http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/160556
"CLIMATE scientists yesterday stunned Britons suffering the coldest winter for 30 years by claiming last month was the hottest January the world has ever seen.The remarkable claim, based on global satellite data, follows Arctic temperatures that brought snow, ice and travel chaos to millions in the UK.At the height of the big freeze, the entire country was blanketed in snow. But Australian weather expert Professor Neville Nicholls, of Monash University in Melbourne, said yesterday: “January, according to satellite data, was the hottest January we’ve ever seen."
Wow!.
Global warming must be real! We really need to takes some serious steps to curtail this planetary heat wave, which threatens to cover so much of the earth in snow and ice!!!
This warming trend that has brought record high global temperatures this past month, and year (indeed this past decade - even though it has been admitted by the lead 'scientist' that there has been no significant warming in the past 15 years...), and record snowfalls to so many areas on the planet, must be STOPPED!!!
The only way I can see to do it effectively is to cap CO2 emissions, or at least introduce a trade system whereby heavily polluting industries can buy 'carbon credits' from lesser polluters so they can keep pumping out their normal amounts whilst passing the costs onto the stupid consumers.
Funny, but I don't see anything about how much higher the temps were. And I don't see anything about which data was used, or how much it would cost if a private person were to try and recreate the data. Because I just did a search on my local area of San Diego. The data I wanted, from just three stations in my area, would cost me nearly $700 to obtain.
When will the madness end? We are burning up, even as we are trying so desperately to keep warm.
Our coastal cities are being flooded as we type - so 'they' say.
Nero fiddled as Rome burned. Are we doing the same?
Or, did he know something we have yet to grasp?
Maybe we simply need to live and adapt with an ever changing planet, instead of trying to be control-freaks that try to control even Mother Nature.
Massive moisture-driven extreme precipitation during warmest winter in the satellite record — and the deniers say it disproves (!) climate science
Since you asked.
Both my parents died of smoking-related disease, one at 54, the other at 65. I've never smoked, except for the half-dozen Crooks cigars I was required to burn up during my frat-initiation hazing.
Smoking is bad for you. What a revelation. But if an adult wants to use a legal product, I'm not going to pass judgment.
I am libertarian when it comes to personal responsibility & freedom of choice. Alcohol is bad for you, too. So is speeding. But we can't ban driving without some issues. People make bad choices. Unless you are willing to usurp free will & take charge of all choices, they will continue to do so.
Less than the blink of an eye in climate time. And you know it.
The question was were the risks of tobacco grossly overblown by the scientific community?
Also psycho didn't seem to think there was much to do about second hand smoke.
So you're OK with allowing an informed adult to decide to do things even if bad for them. So do I. Where I draw the line is when someone *chooses* to do something that is detrimental to the health of others.
So is the danger of second hand smoke grossly overblown and if so should people be forced to be subjected to it against their will? You know like waitresses in a resturant or even someone's own children in their own apartment?
As an aside we seemed to have a Deja Vu moment in this thread.
'Grossly' and 'overblown' are subjective terms with no application to science. Having said that, the risks associated with smoking have been identified and well-quantified. Approximately 5% of individuals who smoke for a decade or more develop lung cancer. 10-15% of lung cancers occur in indviduals who have never smoked. A much higher percentage of smokers than non-smokers develop emphysema and/or chronic bronchitis. There appear to be host-specific factors, as yet not fully identified, which strongly influence the likelihood that either will develop. The incidence of lung cancer has been on the decline as the prevalence of smoking has declined.
The risks associated with second-hand smoke exposure are lower than those of direct inhalation (something I'm sure you already know), approaching those of direct inhalation only in non-smoking workers in heavy smoke environments such as unventilated bars, but dropping off dramatically as the degree of exposure over time lessens. The unstratified risk of lung cancer is 20-30% greater in non-smokers with exposure to second-hand smoke than those without such exposure. I'm sure you've seen it, but for those who haven't, here's the NIH/NCI FAQ. The standard line is 'there is no known safe level of exposure to second-hand smoke' but as with all things in biological systems we can only identify relative risks and the relative risk of second-hand smoke exposure I'm willing to guess is less than commuting by car in an urban environment 10 miles twice daily for 10 years. Should we ban driving because some people get killed? Maybe. They *chose* to drive, after all. Every risk has to be placed in the context of lives being lived.
Emphysema is seen in non-smokers, too. The risk of emphysema from second-hand smoke is less well-studied, but would logically correlate with degree & duration of exposure.
Obviously, I grew up in a home with smoking parents. Would I intentionally expose my children to second-hand smoke? No. Do I advise smokers of the risks they run? Absolutely. But I don't make those choices for them and I do not believe the state should have the power to tell parents they cannot smoke in their own homes.
I forget where I was going with this. Actually no I don't, I do have a point although it is somewhat pedantic.
Basically Psycho made a somewhat different analogy between pro-tobacco and anti-AGW than the one I’ve been making. He stated that the AGW crowd has “grossly overblown” the consequences of AGW just as the anti-tobacco crowd had "grossly overblown" the evidence against 2nd hand smoke.
As you say "grossly overblown" is a subjective term but that doesn't mean it’s totally unquantifiable. Certainly if I had swagged some numbers for second hand smoke from memory and happened to say the risk was 40% greater rather than the 20-30% greater that you mention I don't think anyone would say that I had "grossly overblown" the risk. However if I claimed that the number was 70% then the term "grossly overblown" might in fact be applicable.
The bottom line is that I see no evidence that scientists had "grossly overblown" the risk of second hand smoke in the anti-tobacco case and therefore it doesn't necessarily follow that scientists have "grossly overblown" the consequences in the pro-AGW case.
This is somewhat a case of semantics but I just want to illustrate how folks will go out of their way to make an argument. By making a conclusion dependent on a premise you can disprove the conclusion simply by disproving the premise.
The thing is that one could certainly make the argument that AGW proponents have “grossly overblown” the consequences of AGW without making the argument contingent on some supposed anti-tobacco argument. And actually if done in such a way it’s far more difficult for me to disprove.
So why make the analogy in the first place? That’s really the point I’m trying to make here. Why would someone bend over backwards to include an unnecessary premise to a conclusion that they wish to make when their argument has a much better chance of standing up on it’s own without the premise?
I’m not sure, perhaps psycho can shed some light but my guess is that I have (successfully I might add) been making the analogy between the *tactics* of pro-tobacco and anti-AGW and psycho wanted to incorporate some part of my argument (no matter how tenuously related) as a basis for his conclusion thereby conferring more weight upon his conclusion.
Of course the end result is that his premise is flawed as I’ve shown which therefore negates his conclusion but I do find it amusing that he felt compelled to incorporate elements of my (successful) argument into his (unsuccessful) argument.
Of course “imitation is the sincerest of flattery” so I guess I should be flattered.
It's hard to know whether the 20-30% increase in relative risk from second-hand smoke is exagerated or not without delving into the specifics of the articles underpinning those numbers. It's all in the minutiae of definitions & methods.
What is the threshhold degree and duration of exposure for any detectable increased risk? At what degree and duration of exposure is relative risk further increased? And by how much? Is the relationship linear? Is there a 'dose-response' curve? And statistical significance only increases the odds that a relationship exists. Statistical significance doesn't confirm relationships, mostly because not all variables can be completely controlled.
I personally disagree with the NIH/NCS using the term 'causes' in the manner they do when, to be intellectually honest, they should be using the phrase 'increases the risk of'. But the NIH/NCS aren't completely free of bias - they do have a 'mission' and they are a creature of government bureaucracy.
I've said it before, but: Correlation (association) is not causation. Statistical significance, again, proves nothing - it just increases the odds of a relationship being 'not due to chance alone'. It also says nothing about the nature of the relationship.
Speaking of tactics, one of my replies that got swallowed up in the Great Forum Crash of 2010 dealt with that.
Al Gore and at least some of the key pro-AGW scientists refuse to debate or engage skeptics. The reasoning I've seen, put forth by their defenders in the press and in blogs, is that to do so would confer upon skeptics a legitimacy they don't deserve. Any agreement to debate is a loss before any debate occurs, so why debate? Just sharing a stage or podium with a skeptic concedes too much, if only symbolically. We'll just retreat to the tower and wait them out.
