"All the while giving funding for impact research, and the search for Near Earth Objects, little more than lip service."

There are people looking for near earth objects, for example Levy, the co-discoverer of comet Schumaker-Levy-9 has a telescope in Arizona that he uses for this.

JPL has a program to discover at least 90% of the large near earth objects.

This is more than lip service.

IIRC the funding for Near Earth Objects research is under $1M a year. Meanwhile, Michael Mann gets $1.8M to study the effects of global warming on mosquitos.

Go Figure.

Long-term the answers are coming and it'll all balance out. Short-term it makes no sense sending manufacturing to the developing countries on the basis of CO2; they'd probably ignore any agreement as there's enough problems getting them to follow intellectual property law, "dumping", and product safety regulations. According to news reports, the insurance industry is looking pretty hard into climate change since a lot of developed property is close to the ocean (much of it high value) and will assess any increased risk to those property owners. Newport Beach CA (one of the wealthiest towns in the US) has a seawall planned, and besides insurers, many low lying countries (Netherlands, Bangladesh, etc... ) will look at the science harder than we ever will. More science will be done and speaking of science...

As to climate research, that's what climate scientists do. Compete for grants. One side will be proven right, the other side will get their research cut, a smaller office, and 8 sections of freshman earth science to teach next semester.

Edited by hknewman on 06/25/2011 08:19:27 MDT.

"As to climate research, that's what climate scientists do. Compete for grants. One side will be proven right, the other side will get their research cut, a smaller office, and 8 sections of freshman earth science to teach next semester"

The climate deniers or skeptics will be rewarded handsomely for delaying actions which might threaten oil, coal, and other big companies from making mega-profits for a few more years.

Some people, like Rog, are well intentioned. Others just do it to make money.

HK, you assume a level playing field to begin with. Nothing could be further from the truth. Science does not happen under queensbury rules in a perfect vacuum of ivory tower objectivity. The money comes from non-scientists with pre-concieved outcome preferences. The research money is the carrot. The prospect of more of it going to institutions which provide results in line with prefferred outcomes is the stick. Big Government pays a lot more than Big Oil for those results.

Jerry said:

"Deniers"

What? you mean like holocaust deniers? That's a disgusting slur and you should be ashamed to use it. Get civil or get the same level of discourtesy in return.

"Deniers"

Like I said, I think you're a well intentioned skeptic

I think there are deniers that don't care if there's a problem or not, but will say anything if they're paid enough

"The research money is the carrot. The prospect of more of it going to institutions which provide results in line with prefferred outcomes is the stick."

Often preservation of the institute overrides scientific inquiry. This is contrary to objectivity (without bias).

Jerry says:
Like I said, I think you're a well intentioned skeptic

I think there are deniers that don't care if there's a problem or not, but will say anything if they're paid enough

Fair enough with regard to myself. I still take strong exception to your use of the term "denier" against anyone in a debate about scientific results which are on your own admission highly uncertain though. How dare you?

And if you are going to start making accusations about people being paid by the oil industry to promote certain opinions, then you also need to acknowledge that very much bigger sums of money have been flowing to Green lobby groups and NGO's to do equal and opposite work on the other side of the debate.

It is very noticeable that those who want to make 'progress' with the AGW agenda try to speak of man made global warming as if it a given, with no reference to the true scientific position. And then try to bully the public by threatening by implication that they will be labelled as being like holocaust deniers if they have the temerity to express doubt about the science.

What shall we call them? Greenshirts? Ecofascists?

Let's do a deal. You drop the "denier" tag from the conversation and I'll refrain from calling names too.

I'll try to remember not to use the "D" word

There is way more money on the "skeptic" side than the green side. Two of the biggest 10 U.S. companies are oil companies. What's the equivalent for the global warming side, the solar panel manufacturers???

People use bullying tactics for all issues. I don't think global warming proponents are any worse than others.

"Often preservation of the institute overrides scientific inquiry. This is contrary to objectivity (without bias)."

If a scientist wants to get grant money, they have to make provocative proposals like "show how the cute polar bears are going extinct" or "show how global warming proponents are idiots" (okay, I'm parodizing)

But, if you present a study and falsify the data, you'll be fired from the university.

