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[alway]

The people opposing the man-made global warming "craze"(well, some of them at least), argue that the scientific hypothesis in question, despite being, like many other scientific hypotheses, a work in progress, has gained a political and/or cultural acceptance to a degree that direct opposition to it is automatically discarded in the same way that a direct opposition to Newton's Laws of Motion would. They argue that the acceptance is undeserved, and serves only to cloud and polarise the proper scientific discussion, creating the situation that we're in now, where you can either "know" that the man-made global warming is real or you're a nutjob, basically.

Except that's utter bullshit. If the effect wasn't there, it wouldn't matter what part of the climate they studied, the results would still come back in a way which would show the effect to not be there. The data would be all over the place, demonstrating to any scientists that a false assumption was made.

Similarly, Newton's Laws of Motion are somewhat accepted because, no matter how they built on it, it worked; all the engineering, all the other laws deriving from it, they all work. Up until the point where they don't and Einstein's Relativity must be used to get sufficiently accurate results. That point was found precisely because known information was in conflict. Namely, that the speed of light was finite and yet was the same regardless of observer's velocity.

[Sheb]

More over, if you want money, there are tons of think-tanks and advocacy group like the one that did that video that'll be more than happy to fund you. And it's way easier than applicating for standard research grants.

[alway]

Precisely. You don't go into research in a field like climate science if you want to get rich any more than you would become an elementary school teacher to get rich. Though if you did want to make money, from what I recall, the Heartland Foundation was paying some of the anti-global warming bloggers 6 figure salaries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heartland_Institute#February_2012_document_leak

the founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), physicist Fred Singer ($5,000 plus expenses per month), geologist Robert M. Carter ($1,667 per month) and a single pledge of $90,000 to meteorologist Anthony Watts. Payments or pledges to Carter and Watts have been confirmed by the recipients.[22]

[ChairmanPoo]

Precisely. You don't go into research if you want to get rich

Corrected

[GlyphGryph]

And if you were stupid enough to do so, you would go and work for the anti-gw people.

Double fail.

[Sheb]

Although maybe pro-oil advocacy groups don't like funding climate research anymore since the Koch Brother funded a prominent climate skeptic do do some research, and his conclusion was "Well, after looking at it, it's like 100% legit."

[Reudh]

Oh my gawd, I couldn't watch more than half a minute of it. And the comments...


As for the 'HURR DURR GLOBAL WARMING NOT REAL COS COLD' argument, we are well overdue for an ice age from what I've heard.

[alway]

we are well overdue for an ice age from what I've heard.

Actually, we aren't. According to wiki, the period between ice ages is typically 40k-100k years; we've got quite a way to go before the next one.

[Lagslayer]

So... if the last ice age was only 10k years ago, shouldn't we be warming up anyways? You can't look at the last few years to determine long term trends like this. You can check rock layers for some data, but it's not nearly accurate enough to forecast year by year temperature.

I'm not going to lie or hide it. I grew up in a house that was skeptical of this sort of thing. To say my upbringing has not influenced my life could not be farther from the truth. Nobody can honestly say their upbringing has not helped shaped them. However, I believe I have become smart enough and sufficiently self-aware to realize my own bias and to recognize bogus or incomplete data.

[Sheb]

Well, we got data going back for several hundred thousands years from ice cores. They are usually considered accurate enough, and are consistent with each other.

And no, the transition between Ice ages and interglacial period is quite sharp. We've had fairly stable temperature for the last 10,000 years, until we started warming the athmosphere.

[GlyphGryph]

We definitely had some colder and warmer years thanks to volcanic activity, though. Turns out dumping tons of shit into the atmosphere, human-made or not, has some pretty severe climate effects.

Hence things like the "Year without a Summer" where the northern hemisphere basically got snow year round and messed stuff up for a couple years after. That stuff, thankfully, doesn't last as long.

[Fenrir]

This is the only planet we have, so we should probably assume that it is real and stop polluting until we find a way off this rock. Pascal’s Wager done right.

[Sheb]

Yeah. Plus, it's not like using so much fossil fuel (especially coal) is such a bright idea anyway. Dependance on foreign oil, health effect, and we know oil is going to get more and more expensive anyway.

[Lagslayer]

Too much politics wrapped up in this. Conversation not going anywhere.

Anyways, back to my main point. I feel that people take a lot of decisions too lightly. That people say "fuck it, I know I'm absolutely right" too easily. That they too easily accept anyone claiming to be on their side. That a lot of bad people like to exploit this. That just maybe you are having one pulled over on you, and don't realize it. That maybe people should double check their assumptions and all the possible fallout and implications of their decisions before saying to themselves "Nothing could possibly go wrong with my awesomely brilliant idea!".

It pisses me off to no end when people do this. Maybe it's my cynicism that makes me hate idealists.

Sorry if I went off on a rant a little bit.

[Sheb]

Well, given global warming has been theorized for the last 50 years or so, that we've had good evidence of it for at least 20 years, that institution like the IPCC litterally employ thousands of people just to keep up and summarize the litterature, that they produce lengthy report (Last one was what?  3 volumes of a few thousands pages each?), I'd say those guy know what they are talking about (and what they aren't talking about).

So unless I got a really good reasons to believe the industry-paid lobbyist rather than the scientist, I'll go with the scientists. And I don't see how believing the world is fuckin' itself over and civilization will collapse in the next 50-60 years makes me and idealist. (Cfr Club of Rome).