aphar

but Alka, I actually don't care about greenhouse at all.
It may very well be occurring (for all I know) .

I mostly hate propaganda (on both sides).
I just wish both oil-diggers and alarmists would shut up for a year, remove all their money from this project, and let the scientists speak.
Thank, I think, most scientists will say that they need another hundred of years to collect more data (and this would be the most reasonable thing to do).

Likvidaciya-Alkin, eto zh UPA. Ukranian National Army, or whatever it was called :)

From:

Jenechka, what project, the Opera? :)
Seriously, I am now talking about any specific political happenings, just the climate (and what world are we leaving to our kids, of course). And I actually sense it outside the US much more sharply than inside. Last summer I was flying Icelandair to Norway, and the brochure in the seat pocket said that Icelandic glaciers are a must-see wonder, but hurry to book your Icelandic vacation now, because they are disappearing at the speed of x per year. It felt absolutely chilling. And then in Norway we were in a small town in the very North, and they had an Arctic museum with a big section on the effects of global warming on the Arctic region - oh, man. Again, I am no expert, but from whatever they were covering in their exhibit, it seemed absolutely non-controversial from a scientific perspective, and was not presented as an opinion or one of many possible explanations. And Iceland and Norway are far from politicized hysterical countries, they just happen to be in the climate zone that is getting the first blow. I am afraid that in another 20 years the data will obvious to the naked eye. :(

Ok, da nu ee pered snom, etu temu. What on earth is UPA??? All right, I am calling Jay to ask, his Ukrainian history is much better than mine.

From:

What on earth is UPA???
Украинская Повстанческая Армия.
Воевала на три фронта:
1. против "жидов" (погромы)
2. против вермахта
3. против РККА.

hurry to book your Icelandic vacation now, because they are disappearing at the speed of x per year.
what did you expect? "no hurry, the glaciers are millions of years old and will be here long after the humanity is gone"?
come on - this is a travel brochure!

The bottom line is:
"The UN-paid human rights activists say that the Jews are murders and rapists".
"The UN-paid scientists say that the global warming is real and caused by humans".
"same difference".

From:

Semka, no.
it's not "same difference".
I wish you stayed with the issue at hand, and didn't bring up other issues that are not linked with this one.
Scientists who receive the grant are still honest experts in the area and their opinion should be trusted. Btw, these scientists might very well be jews (or spaniards) pro or against israel, love or hate gays, pro-choice or pro-life, none of this matters. The is an empricial question.
There are poeple who know how it should be studied and they study it.
there is no reason not to trust their investigations, regardless of the monetary source (this goes for both the alarmists and the sceptics).

From:

as I said - for me, taking money from the UN is just as dishonorable as for the leftists taking money from big oil.

From:

i learned about GW from my professor back in 1995. I don't think the grant existed then. seriously, scientists (correctly or wrongly) were worried about it long before UN or Gore.

From:

and my reply to you is exactly the same as to

azazzela,
monetary source is of secondary importance.

From:

agreed.
my point only was that the sources are dubious on both sides.

From:

Alka,
Iceland and Norway benefit from all this hype and travel directly.
I completely disagree with Semka's bottom line. I don't think it's "same difference", although I do have a general mistrust in the UN. I also have general mistrust in oil diggers. Everybody has their own agenda.

But the "consensus" hype benefits several important players within the UN and it's not true. there are plenty of sceptics among scientists, but now that so much money is invested into it, and propaganda is active on both sides, I have not clue who to trust.
"Consensus" or no "consesnus", GW maybe happening. or not.

From:

what I mean is that the association with the UN taints the source, just like for others association with "oil diggers" does.

From:

aga.
your sourse should be experts.
check the name of the scientists who are pro-GW, check if you trust their credentials, check if they publich in p-reviewed journals etc, etc.
do the same for the sceptics.

funding can come from Bill Gates or the Big Blue Bird, just diregard it for now.

From:

"Iceland and Norway benefit from all this hype and travel directly."

Jen'k, it's a pretty cynical statement.

Look, we are developing an environmental health portal for kids at work. I am not a climatologist, but I've been looking at a lot of articles and websites lately, from places like EPA, for example (Environmental Protection Agency), or NASA. From all the mainstream stuff I've seen, it looks like human contribution to global warming is pretty much a scientific consensus, not to mention the global warming phenomenon itself. Again, I don't have the expertise to evaluate the argument itself, but I don't see a wide range of diverging opinions. Here is a direct quote from a NASA page, "A majority of climatologists have concluded that human activities are responsible for most of the warming." (http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_warming_worldbook.html)

Where I see a wide range of diverging opinions is in grassroots websites and postings that mushroom on the Internet. People link to all kinds of places to support all kinds of opinions. In one comment in your LJ, someone sent me a quote from a Washington Post article. The author is a "director" of something-or-other, and wrote a book about global warming being a fluke. A quick google search reveals that he was accused of presenting inaccurate scientific data in the book, by three independent scientific organizations, and the court of whatever Scandinavian country the book was published in ruled that its data was fraudulent indeed.

Yes, there are *some* (*few*) scientists who disagree with the majority consensus. But then there is Peter Duseberg, a distinguished professor of microbiology at Berkeley, who claims that HIV does not cause AIDS. And then there is Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry and the major force behind the intelligent design "theory". So what? There are always a few conspiracy theorists in science, but when you look at the history of science, you won't find a single case of true conspiracy, funding or no funding. Science is driven by incurable curiosity to discover the truth. There is a lot of vanity there, but it's the kind of vanity where they want to get famous by making a major contribution that will withstand the test of time. Also, true breakthroughs make it into the scientific mainstream very fast - it did not take Darwin years and years to convince his colleagues that he was right.

Ok, Jen'k, I've said it all and won't say any more. Arguments like this don't usually lead to any opinion change on either side, anyway.

From:

human contribution to global warming is pretty much a scientific consensus
yeah - contribution, bit causality.
as I said: there are more important things to worry about, and there are many many many more efficient ways to use our money

From:

"yeah - contribution, bit causality."

I am not sure what this means - the contribution is causal, even if causality is multi-factorial and involves interactions of factors.

"as I said: there are more important things to worry about, and there are many many many more efficient ways to use our money"

Look, I don't know enough to argue about this, especially on the efficiency part, but this is very different from saying that "in three years the main issue may be global cooling", which started this whole thread.

From:

ISTR reading a paper that that in the current solar cycle the Sun is very active and that is about to be reverted, so I still think that in 3 years the GW will fade in importance, just like the GC (Global Cooling) faded in the 80ies.

From:

What's a solar cycle and how long does it last?

Semka, I am curious about how you come to the views you have. I mean, we can evaluate the arguments from each side of the debate, or we can try to evaluate the sources that the arguments come from. I don't have the knowledge to evaluate the scientific side of the reasons you provide, though some things seem surprising to me (like trying to make a case on the basis of a very narrow range of data with high local fluctuations, or inferring that "high solar activity *in the current cycle* questions 100-year stretch of global warming evidence). But I am more surprised by your treatment of sources - we can always find something that will say anything, but for once, I've never heard of let's say ISTR until I googled it just now, and seem to ascribe more importance to who funds independent research than to the process of peer review.

That's actually the most fascinating thing to me in this whole debate: not that we disagree, but that we use very different processes to arrive at our conclusions. Which kills every hope of us ever coming to a consensus. Which makes the phenomenon of scientific consensus on the issue even more surprising: if all these experts agree (I am not talking journalists, activists, oil diggers and bleeding heart citizen), there is got to be something to it.

Ok, I said I was gonna stop, and I will try.

From: