The Global Warming Movement -- Look to Eugenics
By Erick Posted in Policy — Comments (76) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Be sure to check out this column by Georgia Congressman John Linder in today's Washington Times about Global Warming.
Congressman Linder points out that the world's scientists previously united on a question of global scientific consensus and we're still dealing with the effects today.
Read on . . .
"Global Warming" had a precursor in capturing the hearts and minds of the world. Michael Crichton, in his novel "State of Fear," brilliantly juxtaposes the world's current political embrace of "global warming" with the popular embrace of the "science" of eugenics a century ago. For nearly 50 years, from the late 1800s through the first half of the 20th century, there grew a common political acceptance by the world's thinkers, political leaders and media elite that the "science" of eugenics was settled science. There were a few lonely voices trying to be heard in the wilderness in opposition to this bogus science, but they were ridiculed or ignored.
Believers in eugenics argued that we could improve the human race by controlling reproduction. The most respected scientists from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and other bastions of intellectual rigor retreated to a complex on Long Island named Cold Spring Harbor. Their support came from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman fortune working with the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, State and other agencies.
The result was that 60,000 Americans were sterilized with twenty-nine states passing laws allowing sterilization.
Congressman Linder also points out that
if there is a settled science, it is adduced by climatologists who have been observing and studying the world for decades. Many are retired and not seeking government grants for research and thus not inclined to reach outcomes that are politically popular. Most have been through more than one alarmist cycle of doom.
Most of these old hands think we're going through a normal cycle. Of course, they are discredited, just like the Christian ministers religious nutjobs who opposed eugenics.
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Why have I not heard of him before? Linder absolutely nailed it. I give him a 10. Everyone forced to see An Inconvenient Truth in Seattle should be forced to read this, too.
was all about eugenics and guess what it is still being practiced today? Eugenics in the form of abortion, more abortions are done in the black community then in any other race in that the black community comprises 15% of the population and that was the whole plan one just needs to read up on Ms. Sanger. "At a March 1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the "black" and "yellow" peril. The man was not a Nazi or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (ABCL), which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood." (information taken from BlackGenocide.org)
Peace through superior fire power:)
An emailer to NRO hit the nail on the head. GW is caused by DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME! An extra hour sunlight every day...
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Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged. — J. Michael Waller
I've always thought DST was all smoke and mirrors. Now you tell me it's just greenhouse gas.
It's healthy to remember that any consensus can be wrong.
But are we supposed to assume that most scientists coming to agreement is a strong indicator that a theory is wrong? The Representative himself, in the end, relies on a consensus of unnamed "wise old heads."
It's not a good sign when your science article is written by a politician* with the primary citation being a novelist.
I belief there is uncertainty about the size of the effect and about the potential to mitigate it through alternate measures. That said, a good first step would be a revenue neutral swap where we lowered income taxes and introduced a carbon tax. The net economic effect should be positive.
I also had to laugh at the implication that scientists who believe in global warming do so to obtain the government's money. The government has been run by Republicans for a while now. Why can't they change this system? For that matter, aren't there some wealthy organizations with a strong stake in discrediting global warming? Can't they do something?
I do have to give the Representive credit for making a specific prediction - that global average temperatures will drop this decade. I am curious - do most here agree?
Tom
* Yes, this applies to Al Gore as well. I had to read Earth In Balance at one point and the commentary on my field, economics, was awful.
...science article is written by a politician... add the recent UN document to that.
The government has been run by Republicans for a while now. Why can't they change this system? Achance covered this point at length a couple of weeks ago. Bottom line, the mechanism of modern government was designed by, and is largely populated with left leaning bureaucrats who have unfettered tenure and are immune to the wished of both the voters and the executive.
Can't they do something? Why? You folks treat GW with religious zeal, it is not scientific. Producing evidence that GW is a fool's errand is about as significant as producing evidence that intelligent design is silly. Your "scientists" have learned one valuable lesson: don't make short term predictions. Paul Ehrlich learned that the hard way. Now, the doom and gloom is for my children's grandchildren. None of us who heard the prediction will be pointing to you and chortling "fool!" like I would with Ehrlich.
And finally, with respect to temperature over the next decade, they will either rise or fall. I don't really care which and I'm not willing to destroy the US economy on a fool's bet. If you really want to be treated with some seriousness here, knock off the blather and write a blog describing some mechanism to reduce the dreaded CO2 emissions that will be enforceable worldwide, including China and India. Provide some details on the enforcement mechanism. Other than that, knock off with the hot air, the planet is heating up.
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Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged. — J. Michael Waller
If I understand your first point, you think that even Congress and the President acting in concert can not prevent US agencies from embracing obviously incorrect science.
A counter-example that leaps to mind is the placement of Creationist literature at National Park bookstores. If our political leaders can make that happen, why can't they get funding for real science on the climate.
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/jaroff/article/0,9565,783829,00.html
If I understand your second point, your response would be - why should they bother? My response would be most of the country, including me, is becoming convinced that global warming is real. See the link below for example, business leaders acknowledging the issue. When utility company CEO's start calling for carbon taxes, I think there is a real possibility of government action. http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2006-05-31-business-globalwarmin...
As a side note, Paul Erhlich is not one of my "scientists". Markets are very good at solving scarcity problems. That's why I don't worry about running out of, say, a key mineral. Markets are not good at capturing polution externalities. That's why industrial countries without effective environmental regulations have serious polution issues.
"I'm not willing to destroy the US economy on a fool's bet."
Do you believe that a carbon tax would destory the US economy? How did you come to that conclusion?
The US is still the largest producer, so it seems to me that solutions need to start here. How we get China and India to act is a genuinely difficult and interesting question. I am happy to delve into it, but don't see the point if you believe that global warming is a fantasy made up by scientists looking to get rich off of project money that is doled out by uncontrollable government bureaucrats.
Tom
"If you really want to be treated with some seriousness here, knock off the blather and write a blog describing some mechanism to reduce the dreaded CO2 emissions that will be enforceable worldwide, including China and India. Provide some details on the enforcement mechanism. Other than that, knock off with the hot air, the planet is heating up."