Talk about tactics, well those are the tactics of the pro-AGW contingent - refuse to accept that there is anything to discuss. 'You have nothing to say, so I'm not going to give you any satisfaction.' It's what they call 'denial' turned inside out - the Royal Treatment, if you will. It's pretty much more of the same sort of thing Mann & Jones were doing all along, if privately, as evidenced by the emails they've conceded they authored.
You can "prove" that dice are loaded, you can "prove" that someone is counting cards at blackjack.
The two premises of AGW are sufficiently "proven" that ...
The reality of these key points is not just our opinion. The national academies of science of 32 nations, and every major scientific organization in the United States whose members include climate experts, have issued statements endorsing these points. The entire faculty of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M as well as the Climate System Science group at the University of Texas have issued their own statements endorsing these views (http://atmo.tamu.edu/weather-and-climate/climate-change-statement; http://www.ig.utexas.edu/jsg/css/statement.html). In fact, to the best of our knowledge, there are no climate scientists in Texas who disagree with the mainstream view of climate science.
And ...
We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. That research has been subject to peer review and publication, providing traceability of the evidence and support for the scientific method. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/news/latest/uk-science-statement.html
I could go on and on and list scientific organization after organization whose published position statement affirms the two tenents of AGW. On the other side there are admittedly a handful of credible individual scientists that doubt one or even both of the two tenents of AGW which are 1) the planet is warming and 2) human activity is a significant contributor to that warming.
There is no doubt by any reasoned or reasonable person. There is only denial by those whose real objection is to the politics of potential remedies.
Not true. You don't understand the concept of statistical significance.
There is no reasonable doubt that the planet is warming and that human activity is a significant contribution to that warming.
There is some basis for this view. Even if one concedes that man is the principle cause of the recently observed warming, however, 'human activities' is a rather broad phrase, one that is difficult at best to use as the basis for concrete remedies. We have a long way to go before we can be confident that any proposed remedy is 1) feasible and 2) will achieve some as yet undetermined 'ideal' set point. Much as I've always believed on a gut level that there was no challenge man was incapable of meeting (I grew up in the decade of Mercury, Gemini & Apollo), I don't believe we have sufficient knowledge or technology to take on climate.
I suppose it would be nice if the evidence for CO2 as the principle cause of global warming were as tight as that for fingerprint & DNA matches, but it isn't. Not even close. By orders of magnitude. So that's pretty much not relevant.
That would still leave us with a bit of a problem, though. One that will be a bit more difficult to solve than the speed & angle of attack necessary to achieve orbital insertion around some distant planet. Forgetting completely about any politics.
On the pro-AGW side we have *every single* scientific organization on the planet, 99.9%+ of all credible scientists and the entirety of the peer reviewed scientific literature.
On the anti-AGW side there are a handful of credible scientists, a noticeable portion of the blogosphere and right wing talk radio.
What a time for the forums to explode. Serves me right for bothering to link sources that will probably be ignored...
Short version follows:
Arctic ice. I know, it's long. All you idiots yammering over the disappearance need to read it though. Massive hole in the "established" science on the topic.
Mumbles!
Stop picking on poly sci majors and go after Richard Lindzen or something. Trashing them for talking about poly sci topics(AGW has like 20 billion just in US government funding behind it regardless of your refusal to admit it) is low.
Stop using GISTEMP. Seriously, even Jones doesn't like it, and his numbers are just as cooked. Try these instead. They aren't being manually altered, and show the actual trends.
For those of you confused by this Mumbles directed information, both my reply and his post were et. Hopefully, it makes sense to him. Well, ok, I'm not really hopeful, more like resigned but too stupid to stop posting, but humor is the only thing left to live for so I have to do something.
Lastly, as there seems to be some serious confusion here, usually because you're idiots that don't know what you're talking about, some minor clarification. Apparently, no one bothered to read the transcripts, so no one knows what "statistically significant global warming" means. No Mumbles, it's not because they picked the time frame of 1995-2009. Read it. For those of you too fucking lazy to be wasting our oxygen supply, it's because warming trends of equal significance to even the high estimates of the current one just happen to predate industrialization.
