Phoenix Riising ([info]ellipsedream) wrote in [info]_scientists_,
@ 2006-06-14 16:44:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Current mood: curious

climatologists on Gore's movie
have you read this piece?

Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe


http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm

i was wondering your thoughts here because i have not seen this opposing view highly discussed in the media.

the scientists quoted in the article seem reputable and offer hard data. Gore is a politician and prone to spin, as is the media, to employ sensationalism and grab public attention. however, i thought there was consensus that climate change IS happening, be it anthropogenic or not, and that we have some serious environmental issues to solve in the coming decades.

i guess i'm just hating to see this debate polarized in such a political manner. i'd rather see the whole thing scientifically discussed. any comments? thanks!

(Post a new comment)


[info]antje23
2006-06-14 09:10 pm UTC (link)
I do agree with this statement:

This is highly valuable knowledge, but doesn't make them climate change cause experts, only climate impact experts.

However, I have yet to see the movie or read any of the papers cited either by the movie or this article.

I think the debate, especially in the US, is going to continue being polarized because our media does it's best to be "balanced" and provide the "opposing viewpoint" even if that viewpoint isn't grounded in good science.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]ellipsedream
2006-06-14 09:23 pm UTC (link)
yeah, i haven't seen the movie either. i still want to check it out, tho. thanks for your comments.

"balanced media"... lol... ahhhh, America. heh. ;)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]eukarya
2006-06-14 09:15 pm UTC (link)
You realize that is a right-wing paper, right? Most scientists, at least outside the states, agree that global warming is occuring-there is really not much of a debate on this issue.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]ellipsedream
2006-06-14 09:21 pm UTC (link)
i agree that climate change IS happening, and probably anthropogenically caused. yet a friend of mine, a right-winger himself, tried to tell me that this article conclusively proves the global warming is... how did he put it? oh yeah, he it "a load of crap".

i have to lmao at him, but still i will not dismiss what appear to be solid facts from reputable scientists just because i may not be fond of the forum in which they are presented. so i was just hoping for some insight into other scientists' heads on this issue. debate is good. :)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]antje23
2006-06-14 09:24 pm UTC (link)
Who, in theory, are not being funded by say, Exxon Mobil.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]ageekluvskungfu
2006-06-14 09:32 pm UTC (link)
Skeptics society. Conference June 2-4 2006. Look it up.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]infinitedomain
2006-06-14 09:58 pm UTC (link)
Most scientists agree that human activity impacts the environment in some way.

The extent to which this happens, and whether or not it is a bad thing or a doomsday scinario that can't be overcome and whether the costs of the environmental damage that is occuring exceed the benefits of allowing the use of technology that impacts the environment to continue, are open to debate.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]queentatooine
2006-06-14 09:36 pm UTC (link)
My boss had a grad student who went to work from NASA. He was doing talks on how Global Warming was an issue, and a more immediate issue than many want to believe. He was later approached by two people who told him that if he wanted to keep his job and his reputation he would retract those statements.

There was a story on it in Science Magazine. Basically anything that goes against Bush's statements is repressed as far as I can tell.

~QueenTatooine

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]antje23
2006-06-14 11:36 pm UTC (link)
well duh, if you have an opposing viewpoint, it means you are helping the terrorists.


;)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]_mattt
2006-06-14 10:13 pm UTC (link)
With all due respect, you've been duped by backlash media spin. Isn't it amazing how easy it was, yes? They are very insidious and if you are not armed with facts, you can easily buy in.

You can get a "scientist" to say anything. And this "scientist" is a notorious right wing shill whose area of expertise isn't even climate research (He's a geologist). He's also a member of the IPA, taking money from eco friendly organizations such as mining companies, tobacco companies, big oil, et cetera.

In Science, we have a wonderful process called peer reivew to weed out ill-formed hypotheses. A scientist can hypothesize anything he or she wants, but before it can be added to the body of scientific knowledge, it must go through the rigorous process of peer review. As a scientist, I can go out and claim the sky isn't blue or the world is flat. Maybe I can even get quotted in a Canadian right wing mag. But such a hypothesis would never survive peer review.