This is certainly a common argument against taking political/economic steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but it strikes me as disingenuous. The greenhouse gases that are increasingly being produced in developing nations are being produced by technology that has (for the most part) been developed by nations such as the US, Great Britain, and other European nations. Cars, airplanes, coal-fired power plants, etc. etc. ad nauseum were all initially developed by the world's technological leaders, and are now being adopted by the rest of the world, as they follow us along the path of development.
Why should the technology of greenhouse gas reduction be any different. The leaders lead, the followers follow. China in particular has spoken repeatedly of the damage that climate change may well do to its population, and is keen to reduce its national carbon footprint. That it has so far been unsuccesful in achieving this is regrettable, but hardly surprising for a nation that is so busy playing catch-up.
The question that I am asking is this: do you have any reason to suppose that greenhouse gas reduction technologies developed by American companies would not be adopted by companies in the developing world, particularly as we can assume that any widespread deployment in the West would bring about significant price reductions?
My answer would be a resounding "no", but I am certainly open to factual evidence (or reasoned argument) to the contrary.
If this is the case though, it becomes not only a case of moral duty (we developed these technologies, we should develop the "cure"), but also a case of positioning our economies to capitalise on the development taking place in other countries.
Its very hard to argue against a snow job. Start with your position on Chinas concern. If they are so concerned why are they building coal plants like there is no tomorrow ? The other question is why are they selling fake carbon credits to european manufacturers?
Correct the factual basis of the argument and then there can be dialog.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Sorry, I thought I had already addressed this in my post - they are playing catch up. At this point there is no cheaper or better source of energy, and as a huge nation going through a major economic shift, cheap energy is what they need.
This doesn't mean that they don't accept the possibility of climate change, just that they have more pressing concerns. The same could be said of us in the West, but with far less credibility.
China has something like a billion people living on its coasts. Care to tell me what is more pressing than having them flooded out ?
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I thought the goal was to prevent future disasters by abating the emission of greenhouse gases. It sounds like you're making excuses for the Chinese, who may indeed be the largest carbon emitter today, and if not, then they're getting there fast. Their emissions will be growing at double-digit rates for decades to come, while ours are not growing and will probably stay that way.
Wouldn't it be more honest and practical to say that the Chinese must be stopped at all costs? By focusing on reducing emissions from the West, you're addressing the small part of the problem and ignoring the big part.
Unless I'm the one who's being irrational. Maybe the goal is not to forestall future disasters at all. Maybe it's just to assuage our guilty consciences.
I don't think your point is irrational - China's population is huge, and obviously has a huge capacity to produce greenhouse gases. In terms of reducing greenhouse gases and (we hope) the effects that climate change will have, of course curbing the emissions of China and India is a primary concern.
The issue is how best to do that, and I am arguing that most logical option is to devote the expertise already extant in the West to developing technologies that will reduce emissions.
Whether this is making excuses for the Chinese or not, I don't know... though I would suggest that perhaps the one flaw in my argument is that it discounts the role that Chinese (and Indian) scientists and inventors will play in developing the next generation of emission-reducing technology. If that is so though, it seems even more pressing that we position our own industries to make the key breakthroughs and cash in!
I feel like you're just trying to make me sound stupid, but I'll take the risk and point out the obvious: you can have the best technology in the world and no one will buy it, if it solves a problem they don't think they have.
How are you going to get China and India to agree that they should spend anything on greenhouse gas abatement? If anything, they should be deeply concerned at the prospect that we're going to do it ourselves, because that will damage their export markets.
I'm not trying to make anyone look stupid; I simply disagree with one of the presmises in your argument, ie. that climate change is a problem that the Chinese and Indian populations don't think they have.
I have read numerous reports of efforts by the Chinese government to appear pro-active on climate change (this for one, but it's simply the first one i found on Google). Note that I said "appear" - I have no reason to think that any of these efforts have amounted to much, but the desire to appear to be taking action indicates that the Chinese population is concerned about climate change. If technologies that can effectively reduce emissions are developed (whether here or elsewhere), there is reason to suppose that there would be a market for them.
Wouldn't it be more honest and practical to say that the Chinese must be stopped at all costs?
To add to my post above, yes, i would agree with this. I have offered a way to do this. You haven't.
...but I thought I'd chime in with a direct answer to this:
The question that I am asking is: do you have any reason to suppose that greenhouse gas reduction technologies developed by American companies would not be adopted by companies in the developing world, particularly as we can assume that any widespread deployment in the West would bring about significant price reductions?
Answer: Yup. No one with a brain spends money they don't have to spend.
I belief there is uncertainty about the size of the effect and about the potential to mitigate it through alternate measures. That said, a good first step would be a revenue neutral swap where we lowered income taxes and introduced a carbon tax. The net economic effect should be positive.
Ok, two problems:
First, a carbon tax is bad, really bad, because it taxes production at every step, and taxes whether any profit is made or not.
Second, one the carbon tax is in place, both it and the income tax will be free to rise once it becomes clear that revenue supply is not keeping up with government demand and carbon reductions are not doing anything.
The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts
Why do you believe that taxes based on profitability are superior to other taxes? The conventional economic view is that taxing anything will lead to less of it. Why taxes profits instead of gasoline use?
The comment about production at every step is unclear to me. Can you clarify?
Greg Mankiw, Bush's former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, favors a carbon tax. If you search his blog for carbon tax, you will see a number of people who agree with him
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/search?q=carbon+tax
Your second point is a political one, and the short answer is that I don't know. Would you support a swap if it eliminated as opposed to lowered another tax (e..g corporate income tax)?
Tom
Why taxes profits instead of gasoline use?
But retail taxes alone already account for 1/5 of the price of a gallon of gas. That's a real novel new idea you have there. Next you'll be telling us we should try taxing cigarettes.
Would you support a swap if it eliminated as opposed to lowered another tax (e..g corporate income tax)?
