehow knows that environmental scientists are all wrong is certainly moving in the wrong direction.

No-one disputes that a healthy diet can lower the risk of cancer (whether that means a vegetarian diet is still up for debate).

However, diet can not guarantee no cancer and it certainly can't cure it.
Part of the problem is that we still don't fully understand what causes cancer. We know that both genetic and environmental factors play a part.

You can spent your entire life eating perfectly healthily, not smoking, exercising and still get cancer. Or you can smoke and drink into your 90s and get away with it.

It's officially known as a report on the "Measurement of the Duration of a Trendless Subsample in a Global Climate Time Series." In lay-speak, it's a study of just how long the current pause in global warming has lasted. And the results are profound:

According to Canadian Ross McKitrick, a professor of environmental economics who wrote the paper for the Open Journal of Statistics, "I make the duration out to be 19 years at the surface and 16 to 26 years in the lower troposphere depending on the data set used."

In still plainer English, McKitrick has crunched the numbers from all the major weather organizations in the world and has found that there has been no overall warming at the Earth's surface since 1995 - that's 19 years in all.

During the past two decades, there have been hotter years and colder years, but on the whole the world's temperatures have not been rising. Despite a 13 per cent rise in carbon dioxide levels over the period, the average global temperature is the same today as it was almost 20 years ago.

In the lower atmosphere, there has been no warming for somewhere between 16 and 26 years, depending on which weather organization's records are used.

Not a single one of the world's major meteorological organizations - including the ones the United Nations relies on for its hysterical, the-skies-are-on-fire predictions of environmental apocalypse - shows atmospheric warming for at least the last 16 years. And some show no warming for the past quarter century.

This might be less significant if some of the major temperature records showed warming and some did not. But they all show no warming.

Even the records maintained by devoted eco-alarmists, such as the United Kingdom's Hadley Centre, show no appreciable warming since the mid-1990s.

Despite continued cymbal-crashing propaganda from environmentalists and politicians who insist humankind is approaching a critical climate-change tipping point, there is no real evidence this is true.

There are no more hurricanes than usual, no more typhoons or tornadoes, floods or droughts. What there is, is more media coverage more often.

Forty years ago when a tropical storm wiped out villages on a South Pacific Island there might have been pictures in the newspaper days or weeks later, then nothing more. Now there is live television coverage hours after the fact and for weeks afterwards.

That creates the impression storms are worse than they used to be, even though statistically they are not.

While the UN's official climate-scare mouthpiece, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has acknowledged the lack of warming over the past two decades, it has done so very quietly. What's more, it has not permitted the facts to get in the way of its continued insistence that the world is going to hell in a hand basket soon unless modern economies are crippled and more decision-making power is turned over to the UN and to national bureaucrats and environmental activists.

Later this month in New York, the UN will hold a climate summit including many of the world's leaders. So frantic are UN bureaucrats to keep the climate scare alive they have begun a worldwide search for what they themselves call a climate-change "Malala."

That's a reference to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head by the Taliban after demanding an education. Her wounding sparked a renewed, worldwide concern for women's rights.

The new climate spokeswoman must be a female under 30, come from a poor country and have been the victim of a natural disaster.

If the facts surrounding climate-disaster predictions weren't falling apart, the UN wouldn't such need a sympathetic new face of fear.

I'm not saying that "climate change" isn't "real," but that the practice of climate science is highly prone to fraud and conflates natural science with social science.

This matters because one could accept climate change on the basis of natural science but still reject it on the basis of social science given the understanding that the policies normally associated with environmentalism are clearly not the proper ways of addressing the effects of climate change.

As such, there is a lack of scrutiny in much of the discourse about and around climate change (to say nothing of the ridicule and mockery and epithets that are slung on "both" sides). There are a few separate questions worth addressing:

1. Is the planet getting warmer?
2. If it's getting warmer, is it anthropogenic (human-caused)? (If not, then it's unclear how humans can 'reduce' it and/or deal with the consequences.)
3. If it's getting warmer, by what magnitude? (This is a scientific question with many implications for policy.)
4. What are the costs of climate change? (Oft asked/answered)
5. What are the benefits of climate change? (Might it, say, make the arctic habitable and a source of land or food? Might it bring down the costs of heating homes/businesses in colder climates?)
6. Do costs outweigh benefits or vice versa? (This question, while important, is based less on scientific fact than on interpersonal value and depends heavily on the results of the scientific questions above. As such, public policy is based on facts and values, and does not translate science directly into policy.)
7. If costs outweigh the benefits, what policies are appropriate? (This, again, would be determined by the matters of both fact and value -- natural science and social science.)
8. What are the costs of the policies designed to reduce the costs of climate change? (Might the policies imposed to address the costs of climate change have associated costs that may outweigh their potential benefits? Might reducing the effects of global warming slow the economic growth so as to impoverish half the planet, or imbuing powers to governments that're likely to be used in ways having little to do with climate change? Such costs might have grave and devastating effects that far outstrip their potential benefits to say nothing of the perceived costs of climate change, itself.)

