Chade on 10/3/2008 at 23:05
That sorta puts the cart before the horse ... California was so good at dealing with it's greenhouse gas targets because it had such a strong economy in the first place. AFAIK Arnie was pretty much able to just set the targets, and let California's giant steam-roller economy smash it's way through to achieving them.
Not all other places have that luxury, unfortunately,
Starrfall on 11/3/2008 at 00:04
I make it pretty interesting that five billion dollars worth of research funding (world-wide, I'm assuming) is evidence that global warming is all a lie when just one american electric utility (the 35th largest corporate air polluter in the US, according to wikipedia) had $37,987,000,000 (that's nearly 38 billion) in total assets in 2006.
(
http://www.aep.com/investors/annrep/06annrep/AepAnnRpt2006.pdf) - Page 20.
Nuth on 11/3/2008 at 02:01
But if Miskolczi is correct, the scientific community's thinking will shift eventually. Time will tell, regardless of who has what money.
Pyrian on 11/3/2008 at 02:56
Quote Posted by Nuth
Time will tell...
Time
has told. I've sat here and watched "it's not going to happen" morph into "it's not really happening" morph into "it's not going to get worse".
Well, it did happen, it is happening, and it's going to get worse.
Bathcat on 11/3/2008 at 04:06
I'm curious about the motivations of climate change skeptics -- at least those with nothing at stake financially. I suspect some of them are simply unaware of the robust consensus behind anthropogenic climate change. The National Academies, the (
http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm) APS, and the rest of the scientific establishment assent to this consensus. Last fall I attended a colloquium given by (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu) Nobel Laureate Steve Chu about climate change mitigation; he didn't even bother to address skeptics.
I suspect that other skeptics simply do not believe in a consensual model of science, seeing it as another realm of politics: riven by ideology and not possessing any epistemologically privileged methods of inquiry. This sort of relativism used to be de rigeur on the postmodern left, but now seems to be the province of the American Right -- since, as we know, the brute facts haven't been kind to them recently.
Chade on 11/3/2008 at 07:36
I think that, while the issue has been researched within scientific circles for decades, it has only had massive mainstream attention recently. A lot of people probably find it easy to believe that the evidence supporting global warming is new, and therefore unreliable.
Also: a lot of people know little about (and don't really trust) the scientific process.
Nuth on 11/3/2008 at 09:34
But Miskolczi's and Zagoni's work doesn't deny global warming. It just puts an upper limit of 2-3C from the effect of CO2. If they're wrong the participants in the massive consensus should be able to refute them soon enough.
Jennie&Tim on 11/3/2008 at 14:39
Now isn't this a neat idea: (
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080306223745.htm)
Steel buildings are cheap and common, if the new ones can all be even fairly inefficient solar generators we can get a lot of power without having to dedicate extra land to generate it. And even if the building isn't all steel, steel rooftops are more and more common in my area; we put one on our outbuilding and I see them on homes all the time.
Plus, painting solar cells is just neat. And if it works well in Wales, which I'm told is cloudy and misty, then it should work well here in the cloudy and misty Pacific NW.
Starrfall on 11/3/2008 at 16:34
Quote Posted by Nuth
If they're wrong the participants in the massive consensus should be able to refute them soon enough.
Well then in the meantime I guess the best I can do is refer you to Pascal's Wager and ask for your thoughts.