I wouldn't. You got some proof that a carbon tax implemented in the US is going to save the world from some horrible fate? Because the burden is all on you to make the case. All I've seen so far is "Hey, this collection of random people (some of whom probably stand to benefit) think its a groovy idea."
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
I belief there is uncertainty about the size of the effect and about the potential to mitigate it through alternate measures
Lets face it the AGW people are trying to pull data from what most would call noise. If the congressmen gets to play with what is meant by decade and temperature, the way the GW people have, he has a 9 in ten or better shot of claiming a temp reduction.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I am curious - which data do you think is too noisy?
Do you believe
a) the Earth is not warming
b) It is warming but for reasons unrelated to man
c) It is warming for reasons that may be related to man but it is too soon to tell
d) It is warming for reasons related to man, but it's too expensive/difficult to do anything about it
e) It is warming but too little to matter
f) It is warming and that's a good thing
Tom
used to justify the IPCC's political report regarding GlobalWarming™ could be considered as questionable.
In 1988, James Hansen, a climatologist, told the US Congress that temperature would rise 0.3C by the end of the century (it rose 0.1C), and that sea level would rise several feet (no, one inch). The UN set up a transnational bureaucracy, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The UK taxpayer unwittingly meets the entire cost of its scientific team, which, in 2001, produced the Third Assessment Report, a Bible-length document presenting apocalyptic conclusions well beyond previous reports.
This week, I'll show how the UN undervalued the sun's effects on historical and contemporary climate, slashed the natural greenhouse effect, overstated the past century's temperature increase, repealed a fundamental law of physics and tripled the man-made greenhouse effect.
Two tree ring chronologies from the dataset relied upon by Mann et al (1998). Upper panel: Sheep Mountain, California, USA. Lower panel: Mayberry Slough, Arizona, USA. Both series are the same length, but Mann’s algorithm gives the Sheep Mountain chronology 390 times the weight of the other series.
To McIntyre et al., it appeared possible that Mann et al. had given the tainted bristlecone data series such exceptional prominence, effectively swamping all influence from the other datasets in their calculations, because the bristlecone-pine dataset produced the pronounced 20th-century uptick (and a corresponding suppression of evidence for mediaeval high temperatures), which would apparently eradicate the mediaeval warm period.
To test this possibility, McIntyre et al. ran the algorithm of Mann et al. 10,000 times, having replaced all palaeoclimatological data with randomly-generated, electronic “red noise”. They found that – even with this entirely random data, altogether unconnected with the temperature record – the model nearly always constructed a “hockey-stick” curve similar to that in the UN’s 2001 report.
(emphasis added)
There is almost no intellectual debate regarding climate change, but there certainly is a lot of noise about GlobalWarming.™
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“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
The 1880 to current particularly. There are several different regions un the charts where the method of determining avg temp has been changed. The satellite data used un the last 30 years has just been re adjusted to recast the warmth of 1934.
As for noise you are talking about a 1/500th variation in temperature over 120 years. The year on year variation is what ?
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
as for no
I didn’t find the op-ed to make a particularly compelling argument as comparing proponents of the AGW theory to proponents of eugenics as lame as an early diary trying to compare them to Stalinists. It doesn't advance a serious argument and quickly puts the person making it into the nutter category.
I’m agnostic on AGW but could support a revenue neutral tax swap (gasoline taxes for income taxes) because it would have other economic and environmental benefits regardless of AGW.
I'm not a South Park Republican, I'm a King of the Hill libertarian.
I'd be very happy to turn the market loose on reducing our fossil fuel dependency for political as well as enviromental reasons.
1. There are quite a few scientists who disagree with global warming - and the cultish AGW people are threatening to have them defunded and their credentials stripped. And senators are asking for research contrary to the religion of global warming be defunded. So much for scientific investigation.
2. You may know Michael Chricton first and foremost as a novelist, but if you think that's all he is, you obviously know nothing of Michael Chricton. He went to Harvard Medical School and has done a tremendous amount of researching of published scientific research.
3. The money available to those pushing global warming flows much more fluidly than to those who question it. See once again Sens. Snowe and Rockefeller's letter basically threatening ExxonMobil with investigation if they don't stop funding opposition research.
4. There are institutional levers in government that keep money flowing, largely out of control of politicians.
5. If sunspot activity really is set to start decreasing and that is the true cause of global warming, we shall see.
It's not even an argument. It's just a dreary reductio ad Hitlerum, a particularly low, but sadly very effective, way of preventing argument.
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I don't want to shred the whole constitution, just the parts the ACLU wrote.
Is showing which methods of the current crop of scientists fail, and why they fail, and then showing that their failures are similar in nature to those of the eugenecists.
I don't think he can do that, because I don't think he has in hand a valid critique of the research that supports GW. I don't think he has that in hand, because I haven't come across such a thing, and it is quite apparent that there exists ample political motivation to provide such a critique if it could be done.
It would be convenient for those who are politically opposed to recognition of GW to make a comparison to the ugly pseudo-science of eugenics stick. But just holding each of the two up and saying "they are the same" - well - the only people who are going to believe that are the ones who are politically motivated to deny GW to the point that they never bother to ask "ok - how are they the same?"
I think that a major point to be taken from his article was that these people who are promoting global warming seem to have blinders on. They've already decided that global warming is caused by humans, and they are so busy peddling this predetermined outcome that they seem to be completely blind to refuse to seriously weigh any legitimate evidence to the contrary.
Basically, he said, of all greenhouse gasses, carbon gasses only make up 26% - and of those 26%, we're not even completely responsible. So how is human activity affecting only a fraction of a fraction of all of these supposed greenhouse gasses destroying the world's climate?
Then he offered an alternative and much more plausible reasoning - sunspots. That and celestial activity would be much more plausible to affect the global temperature than that posited by AGW-ofiles.
Another commenter kind of nailed it when he asked:
But are we supposed to assume that most scientists coming to agreement is a strong indicator that a theory is wrong?
