Freelancer - The Void

Although I completely agree with Kahless, I really do appreciate all of you that believe in global warming.  All those that believe governmental gibberish will do what they can to (hopelessly) prevent it...  Namely staying off the road.. The world has enough bad drivers....

The earth goes in cycles and eventually we will all go the way of the dinosaurs and die off in our current ice age as it gets colder...  To be honest, I wish you believers were correct..  I wouldn't be sitting here now freezing my back side off.....lol

TIODS

Remember we survived an ice age before an we can do it again.
And if we cant make it because we'd gone soft. Then we could live in space. It will not take long before we make an big space station for billions of people.

A couple of years ago we launced into space, now we have people ( scientist ) living in a space station.
Our technologie is advancing in a quick rate.

Oh do you think dinosaurs had tecnologie? I mean they have life'd for millions of years. Humans arn't that old yet and we can already go into space.
Do you think that dinosaurs have a colonie in space?  

Scream on
True Voidian, Inf.

Is somebody going to talk about frozen methane deposits? this will scare the pants of you.

Last seen doing its stuff 50m years ago (sea temp rises, 5 degrees, it melts, marine life becomes extinct, methane hits the atmosphere, most of life as we know it dies.)

As def leppard said...armageddon it

god dam it IT NOT a ice age thats going to happen  its  a HUGE heat temparature   FFS
scientific proof :
in a few millemias the temepature went up by 1 degree (only 1 degree) and now for the pass 100 year the teamparature went up form +5 degree dosnt that make a tick in your head

infinity your wrong about the water glass take a glass of water and put ice in it (make sure the ice flots) ones the ice is meted the water will be higher (ps if the ice is in the water the water will NOT go up but if the ice in ON the water the warter lv will go up)
plus with the artic ice melting (that ice is ON the water not in the water) the sea level will go up by about 2 meters (about 6 foot)


the temperature dint go down it got hoter
with the heat going up the water gets hotter
for example huricane katrina it started as a lv 1 huricane then it went into a hot section of hot water and got to a category 5 in less then 10 minute (never happend for a LONG time)

the dinosuares shesh a meteor went into coligion on the earth next to mexico ( proven by scientific) with the colition the earth was completlly surouded by clouds blocking the sun form the earth. with the sun gone the big plants started to die and the big dinosaures that needed to eat a LOT of plants died and the preatator with no big animals to eat died a few small animals survived (including the humains but we were not as many as today ) THATS how the dinosaurse died not global warming

anyhow i cant belived im debating with a topic for a funny joke

love
electra

Posted by: yellerKat | May 20, 2006 2:15:22 AM

I am not a scientist, i do however take a great interest in all things scientific.
I know for instance that the melting point of ice is 0 degrees ( this can be slightly lower in a process affected by pressure )I was amazed, when in the week, i was witness to a news bulletin that claimed Antartica could dissapear by 2020. The average temperature in Antartica is -50
and can drop to -90 even -120.For Antartica to melt the earths temperature would have to rise by 90 degrees, at that temperature, on the equator, the oceans would begin to evaporate. What absolute rubbish.

You know he's right dont denie it thit is a fact.

But what is a fact? Is it something what scientist say? If you have a degree in palaeoclimatology? If thats so than hear my facs:

Gravity is made up, i don't feel like im being pull'd down. Sometimes i feel like im being pushed down. So isaak newton is wrong. And birds do not fly they floot.
These are facts. Wy? Because i have a degree.
Would you believe this?

Wy not, because i dont have a white coat or because i'm not a president?

We can continu this discussion till the end of time. I believe that we aren't strong inough to destroy the earth and there is no way you can convince me other wise.
And others believe that they are so strong that they can destroy an intire planet.

That's the way of life. Its balaced. And it will always be balanced, like the Earth.

Inf.

Nice vid but then again every time you put Bush in an intellectual situation you get a very funny situation anyway.
About Global warming...
I'll copy and paste one of Michael Crichton's speeches here to add more confusion to that topic.
It's a few years old but very good.

---Start---

Aliens Cause Global Warming

The 2003 Michelin Lecture at the California Institute of Technology
January 17, 2003

My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to
argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I
will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of
steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my
task today.

Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in
either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do.
Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to
point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science--
namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public
policy.

I have a special interest in this because of my own upbringing. I was born in the
midst of World War II, and passed my formative years at the height of the Cold
War. In school drills, I dutifully crawled under my desk in preparation for a nuclear
attack.

