hey rational, i started looking through the chrichton article (with an open mind -- trust me i'd love to be convinced that global warming is a hoax as it's no fun to be worried about something so catastrophic). i generally only read articles on the topic that are written by actual climate scientists, but i decided to give this a shot anyway. almost immediately, i was reminded why i generally stick to peer-reviewed science. in the start of the article, crighton says:

"Back in the 90s, if someone said to you, “This population explosion is overstated. In the next hundred years, population will actually decline.” That would contradict what all the environmental groups were saying, what the UN was saying. You would regard such a statement as outrageous.

More or less as you would regard a statement by someone in 2005 that global warming has been overstated.

But in fact, we now know that the hypothetical person in 1995 was right. And we know that there was strong evidence that this was the case going back for twenty years. We just weren’t told about that contradictory evidence, because the conventional wisdom, awesome in its power, kept it from us."

So he implies that the population is now declining, and tries to support this with a chart that shows population growth rate. As I'm sure you know, a declining growth rate is different from a declining population. If our population grew 1% a year in the 80s and .5% per year in the 90s, it's a smaller growth rate but the population is still growing larger.

I read on beyond, but only found crichton taking more and more liberties with data presentation. take for example his chart for global mean temperature 1880-2003 where he blows up the y-axis to go from 0 to 20. if you're going to do that, why not 0 to 100, or -123 to 3280 (after all, the celsius scale was made for the simplicity of working with water and there is no significance to having a chart start at 0 degrees celsius -- that is not absolute zero). scientists present data with a small y-axis so that fluctuations can be seen clearly. it is the correct way to present data as it tells the greatest story about the data. and when (as real scientists say) a 2 degree difference could cause enough sea level rise to cause major flooding, i think we owe it to ourselves to present the data in a way that doesnt discount anything but catastrophic temperature changes.

with regards to the hockey stick theory, crichton writes

Physicist Richard Muller called this result “a shocker…” and he is right. Hans von Storch calls Mann’s study “rubbish.” Both men are staunch advocates of global warming.

The fact that these scientists are willing to throw out a well-recognized piece of data and still believe in global warming says something to me. It says that they are not trying to promote junk science but to get to the truth. As Crichton says, they are staunch advocates of global warming (or I believe he means the theory -- I dont think they're rooting for global warming), and so I will take that as their scientific, and trustworthy, opinion.

alright well i've already gone on too long. i'll leave you with a link that i hope you find interesting that outlines why we should be taking action against climate change even if the evidence isn't 100% certain (applying pascal's wager to climate change)-- http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/pascals-wager-and-climate-change.html

if you'd rather just watch a youtube clip, this hits most of the basics -- http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/pascals-wager-and-climate-change.html

Rick, thanks for the great comment. It’s clear that you’re a thoughtful and thorough thinker; your rhetoric is good, but you could have rebutted with more substance than Tim O’Reilly, right? (“Peer reviewed science”?) Incidentally, I can produce exactly as many peer reviewed scientific reports that support my thesis as you can yours. Boring.

Crichton stated he was exaggerating the graphics to make his point. He made it. You dispute it.

Over population is NOT the catastrophe we were promised. I want my money back!

I do not deny that global warming is occurring. You do deny there is a balance between good and bad attributes of global warming. You choose to believe the efforts to prevent “climate catastrophe” are effective, I choose to believe they’re not. We both believe we can substantiate our beliefs with hard science. This is a sad state, isn't it?

Your grandchildren will think we were stupid for attempting to change climate rather than prepare for the consequences. “You mean they KNEW what was going to happen, and they didn’t prepare?!” (See my "Stop the Tsunamis" post below…)

Rational, what are the problems that you deem most urgent?

I use peer reviewed science to look at the scientific aspects of climate change. The O'Reilly article does not delve into the science, but the reasons for supporting efforts to curb climate change using Pascal's wager as a model. As you might imagine, this is not a topic covered in any peer-reviewed journals.

You wrote, "I can produce exactly as many peer reviewed scientific reports that support my thesis as you can yours. Boring." This simply isn't true. If you choose to disagree with the scientific consensus, you have a right to and I'm interested i what you have to say, but I will not listen to you telling me that there is actually a balance of views on each side. See this article from Science (a peer reviewed journal) for reference -- http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686.

So, again, while I'm happy to hear your point, you must recognize that what I am saying, and what I believe to be true, is what is supported by the science.

Overpopulation -- We're not there yet. Despite what Crichton says (and you still haven't told me why it's okay for him to say that our population is declining), the population is predicted to hit 9 billion in 2040. I don't think this will shut down the world, but it will continue to strain the earths resources -- this is why sustainable living is so important.

Crichton's exaggeration of graphics is a way to distract people that are unaware of the science behind the graphics. His point seems to be that a few degrees isn't a big deal because it looks small when you increase the y-axis. If you are one that is fooled by this, then there is not much else I can say to you.

You wrote, "You do deny there is a balance between good and bad attributes of global warming." I don't know where you got this from. You would be correct to say that I believe the bad outweighs the good.

You wrote, "We both believe we can substantiate our beliefs with hard science." Well we agree that this leaves us in a sad place (please see above again).

Oh and I just glanced at your post on 'Stop the Tsunamis' and realize that I've been wasting my time. You previously seemed to be one interested in attaining knowledge. Now I realize that you're out of touch with reality and just trying to drive your heals into the ground further, no matter how unsettled it is. I will continue to live my life in a sustainable fashion for my grandchildren and for yours, and I hope that enough others do the same so that they might be raised in the same great world we've been blessed to live in.

savee... URGENT PROBLEMS?
Starvation, Disease, & Genocide to name a few. These are real catastrophes THIS MINUTE, not several decades in the future as is global warming.

Rick: “scientific consensus” is an oxymoron. (…the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics.)

You believe that the bad side of global warming outweighs the good… can you even name three positive things about global warming?

Are you challenging me to a contest? It is true I can match every one of your scientific negatives with a scientific positive. I repeat… boring.

My tsunami parallel is logical. Why don’t we bother trying to prevent them, and earthquakes, and volcanoes, and sunspots, and et. al…? It’s because we’re smarter than that. We adapt rather than prevent. Why is global warming different? That’s the one our grandchildren will have to answer… (Politics?)

And in my mind, rational, those problems are not urgent. They are facts of life. There is no way that there will ever be a world free of disease - to hope for one is both delusional and dangerous. Starvation is a result of our innate animal instinct to ensure our survival before others - good luck fighting that. Genocide? Well, that is linked directly to war, which is also linked to our innate animal reactions.

For me, the problems that you list, while important, are far from being urgent because they involve a deeper change than just surface changes that we are capable of making to reduce pollution. If you want to invest your time, energy and feelings into those issues - that's great! I simply find climate and other environmental issues more urgent because we can actually make some lasting changes that (hopefully) will lead to addressing the urgent issues that you reference.

Striving for a world free of starvation and disease is eminently more achievable than dreaming of a world free of climate change… You might as well be trying to change earth’s orbit around the sun.

“Our innate animal instinct (is) to ensure our survival before others”? That sound like remarkably cheap psychology-101 tripe. $29 a month can feed several starving people, or it can dumped into the 401K of some lucky Greenpeace activist!

What is YOUR $29 doing?

let's make this world a better place!
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