To date, there are over 500 published articles in scientific journal on climate change, all of which have undergone peer review, and zero of which deny that climate warming is occuring due to anthropomorphic CO2.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]_mattt
2006-06-14 10:15 pm UTC (link)
That should say anthropogenic. Sorry.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]happinessiseasy
2006-06-19 08:07 pm UTC (link)
Hahahaha! I hate it when people anthropomorphize gases!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]infinitedomain
2006-06-14 11:26 pm UTC (link)
Of course none of them deny it. It would probably be very difficult, if not impossible, to prove that something like that IS NOT occuring, since negatives are inherently more difficult to prove than positives. Have these peer reviewed articles proven conclusively that it is occuring and, if so, at a rate alarming enough to be of concern?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]rxrfrx
2006-06-14 11:35 pm UTC (link)
"Deny" or "prove?" Pick one.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]_mattt
2006-06-15 12:04 am UTC (link)
Proving a climate change is or is not ocurring are equally daunting tasks; the difficulty of proving the hypothesis does not alter the observation. Moreover, alarming is a subjective term.

The universal observation is that the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere is ocurring at a rate greater than any observed over the past hundreds of thousands of years. The overwhelming majority of conclusions is that the CO2 increase is anthropogenic. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that drastically changing the CO2 level in the atmosphere imposes a great risk of climate change. You decide if you should be alarmed.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]antje23
2006-06-15 12:23 am UTC (link)
and there's this from the NOAA site:



(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]adrinna
2006-06-15 12:49 am UTC (link)
Bah.... I've yet to see a good argument from a "skeptic."

Case in point: Bill Gray apparently gave a talk at a recent conference which mainly consisted of him complaining about losing most of his funding and calling pretty much all atmospheric scientists "idiots."

I'm all for criticism of the science, but saying "you're an idiot and your model is wrong! I KNOW the planet is cooling" is just not really convincing to me.

(Reply to this)


[info]ratiopronation
2006-06-15 03:24 am UTC (link)
gore is a self-aggrandizing douche.
not that I have any special expertise, but I do believe the planet is heating up. I have no opinion on whether this is antropogenically caused.

my former chem professor (ron cohen), who is apparently fairly prominent in the world of atmospheric studies, is of the opinion that the world is heating up, but that humans have nothing whatsoever to do with it... YET.

(Reply to this)


[info]5h4wn
2006-06-15 06:04 am UTC (link)
the article quoted a guy who said the CO2 levels were highest 450 million years ago while the earth was very cool but as I recall, the Earth was a gigantic snowball during that time. The reason it was very cool was because the ice reflected most of the sunlight and it wasn't until the CO2 and Nitrogen levels reached such levels that even that amount of reflection couldn't keep the temperature at the equator below 32 degrees.

(Reply to this)


[info]darbyunlimited
2006-06-15 12:42 pm UTC (link)
There are a lot of scientists in every field that are a) slow to change their ingrained ideas about how the world works, and/or b) very cautious about seeing linkages where there are correlations. Being able to find climate folks who are yet to be convinced isn't much of a surprise (they hardly had to leave Canada for it), and the assertion of the article, that many (depending on how you define "many") scientists, experts in this field, don't necessarily agree with the particulars of the current global warming hypotheses (and notice that it was detail that most of them focussed on), isn't really wrong, or much of a reach. As propaganda, this is really mild stuff. Probably milder than the movie. I haven't seen it, but am very familiar with years of Gore's environmental stuff from back in his senator years, and it tends to be very skewed and alarmist.

(Reply to this)


[info]linaliem
2006-06-17 07:00 pm UTC (link)
Have you heard of the blog RealClimate? It's written by climate scientists and one recent post discusses Al Gore's movie. From what I can tell, it's pretty good blog and at least a good place to go to read scientific discussion in the blog and in the comments.

(Reply to this)

Create an Account
Forgot your login?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…