I think peer reviewed papers in scientific journals have a certain amount of objectivity, but nothing's perfect.

Jerry says:
I'll try to remember not to use the "D" word

My sincere thanks. It makes the thread a pleasanter place to be.

If a scientist wants to get grant money, they have to make provocative proposals like "show how the cute polar bears are going extinct

Governments have poured in huge sums to increase the size of atmospheric and Earth science depts. Whole degree courses and curricula have been built on the assumption AGW is true. In that environment, who is going to make a proposal for funding for a research project which risks undermining the funding stream?

Read some of philosophy of science written by Imre Lakatos, Micheal Polyani or Thomas Kuhn. You will see how the 'consensus' develops around institutional allegiances and security of tenure rather than round necessarily sound theory.

"If you believe that then you should be able to make the data look like co2 is changing before temperature rather than after. Can you do it?"

Easy:

Heh, neat use of the isolate function there Stuart, well done. But you didn't apply the same functions to both datasets, naughty.

Here's another graph done by my friend Ray Tomes, which treats both datasets in the same way. It looks at the rate of change in temperature and co2. i.e. the first derivative.

http://cyclesresearchinstitute.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/co2-temperature-roc.png

And the BPL squashed version:

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No way round it. Temperature changes before co2 does. The cart does not push the horse.

According to a May 2011, report to Congress by the US General Accountability Office, the total Federal Government funding for climate change from 1993 to 2010 amounts to $106.7 Billion. This does not include the revenues lost to the Federal Government for special deductions and tax credits (including grants in lieu of tax credits) of $16.1 Billion. These bring the total to $122.8 Billion.

The 2009 “Stimulus Bill” provided $26.1 Billion of this amount, with $25.2 Billion to the Department of Energy, including $16.8 Billion for energy efficiency and alternative energy. In the Fiscal Years (FY) 2009 and 2010 (which ended on September 30, 2010), the Federal government provided $52.8 Billion in climate change funding.

In terms of four stated general categories (without regard to agency) of the total funding, not including the Stimulus Bill, $43.0 Billion is categorized as technology, $31.3 Billion is categorized as science, $5.0 Billion is categorized as international aid, and $65 Million is categorized as wildlife adaptation.

One of the benefits of this funding may have been new satellites to better understand the earth and its weather, yet, including the Stimulus Bill, of $21.6 Billion to NASA only $1.1 Billion fell in the category of Direct Technology / Exploration. Under the general category of Science, NASA received $20.6 Billion for science, aeronautics and technology (note there may be errors due to rounding). The Department of Energy is the agency that has received the most funding — $58.7 Billion.

Global warming / climate change is big business in the US, courtesy of the taxpayer.

I'm glad you pointed that out Rog

I'm really horrified that we don't spend more on this : )

I'm going to call my senators and congressman and complain.

I wonder how much return there is for this investment?

Like if we do efficiency, how much do we save in energy costs in the future? And how much do we save in reduced diseases? And we have little idea what the costs of CO2 emissions what will be so it's difficult to guess how much will be saved there. And how much did it stimulate the economy to make the improvements? And how much will it reduce miltary costs in the future to defend the supply channels?

Well more of that money should have gone into solar research than co2 nonsense. It turns out that not only does temperature always lead co2 by six months, but 90% of the increase since 1958 is natural anyway:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/05/global-warming-causing-carbon-dioxide-increases-a-simple-model/

For an encore, Dr Roy Spencer has just falsified the IPCC ocean modelling too...

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/06/more-evidence-that-global-warming-is-a-false-alarm-a-model-simulation-of-the-last-40-years-of-deep-ocean-warming/

I forecast the collapse of the whole scam within the next 18 months.

Now we need to work out what the heck the Sun is up to. It's not looking good. Very low activity levels for this point in the solar cycle.

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Co2 ain't gonna keep us warm.

I am so glad to see this thread is still alive.

However, it all seems to come back to modeling, filtering/statistical manipulations of the data, and religious zeal.