This is a social scientific question that is no less important than the natural scientific questions listed above. There are many more questions in addition to these, but this is perhaps sufficient to make my points:

* It's possible to accept the natural science of climate change, but reject the policies proposed to combat it.
* It is possible to think that climate change is anthropogenic, but to humanely conclude that nothing should be done about it.

However unpopular it is (on videosift especially) to dissent to the claims that anthropogenic climate is "real," it should be noted that such dissent does not, de facto, "deny" the science, but does, instead, take a far more considered approach that accepts the natural science in light of its many social scientific implications.

I think I'd have to see it in actual printed form to judge the readability accurately.

BUT, in terms of readability on a display, like the 40" 1920x1080 LCD I'm watching on ... it is quite poor in my opinion. I have a feeling that it would work much better in ink on paper.

33% ink savings sounds pretty good, assuming that the readability on paper is better than a display. That being said, encouraging printer manufacturers to have a more sane approach to refillable ink/toner reservoirs would have a better/bigger impact.

Here in Thailand, where respect for patents / IP is low, (SE Asia is notorious for fake manufactured goods, pirated "soft" media, and hardware hacks / bypasses) I'd guess that around 90% of inkjet printers sold have a tank system glued onto the side with ink lines running into the cartridges from big CYMK reservoirs. I never buy new cartridges unless the print head gets damaged/worn out -- instead, I just buy cheap LARGE bottles of the different ink colors and refill the reservoirs. (Image link of such a setup HERE)

That kind of mod would be a gray or black-market item in the West, but here the laissez-faire attitude about such things has some positive effects. At least, for a consumer (like me), or someone concerned about the environmental impact of all the waste packaging for ink carts (like the dude in this video).

If it were done as a single nerve in a direct route, it would be subject to damage from a jerking head motion. This way, the slack (and bundling) adds protection to individual nerves. And again, it works just fine, in ALL mammals.

Let's coin a new term. How about 'stress relief'?

Another point. The heart is functional before it descends into an expanding chest cavity, taking ancillary nerves along for the ride.

And lastly, the evidence points to incremental phenotypic alterations along with some jumps here and there. The first is indicative of environmental adaptations, with possible genetic manipulations [ID] on occasion.

In fact, we ourselves are on the cusp of being able to alter phenotypic outcomes, by PCR, electrophoresis, and subsequent spicing to alter structures and codes. For our progress at this point, search 'genetic engineering'.

While not proof of prior gene altering to alter phenotypes, it is at least evidence that it can be done, while at this juncture, no substantiating evidence exists for random mutations, HGT, and genetic drift to radically alter body plans. Just for minor quantitative adaptive alterations [pigmentation, bone density, fur and hair content, metabolism rates, and yes, cephalic index, essentially brain size increases].

IOW, the evidence clearly points to both microevolution, a likely 'designed-in' function to aid in survival, as well as ID for radical re-designs, possibly by multiple intelligentsia over vast time. Google MDT for more on that possibility.

@dannym3141, I understand that you are "stepping out of the debate," but, for your edification, I'll respond here... And, for the record, I am not "funded" by Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Solar, or Big Green. Nor am I a professor of climate or environmental science at a State University (and don't have a political agenda around this issue other than to help promote sound reasoning and critical thinking). I do, however, hold a doctorate and can read the scientific literature critically. So, in response to what climate change "believers" say, it's worth noting that no one is actually taking the temperature of the seas. They simply see sea levels rising and say "global warming," but how do they know? It's a model they came up with. But far from certain, just a theory. Like Antarctica melting, but then someone finds out that it's due to volcanic activity underneath, and so on.