This seems to be the force of Friedman's article: that because most scientists agree on the matter, then they must be wrong, like the Eugenicists. That's a poor approach to the question, I fear. That would mean the only people who are *right* are the UFOlogists, paranormalists, flat-earthers, and creationists.
When they start to talk in absolutist terms - with absolutely no doubt or reservation - which happens to be unsupported by even their own data...yeah...leads me to believe that they're wrong and blustering because they know that the data isn't about to move any more dramatically in their favor in the near future.
In public for everyone to view it. A decade ago, there were a lot of skeptical scientists. Now there are very few. What makes you think that the data isn't the reason for them becoming more certain?
What you are calling "no doubt or reservation" - I don't know. The IPCC said that the likelihood that human activity was responsible for global warming was about 90%. That's 10% uncertainty. I think what you may be seeing is a reaction to efforts in some quarters to exaggerate uncertainty. The forceful reaction to people such as the CEI could appear to be a lack of reservation, when it is in fact a defense against people who are trying to make that 10% doubt into 75% in the minds of the American public.
BTW if you want to see a lack of doubt and reservation, listen to the physics guys talk about qm. The only doubt they have is which theory, consistent with gm, will unify with gravity.
their data does not support a 90% confidence level that human activity is significantly responsible for global warming when they fail to account for changes in the sun's activity and celestial movement re: the earth's tilt on its axis. after all, even the moon's relation to the earth is changing due to celestial movements.
the IPCC has seemed bound and determined to 1) blame human activity from the very outset and 2) find a way to tax the whole planet - but especially the US - to "fix it." The latter makes me very suspicious that this is just some back-door socialist conspiracy.
Until they can explain why the earth heated and cooled over the previous couple hundred million years and why those reasons are now ruled out and why this warming trend is any different than previous warming trends, I think we should do nothing - except move towards greater reliance on nuclear energy.
"their data does not support a 90% confidence level that human activity is significantly responsible for global warming"
Well... they think it does. They being the IPCC, but similar levels of confidence are expressed throughout the scientific community, and they are the ones who work with the data first hand.
"when they fail to account for changes in the sun's activity and celestial movement re: the earth's tilt on its axis. after all, even the moon's relation to the earth is changing due to celestial movements."
Talking point? I've seen a lot of discussion from scientists about these things... the changes of sun's activity, orbital factors and lots of other natural factors. That was a lot of the reason for the greater uncertainty in the late '80s and early '90s and still gets discussed today. I've seen numbers put (though I can't quote them from memory) to the upper and lower bounds of forcing based on natural factors, individually and altogether. I'd say that these things are accounted for.
Until they can explain why the earth heated and cooled over the previous couple hundred million years and why those reasons are now ruled out and why this warming trend is any different than previous warming trends
As I said, a lot of discussion has gone into thism and a lot of answers have been fleshed out. And, presuming for a moment that it can be determined that this warming trend is different from others (more rapid for instance), the question you ask of "why it is different" takes on a different tenor.
Bessodes all that, I should remind you that the physics of electromagnetic absorption & radiation is pretty well understood, and it is not difficult to calculate the results of a change in the atmospheric composition. Something would be wrong if the atmosphere weren't holding vastly unprecedented concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases at the rate they are being pumped into it. Something would be wrong if there was not warming, given the vastly unprecedented concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.
GlobalWarming™ is the justification for the creation of a revenue stream, which will be redirected over time by the "international community," and used to fund Global Governance.
The road map:
Where it began in earnest:
UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit)
The Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court were back-door attempts.
They really don't even try to hide it anymore.
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“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
Where are the data? I've looked for the data; I've found data that gives me a list of temperature anomalies for certain areas but I have yet to find the raw data. That is a list of absolute temperatures in these areas and how they where derived. I want to the the thermometer records, etc. But I can't find this anywhere. And from what I have found Jone's et al. are very protective of the raw data.
There a few other things I would like to know. What is climate? A long term trend in weather? What's long term? 10 years, 100 years, 1,000,000 years?
And what is surface average temperature? This is what has changed by .2C. But what is it? I keep seeing references to how it's changed but no reference to how it's computed. If I'm to be concerned about changes in SAT shouldn't I at least know what's changing.
Which is why the IPCC doesn't come to the blogs to get the answers. But the answers - the data - are out there. As are the definitions. The data - that is published in a variety of scientific journals. They are accessible in your good public libraries and almost all University libraries. Abstracts, and a few free full-text articles are available through the internet. Google hasn't publicized it much, but they have indexed quite a few of them, and you can search them at scholar.google.com. If you have the technical background to peruse & decipher them, and do not trust the scientists to accurately relay them to you, then I recommend you spend some time in the library, or some money on the internet.
The definitions - that's a different matter. You could probably find a conference report somewhere that discusses some of those definitions at a very technical level. Realclimate.org has a user-friendly glossary if you want something written in layman's terms. Here is their entry on Surface Temperature Record.
Honestly, a great deal of climate science is over my head. It may be true that practically every climate science is bluffing, with no data to back themselves up. If that is the case, I can't think of a way to discover their deception apart from getting the necessary background education, doing my research, and taking the results of my discovery about the climate scientists to every other type scientist in every related discipline and showing them the deception. They could, in turn, force the hands of the deceptive climate scientists by publishing exposes in their own journals and in their association journals.
I honestly don't think there is a deception of this sort. Two reasons:
1) There are too many climate scientists with too many sets of politics, religions, cultural factors, etc. to think that all but the ones in the employ of right-wing, oil-funded think-tanks are working together to decieve us.
2) There are the handful of scientists who are in the employ of right-wing, oil-funded think-tanks who know the discipline. They could do for real what I said was the only thing I could do should I get the necessary background myself. They have enough credibility and stature that they could expose the deception to physicists and chemists the world over and force the counter-revolution. Instead - they give quotes to gullible media figures. They circumvent the scientific community altogether and take their conclusions directly to an unwary public. That tells me that they found no such deception, but are instead perpetuating one. If the data truly didn't support the climate scientists, then they would have a case that would hold up before the NAS editorial staff. They wouldn't have to rely on the Washington Times editorial staff.
