• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Buying a climatologist just ain't what it used to be

techs

techs

Lifer
http://www.latimes.com/news/politic...ptic-reverses-course-20120729,0,7372823.story

Koch-funded climate change skeptic reverses course

The verdict is in: Global warming is occurring and emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activity are the main cause.

This, according to Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at UC Berkeley, MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project. Never mind that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of other climatologists around the world came to such conclusions years ago. The difference now is the source: Muller is a long-standing, colorful critic of prevailing climate science, and the Berkeley project was heavily funded by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, which, along with its libertarian petrochemical billionaire founder Charles G. Koch, has a considerable history of backing groups that deny climate change.

In an opinion piece in Saturday’s New York Times titled “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” Muller writes: “Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

The Berkeley project’s research has shown, Muller says, “that the average temperature of the Earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.”

He calls his stance now “a total turnaround.”



When even your bought and paid for scientists start deserting its time to give up.

Time to move on and start dealing with climate change instead of debating if its real.
 
0roo0roo said:
honestly it doesn't matter because they have no workable solutions😛
Click to expand...

Sure there is: ABANDON SHIP!

This rock is doomed one way or the other. We need to find a new rock to call home - that, and new propulsion systems, should probably be our top priorities in terms of science budgets and R&D.

There's really no way around it: if we wish to survive the test of time, we will have to fashion ourselves like a giant cockroach that has an endoskeleton; we'll have to move from home to home, scatter when the home is no longer safe, and move onward to bigger and better places. 😉
 
destrekor said:
Sure there is: ABANDON SHIP!

This rock is doomed one way or the other. We need to find a new rock to call home - that, and new propulsion systems, should probably be our top priorities in terms of science budgets and R&D.

There's really no way around it: if we wish to survive the test of time, we will have to fashion ourselves like a giant cockroach that has an endoskeleton; we'll have to move from home to home, scatter when the home is no longer safe, and move onward to bigger and better places. 😉
Click to expand...

I agree that extraterrestrial settlement is somewhere in humanity's future, but for the foreseeable future we need to figure out how to stop being stupid and make this planet a better place to live.
 
If he was a paid shill before, he's probably a paid shill now. The question is, where is his money coming from? The one thing we know for sure is that he ain't working for it.
 
I don't deny the earth is experiencing a warming trend, however, Im not convinced this warming trend is due to mankind.
 
tboo said:
I don't deny the earth is experiencing a warming trend, however, Im not convinced this warming trend is due to mankind.
Click to expand...
I suspect this is largely because you haven't looked at the real evidence and real data, else it's because you don't have the education to understand it.
 
DrPizza said:
I suspect this is largely because you haven't looked at the real evidence and real data, else it's because you don't have the education to understand it.
Click to expand...

I have a BS in geology & am 3 terms away from getting my degree in EE. Ive looked at real evidence and data & find it inconclusive at this time.
 
tboo said:
I don't deny the earth is experiencing a warming trend, however, Im not convinced this warming trend is due to mankind.
Click to expand...

This.

I still firmly believe the scare mongering from the mid-2000s was little more than a ploy to get more grant money. The media propagated it because who doesn't love a good crisis. Climategate discredited the IPCC, carbon credits proved to be a huge scandal, and the recession turned off the grant taps. It's why they've been so quiet lately. Another fake crisis averted because more important things came up. I'm not convinced its manmade nor am I convinced we are in any imminent danger. So yeah, I'm a denier if that's what you want to call it. I just choose not to live in fear. While I strongly believe in science, I'm also wise enough to know that money corrupts and agendas emerge when issues become politicized. I also believe that air pollution is a problem and we should seek ways to cut our dependence on dirty fuels, provided we don't impoverish people in the process. Practical technology will solve the issue, it always has.
 
xanis said:
I agree that extraterrestrial settlement is somewhere in humanity's future, but for the foreseeable future we need to figure out how to stop being stupid and make this planet a better place to live.
Click to expand...

Our only salvation is tampering with our very genetics, do a bit of house cleaning, and while we're at it, replace the floor, remodel the kitchen, sweep out the attic, replace the gutters, and maybe get some new windows to boot.

Otherwise, I have no faith in our ability to fix ourselves. Nobody wants to sacrifice, nobody wants to challenge themselves, and everybody wants everything handed to them - preferably on a silver platter.


The optimist in me doesn't see much light at the end of the tunnel. There's a chance, he thinks, but it's gonna require an actual worldly governing body that is actually worth a damn, one that actually governs to some degree and has the might to force a little cooperation and get us to sing kumbaya.

We can't really make any large strides unless we can devote a lot of resources - and too much is wasted on bullshit out of the need to be better than others.
We refuse to learn, and we probably won't take the necessary corrective actions until a large and devastating event has crippled our civilization. We refuse to learn and think we can forever be a reactive species, simply because we've had the success of being able to recover from the wounds with reactive planning; sooner or later, unless we're proactive, we're gonna get our asses handed to us by our own hands, due to a lack of critical planning. We don't care to sacrifice and dedicate resources to long-term plans, just because we see these things as "not written in stone."
 
lupi said:
one of the mildest summers we've had around here in awhile.
Click to expand...