And also, why is the heat then staying in the water and not going into the atmosphere? So, they then have to come up with a theory on top of the other theory... So the heat is supposedly being stored deep below where the sensors cannot detect it. Great. And this is happening because...some other theory or another that can't be proven either. And then they have to somehow come up with a theory as to how they know that the deep sea warming is due to human activity and not to other causes. I'm not denying that any of this happens, just expressing skepticism, meaning that no one really knows for sure. That folks would "bet the house on it" does not serve as any proof, at all.

The discussion on the sift pivots from "global warming" to vilifying skeptics, not about the original skepticism discussed, that there is catastrophic man-caused global warming going on. Three issues yet to be proven beyond skepticism: 1) that there is global warming; 2) that it is caused by human activity; 3) that it's a big problem.

When I ask about one, they dance around to another one of these points, rather than responding. And all they have in response to the research is the IPCC "report" on which all their science is based. And most if not all published "believers" say that the heat "may be hiding" in the deep ocean, not that they "certainly know it is" like they seem to claim.

They don't have knowledge that the scientists who are actively working on this do not have, do they? It's like the IRS saying, "My computer crashed." The IPCC says, "The ocean ate my global warming!"

Here are some links worth reading:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304636404577291352882984274

And, from a different rebuttal: "Referring to the 17 year ‘pause,’ the IPCC allows for two possibilities: that the sensitivity of the climate to increasing greenhouse gases is less than models project and that the heat added by increasing CO2 is ‘hiding’ in the deep ocean. Both possibilities contradict alarming claims."

Here's the entire piece from emeritus Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, Dr. Richard Lindzen: http://www.thegwpf.org/richard-lindzen-understanding-ipcc-climate-assessment/

And take your pick from all of the short pieces listed here: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/08/is-gores-missing-heat-really-hiding-in-the-deep-ocean/

And http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/ipcc-in-denial-just-so-excuses-use-mystery-ocean-heat-to-hide-their-failure/

"Just where the heat is and how much there is seems to depend on who is doing the modeling. The U.S. National Oceanographic Data Center ARGO data shows a slight rise in global ocean heat content, while the British Met Office, presumably using the same data shows a slight decline in global ocean heat content."

http://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2013/10/03/the-ocean-ate-my-global-warming-part-2/#sthash.idQttama.dpuf

Dr. Lindzen had this to say about the IPCC report: "I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to a level of hilarious incoherence. They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase."

http://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2013/10/01/the-ocean-ate-my-global-warming-part-1/#sthash.oMO3oy6X.dpuf

So just as "believers" can ask "Why believe Heartland [financier for much of the NPCC], but not the IPCC," I can just as easily ask "Why should I believe you and not Richard Lindzen?"

"CCR-II cites more than 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers to show that the IPCC has ignored or misinterpreted much of the research that challenges the need for carbon dioxide controls."

And from the same author's series:

"Human carbon dioxide emissions are 3% to 5% of total carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, and about 98% of all carbon dioxide emissions are reabsorbed through the carbon cycle.

http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/1605/archive/gg04rpt/pdf/tbl3.pdf

"Using data from the Department of Energy and the IPCC we can calculate the impact of our carbon dioxide emissions. The results of that calculation shows that if we stopped all U.S. emissions it could theoretically prevent a temperature rise of 0.003 C per year. If every country totally stopped human emissions, we might forestall 0.01 C of warming."

http://www.arizonadailyindependent.com/2013/08/01/climate-change-in-perspective/#sthash.Dboz3dC5.dpuf

Again, I have asked, repeatedly, where's the evidence of human impact on global warming? "Consensus" is not evidence. I ask for evidence and instead I get statements about the consensus that global warming happening. These are two different issues.

"Although Earth’s atmosphere does have a “greenhouse effect” and carbon dioxide does have a limited hypothetical capacity to warm the atmosphere, there is no physical evidence showing that human carbon dioxide emissions actually produce any significant warming."

Or Roger Pielke, Sr: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/20/pielke-sr-on-that-hide-and-seek-ocean-heat/

Or Lennart Bengtsoon (good interview): "Yes, the scientific report does this but, at least in my view, not critically enough. It does not bring up the large difference between observational results and model simulations. I have full respect for the scientific work behind the IPCC reports but I do not appreciate the need for consensus. It is important, and I will say essential, that society and the political community is also made aware of areas where consensus does not exist. To aim for a simplistic course of action in an area that is as complex and as incompletely understood as the climate system does not make sense at all in my opinion."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/meteorologist-lennart-bengtsson-joins-climate-skeptic-think-tank-a-968856.html

Bengtsson: "I have always been a skeptic and I believe this is what most scientists really are."