It was a time of widespread fear and uncertainty, but even as a child I believed that
science represented the best and greatest hope for mankind. Even to a child, the
contrast was clear between the world of politics--a world of hate and danger, of
irrational beliefs and fears, of mass manipulation and disgraceful blots on human
history--and the world of science--international in scope, forging friendships and
working relationships across national boundaries and political systems,
encouraging a dispassionate habit of thought, and ultimately leading to fresh
knowledge and technology that would benefit all mankind. The world might not be
a very good place, but science would make it better. And it did. In my lifetime,
science has largely fulfilled its promise. Science has been the great intellectual
adventure of our age, and a great hope for our troubled and restless world.
But I did not expect science merely to extend lifespan, feed the hungry, cure
disease, and shrink the world with jets and cell phones. I also expected science to
banish the evils of human thought--prejudice and superstition, irrational beliefs
and false fears. I expected science to be, in Carl Sagan's memorable phrase, "a
candle in a demon-haunted world." And here, I am not so pleased with the impact
of science. Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some
instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity. Some
of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The
world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape.

But let's look at how it came to pass.

Cast your minds back to 1960: John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet
airplanes are just appearing, and the biggest university mainframes have 12K of
memory, and in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy
Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project
called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great
excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake
organizes the first Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) conference, and
comes up with the now-famous Drake equation:

N equals N times fp times ne times fl times fi times fc times fL

Where "N" is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; "fp" is the fraction with
planets; "ne" is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; "fl" is the
fraction of planets where life evolves; "fi" is the fraction where intelligent life
evolves; "fc" is the fraction that communicates; and "fL" is the fraction of the
planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live.

This serious-looking equation gave SETI serious footing as a legitimate intellectual
inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most
cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with
guesses. And guesses--just so we're clear--are merely expressions of prejudice.
Nor can there be an "informed estimate." If you need to state how many planets
with life choose to communicate, there is no way to make an informed estimate.
Your estimate will be simply prejudice.

As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to
zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely,
the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I
take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The
Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is
unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which
there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith.
The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The
belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not
a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching,
none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain
this belief. SETI is a religion.

One way to chart the cooling of enthusiasm is to review popular works on the
subject. In 1964, at the height of SETI excitement, Walter Sullivan of the New York
Times wrote a breathless book about life in the universe entitled We are Not Alone.
By 1995, when Paul Davis wrote a book on the same subject, he titled it Are We
Alone? (Since 1981, there have in fact been four books titled Are We Alone?) More
recently, we have seen the rise of the so-called "Rare Earth" theory which
suggests that we may, in fact, be all alone. Again, there is no evidence either way.
Back in the sixties, SETI had its critics, although not among astro-physicists and
astronomers. The biologists and paleontologists were harshest. George Gaylord
Simpson of Harvard sneered that SETI was a "study without a subject," and it
remains so to the present day.

But scientists in general have been indulgent toward SETI, viewing it either with
bemused tolerance, or with indifference. After all, what's the big deal? It's kind of
fun. If people want to look for aliens, let them. Only a curmudgeon would speak
harshly of SETI. It wasn't worth the bother.

And of course it is true that untestable theories may have heuristic value. Of
course it is true that extraterrestrials are a good way to teach science to kids. But
that does not relieve us of the obligation to see the Drake equation clearly for what
it is--pure speculation in quasi-scientific trappings.

The fact that the Drake equation was not greeted with screams of outrage--similar
to the screams of outrage that greet each new Creationist claim, for example--
meant that now there was a crack in the door, a loosening of the definition of what
constituted legitimate scientific procedure. And soon enough, pernicious garbage
began to ooze through the cracks.

Now let's jump ahead a decade to the 1970s, and the theory of Nuclear Winter.
In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences reported on "Long-Term Worldwide
Effects of Multiple Nuclear Weapons Detonations," but the report estimated the
effect of dust from nuclear blasts to be relatively minor. In 1979, the Office of
Technology Assessment (OTA) issued a report on "The Effects of Nuclear War"
and stated that nuclear war could perhaps produce irreversible, adverse
consequences on the environment. However, because the scientific processes
involved were poorly understood, the report stated it was not possible to estimate
the probable magnitude of such damage.

Three years later, in 1982, the Swedish Academy of Sciences commissioned a
report entitled "The Atmosphere after a Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon," which
attempted to quantify the effect of smoke from burning forests and cities. The
authors speculated that there would be so much smoke that a large cloud over the
northern hemisphere would reduce incoming sunlight below the level required for
photosynthesis, and that this would last for weeks or even longer.