1. Load of shit, don't you live in the tri-state area? I do and it is anything but 'mild'

2. The winter was one of the warmest winters i've EVER seen. This is the first winter i've never had to use my snow blower.

3. Global warming isn't linear. It could get colder next year and it wouldn't 'disprove' global warming. If it goes hot-cold-hot-cold-hot-cold, but the overall trend is that it's zigzagging upward, then you have global warming.
 
No Problem no Problem, just because one Koch brother bought climatologist would not stay bought, there are plenty of remaining climatologist ready and willing to sell out.

True scientific qualifications are not really needed either, even a BS ( short for Bullshit), in Climatology is all it takes to be an unassailable guru. And if you failed to graduate, and achieve that BS degree, its a Bonus that proves the Scientific community flunked you out, not because you were a bad student and unqualified, when they can prove it with their failure. And that they were censored because only those failures were flunked out because only they were smart enough to realize global warming is a fraud.

But sadly in this rant, I have also outed myself. As I am a paid shill of the Lemon industry, and somewhat a failure at it. As I try to tell everyone on this forum that a Lemon a day keeps the doctor away.
 
I made a chart based on Climate.gov. I found it pretty interesting, so I thought I'd post it:

climatechange800x600eng.png


Data source: http://www.climate.gov/#climateWatch

edit: Made the background opaque (White) and the chart 800x600.
edit2: Properly translated.
 
Last edited:
One of the biggest man made global warming supporters makes money off the fear he helps spread (Al Gore). That alone makes me not support any of this crap.
 
Here's one of the absolute numbers (instead of relative percentages):

climatechangeabs800x600.png


edit: Same mistake twice, fully translated now.
 
Last edited:
Phokus said:
1. Load of shit, don't you live in the tri-state area? I do and it is anything but 'mild'

2. The winter was one of the warmest winters i've EVER seen. This is the first winter i've never had to use my snow blower.

3. Global warming isn't linear. It could get colder next year and it wouldn't 'disprove' global warming. If it goes hot-cold-hot-cold-hot-cold, but the overall trend is that it's zigzagging upward, then you have global warming.
Click to expand...

Global warming is a disservice to the trend anyway. Global climate change is more accurate.

In the end, the statistical average (pick your poison: mean, median, or mode) global temperature can remain the exact same, but if the climate patterns change worldwide, we could all be in trouble. Or it could make the world better - it's truly difficult to know the extent of things, until a new pattern is established and that one becomes settled (to the point that almanac's can start anew and be reliable more often than not).
Even if it's better at the end, the ride there will be rocky and disastrous - climate pattern changes, the in-between years, could be turbulent and unpredictable.

But regardless, the immediate impacts can be bad regardless of how it all turns out in the end. Regions once reliable for important crops might become dangerously arid and unsuitable, water supplies becomes a major question, major storm outbreaks hit regions like clockwork when they had little experience with such.

If the global average is indeed warmer, it won't be good for any of us for a long while. Climate patterns would most certainly shift, regions once arid might become water-rich, and the reverse true for arable land. That would be very devastating, because it would take quite awhile to get once arid land into one that is ripe for planting. And that's doing it the manual labor way - if climate patterns change to that extent and settle there, it would take a very long time, generations, for arid land to become rich with arable soil.
 
MrMuppet said:
I made a chart based on Climate.gov. I found it pretty interesting, so I thought I'd post it:
Click to expand...

Wow. Pretty cool way to make a graph look like you want to.
You are comparing percentages for both Co2 and Temp. It looks like nothing has happened at all to temps.

Of course even a ten degree change in temps would devastate the earth. But that would be so tiny a change as to be barely seen on your chart.
Nice piece of completely irrevelant chart making therr.
 
There is nothing the USA can do about this, we've already regulated our air quality -

China & India are the worlds gross polluters. Reign them in and get them up to our current standard in 20yrs. That is real progress.

33% of airborne lead pollution in San Francisco area is from China.
 
techs said:
Wow. Pretty cool way to make a graph look like you want to.
You are comparing percentages for both Co2 and Temp. It looks like nothing has happened at all to temps.

Of course even a ten degree change in temps would devastate the earth. But that would be so tiny a change as to be barely seen on your chart.
Nice piece of completely irrevelant chart making therr.
Click to expand...
I made one with the absolute numbers too, see above.

"Even a ten degree change"? The difference between 2011-1959 is ~0.44 degrees Celcius or an increase of ~0.16%. The chart says a thing or two about how important CO2 is compared to other factors.

I'll make one for you with a manipulated Y-axis, just a sec.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top