What Michael Crichton said about "consensus": "Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus."

Will Happer on the irrelevancy of more CO2 now: "The earth's climate really is strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, although the physics is not the same as that which makes real, glassed-in greenhouses work. Without greenhouse warming, the earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life. However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth's temperature -- on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. It is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but your are only wearing a windbreaker. To really get warmer, you need to add a warmer jacket. The IPCC thinks that this extra jacket is water vapor and clouds."

Ivar Giaever, not a climate scientist per se, but a notable scientist and also a skeptic challenging "consensus": http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8786565/War-of-words-over-global-warming-as-Nobel-laureate-resigns-in-protest.html

Even prominent IPCC scientists are skeptics, even within the IPCC there is not agreement: http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/08/21/un-scientists-who-have-turned-on-unipcc-man-made-climate-fears-a-climate-depot-flashback-report/

And for your research, it may be worth checking out: http://www.amazon.com/The-Skeptical-Environmentalist-Measuring-State/dp/0521010683

@lucky760

Showing compassion is a choice. I don't doubt for a second that a majority of people in the world agree with your viewpoint the guy in the video doesn't deserve to be shown compassion because a) he was engaging in a crime and b) his injuries are a direct result of the actions he took.

And that's specifically why I responded to your post and the point I've been trying to make throughout this conversation: choosing not to have compassion for fellow human beings--making arbitrary decisions about who deserves and does not deserve compassion--leads exactly to the kind of mess you now see in Gaza, Syria, the Ukraine, and the U.S. prison system (John Oliver's vid explains clearly that the situation has gotten so bad because it's easy for people not to care about convicted criminals).

Yes, you are right about the Gaza vid--the Israelis want revenge. They want revenge because they no longer look at Gazans as humans worthy of compassion but as "the other," an enemy that must be conquered. Again, arbitrarily choosing who to have and not to have compassion for gives us exactly the world we have now--a world where people can cheer the bombing of civilians.

Ghandi once said be the change in the world you want to see--and followed through in a way that changed not just India's future but that of the world (with his effect on the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., on Mandela's movement to abolish apartheid in South African, etc.). I have no idea how you imagined up I was proposing compassion re-education camps. I'm simply pointing out to you and anyone else who cares to read that you have a choice. You can choose to believe and act the same as we as a species always have (and get in return the world we currently have) or you can choose to try to move beyond our genetic and environmental predispositions and work towards a potentially better world.

Then again, you've already said you'd call an ambulance and run over to help the guy in the vid if you saw this happen, so I think it's safe to say you do feel some compassion for the guy even if you think what he did was stupid and irresponsible. Your initial posts made it sound like you didn't care at all, which is partly what led me to respond because frankly I didn't really believe that--and I'm glad I was right about that at least even if I'm completely wrong about humanity as you suggest.

Well, you were the one that initially compared your marriage fidelity (or hypothetical lack thereof) to virtuous (or immoral) behaviours. You can't really compare one side (the behaviours) and then complain about a comparison of the (dis)incentives.

Both are systems of reward and punishment. You incentivise desired behaviours and disincentivise undesired ones. Whether the incentive is a tax break or an emotional response is irrelevant.

But let's say that you're right and there is a distinction between them. It still doesn't solve the problem of encouraging moral behaviour.

If I'm the CEO of a company and I make a decision that makes me and my family better off, everyone is happier, right? Moral bonus all round.

Except maybe my decision impacts someone else profoundly negatively. Halfway around the world, someones working conditions got much worse. Locally someone got laid off so I could employ the people with the crap working conditions. I saved money on environmental standards now at the cost of a problem in the future.

But none of that has an immediate social or personal consequence to me. I just bought a boat and took my family sailing and they're happy!!

The fact is that with the best will in the world, it's really easy for those with power to abuse it, and no, morality does not keep them in check. It might in a few individual cases, but those are dwarfed by the colossal atrocities perpetrated by those whose morality fails to keep their power in check.

Again, look at the current banking system. Please don't tell me you think there are moral people in charge of that, and for the love of all that is holy, please don't tell me that we just need to give them the opportunity to exercise their moral muscle.