The following year, five scientists, including Richard Turco and Carl Sagan,
published a paper in Science called "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of
Multiple Nuclear Explosions." This was the so-called TTAPS (Turco, Toon,
Ackerman, Pollack, and Sagan) report, which attempted to quantify more
rigorously the atmospheric effects, with the added credibility to be gained from an
actual computer model of climate.

At the heart of the TTAPS undertaking was another equation, never explicitly
expressed, but one that could be paraphrased as follows:

Ds equals Wn times Ws times Wh times Tf times Tb times Pt times Pr times Pe -- etc

(The amount of tropospheric dust = the number of warheads times size warheads times
warhead detonation height times flammability of targets times Target burn duration times
Number of particles entering the Troposphere times Particle reflectivity times Particle
endurance in troposphere -- and so on.)

The similarity to the Drake equation is striking. As with the Drake equation, none of
these variables can be determined. None at all. The TTAPS study addressed this
problem in part by mapping out different wartime scenarios and assigning a range
of numbers to some variables, but even so, the remaining variables were--and
are--simply unknowable. Nobody knows how much smoke will be generated when
cities burn, creating particles of what kind, and for how long. No one knows the
effect of local weather conditions on the amount of particles that will be injected
into the troposphere. No one knows how long the particles will remain in the
troposphere. And so on.

And remember, this is only four years after the OTA study concluded that the
underlying scientific processes were so poorly known that estimates could not be
reliably made. Nevertheless, the TTAPS study not only made those estimates, but
concluded they were catastrophic.

According to Sagan and his coworkers, even a limited 5000 megaton nuclear
exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees
Celsius, and this change would last for three months. The greatest volcanic
eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between 0.5
and 2 degrees Celsius. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees.
Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any ice age. One
might expect this prediction to be the subject of some dispute.

But Sagan and his coworkers had prepared for criticism, for nuclear winter was
from the outset the subject of a well-orchestrated media campaign. The first
announcement of nuclear winter appeared in an article by Sagan in the Sunday
supplement, Parade. The very next day, a highly-publicized, high-profile
conference on the long-term consequences of nuclear war was held in
Washington, chaired by Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich, the most famous and mediasavvy
scientists of their generation. Sagan appeared on the Johnny Carson Show
40 times; Ehrlich appeared 25 times. Following the conference, there were press
conferences, meetings with congressmen, and so on. The formal papers in
Science came months later.

This is not the way science is done. It is the way products are sold.
The highly emotional quality of the conference is indicated by these artists'
renderings of the effect of nuclear winter.

I cannot help but quote the caption for figure 5: "Shown here is a tranquil scene in
the north woods. A beaver has just completed its dam, two black bears forage for
food, a swallow-tailed butterfly flutters in the foreground, a loon swims quietly by,
and a kingfisher searches for a tasty fish." Hard science if ever there was.
At the conference in Washington, during the question period, Ehrlich was reminded
that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists were quoted as saying nothing would
grow there for 75 years, but in fact melons were growing the next year. So, he was
asked, how accurate were these findings now?

Ehrlich answered by saying "I think they are extremely robust. Scientists may have
made statements like that, although I cannot imagine what their basis would have
been, even with the state of science at that time, but scientists are always making
absurd statements, individually, in various places. What we are doing here,
however, is presenting a consensus of a very large group of scientists..."

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what
has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely
pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the
claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid
debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the
consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet,
because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus.
Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one
investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that
are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant.
What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great
precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If
it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to
be proud of. Let's review a few cases.

In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth. One
woman in six died of this puerperal fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen
suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and that he was able to cure
them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes presented
compelling evidence that puerperal fever was contagious, but the consensus said
no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually
eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus
said he was a Jew, ignored his findings, and dismissed him from his post. There
was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century.
Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right
conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world--
skeptics who were demeaned and ignored, despite the constant ongoing deaths of
women.

There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of
thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The
consensus said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the "pellagra
germ." The United States government assigned a brilliant young investigator, Dr.
Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the
crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger
demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that
the disease was not infectious by injecting himself and his assistant with the blood
of a pellagra patient. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs
from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra
rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra.
The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social
factor--southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it
meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the nineteen twentys.
Result--despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the
light.

Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit
together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents
had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years.
The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology--until 1961,
when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the
consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild can see plainly.

