State of the Union

[blahblahblah]

Nawww Perry, you’ve got it wrong. The rapture is just around the corner, so it doesn’t matter anyway. Go ahead and run your SUV up and down the freeway all day long. I’m sure the Easter Islanders were counting on the return of their ancestors to rescue them as they cut down the last of their trees back in the 17th century.

Growing up as a Baptist in Texas back in the 70s and 80s, it seemed that the rapture was always just a few days away. I asked my mom recently what church in Texas was like back in the ’40s, and she reported that, yes, back then, the rapture was imminent as well. After all you had wars, famines, droughts, children disobeying their parents, all of the signs were there.

[greekfire]

Perry, your last post does not seem to be in line with the calls for tolerance and civility from some of your other posts. I just thought that mocking people’s religious beliefs was beneath you.

[sdnativeson]

Thats a rather myopic view PC. Rapture? How is that pertinent CONCHO?

[blahblahblah]

Many people feel that there is no need to take care of the environment because rapture is imminent. Think of all of the people in this country (and around the world) reading those “Left Behind” books. Why worry about CO2 levels when armaggedon is just around the corner? Why take responsibility for your environment when it’s just going to be nuked tomorrow and you’ll be in heaven anyway? I know it’s hard for us to believe here on piggington (where almost everyone is a reasonable individual, regardless of political affiliation), but there are lots of Duh-mericans who buy that malarkey. You’d really need to visit a Baptist church back in my home state to get a feel for what I’m talking about, or you could check out that documentary “Jesus Camp”. I had flashbacks to my childhood watching that!

[lindismith]

Well in the last year, several prominent Evangelicals have stepped forward and said they do believe in global warming, and that as good Christians, they believe they have a duty to protect Earth and the environment. So, we’re seeing some change in those circles.

I’d say the mere fact that the President even mentioned Climate Change last night in his speech is a good sign.

[Anonymous]

President Bush is wrong on a guest worker program; he’s wrong on words to the effect of ‘finding a humane solution to the 11M illegal aliens living in our midst’; he’s wrong on more insurance company solutions to rising health care costs; he’s wrong on supporting ethanol and switch grass for fuel diversification. And, he’s wrong on global warming.

But, he’s right on Iraq.

[ucodegen]

First, I must mention that the domain of insults and personal attacks are the behavior of bullys and do not apply to the scientific method. I would have expected a more analytical approach along the lines of powayseller’s style (complete with references, bookmarks, footnotes and supporting information) and along the general style of piggington.com

One thing I have noticed in the whole global warming debate (beyond what this blog page has), is that the pro (Carbon Dioxide {C02} as cause} camp has provided very little in terms of scientific proof or analysis. On the other hand, the anti (Carbon Dioxide {C02} as cause) have presented scientific arguments. Reading both the pro and anti global warming papers, you can detect the difference.

1) That being said, a person on this site asked for proof that there were as many articles debunking C02 as the cause as supporting (lindismith). Here it is.. first some background. The perception that CO2 as a cause of anthropogenic global warming is largely supported by the scientific community came out of a paper written by Naomi Oreskes. The methodology behind this study was found to be seriously flawed and possibly forged. The incorrect results of the study (called as a mistake) by the author were later admitted by the author. The following link references a copy of a letter from a professor at John Moores University, Liverpool UK.
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Scienceletter.htm

2) Second point is that the old famous ‘hocky stick’ temperature diagram is incorrect. It was based on cherry picked or forged data. It leaves out the Midieval Warm Period (when C02 levels were significantly lower than they are presently). The following reference shows the corrected graph alongside the ‘hockey stick’ graph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml
Scroll down almost half way, or search on the keyword ‘hockey-stick’. The rest of the article is also important.

3) The pro global waming camp claim that the anti global warming camp are just shills for the oil companies. This is another form of name calling, and is not a valid scientific method. This claim also ignores the vested interests of the scientific community. If there is no ‘crisis’, there is no funding for studies. Now scientists are getting worried that they may have ‘oversold’ the global warming scenario which may lead to loss of their credibility.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4487421.html
(NOTE: There may be an advertisment pre-page popping up… skip it, the article is titled “Climate scientists feeling the heat”).

One of the better written papers on global warming is from this reference:
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/What_Watt.htm
This site is footnoted and has additional references… be prepared for math and having to crack open some of your old college texts..

I also have additional references…

[PerryChase]

Bush is becoming isolated.

He’s loosing his base of religious voters for condoning the lesbian relationship of Mary Cheney who is having a baby.

He’s loosing his base of business executives who want health care reform. Those business executives feel that American industry are unfairly asked to shoulder the health care cost of workers. Foreign company don’t have that enormous cost.