The problem with this libertarian philosophy is that it has been the default position throughout history and the outcome has been spectacularly bad.
Libertarians counter this by claiming that we haven't had a "true" libertarian system, which to me is akin to trying to put out a fire with gasoline and then when it doesn't work, claiming we didn't add enough gasoline.

everyone buys food and lets it rot, wasting the entire process from ground to shelf, including all the transportation and environmental costs.

every individual does it. all of us. if we can see how to avoid it using a computer that can connect dots we can't that would be best. there are too many moving pieces for us to be as efficient as we could be with a better master control system!@

The pretense of the captioning is petty, foolish and lays bare the crass motivations of the idiot who wrote it. Everyone knows the only ones who are killing Bald Eagles these days are Barack Obama and his environmentally hostile interior department. http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/wind/biologist-eagle-deaths-at-turbines-widespread-undercounted.html

Ya know what, @Trancecoach is right. I could rebut all your points, but you've taken an ideological position that is unsupported by evidence, so clearly this is a waste of my time.

You probably genuinely believe what you've written, despite it being obvious nonsense.

One thing I can't let slide is your last little fantasy about the lone scientist against the establishment. That hasn't been true for a long time, and even then, it was generally religion or business (cf. Edison and Tesla) and not scientific consensus that impeded progress. Most major advances in science have come about by people working together, sharing results and bouncing ideas off each other. In fact, most of the time, the people we credit with great ideas (Newton, Einstein, etc) were only a step ahead of other scientists working toward the same ideas.

Yes, evidence trumps consensus, but scientists are not idiots, and there isn't some lone genius who has understood climate change when everyone else hasn't. If there was, the scientific community would recognise it.

There simply isn't any evidence to support your position that isn't easily dismissed in a few paragraphs. Read http://skepticalscience.com

The whole climate change denial (and no, I won't dignify it by calling it scepticism, that's an insult to scepticism) is marketing.

So I'll leave you, trance and the republicans in your little fantasy world where scientists and environmental campaigners have engaged in a massively profitable (please explain how, still not clear on this one) scheme to fuck up the world economy (because??? reasons, I guess) and the heroic oil companies are going to rescue us from a fate worse than a clean planet.

Meanwhile, I, the scientific community and the other humans that don't believe the earth is flat will accept the reality of climate change and move on.

I share some of your cynicism in terms of politicians and their incentives but climate change, whether you acknowledge it as a serious issue or not, is something that can only be addressed on an inter-governmental level.

I've said this before in a different video thread but individually minimising your carbon emissions is quite literally an exercise in self masturbatory indulgence. The vast majority of emissions are the result of industrial by-products in the product cycle. The same applies to regular pollution (and whether you use the recycling bin or not) and water wastage among other issues.

Actively selecting environmentally friendly products is generally either impossible (where alternatives don't exist) or impractical (where you're simply not provided sufficient or accurate information to effectively do so).

The efficient and effective way to reduce emissions is through a climate trading scheme. Emissions reduction occurs where it is cheapest to do and those for whom it is expensive buy the permits from those who can offset cheapest. Broad international adoption is the only way that this gets implemented because the costs are borne by everyone. In progress towards that goal, Republican opposition and the broad corporate campaign in the US against what is a scientific consensus is the primarily roadblock here.

The level of belief in climate change being caused by human activity and of being perceived as a threat in the US is woeful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_opinion_by_country

The EU is on board. Japan is on board. Among the largest economies, the US is the laggard and perhaps China. With the US being a major funder and significant influence on international agencies, they are clearly the roadblock here. With just EU, Japan, and the US, there would be consensus in >50% of global GDP output, which should be decisive.

You should acknowledge that, if you are wrong, while you may think you're hedging your bets by being environmentally responsible as you claim, in sum you're doing more harm than good through spreading FUD.

You completely missed the point.

The point is that most people think they are not the problem. I don't even know what you think because your attitude seems to be "there isn't really a problem but at least I'm doing something about it." I'm actually impressed that you can be both contrarian and sanctimonious simultaneously.

I do do heaps of things about it. I'm not bothered listing them again, and besides it comes off as preaching, but I know it's not enough. I recognise that my contributions on their own are meaningless, and that is why I advocate for more meaningful change on a larger scale.

Yeah, I could give up the things I love to help the planet and sit back patting myself on the back while we plunge further toward disaster. Or better yet, I could engage in some kind of wishful thinking that everyone will follow my example and we'll all return to some kind agrarian paradise. Unfortunately, I don't believe that will happen.

The problem is that it's a genuinely difficult issue to solve. There are political, economic and even environmental (is nuclear a viable solution?) issues that all have to balance.

But like anything, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.