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Hi Eddie,

I don’t follow this at all. For reference’s sake, here’s her original statement:

I don’t see one Planck space of difference between her statement and mine.

What makes you think, Eddie, that I write everything I know about a subject in every post I make? I know that you try to do that, and it’s a very charming quality, indeed. In this case, I’ve been reading both sides of the Curry controversy for years.

I also mentioned the following which you seem not to have noticed:

I think we agree on that, no?

Best,

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The data point to an inevitable conclusion: the earth is warming and mankind is largely to blame.

Why is there still flapping about this? Well, it all goes back to the tobacco companies, who wrote the playbook. They didn’t want any regulations, so they created doubt about the research showing the link between smoking and disease. They were able to dodge regulations for decades! Their playbook has been pressed into service to foment doubt about acid rain, the depletion of ozone, and global warming. They recruited contrarian scientists friendly to their cause. They took advantage of the fact that science is never 100% certain, fomented doubt, and made it seem that there was a genuine controversy. If anybody would like to learn more, I recommend the book Merchants of Doubt, by historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway. There is also a really good documentary film also called Merchants of Doubt , with Naomi Oreskes and others.

You can also listen to an hour-long free BioInteractive lecture by Naomi Oreskes called Climate Change: How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong?. The description of the lecture is this:

Dr. Oreskes shares her insights into why the growing scientific consensus on climate change continues to be debated. She describes how a Cold War-era think tank became an influential source of anti-regulation sentiment, swaying public opinion on many topics, including climate change. She then reviews the reasons why scientists have come to a consensus on climate change, as well as debunking some common arguments against anthropogenic causes of climate change.

I also like the web pages of Katharine Hayhoe, Michael Mann, and Yale Climate Connections. These three resources also have facebook pages you can “like” to receive updates.

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@Eddie

If 8 times, during the course of 800,000 years, the Earth has cycled up and down from 180 ppm of CO2 to 280 ppm… up and down… up and down… creating glaciers a mile high over the island of Manhattan … and then melting them down … with related increases in sea levels…

… and then with the rise of humanity and the Industrial Revolution … and within just a century or so … we have CO2 levels going from 280 ppm to 400 ppm… this is virtually conclusive that human activity has moved the Earth OFF the bubble… What would we expect from burning millions of years of Carbon laden fuel … in the course of just 100 years? Of COURSE carbon levels are going to jump!

The normal cycle, which has been driven by the Milankovitch Cycles for almost a million years… has been swamped out by a 40% increase in CO2 levels.

I have no idea what other information you think you are going to get on this eruption in CO2 levels… but your prayers have been answered. We have the information. You just choose to ignore it.

George Brooks

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature.

Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that HUMANS ARE CAUSING global warming.

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Statement on climate change from 18 scientific associations (2009).

Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the PRIMARY DRIVER.

American Chemical Society (2004).

Comprehensive scientific assessments of our current and potential future climates clearly indicate that climate change is real, largely attributable to emissions from human activities, and potentially a very serious problem.

American Meteorological Society (2012).

It is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrous oxide.

The Geological Society of America (2006; revised 2010).

The Geological Society of America (GSA) concurs with assessments by the National Academies of Science (2005), the National Research Council (2006), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) that global climate has warmed and that human activities (mainly greenhouse‐gas emissions) account for most of the warming since the middle 1900s.

U.S. Global Change Research Program (2009, 13 U.S. government departments and agencies).

The global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases. Human ‘fingerprints’ also have been identified in many other aspects of the climate system, including changes in ocean heat content, precipitation, atmospheric moisture, and Arctic sea ice.

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Now then, what are we to think of the vaccine controversy? Should Andrew Wakefield, a medical doctor and researcher who claimed to find a link between autism and vaccines, be bullied into silenced by the vast majority of other researchers and BIG PHARMA? Or should we search for the truth and give this courageous man a hearing?

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Excellent. The inner atmosphere is warming, and the isotopes of carbon found in the atmosphere point to the burning of fossil fuels. (Unless God is pumping this stuff into the atmosphere to fool us.)

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The argument being used here is “Teach the Controversy”, which says it all.

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Was that sarcasm?

Which post are you referring to?

Hi Eddie-

Of course, everyone should be treated with dignity. No, I don’t think of climate scientists as being the modern equivalent of a Franciscan order. I don’t think of their critics as the modern equivalent of a Franciscan order, either.