I also read the transcript for the hearing as well. I know I'm supposed to be a redneck conservative that only reads blogs(I'm not real sure rednecks actually have computers to start with, but I'll work with it anyway), but this particularly stupid back and forth just bugged me. Especially since a certain someone, frequently named, persisted in posting more visuals to GISTEMP...
New material, smoking nonsense.
I'll explain why you look like an idiot, along with most of the adult population. Non-smokers have a 1.4%(males)-1.3%(females) chance of developing lung cancer before they kick the bucket. How do you feel about that 20-30% increase now?
Anyone who actually knows what they're talking about(which should include congress and other legislative bodies when debating a subject and writing laws in regards to it) isn't going to get excited over second hand smoke. It's not even a tenth the concern that first hand smoke is, that only makes it up around 17% among males. Females, who more commonly smoke in a less irresponsible manner, are under 12%.
It's more in line with things like drowning in your bathtub than it is a threat to public safety. Instead, they've made it illegal in many states for people to allow smoking on their own property based on a cancer scare of mythical proportions, the food in those restaurants and clubs has far more of an impact on both cancer rates and heart disease. At most they should have mandated common sense ventilation practices(something any business with a brain already has), which negates the already minor risk almost entirely.
I know, sob stories galore, so and so died, so and so has asthma. Shit happens. To everyone. If there's anyone out there that doesn't have a relatively close relative that went or is currently going that way, lucky them.
Well, at least you've gotten it down to the nubby nitty gritty: that solitary word 'significant'. Pretty much everything hinges on that.
A reasonable exposition, even though 7 years old: link
But, doesn't that put it alarmingly close to 1.7-1.8%?
That is truly shocking!
First off I'm not going to bother trying to totally recreate the past.
Try this instead http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-107.
B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
Actually, you're the one who looks more like an idiot. Your views on smoking are extremely narrowminded and you aren't seeing the bigger broader picture. You're limiting the dangers of smoking to just lung cancer. Smoking is known to cause heart disease, lung diseases, lung infections (pneumonia and bronchitis), birth defects/prematurity, SIDS, etc. You can't simply look at one danger of smoking and claim that it is miniscule. You have to look at the sum of all those dangers and say whether or not it is dangerous. Sure a 1% increase for lung cancer is one thing, but what about another 1% increase from all the other dangers? You'll soon realize that it can really add up and really affect the population as a whole. There is a reason why it is a big killer in the USA.
Let's also not forget that even if you don't have any lung cancer risk, second hand smoke can still trigger other diseases when exposed even briefly to it. The CDC has reported how even just a brief exposure to second hand smoke with someone who has heart risks can trigger a heart attack.
http://www.cdc.gov/features/heartmonth/
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/health_effects/heart_disease/iom_report/index.htm
Second hand smoke is dangerous. Obviously not nearly as dangerous as first-hand, but it can still be very dangerous. What's to protect the baby in the car with a parent smoking in the front seat? A baby's lungs are still developing and are much more prone to lung diseases from second hand smoke.
You then go and compare food in clubs to secondhand smoke? Wow...first off, the food is only hurting the person eating it, not the person next to the person eating it.
Also, most states that have bans from smoking in restaurants and bars already previously had regulations on ventilation and smoking areas. Sit-in restaurants were already required to have seperate ventilation systems for smoking and non-smoking areas. It was then banned altogether in many states because you lose that seperation in bar areas.
Finally, I don't know of any states that prohibit an individual from smoking on their own home property. That would be pretty big for anti-tobacco to accomplish that. That is the tobacco industry's last sanctuary so-to-speak.
http://www.mindfully.org/Industry/Philip-Morris-Czech-Study.htm
You guys remember this? Philip Morris did a study for the Czech government and determined:
"Public finance saved between 943 mil. CZK and 1,193 mil. CZK (realistic estimate:1,193 mil. CZK) from reduced health-care costs, savings on pensions and housing costs for the elderly -- all related to the early mortality of smokers. Among the positive effects, excise tax, VAT and health care cost savings due to early mortality are the most important."
emphasis added.
