Lazy8 wrote: 

What is the vastly expensive and intrusive program?  I have not heard of a specific plan.  

I do not hear a debate about what should be done.  As you say, one side of the spectrum is arguing that nothing should be done. That can only be justified if no problem exists or the problem that exists has no possible solution.  

 islander wrote: 
Uh-oh.  He's got records on you, pal.  Expect some....Links!!...gasp....

first smartass who posts a pic of sausages gets a wedgie, or deserves one, anyway

 Lazy8 wrote: 

 

Typo/fixed.

 Lazy8 wrote: 

Why can't I say it like that? I must be lost in my own BS or something. I've tried to say this very thing, only to fall between the cracks in my
philosophy...

 islander wrote: 

The oil example is a good one.  We should be able to agree that oil is a finite resource that has been seriously depleted, and that there is a need to develop alternative energy sources.  Yet, we do not agree on that. Instead, we get sidetracked into convoluted, labyrinthinian arguments about who is trying to manipulate whom and for what reasons (usually unspecified).  Once the discussions focus more on motivations than upon substances, the rabbit hole opens ever wider, eventually swallowing reason.

I think you frame this issue fairly well.  I would frame it as follows:  We agree there is climate change, but we disagree as to its causes. Primarily, this boils down to those who say that climate change occurs naturally and inevitably, so we should not do anything to interefere. In sum: don't worry about it. On the other side are those who believe that the writing is on the wall, and that human consumption has contributed immensely to the current state. 

I say, even if human consumption has not knocked the whole natural order of things out of whack, we still have to know that something is happening that can be and likely will be threatening to human and animal life.  Yesterday I cited the Ice Age as an example of something that occurred and wiped out species.  The earth survived, sure, but a lot of species did not. That, alone, seems to me to provide ample reason for concern.  So, why we should be looking for answers, we're bogged down on whether there, in fact, is a problem.  Wonder if the dinosaurs had the same conversations?                    

 Beaker wrote: 
Yes argumentative. That is what you do here. You would take a contrary position to just about anything on the other side of your agenda/ideology and prepare a 27 post dissertation w/ the graphs, supporting blogs, commentary, 4 part harmony, and a reserve of any likely opponents posting history to throw back at them on a moments notice. Hyper-partisan hackery is your tagline.

Climate denialism links to tobacco denialism: George Monbiot, from The Guardian (UK).

 steeler wrote:
Not such a surprise, really. One side pitches a vastly expensive and intrusive program of government involvement in every aspect of our lives, the other pitches business as usual. If the solutions to the problems had been framed differently it could have turned out very differently, but neither side wants to solve the problem unless it means vanquishing the other side in the process.

This issue is being used to push other agendas. Suspicion of those other agendas is driving resistance to an honest assessment of the problem and a rational discussion of solutions. Both sides have their hammers and see the issue as a nail.

 hobiejoe wrote: 
The day Mrs.Islander tires of me.

 islander wrote: 
Will you marry me?  love MrsHJ.

 Beaker wrote: 
how very argumentative of you. What if he's right (as the majority of valid scientific opinion indicates), and we really should be doing something to minimize our impact on climate change?  Doesn't matter, it would be much better if you got to win the argument and got to sing the "nah, nah, nah, nah" song while doing your victory dance.

 islander wrote: 

Thank you, P.

 dionysius wrote: 
Not at all. I'm very much on the side of Climate change is pretty much settled (as settled as any scientific endeavor ever is). The "not caused by people" side will jump all over the ambiguity there, but that is the scientific method - always open for review, but it doesn't mean that we don't make decisions and take actions based on our current findings.

My point on the politics is that on any issue, people simply dig in based on ideology. They refuse to even hear the there evidence, they have decided.  I believe climate change to be settled at this point and think we need to be taking actions based on our current assessment. This doesn't meant that I'm not willing to look at alternative views, or entertain the possibility that there is another cause, just show me that evidence. In the mean time, let's go fix the looming problem.

Unfortunately this same problem exists on economics, regulation, religion, health care, education..... you name it. Anything that comes up we trench in and go for the win. All the time we spend fighting takes away from time we could be fixing/progressing. Climate change is a grand example. The oil dependent, pollution creating base has been a know problem for decades. Only in the last few years are we really talking about it, and we have trenched in along party lines and the only agreements we have reached are meaningless to the growing problem.

I'm just getting pissed off at what are clearly concerted attempts to derail Copenhagen. Grrrrrrrrrrr.  Decision time folks.  This is the point to opt in as citizens of the world.

 islander wrote: 
If you're equating the two sides in this "debate" then I'm mystified. There's no equivalence. Climate change denial is every bit as honest, rational and respectable as the campaign to cast doubt on the harmful effects of tobacco. Remember that? (Indeed, it has many of the same motives and many of the same people behind it.) All they can do is delay the inevitable, but this delay is fatal, when we urgently need to be accomplishing something. Denial and footdragging hurts everyone, and that's hard to forgive.

 islander wrote: 

Let's all repeat it together:  Zero-sum game.  

Equals "end game."

 

 steeler wrote: 
There is no longer any issue that will not be polarized into left/right, dem/repub, north/south in this country. It's not about right and wrong anymore it is about win/lose and which team are you on. It's unfortunate and will be our downfall. People truly believe that they can't have theirs if somebody else get's theirs first. We have become a mob scrambling for a dwindling supply of robotic hamsters. I doubt a majority of people even care about the base issue as long as they can win the argument/battle/election/hamster scramble.