Shall we go on? Examples of consensus error are endless. Jenner and smallpox,
Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and
colon cancer, hormone replacement therapy...the list of dramatic, damaging errors
of the consensus goes on and on. New ones are reported almost every day in the
newspaper.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked.
Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc squared. Nobody says the
consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone
to speak that way. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not
solid enough.

Which means, in turn, that if somebody tells you the consensus of scientists
believes something or other, you should be immediately suspicious.

But back to our main subject.

What I have been suggesting to you is that nuclear winter was a meaningless
formula, tricked out with bad science, for clear policy ends. It was a political
movement from its inception, promoted in a well orchestrated media campaign
that had to be planned weeks or months in advance.

Further evidence of the political nature of the project can be found in the response
to criticism. Although Richard Feynman was characteristically blunt, saying, "I
really don't think these guys know what they're talking about," other prominent
scientists were noticeably reticent. Freeman Dyson was quoted as saying "It's an
absolutely atrocious piece of science but...who wants to be accused of being in
favor of nuclear war?" And Victor Weisskopf said, "The science is terrible but--
perhaps the psychology is good." The nuclear winter team followed up the
publication of such comments with letters to the editors denying that these
statements were ever made, though the scientists since have subsequently
confirmed their views, at least in substance.

At the time, there was a concerted desire to avoid nuclear war. If nuclear winter
made nuclear war look awful, why investigate too closely? Who wanted to
disagree? Only people like Edward Teller, the "father of the H bomb."
Teller said, "While it is generally recognized that details are still uncertain and
deserve much more study, Dr. Sagan nevertheless has taken the position that the
whole scenario is so robust that there can be little doubt about its main
conclusions." Teller's view was ignored; for most people, the fact that nuclear
winter was a scenario riddled with uncertainties did not seem to be relevant.
I say it is hugely relevant. Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells
us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is
possible. In one context, perhaps you will get mobilization against nuclear war. But
in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia. The
danger is always there, if you subvert science to political ends.

That is why it is so important for the future of science that the line between what
science can say with certainty, and what it cannot, be drawn clearly--and
defended.

What happened to nuclear winter? Even as the media glare faded, its robust
scenario appeared less persuasive; John Maddox, editor of Nature, repeatedly
criticized its claims; within a year, Stephen Schneider, one of the leading figures in
the climate model, began to speak of "nuclear autumn." It just didn't have the same
ring.

A final media embarrassment came in 1991, when Carl Sagan predicted on
Nightline that Kuwaiti oil fires would produce a nuclear winter effect, causing a
"year without a summer," and endangering crops around the world. Sagan
stressed this outcome was so likely that "it should affect the war plans." None of it
happened.

What, then, can we say were the lessons of Nuclear Winter? I believe the lesson
was that given a catchy name, a strong policy position, and an aggressive media
campaign, nobody will dare to criticize the science, and in short order, a terminally
weak thesis can be established as fact. After that, any criticism becomes beside
the point. The war is already over, without a shot being fired. That was the lesson,
and we had a textbook application soon afterward, with second hand smoke.

In 1993, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that second-hand
smoke was "responsible for approximately 3000 lung cancer deaths each year in
nonsmoking adults," and that it "impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of
thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet, the EPA said that the eleven studies it
based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that these studies
collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a
risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA under its own rules. Nor is it
sufficient for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example,
which requires a risk factor of 3 to 4.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical
association between second-hand smoke and health risk at the 95% confidence
limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then classified second-hand smoke
as a Group A Carcinogen.

This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in
restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon,
no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that
"Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause of death." The
American Cancer Society announced that 53000 people died each year of
second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent.
In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had "committed
to a conclusion before research had begun," and had "disregarded information and
made findings on selective information." The reaction of Carol Browner, head of
the EPA was: "We stand by our science...there's wide agreement. The American
people certainly recognize that exposure to second-hand smoke brings...a whole
host of health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps hard
science. In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes!
It's the consensus of the American people.

Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large, seven country
World Health Organization (WHO) study in 1998 found no association. Nor
have subsequent well-controlled studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read that
second-hand smoke is a cause of a range of ills, from breast cancer to autism. At
this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke.
As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would
consider good policy. I certainly think it is good policy. I don't want people smoking
around me. So who will speak out against a ban on second-hand smoke? Nobody,
and if you do, you'll be branded a shill of R.J. Reynolds. A flunky of big tobacco.
But the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of
superstitions. And we've given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the
future. We've told them that cheating is the way to succeed.