The tobacco company points out the benefits of a smoking population to the state - namely no one who smokes gets old enough to become a burden to said state.
Surreal...
Maybe in 50 years or so the Heartland Institute will come out with a study showing the benefits of AGW to the state.
@Daiwa, my reply to your 'refusal to debate' comment got eaten, but the premise was:
1. Both sides have policy hacks or spin doctors or lobbyists
2. Policy hacks generally have no concern for the truth, and will alter, erase, or manipulate data to fit their agenda - it's Frankfurt's On Bullshit writ political. Swift Boat Veterans For A Warmer America
3. The majority of research, and scientists collecting it, is on the AGW side of the table
4. Almost all of the people offering debate on the skepticism side are policy hacks, or at least aren't considered climate scientists
Can we agree on these four things?
If so, then it makes sense for spin doctors to debate each other. If neither party is concerned with the truth then you win when you are the better bullshitter. I think that's fair.
What doesn't make sense is for a scientist of any discipline to debate a prepared lobbyist, because the scientist not only cares about what he is saying but probably has an objective view of reality. The lobbyist is paid to be persuasively subjective, and truth or fiction are equally valid tools in the arsenal.
How do you 'win' a meaningful debate with someone who doesn't care about the truth when you do?
The answer, of course, is that you have lost before the curtain comes up.
If you really wanted to bring the scientists out of their shell to talk you would have to show fundamentally sound research which differs significantly from what we already have. That happens in peer-reviewed journals every day - it's how science works.
That's sorta the problem, no? Sure you can cherry-pick and fudge the stats and put your thumb on the scale to manipulate the data we already have, and actually there have been a few valid methodology criticisms mixed into all the spin, but what else have you got?
Seems to me what you are missing is the people who collected and interpreted the data in the first place. Get some of those and we can actually have a 'debate'
Kestrel, your point 3 is one of those examples of "truth in repetition". No matter how many times this lie is repeated, it remains a lie.
This is old news:
http://infowars.net/articles/august2007/300807Warming.htm
Another thing that Climategate has exposed is the corruption of the peer-review process. Science should be about discovering the truth, not federal grants and political correctness.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/24/the_fix_is_in_99280.html
I know, I know, these article will convince no one and the author's credibility will be destroyed. Enjoy.
DJ,
This is a perfect example of the disconnect, thank you.
1. You cite a never-published paper by an endocrinologist as your first source.
2. Before the paper was publically available in 'pre-published' form it was used at length in a post by good ol' Christopher Monckton without citation. You remember Monckton, right? I wonder how he got an early peek at the galleys.
3. Schulte took his 32 'dissenting papers' from Benny Peiser's list (down to the same citation errors), which was also never published, and which after massive ciriticism from scientists actually had to be reduced by Peiser to a single non-peer-reviewed paper written for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin.
4. Oreske wrote the original survey which has been used widely as the basis for "consensus" narrative. She rebutts Schulte here.
A nice example of her take on things:
"In the original AAAS talk on which the paper was based, and in various interviews and conversations after, I repeated pointed out that very few papers analyzed said anything explicit at all about the consensus position. This was actually a very important result, for the following reason. Biologists today never write papers in which they explicitly say "we endorse evolution". Earth scientists never say "we explicitly endorse plate tectonics." This is because these things are now taken for granted. So when we read these papers and observed this pattern, we took this to be very significant. We realized that the basic issue was settled, and we observed that scientists had moved on to discussing details of the problem, mostly tempo and mode issues: how fast, how soon, in what manner, with what impacts, etc."
Also good:
"The blog reports describe Mr. Schulte as a medical researcher. As a historian of science I am trained to analyze and understand scientific arguments, their development, their progress, etc., and my specific expertise is in the history of earth science. This past summer I was invited to teach a graduate intensive course at Vienna International Summer University, Vienna Circle Institute, on Consensus in Science. I do not know why a medical researcher would feel qualified to undertake an analysis of consensus in the earth scientific literature."
Keep in mind that we aren't even talking about the science - just whether a consensus exists, and even here we have a perfect microscopic example of Research vs. Spin.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