Politics has been uglier in the past, but the political system has never been worse. And the trend line that we are following is not good.

Just to repeat, from another source:

UN hits back at climate sceptics amid e-mails row

The UN's official panel on climate change has hit back at sceptics' claims that the case for human influence on global warming has been exaggerated.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said it was "firmly" standing by findings that a rise in the use of greenhouse gases was a factor.

It was responding to a row over the reliability of data from East Anglia University's Climatic Research Unit

Leaked e-mail exchanges prompted claims that data had been manipulated.

Last month, hundreds of messages between scientists at the unit and their peers around the world were put on the internet along with other documents.

Some observers alleged one of the e-mails suggested head of the unit Professor Phil Jones wanted certain papers excluded from the UN's next major assessment of climate science.

The body of evidence is the result of the careful and painstaking work of hundreds of scientists worldwide Professor Thomas Stocker and Professor Qin Dahe, IPCC

Professor Jones, who denies this was his intention, has stood down from his post while an independent inquiry takes place.

In a statement, Professor Thomas Stocker and Professor Qin Dahe, co-chairmen of the IPCC's working group 1, condemned the act of posting the private e-mails on the internet, but avoided commenting on their content.

They went on to point to a key finding that states: "The warming in the climate system is unequivocal.

" is based on measurements made by many independent institutions worldwide that demonstrate significant changes on land, in the atmosphere, the ocean and in the ice-covered areas of the Earth.

"Through further independent scientific work involving statistical methods and a range of different climate models, these changes have been detected as significant deviations from natural climate variability and have been attributed to the increase of greenhouse gases."

They added: "The body of evidence is the result of the careful and painstaking work of hundreds of scientists worldwide.

There is an anti-science group, there is a flat Earth group, if I may say so, over the scientific evidence for climate change Gordon Brown, Prime Minister

"The internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these e-mail exchanges."

The row comes ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit which starts on Monday.

Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the IPCC, said it was no coincidence the information was released in the run-up to the summit.

He claimed unnamed conspirators could have paid for Russian hackers to break into the university computers to steal the e-mails.

He said the theft was a scandal and was "probably ordered" to disrupt the confidence negotiators have in the science.

Earlier, Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband told the BBC he would be "very surprised" if there had been any wrongdoing on the part of the East Anglia University scientists.

"We're in a moment when the world is about to make some big political decisions," he said.

"And there will be people who don't want the world to make those big decisions and they are trying to use this in part to say somehow this is all in doubt and perhaps we should put the whole thing off.

"Well, I just think they're wrong about that."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the scientific evidence was "very clear" and called doubters a "flat Earth group".

He said: "There is an anti-change group. There is an anti-reform group. There is an anti-science group, there is a flat Earth group, if I may say so, over the scientific evidence for climate change."

'Open and transparent'

Meanwhile, the Met Office said it would publish all the data from weather stations worldwide, which it said proved climate change was caused by humans.

Its database is a main source of analysis for the IPCC.

It has written to 188 countries for permission to publish the material, dating back 160 years from more than 1,000 weather stations.

John Mitchell, head of climate science at the Met Office, said the evidence for man-made global warming was overwhelming - and the data would show that.

"So this is not an issue of whether we are confident or not in the figures for the trend in global warming, it's more about being open and transparent," he told the BBC.

The Met Office said it had already planned to publish the material long before the row and denied reports that government ministers had tried to block the publication.

It's all down to whom we trust: climatologists, or people who aren't.
Climate chief dismisses e-mail outrage

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN December 8, 2009 7:42 a.m. EST

(CNN) — One of the world's leading authorities on climate change has dismissed the contents of controversial e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia as nothing more than friends and colleagues "letting off steam."

"Well, I can tell you, privately when I talk to my friends, I use language much worse than that. This was purely private communications between friends, between, colleagues, they were letting off steam. I think we should see it as nothing more than that," Rajendra Pachauri, the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told CNN.

In late November, a substantial file including more than 1,000 e-mails either sent from or to members of the University's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in eastern England were allegedly hacked and leaked on the Internet.

They contained language seized upon by climate skeptics who say they offer evidence that scientists have manipulated climate data to exaggerate the threat of global warming.

The affair has been covered extensively in the global press under the moniker, "Climategate."

One e-mail allegedly sent by the head of the CRU, Professor Phil Jones, refers to using "Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years ... to hide the decline."

As one of the world's leading research bodies on climate change, the CRU's research was used in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report released in 2007, which is considered to be the most authoritative report on climate change to date.

Pachauri told CNN there was no way that unreliable climate data could have made its way into the IPCC report.

"There are so many checks and balances in the processes and procedures that we follow at the IPCC, there is not one iota of possibility that something like this would happen," he said.

He added he would not hesitate in using the unit's information in any future IPCC reports.

"Well why not, if they are qualified in professional terms I certainly would," Pachauri said.

"I don't see any reason why they should be excluded. The fact is that their actions, their contributions have been totally above board. And they've been completely objective in what they've carried out. So I don't have any reason whatsoever to leave them out if there's a requirement and they qualify," he added.

Last week, Jones stepped down from his position as head of the CRU while a review is conducted into claims of data tampering.

The e-mails were released just three weeks before the start of the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen where around 100 heads of state are meeting to agree on a new climate deal.

I have a new barometer... my left ankle full of screws..
OOOO i think I should write a song about that...