Know what I mean?
1. You believe the AGW hype, because scientists do.
2. You don't trust scientists who work for pay.
Tell me, have you ever met a scientist who did research for free?
The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts
actually, i think the point was that he/she would rather believe a large group of scientists whose funding comes from a wide variety of sources, than a smaller group of scientists whose funding appears to come from a specific (and clearly no disinterested) sector.
From a purely logical standpoint, this makes sense.
If you don't bother to check premises. I see no evidence for either claim. Show me that the funding for promoters is diverse and detractors is narrow.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I made the statement, scuffs just checked the logic and rebuffed Socrates' straw man. In fact, my statement about how the handful of skeptical scientists were funded was a side note. The main point is that, if they had a case, they could put it out to a variety of physical scientists in related fields who are not memebers of the cabal. Climate science would become a "junk" science field, and lose its standing with the NAS and other professional organizations. If the skeptics had a case, that AWG was "hype", they would not have to circumvent the normal protocols and go straight to the media with their claims.
Their funding? Maybe it is diverse after all. Let me just remark, however, that I have read about a good dozen of these skeptical scientists - considering how few they are, this is not a small fraction of them. However, I have yet to find one - and I have been looking - that was not tied to and funded by CEI or other petroleum-funded right-wing think-tanks.
The funding of climate scientists, generally - those who represent the consensus view, saying AWG is more than "hype"? Yes, I'm pretty sure it is diverse. I've seen statements from scientists in government, academia, and private industry, all saying the same things.
The upshot? It is difficult to believe that the thousands of consensus climate scientists - most of them relatively new converts to the emerging certainty on the matter - are in cahoots to pull the wool over the eyes of the public. It is much easier to believe that of the handful of skeptical scientists - of whom it seems difficult or impossible to find one not in the employ of CO2 polluting industry. If you do find such a scientist with a clean CV, I'd like to know about it. I ask that same question as often as I get a chance to - because I want to know if my estimation is wrong. So far, no one has come up with one.
Its just outside of the climatology journals. Not surprising considering the level of groupthink going on over there. And there is much evidence disputing the theory.
Here is a small list of disputing material
Heres a test you can take on your own knowlege of global warming , its short
P.S. the argument is you are making is a logical fallacy called the bandwagon or appeal to majority.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I've spent a little time this morning looking at your links & I have some things to say, but will have to hold it until this evening. I'm not sure I'm making an appeal to majority - at least not purely so. Mostly an appeal to authority of the form - those most qualified to study and reach conclusions on a matter have done so and reached a conclusion with a strong degree of certainty, therefore it is reasonable to believe that conclusion. The issue of majority comes from the fact that it is easy to produce an answering appeal to authority - that others qualified to study and reach conclusions on the same matter have reached a different conclusion. If it were a simple majority, then appeals to authority would be insufficient, leaving us to become qualified ourselves so we could discover which conclusion is correct by our own research, or to remain ignorant. However, since we have a supermajority of those qualified who have reached one conclusion, and only a handful who are convinced of the contrary, then we can look for a parsimonious explanation why there are a handful of qualified researchers who express a different view, and we can reasonably trust the consensus viewpoint.
That said, it seems you do have an eye for logical fallacy. Can you identify any in the analogy from eugenics to global warming?
I will reply to your links this evening.
When You do be sure to include Martin Knights blog. Where the article by an AGW proponent directly speaks to the problems of extracting signal from what amounts to noise.
Or you can check this article over at climate audit showing the temperatures being reevaluated.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1139#more-1139
Just for fun I would note that the U.S. seems exempt from GW
Curious isn't it.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I looked at Martin Knight's blog & your other link & will comment on them tonight as well.
here... sorry about the formatting errors.
Plus what I said, about the data, etc.
The straw me is down for the count, though.
If that is the case, I can't think of a way to discover their deception apart from getting the necessary background education, doing my research, and taking the results of my discovery about the climate scientists to every other type scientist in every related discipline and showing them the deception. They could, in turn, force the hands of the deceptive climate scientists by publishing exposes in their own journals and in their association journals.
Good luck with that. There are sceptics out there and they have a pretty sad life. Everyone accuses them of simply being tools of Exxon Mobil instead of real scientists. They certainly don't get any party invites. And good luck getting your articles published in journals run by true believers.
There are too many climate scientists with too many sets of politics, religions, cultural factors, etc. to think that all but the ones in the employ of right-wing, oil-funded think-tanks are working together to decieve us.
Except they all have the same motivation. That is to make their field of study (you know, the one they dedicated their life to) seem important. The skeptics are working against their own best interest. If the GW craze went away there would be much less use for climatologists. GW is the gravy train. Not many are going to want to derail that. Besides, they got into climatology for a reason... most likely to ChangeTheWorld™. There are a lot of apolitical fields of science... so it is probably not a complete accident they picked one of the most political fields.
If everybody starts with the same hypothesis and tries to find (or create) data that supports that hypothesis, the "scientific consensus" shouldn't be surprising. Too bad we can't actually test any of it, you know?
---
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
Please check out RS Lindzen's published articles here. So, the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences is NOT a "true believer's" publication, right? Nor are any of the others in which he has published? Right? Clarification before we go forward.
A few points here.
First you asserted the data are publicly available. I asked where I could find them. Instead of giving me a specific place to find the data you gave a (rather good) list of places to start looking. I can only infer from this that you do not know where to find the data and can not support your claim that the data are publicly available.
The fact that the processed data are readily available from the CRU makes me horribly curious as to why the raw data are not published along side them. And when one consider what happened when congressman Barton asked for the data and the experience of McIntyre and McKitrick (M&M) when they asked for the data one quickly comes to the conclusion that the data are not publicy available.