I, for one, still believe in the theory of evolution rather than creationism, like the majority of scientists who study genetics and archaelogy. Is this an entrenched religious point of view?? Possibly. There is no evidence that creationists could present me, short of God itself revealed to me in all it's glory, that would change my "beliefs". So I am personally pessimistic that the beliefs of people who either believe in anthropogenic climate change, or not, will ever feel totally convinced. Sorry, Rog, but I don't think you will ever claim from, or pay, Dean on this issue.

However, I am definitely in the camp of people who still believe that humans, in the grossly excess populations this planet is now trying to support, are by far the biggest problem facing ourselves and other species of plant, animal, bacteria, fungi, etc...barring a strike by a very big extra-planetary object. As such, I feel a moral obligation (a uniquely human feeling) to mitigate as much of this human impact as possible. Like Nick, I think issues like birth control are more important than what car you drive (if you can afford a car and choose to drive it). But I also think we all need to tighten our belts, if only because we are rapidly running out of fossil fuels and "safe" places to dump our garbage. As mentioned more than once, I also think issues like fresh, clean drinking water are and will continue to be our biggest problems as a species.

Does Dr. Spencer being a creationist make his analysis less convincing ?

Rog keeps posting global warming skeptic links. I read this article in the July 2011 Scientific American “The Last Great Global Warming”. This was a summary of a paper in some scientific journal. Written by Lee Kump, professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University.

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was 56 million years ago. The author says that this was the most recent major global warming event so it’s good to compare to our current situation.

He looked at cores of sedimentary material in the arctic and antarctic. They looked at ratios of different Carbon isotopes to determine CO2 and temperatures. There weren’t a lot of details in the Scientific American article, like plots of CO2 or temp vs time and I’m too lazy to look up the science journal article.

His explanation of the PETM was that the super continent Pangea broke apart producing lots of volcanic activity which released large amounts of CO2 – a few hundred petagrams of Carbon. This warmed up the ocean due to the greenhouse effect, which caused a release of the methane hydrate that’s on the ocean bottom, which produced methane in the atmosphere, which warmed the atmosphere more – positive feedback. Probably there was other positive feedback - warming resulted in forest and peat fires which released more CO2. Methane was probably released from permafrost in the upper latitudes. There was a total of 3,000 to 10,000 petagrams of carbon released over 20,000 years.

Acidification and warming of the ocean decreased O2 levels which caused large extinctions of microscopic organisms. There was an increase of global temperature of 5 degree C. Since it took 20,000 years, there was enough time for most plants and animals to adapt or move to cooler latitudes.

We are currently releasing CO2 at a rate of about 10 petagrams of Carbon per year, so it will take a few decades to release the amount that precipitated the PETM. Then it will take a hundred years for the oceans to warm and circulate to where the methane hydrates are?

If this is the case, looking at changes in the climate today are missing the point. If we wait for indisputable proof that the climate is warming, then forces will be in motion that will eventually lead to more significant changes in the climate. This won’t affect us, we’ll be dead, but our children’s children’s children will have some major changes to adapt to.

There’s a lot of uncertainty in this because the material is 56 millions years old, but it’s just one more data point that shows we have a problem and we should at least take the easy actions like improving efficiency and getting as much energy as possible from alternate energy sources.

I heard about this book, “Merchants of Doubt” by Naomi Oreskes, professor of history and science studies at UC San Diego and Professor of Geosciences at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and Eric Conway historian of science and technology at the California Institute of Technology. see merchantsofdoubt.org.

They noticed that some of the same people that were questioning global warming had also questioned ozone depletion. They looked into this some more and found that they also questioned the ill effects of Tobacco. They then knew they had a story so they wrote this book.

They found the same authors wrote articles for the Strategic Defense Initiative, against Acid Rain, Second Hand Smoke, and for DDT.

The strategy was to place doubt into the validity of the evidence to allow industry to continue making money before eventually the truth comes out. At least in the case of Tobacco, SDI, Acid Rain, Ozone, and Second Hand Smoke. (Are there any skeptics on these issues out there?).

Do you remember the stories that questioned whether tobacco causes cancer? Or Ronald Reagan saying that his doctor told him a particular brand of cigarettes were more healthful?

The authors thought that these men did nothing illegal, but were just afraid of environmentalism, socialism, and regulation.

It makes me skeptical about the global warming skeptics “movement”.