Sunday morning at Boskone, I moderated a panel on "Global Warming: Facts and Myths, (and all that jazz)", featuring James Morrow, Mark Olson, and Vince Docherty. As noted previously, I was a little worried that this would turn out to be absolutely awful in one of a couple of obvious ways, but it wound up being pretty good, all things considered.
The panelists were all pretty much on board with my request to try to keep from being soul-crushingly depressing, and a lot of the discussion focused on things that can be done to mitigate the worst effects of global warming. The whole thing was reasonably upbeat, as global warming discussions go.
We were, alas, graced with the presence of a couple of people spouting bog standard denialist arguments. Had I been more awake, I probably would've said something really snarky to to woman who trotted out "Mars and Jupiter are warming, too, are we going to restrict the activities of the Jovians?" As it was, I was coming down with a cold (which has totally destroyed my voice today), and I just stared at her incredulously. At another point, I did cut somebody off by saying "The fact is, there is not a single scientist with any credibility who believes that human activity is not a major contributor to global warming.
The other panelists were smart and eloquent in presenting their arguments, and Vince came armed with a bunch of PowerPoint slides containing potentially useful data. James Morrow also had extensive notes, but we went off in a different direction than what he had written down (unfortunately, because he had some good stuff). He did make an impassioned argument for re-thinking what we mean when we talk about quality of life to be less centered on the consumption of fossil fuels.
There probably wasn't anything in the discussion that would've surprised anybody who closely follows the global warming debate, but it went pretty well, all things considered. Vince had a closing comment that I really liked, noting that most of the solutions to the problem that turn up in SF going back twenty or thirty years involve utopian one-world-government type arrangements. We don't have that, obviously, but he pointed out that even absent the utopian world government, a serious conversation about what to do about global warming is taking place all around the world, and that's probably an encouraging sign.
(I should note that somebody was videotaping the panel. If the video turns up on the web, I'll post a link to it.)
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... with a captive audience, one assumes ...
"... spouting bog standard denialist arguments."
bog?
"Bog standard" is idiom for "completely ordinary."
"The fact is, there is not a single scientist with any credibility who believes that human activity is not a major contributor to global warming."
Easy killer. That kind of rhetoric does nothing but increase the rift between 'deniers' and 'believers' - two divisive terms in themselves.
Kate@3
Meccano kits in 1930s Britain came in two styles: "Box, Standard" and "Box, De Luxe". Hence "bog standard" for ordinary stuff and "dog's bollocks" for the good stuff...
Gores film An Inconvenient Truth is full of lies. Not exaggerations. Not errors.
Lies!
Al Gore air brushed out the little ice age and the medieval warming periods from his graphs in AIT. We wouldn't want people knowing that the earth was two degrees celsius warmer than it is now during the medieval warming period. Somehow man survived without the use of central cooling. Gore left off the little ice age because he wouldn't want to demonstrate that the warming trend he talks about began at the end of an ice age.
He also stated that sea lever would rise by 20 feet by the end of the century. Even the UN IPCC (harldy conservative on this issue) estimates only 4 to 36 inches.
Gore also suggested that the Aral Sea has dried up because of global warming. In actuality it has been drained for the irrigation of cotton crops.
Gore claims that for the first time ever, a significant number of polar bears had drowned. First of all, they can swim around fifty miles. Secondly, the researchers at one of America's most respected think tanks the Competitive Enterprise Institute tracked down the study Gore was quoting and found that only four polar bears had drowned during severe storm conditions.
Furthermore, he quotes a quickly debunked paper suggesting there is a 100% consenus among scientists that athropogenic global warming is real. Here are a few scientists who must have missed the memo:
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/GlobalWarming.html
It is worth noting that a UK Court ruled that AIT contained many errors and should not be shown in public schools without a warning about the errors.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/10/09/court-identifies-…
I find it interesting that Al Gore talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk. He jets around the world in his private plane. He rides around in gas guzzling limousines, and has a compound so wasteful of energy that it needs its own power grid. His houseboat more than likely isn't that energy efficient either.
I suppose conserving energy and fighting global warming is for the little people. Let the peasants drive the small dangerous energy efficient cars, I'll drive what I want.
Al Gore was worth about $2 Million Dollars when leaving office and is worth over $100 Million now. He's laughing all the way to the global warming bank. It's a pity some are too gullible to see it. As one of my favorite SNL characters might have said "global warming has been bery bery good to him."
By the way, the flat earthers were the ones who refused to debate. "The debates over, we have a consensus." Sound familiar? If anyone is a flat earther, it's Al Gore.
Everyone who has seen An Inconvenient Truth should view The Great Global Warming Swindle in order to get a more balanced view of the true state of the science on this issue.
You may view it by visiting:
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/Videos.html
It is the first video listed.
Happy Viewing,
Dash RIPROCK III
At another point, I did cut somebody off by saying "The fact is, there is not a single scientist with any credibility who believes that human activity is not a major contributor to global warming."
ROFL! Of course not -- because any scientist who questions the anthropogenic-global-warming hypothesis is automatically deemed by the AGWers to have no credibility!
How many times, in how many different scientific controversies, has orthodoxy used that line and wound up with egg on its face? Evolution. Plate tectonics. Terrestrial meteorite craters. Paleoanthropology (multiple counts). Evolution of specific animal lineages (multiple counts). The list goes on, and on, and on.
If a theory is correct, then the evidence alone should suffice to prove it. In fact the evidence does demonstrate global climate is changing, probably not for the better. But as yet I have seen no solid evidence that CO2 emissions from the Industrial Revolution onward are the culprit. Just the opposite, actually: the evidence I've seen indicates that humans have been affecting global climate for at least three thousand years, and probably closer to ten thousand. We weren't burning fossil fuels for energy ten thousand years ago.
... and here comes the wave of commenters spouting bog standard denialist arguments. Quelle surprise.
P.S. Al Gore is fat, therefore global warming is false.
Al Gore is a stupendous turd turkey though he has not blown anybody to pieces yet (unlike several prominent Peace Nobelists). Global warming alarmist call for action is the new political correctness and anyone who suggests questions the proposed social engineering solutions gets career- assassinated in the Orwellian manner. Look what they tried on Bjorn Lomborg.
At risk of losing credibility as a chemist, I can tell you that I am not certain how big a role the human activities play in the climate change - but even if they are significant, I believe reducing the carbon emission will be extremely difficult and the cap-and-trade scheme will not help but will turn out to be hugely detrimental, and there are far better ways to spend the resources.
I don't know what you think of credibility of Freeman Dyson, his opinion is that we should rather try to adapt to climate changes that are (and have always been)happening on scale of generations and centuries, and try to improve the technology rather than attempting some kind of politically-motivated reverse Terra-forming here on Earth.