About the definitions. It dawned on me to check the IPCC TAR to see if there where any definitions there. I did find a glossary. I could not find a definition for Surface Average Temperature which is a phase used throughout the report. I did, however, find the definition of climate. The rigorous definition of climate is "the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years." First off, I would not call that definition rigorous but to be fair it was qualified with this statement: "The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). These quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, and wind." The only one of these common quantities I've really looked at is temperature and I don't ever remember seeing an average temperature over a 30 year span. I've seen 1 year and 5 year spans but that's about it. And I know I've never seen a variance given. This is what I've been looking for.
This leads me to Surface Average Temperature. I always found the .2C error margin a bit fishy so I was wondering how this average was computed the only thing I could come up with is using a weighted average of the temperature data. That is use one temperature for the smallest area possible, multiply it by that area and add the resulting temperature*areas and divide by the area of the Earth to get a Surface Average Temperature. The problem with this is that the temperature of the earth varies wildly from place to place and this would be reflected in a rather large variance and standard deviation. Much larger in fact than .2C.
About debunking the IPCC. I mentioned M&M earlier. Their claim to fame is debunking the hockey stick. Apparently they had a paper published in Nature. But what I find interesting is not the paper but the fact that while the hockey stick is prominantly displayed the in the summary for policymakers of the TAR it is missing form the summary for policymakers of the AR4; in fact it's not even mentioned.
About "shills for the oil companies". If you want a climate skeptic that isn't tainted by oil money there's Tim Ball, the first person to recieve a Ph.D in climatology. An article he wrote was linked from redstate about a week ago. I searched for his name on exxonsecrets and didn't get a single hit.
But frankly I am so sick of this "shill for the oil companies" thing. It's nothing but a way to avoid the arguments that skeptics make. And if you think about it. Exxon-Mobil is a large company and as a large company probably donates quite a bit of money to universities around the country making it not so hard to link just about anyone in academia to Exxon.
On the shill for oil companies, does anyone think the current abatement schemes are going to cause less oil to be used ? Given the fact that the largest growing markets are given free passes all they do is shift who is doing the burning.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Of course, there are some researchers who flush data rather than publish it for no other reason than that it embarrasses them. But, the data upon which all this was built was published - that's how the UK's School of Environmental Sciences found them.
"This leads me to Surface Average Temperature. I always found the .2C error margin a bit fishy so I was wondering how this average was computed the only thing I could come up with is using a weighted average of the temperature data."
Beats me. If you would like, I can see if I can find a climate scientist who can answer that question. Let me know.
"About debunking the IPCC. I mentioned M&M earlier. Their claim to fame is debunking the hockey stick. Apparently they had a paper published in Nature. But what I find interesting is not the paper but the fact that while the hockey stick is prominantly displayed the in the summary for policymakers of the TAR it is missing form the summary for policymakers of the AR4; in fact it's not even mentioned."
Significance of, and lack thereof, the "hockey stick". And, it is both. I would recommend you not allow yourself to be distracted by sound-bites.
About Tim Ball - you are right. There appears to be no paper trail linking him to CO2 polluting industry. However, SourceWatch pegs his organizations: the National Resources Stewardship Group, and Friends of Science - to the petroleum industry (without much documentation). They also pin him to a "free-market" (read right-wing) think-tank - Frontier Centre for Public Policy. I do suspect that he is receiving funding from CO2 polluting industry, but I can't prove it - either because I am wrong, or because the Canadian finance system makes it easier for a researcher to hide his funding sources. Unless I can dig up some real "dirt" on him, you are the first to meet this challenge, as far as I know. Congratulations.
The arguments are the arguments and the data is the data. As I noted above the only thing the current proposals do is shift who is putting out the carbon not the total amount.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
the arguments are the arguments, & the data is the data, but neither of us is prepared to analyze them on their own merits. At some point it becomes a question of whether to trust the scientific community at large, or the tiny subset of the scientific community that is funded by CO2 polluters. Basically the same thing as when there was "debate" in the '70s & '80s over the health impact of cigarettes. Though the question was settled in the minds of those who studied it, it was over Joe Sixpack's head - at some point we had to decide whether to trust the larger medical community or the scientists working for Phillip Morris. We had good reason to trust the larger medical community in that case.
(Please see my note above - I did not want to squeeze this into a 200 pixel column in the earlier thread)
"Actually there is peer reviewed work.
Its just outside of the climatology journals. Not surprising considering the level of groupthink going on over there. And there is much evidence disputing
the theory.
Here is a small list of disputing material"
I had hoped more of your links would go to the peer reviewed work you mentioned, and that more of it would represent a dispute with the consensus view.
"Heres a test you can take on your own knowlege of global warming , its short".
I looked at the test. The questions and answers, as far as I could tell, included mostly factually correct information. However, I have a strong suspicion
that none of this would be new to even a graduate student in climate science, who would understand the factual information (possibly better than Hieb - the
author - does), and quite likely would understand the significance of that information in the context of the larger body of research on the matter. Hieb, is
after all, an engineer working for the West Virginia mining authority, so he probably knows a little more about mine safety than he does about climate
science, both in terms of factual information, and in terms of how that information fits into theory and experiment in current scientific research. In
short, I think Hieb is blowing smoke here. Would you like for me to see if I can find a climate scientist willing to take the test and share his or her
thoughts on it?
Anyway, back to your list of material... I'm going to skip over a lot of items are not peer reviewed, and deal mostly with the items that have passed peer
review, just so I don't feel I am chasing wild geese - noting whether it seems to "dispute" or merely inform the consensus scientific view, and noting where
appropriate, where the relevant information has been taken account of by climate scientists who subscribe to the consensus view.
I do this only to show that there is more to the analysis than what we get fed to us from Exxon or the WV Mining Authority. I cannot argue each point to its
conclusion, because I am not equipped to do so any more than Hieb is - or than I expect you are. Correct me if I am wrong, but you do not work as a
researcher in any physical science, right? I would rather not get into a link war, or a high-school debating match. If you want a debate on the quality of
the data, the merits of the models that predict or fail to predict it, or anything else, I suggest you look for an appropriate symposium to attend. I cannot
provide such a debate, because I - admittedly - do not understand the particulars at a level approaching competence in them. I hope you will admit the same,
or advise me if you are in a position to do so. (If it is the latter, perhaps I can find someone who is qualified to take the AGW side in a debate with
you).