How are you defining that inflammatory word “chicanery,” Eddie? If you mean that 10 years ago the CRU researchers did not share their data as openly as they should have, and that they made disparaging comments about their critics in their private conversations, I would agree with you. If you mean that they made invalid data adjustments or engaged in scientific misconduct, then I wouldn’t–and would be happy to explain why. So instead of assuming you mean one thing or the other, I would like to ask you to clarify your statement.

Gerardus Bouw, who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics, complains of stifling orthodoxy in the world of astrophysics because his critics will not accept that the earth is unmoved, the structural center about which the rest of the universe revolves.

Jason Lisle, who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics, complains of a stifling orthodoxy among astrophysicists because they do not accept that the speed of light moves at infinite speed toward from the earth and at 1/2 * c away from the earth.

Open theists complain of the stifling orthodoxy among conservative theologians, who staunchly oppose their modern reformulations of ancient truths.

What I’m getting at is this: complaints about stifling orthodoxy are proof of nothing and evidence of very little…other than the obvious fact that the complainant feels aggrieved that the majority of his or her peers do not accept his or her work.

Sometimes the complainant turns out to be right. Galileo was right, for example. Luther was right about the corruption in Rome.

Sometimes the complainant turns out to be very wrong. Cold fusion still isn’t accepted. The speed of light is still deemed c along every axis.

With regard to climate science, it appears that the complainants are very much wrong to the extent that they dismiss the dominant role of AGW. On the other hand, I do agree with the position that explanations of the probabilistic nature of the modeling could, and should, be improved.

I agree that fostering civility in debate is important. But is it the only concern we should focus on?

Should we be concerned about the billions of our fellow human beings who are at grave risk due to future effects of anthropogenic global warming?

Best,

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People are already suffering from the grave effects of global warming, and it’s usually poor people.

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I was referring to the Andrew Wakefield comment. That issue is sort of like religion, so we really should not go there as it is too far afield, but was wondering if you were serious.

@Eddie

Without having waded through the entire stream of posts above, I’ll risk repeating already made points.

Your concern about treatment with dignity and need for due diligence among professional scientists is all well and good, but at the popular (but hopefully educated) discussion level that we have here, we can still validly aspire towards informed opinions, and more importantly we can promote the spread of informed opinions to displace misinformed and especially harmful opinions. In that spirit, your objections that you perceive to be a needed corrective here seem a bit misplaced. I am not a medical person and have no formal medical training whatsoever, but that does not prevent me from having a valid and informed opinion that inhaling cigarette smoke is harmful to my health. For many years (decades!) cigarette executives (who had ‘experts’ on their side) were planting outright lies about this and when that failed that would at least fall back on the “well … it’s not a proven connection” canard (which will always be technically true in some pedantic sense).

All of the noise about climate change doubt today reminds me much of all those tobacco executives with their employed scientists casting doubts and trying to pretend there is at least some controversy. We have rightly put that lie in the dustbin where it belongs.

Also reacting to others in general here about how much Christians are caught up in this denial…
I think it boils down to pure old greed, from which Christians are unfortunately not immune. Does anybody want to speculate that Donald Trump is a climate denier because he is such a pious Christian? If so, I have some expensive land in Australia for sale. His motivations (like most I suspect) are pure and simple: It would be expensive to large corporate interests to have to take that seriously. Business-as-usual on the other hand is what most of us (Chistian or not) find to be more attractive to our daily interests since most of us don’t live on low-lying islands or in areas that are feeling the immediate impact. But even that excuse erodes as even affluent areas are increasingly affected by forest fires, etc. which impacts all of us through increased insurance rates at least.)

All this is to point out that sometimes the responsible thing is to be very one-sided about something and the irresponsible thing is to try to inject controversy which ends up being in the service of dis-information or dis-motivation. Teasing apart necessary controversy from irresponsible controversy is not a trivial task. But it is one in which you can almost always count on large corporate interests taking the moral low-ground.

And according to at least one climate scientist I’ve heard speak – climate change denial is where the big money is if scientists want to get rich (courtesy of those corporate interests).

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Hi Eddie,

You have given me no reason or means to distinguish between Curry’s complaints of stifling orthodoxy and the similar complaints of Bouw, Lisle, and Wakefield. Or do you think that there is in fact no point in distinguishing between them?

Godspeed,