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the connection between hard scientific
fact and public policy became increasingly elastic. In part this was possible
because of the complacency of the scientific profession; in part because of the lack
of good science education among the public; in part, because of the rise of
specialized advocacy groups which have been enormously effective in generating
publicity and shaping policy; and in great part because of the decline of the media
as an independent assessor of fact. The deterioration of the American media is
dire loss for our country. When distinguished institutions like the New York Times
can no longer differentiate between factual content and editorial opinion, but rather
mix both freely on their front page, then who will hold anyone to a higher standard?

And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science--or nonscience--is the
handmaiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is
not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the demons
haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which
these things are established. Dramatic announcements are carefully contrived.
Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching
policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by
the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program,
and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation
marks--suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries,
or simply anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate ends, even though
prominent scientists in many fields are uncomfortable about how things are being
done.

(Just as an aside: when did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a
skeptic require quotation marks around him or her? Skepticism lies at the very
heart of science.)

To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is
the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear
winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These
results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now, large-scale
computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are
models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world--increasingly,
models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are,
when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the
year 2100. There are only model runs.

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well.
Richard Feynman called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a
lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where
the global warming debate now stands.

Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to
believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future. And make large
financial decisions based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?
Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the model makers is breathtaking.
There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since
climate may be a chaotic system--no one is sure about that--these predictions are
inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the
science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the
world a hundred years from now is simply absurd.

Look: if I was selling stock in a company that I told you would be profitable in 2100,
would you buy it? Or would you think the idea was so crazy that it must be a
scam?

Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people
in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: where would people get enough
horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad
in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more
people riding horses!

But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in
2000, France was getting 80% of its power from an energy source that was
unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more
than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn't
know what an atom was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what
a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell
phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, ICBM, EEG,
EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet, interferon, instant replay, remote sensing,
remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding,
heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs,
airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction,
superconduction, dish antennas, tupperware, sneakers, step aerobics, smoothies,
twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, fuel cell, fuel injection,
carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant,
AIDS...None of these things would have meant anything to a person in the year
1900. They wouldn't know what you are talking about.

In short, a person in 1900 wouldn't know what an airport, a computer, a cell phone,
a jetliner, a sneaker, or a television was. So how could they possibly predict
anything about a world in which those things would be commonplace?

So. You tell me how you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it's even worth
thinking about. Because I argue it's not. Our models just carry the present into the
future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought
knows it.

I remind you that in the lifetime of most scientists now living, we have already had
an example of dire predictions set aside by new technology. I refer to the green
revolution. In 1960, Paul Ehrlich said, "The battle to feed humanity is over. In the
1970s the world will undergo famines--hundreds of millions of people are going to
starve to death." Ten years later, he predicted four billion people would die during
the 1980s, including 65 million Americans. The mass starvation that was predicted
never occurred, and it now seems it isn't ever going to happen. Nor is the
population explosion going to reach the numbers predicted even ten years ago. In
1990, climate modelers anticipated a world population of 11 billion by 2100. Today,
some people think the correct number will be 7 billion and falling. But nobody
knows for sure.

It is impossible to ignore how closely the history of global warming fits the previous
template for nuclear winter. Just as the earliest studies of nuclear winter stated that
the uncertainties were so great that probabilities could never be known, so, too the
first pronouncements on global warming argued strong limits on what could be
determined with certainty about climate change. The 1995 Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) draft report said, "Any claims of positive
detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until
uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced." It
also said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of observed climate
changes to anthropogenic causes." Those statements were removed, and in their
place appeared: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human
influence on climate."

What is clear, however, is that on this issue, science and policy have become
inextricably mixed to the point where it will be difficult, if not impossible, to separate
them out. It is possible for an outside observer to ask serious questions about the
conduct of investigations into global warming, such as whether we are taking
appropriate steps to improve the quality of our observational data records, whether
we are systematically obtaining the information that will clarify existing
uncertainties, whether we have any organized disinterested mechanism to direct
research in this contentious area.

The answer to all these questions is no. We don't.

In trying to think about how these questions can be resolved, it occurs to me that in
the progression from SETI to nuclear winter to second-hand smoke to global
warming, we have one clear message: that we can expect more and more
problems of public policy dealing with technical issues in the future--problems of
ever greater seriousness, where people care passionately on all sides.
And at the moment we have no mechanism to get good answers. So I will propose
one.