First link:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html
This is the home page of the paleoclimatology group at NOAA. On the home page, there is no critique of AGW theory. Following the links to their pages dealing
with modern global warming, we find statements like the following:
Some scientists look to satellites to reveal something about the Earth's changing climate. Although the satellite record is very short (ca. 20
years) and hard to interpret due to changes in instruments and orbits, the latest satellite studies confirm the same story - the globe is warming.
The record of instrumental temperature measurements, which extends back to the 19th century, provides one clear indication that the modern earth is warming:
that the mean annual surface air temperatures of the earth have risen approximately 0.5°C (0.9°F) since 1860.
[...]
So far, paleoclimatologists have been unable to find any natural climatic explanations for our present-day warming.
This is hardly what I would call "disputing material". I don't doubt that there is data available on the site that is used by people who are building a
scientific critique, but the critique itself doesn't seem to be found here.
Your second link is:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Articles1.html
But I think you intended for it to link to one of the sub-pages of the Hiebs' site. In any case, I don't intend to deal with Hieb since he doesn't write for
the scientific debate, but rather for a lay audience. Perhaps he has a case. If so, I have no doubt he can find chemists and physicists who can confirm it
for him, and help him publish his research. I will wait for that to happen.
Your next link (http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/start.html) is the "test" that we talked about earlier.
Your next three links are data sets:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/dv/
Great, if you know enough about climate science to understand how they are constructed (and therefore to acknowledge or question their validity). They are
not what I would characterize as repudiating materials, though.
Your next link comes from a conservative think-tank, and is not exactly peer reviewed:
http://media.hoover.org/documents/0817944826_173.pdf
It's extremely long, and though I skimmed it, I cannot summarize its contents. Nothing I can find in it disputes AGW as a result of greenhouse gases.
Instead, it suggests that per capita net emissions will decrease as economies grow (though the data they use only show the slightest decrease in per
capita emissions), and that perhaps population growth would slow at a similar rate. Best I can figure, being - like the Hoover Institute - not disciplined in
the analysis of this type argument - gross emissions would still continue to grow, even under their model. There is an advantage under their model,
since gross emissions would grow more slowly than under another group of assumptions, and therefore delay deleterious effects to the ecosphere and to human
society. However, CO2 in the atmosphere lurks there, and while emissions continue even at their current rate, the climate will continue to heat up for quite
a while before an equilibrium might be reached. If they increase, even at the lower rates that the HI's model would suggest, then it may not be possible to
reach an equilibrium.
However, there is a bigger probem still with this report. That is the fact that it relies on a variety of different unintentional sequestration effects,
many of which may be more volatile than others, or more volatile than intentional sequestration schemes. That is to say, what is buried in a landfill or
dumped into the rivers in oceans may easily escape back into the atmosphere and come un-sequestered. Also, some of the sequestration schemes cannot be
sustained indefinitely. Reforestation is wonderful, and may sequester a certain amount of carbon, but there are only a certain number of acres of land
available for it. Then there are forest fires, and natural decomposition which can take place where logging isn't efficient or in demand. Further, there
may be limits on demand for sequestering products such as processed or laminated lumber.
Please correct me if I am mistaken on any of the above points wrt the Hoover Institute article. I'm not completely certain about the last point:
Last point on this - I am assuming in favor of the article - that the "net" emission is computed with only anthropogenic sequestrations which would not have existed in absence of CO2 emitting industry. I did not read
closely enough to be certain. If it also includes sequestration that would take place without human input, then it isn't truly reflecting a "net" emission,
because obviously, there is a component of natual carbon that would otherwise be sequestered in this way, were it not for the anthropogenic carbon being
taken up.
If you are familiar with climate science, you will probably be familiar with the notion of intentional, artificial sequestration, and its attendant
difficulties. Those difficulties may not prevent a viable solution, or part-solution to CO2 emissions, but whatever difficulties exist there will be
amplified in chaotically unintentional sequestration effects that rely on changes in GDP for effectiveness.
Your next link, and comments:
"Here is a link to the UN interactive online climate model
http://climatechange.unep.net/jcm/
Their own model doesn't even produce an overwhelming CO2 contribution.
2.15 watts from man and 2.04 watts from the sun."
Obviously, this isn't disputing material, except by your interpretation. If current CO2 level forcing is greater than forcing from increased solar radiation over the same period, then the question remains: how significant is the increased solar radiation (and thus, how signficant is CO2 forcing)? Then, if CO2 concentrations continue to increase, how long before CO2 forcing dwarfs solar forcing altogether?
Next, and the first peer-reviewed paper (though I don't doubt that some of the raw data collections came from peer-reviewed papers):
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006.../2005GL025539.shtml
This is the highest estimate of actual solar forcing in the research (and thus, the one that gets the most play in the right wing). And yet, it says that solar forcing can only account for half of the overall forcing for the past century, and up to 35% in the last couple of decades. The results mirror the theoretical results calculated in your previous link, but that doesn't make them more certain, because climate - and radiative forcing - are not simple and straightforward calculations. Nevertheless, even if we assume the best-case for solar forcing, we are faced with quite a bit of warming not explained by solar acivity: half or more - and that will rise as CO2 levels continue to rise with yearly emissions.
From the abstract of that paper:
These results, while confirming that anthropogenic-added climate forcing might have progressively played a dominant role in climate change during the last century, also suggest that the solar impact on climate change during the same period is significantly stronger than what some theoretical models have predicted.
Not exactly "disputing material"... More aptly, it is an example of "best case" supporting material. Even as best-case supporting material - sometimes used in the hands of people who wish to bring a dispute, this paper is subject to critique. One critique can be found here, by Rasmus Benestad, author of Solar Activity and Earth's Climate, which critique is rather detailed and should bear some weight.