He’s slowly loosing the Republican military voters who see Iraq as a quagmire.

He’s slowing loosing the Southern voters whose sons and daughters are sent to Iraq.

He’s loosing the pro-development, bulldoze everything, crowd as the Real Estate market is in the dumps and there’s no more money to be made. The electricians, pumbers and contractors who are loosing their jobs will soon turn against him.

Bush is trying to reclaim the center by talking about a humane solution to illegal immigration, health care, alternative fuels and global warming. Too little too late, Mister.

Bush’s divide and conquer strategy are leaving him with no friends.

[zk]

The part of the speech I didn’t get was the part where he said it’s time to balance the budget. Why didn’t he balance it when he had a congress that would do almost anything he wanted?

[lindismith]

ucodegen,
Actually, I asked for the source of where there has been a study showing there are exactly the same amount of papers debunking global warming as there are proving it. Thanks for looking though.

I’m glad you bring up Ms. Oreskes. I’m really interested in this whole subject, and a colleague of hers at UCSD took the time to write to me about her when I asked him some questions.

From one of his emails regarding denialists, and global warming:
“It is very important to realize that it is quite common and normal in science for new ideas and concepts to take hold unevenly and after considerable disagreement, and thus for some scientists to be left behind as science has progressed. Naomi Oreskes of UCSD has written eloquently and at great length about the history of how continental drift and plate tectonics eventually became settled science. It took a long time. There wasn’t a uniform eureka moment at which everybody agreed on the new ideas, and some eminent experts in fact went to their graves without accepting them.” ~ Richard Somerville, Phd.

You can see how the above applies to the field of climate change. Just as Bush was not on the band-wagon before, he’s now willing to talk about it.

All you others better jump on Bush’s band-wagon too. Perhaps with enough spin, you guys can claim you were the ones to first start solving the problem!

[PD]

Yeah, he can copy Al Gore. Remember when he claimed to have fathered the internet?

Perry, you had nothing relevant to say regarding global warming so you threw a bunch of mud at Republicans. I’m sorry, I just don’t believe your claims that you were ever anything but a diehard liberal. Further, I do not remember a time when you have presented views other than the liberal party line (unlike me and JG who have have many views that are contrary to the republican party line).

[blahblahblah]

Yeah, he can copy Al Gore. Remember when he claimed to have fathered the internet?

“During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”

— Al Gore

“Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.”

— Vinton Cerf, inventor of the Internet Protocol

This article gives a good overview of the “inventing the internet” story. Just keeping us all honest here…

[ucodegen]

lindismith,
With respect to the quantity of papers debunking global warming, I would guide you to the 2nd paragraph of the text on my first reference as well as lower under methodology of research. See results:
Of all 1117 abstracts, only 13 (or 1%) explicitly endorse the ‘consensus view’…
34 abstracts reject or doubt the view that human activities are the main drivers of the “the observed warming over the last 50 years”…
44 abstracts focus on natural factors of global climate change.
Papers are available on ISI, which I don’t presently have access to. I provided a indication that more disagree with the view that human activities are the main drivers of “observed warming…”, than agree. Sorry if it is not exactly 50:50… It seems to support the ‘denialists’ more than the ‘pro’ camp.

I also do not like the use of the term “denialists”. This is both an emotionally charged word as well as making the implicit assumption that those under that category are ‘denying’ something that is actually true (follow-on word to denialist often being delusional), and doing so without supporting proof. (Proof by innuendo?)

As for ‘eloquent’, I don’t care. I want analysis that is supported, not eloquently written. I am quite disturbed by Ms Oreskes publication because it violates scientific method and it was not retracted with the same emphasis as it was presented when a significant mistake was found in it.. (reference again to results in the first link). Scientific method requires the experiment/test/analysis to be able to be performed by someone else under the same conditions and obtaining almost the exact same results. When the latter can not be done, the analysis is flawed to the point where it should not be published.

If you are interested in the subject, I would suggest you trace down the last link I had, read through as well as tracing down the links within the paper (some very interesting an critical work is being referenced in that paper).

As for Bush’s bandwagon.. I think Bush’s jumping on this bandwagon is a way to try to be relevant and gain supporters. As with real-estate, I DON’T jump on anyones bandwagon. I make up my mind for myself based upon evidence at hand. If I don’t understand enough to make the decision, I study until I do (this means buying college texts in many cases).

[PD]

ucodeden, thank you for your posts. It is nice to see science rather than political or emotionally driven opinion.

[sdnativeson]

ucodegen, excellent post, makes my recent one both redundant
and insufficient.

[Author]

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