Just as we have established a tradition of double-blinded research to determine
drug efficacy, we must institute double-blinded research in other policy areas as
well. Certainly the increased use of computer models, such as General Circulation
Models (GCMs), cries out for the separation of those who make the models from
those who verify them. The fact is that the present structure of science is
entrepreneurial, with individual investigative teams vying for funding from
organizations which all too often have a clear stake in the outcome of the
research--or appear to, which may be just as bad. This is not healthy for science.
Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country. It
must be funded by industry, by government, and by private philanthropy, both
individuals and trusts. The money must be pooled, so that investigators do not
know who is paying them. The institute must fund more than one team to do
research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a foregone
requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other groups. In many
cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather it, and those who
gather the data will not analyze it. If we were to address the land temperature
records with such rigor, we would be well on our way to an understanding of
exactly how much faith we can place in the concept of global warming, and
therefore with what seriousness we must address it.

I believe that as we come to the end of this litany, some of you may be saying, well
what is the big deal, really. So we made a few mistakes. So a few scientists have
overstated their cases and have egg on their faces. So what.

Well, I'll tell you.

In recent years, much has been said about the post-modernist claims that science
is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and
objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than
any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But
recent events have made me wonder if they are correct. We can take as an
example the scientific reception accorded a Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg,
who wrote a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist.

The scientific community responded in a way that can only be described as
disgraceful. In professional literature, it was complained he had no standing
because he was not an earth scientist. His publisher, Cambridge University Press,
was attacked with cries that the editor should be fired, and that all right-thinking
scientists should shun the press. The past president of the American Associate for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS) wondered aloud how Cambridge could have
ever "published a book that so clearly could never have passed peer review." (But
of course the manuscript did pass peer review by three earth scientists on both
sides of the Atlantic, and all recommended publication.) But what are scientists
doing attacking a press? Is this the new McCarthyism--coming from scientists?
Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on
proving the post-modernist point that science was all about power, not facts. The
Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with
nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless
mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, even
comparing him to a Holocaust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends
itself against The Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. I wasn't aware that "science"
had to defend itself. Is this what we have come to?

When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and
a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page
and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright infringement
and made him take the pages down.

Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with
heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any
detail. That's why the facts don't matter. That's why they can attack him in the most
vicious personal terms. He's a heretic.

Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never
thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother church.
Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become, unless
there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggressively separate science
from policy. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of
Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of
science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the
charlatans, the public will not discern the difference--science and the nation will
suffer." Personally, I don't worry about the nation. But I do worry about science.

Thank you very much.

---End---

Personally I do believe that mankind is responsible for the changes to our climate. We excel in changing our environment and excel in our stupidity to take no responsibility when it goes wrong.
Since the last ice-age our planet is getting warmer but in the last few hundred years we've been adding to this increasing warming up by putting massive polluters in the atmosphere, seas and ground to a point that the Earth can't keep up.
You have to look at the Earth as a whole and the problem as a whole. One factor alone doesn't give a detailed view of it all.
The whole eco-system needs to be able to adapt to the changes and at the rate it is now going it can't keep up.
Our knowledge as a human collective hasn't gone that far that we can control, and predict, all the changes we are making, and have made, to our planet. Already animal species are migrating to new area's on the globe because due to the climate changes they can't survive any more at their previous location. Those species have evolved because they've adapted to a certain surrounding but because we've changed so much they don't have time to evolve, or adapt, to those changes.
Same goes for plants and one celled organisms on this planet. This is part of the evolution theory we know so far.
I don't feel like posting another few pages of text going more in depth about this subject and I'll spare you on that one.
This subject is more complex than those few arguments which are posted here by others.

Yes, Global warming is a fake!

And Islamic Fundamentalists are capable of destroying some of the most advanced buildings in the world with nothing more than an airplane!



:-w  

*Snaps fingers* "Check Please, table 12"

U know i never realised that i was ever going to discuss Global Warming here on Void but i must say i enjoyed it.

I think we should get back to the video.

[quote="geromix";p="151148"]Please forgive if i am offensive.I found myself at variance with ur beliefs.[/quote]

You never have to apologize because your opinion is different...life would be monumentaly boring if everyone always agreed about everything.

At anyrate something we can all agree on is that Bush is always a reliable source of comic relief even though unlike one of his predecessors, Ronald Reagan, he is not a loveable kind hearted old jester but is instead a man responsible for two wars and for angering the governments and peoples of almost a 3rd of the planet.