Your next link also deals with solar forcing:
http://www.agu.org/history/sv/articles/ARTL.html
Although it cites some peer review material, I found nothing cited on the home page, newer than 1992. There is at least one peer review article from 1995 cited on that web-site (I ain't a web-crawler, you know). The newest citation I found on the site was on this page, and while the graph is pretty stark in showing recent warming, no case seems to be made that anthropogenic effects were unimportant.
Since climate scientists do not dispute the fact, or at least the possibility, of solar forcing, I don't think any of this would qualify as "disputing material".
Your next three links:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/269/5227/1098
http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr98/oct98/noaa98-67.html
http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/98/q4/1016-carbon.htm
The first is the peer-reviewed paper, and the others are non-peer-reviewed references to it. It finds an unexpected CO2 sink in North America - not necessarily anthropogenic, and dating a decade or two back. The suspicion is that it is reforestation of formerly cleared land - in effect - a short-term offset as the biosphere returns to something closer to a natural one as deforestation practices have decreased in North America. I have no more comments to add since I have already talked about this effect when discussing your Hoover Institute article. While accomodating a large portion of anthropogenic CO2, this sink could have neutralized the same amount of natural CO2. Our excesses in emissions still count against AGW since this sink would otherwise have been available to maintain the CO2 'status quo' from natural emissions.
Your next link, I'm sorry to say, is pure garbage. I quote you:
"The following is a link to the April 1974 Newsweek article on global cooling.
http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm"
Bad journalism from 1974 does not poison the well of scientific consensus in 2007. Please take a few moments to read Real Climate's article about the "global cooling" as scientific consensus myth.
For your next links, you present them as "disputing material" in that they purport to represent "sources for temperature histories", and all disagree with one another. Funnily, this isn't a group of citations from the scientific community that disagree with one another. The first link is to a web-site that promotes temperature-record ART. Meaning graphic art. Your second link details measurements from the central U.S. over time, as gathered by the Exxon-funded Center for the Study of CO2 and Climate Change - a creationist climate-change denial organization. The last deals with global (not central-u.s.) temperature records, collected from the NOAA, reproduced by NASA. Why am I not surprised at the disparity in results? One is art, one is a highly localized regional history, and the last actually deals with global climate change.
Your final links all deal with temperature measurements of other planets. Until temperature measurements on other planets come within hundreds of thousands of miles of approaching temperature measurements here at home, I think I will ignore them. That is like measuring Butus' nose to guess Lee Harvey Oswald's shoe size. This link deals with extraterrestrial warming, especially that on Mars, if you are truly curious about comparing the work.
Martin Knight's blog links to a study concerning Antartica, by someone who is decidedly not an AGW skeptic. As you mentioned, it deals with extracting climate signal from climate noise under conditions made more adverse by the parsity of measuring stations on the southernmost continent and by dealing with weather effects that can distort data, such as the westerly winds that encircle that continent. Such considerations do make me respectful of the careful attention being given the subject by its dedicated researchers, and do help me understand how there can be as much as 10% uncertainty factor in climate calculations. To me, and to scientists working on the subject, they do not seem to prevent a 90% estimate of certainty on results at this point.
Your other link to climateaudit.org may be broken, or the site may be down. Is that the source for your U.S. chart that you mentioned "just for fun"? If it is truly just for fun, I have no interest in it. If it has actual bearing on the debate at hand, I'd like to know what you think that would be, and perhaps have an alternate link to explore before commenting on it.
about the formatting errors. I thought I had it right - composed it in a text editor, and pasted it to here... I guess I screwed up... (I just closed, hopefully, the underline tag)
I don't know when I will have time to read through this and formulate a proper reply. Give me a day or two.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I've spent less than a day. And I know little-to-nothing about it, except what the vast majority of scientists say. If I hadn't happened along, you wouldn't have been given even this much rebuttal, much less been given an opportunity to follow the current scientific thinking on the matters as it applies to the denials in the conservative and industry literature. Something is wrong when whole segments of the popultation are only given a tiny fragment of the story, and that fragment from those who are set against any admission of validity to the scientific viewpoint. I won't say that the problem rests with the denialists. I think it rests with the mainstream media in part, and with the climate scientists in large part as well.
I am not even a denier. I am a doubter. I have doubts that enough of global warming is caused by man to warrant redoing our economy. I have doubts that schemes that exempt what are likely to be the largest sources of CO2 will accomplish what they are being sold as accomplishing. I have doubts that a small rise in temperature won't actually be a positive. I have doubts that a warmer wetter climate won't be a positive.
The Sahara was a garden spot.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
And doubt is a beautiful thing. I'm just saying that you doubt finds its foundations largely in the utterances of deniers, and that it is unfortunate that they speak more vocally to you and others like you than do the scientists whose resarch forms the consensus.
Long before there were people being funded by oil companies. Currently the largest number I can get for AGW is about .4 degree K for 120 years. Its just not worrisome.
Even if you go entirely to AGW scenarios about a degree of warming will by itself damp down fuel use and be very beneficial.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Doubt then was justified, even among the scientific community. Continued doubt today - based on things like the Hieb's web-site - seems to be unnecessarily exaggerated.
".4 degree K for 120 years."
120 years in which population & anthropogenic CO2 emissions only became very large toward the last 60... Again, CO2 persists in the atmosphere - what does that figure translate to for the next 120 years?
A degree of warming might damp down wintertime fuel use, and might not be too worrisome.
I don't think that exemptions should appy to those who will likely be the largest CO2 producers in the coming years. The problem with Kyoto is a political one - and the Chinese and Indians need to be awakened to the humanitarian problem, and called to account for their present or future contributions to it. More so than in Western states, they have an interest in pursuing economic growth regardless of its humanitarian cots. To a certain extenet, their interests should be taken into consideration. At the end of the day, the interests of humanity must take precedence.
He renamed it racial Hygiene. So you can add all those in the death camps to the results of eugenics.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777