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dvelasco68 wrote:

Science is not a matter of democratic decisions.

If you would give the american people the choice of driving a Porsche and being killed in an accident tomorrow, or drive a bicycle and live for 100 years, most of them would take the Porsche.

chacha wrote:

Science is not a matter of democratic decisions.

If you would give the american people the choice of driving a Porsche and being killed in an accident tomorrow, or drive a bicycle and live for 100 years, most of them would take the Porsche.

You were far better off without the analogy.

Zagar wrote:

unipres wrote:

Zagar wrote:

Most of the scientists arguing against it are funded by the companies who don't like the message.

Zagar,

I'm not saying your wrong here but I'm not willing to accept a broad statment like this from either side of the debate without some evidence to back it up. Please send me some sort of reference. I've been seeing the accusations from both sides about the money trails with no good evidence to date. (exception Al Gore and T-Boon pickens both have significant $'s riding on their message)

This evidence should not be a one off case either since you say "most" and they should not be opinion pieces but rather something with sources.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Glob...

Check out the Global Climate Coalition funded by Industry to refute the science of global warming. backed by the companies with the most (in their view at the time) to lose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Climate_Coa...

Industry funding scientists to refute the accepted view - its a strategy employed by the tabacco companies in the past to naysay the link between smoking and cancer.

I am not arguing that there is a lot of money riding on climate change - some of the worst polluters are now investing in technologies which in the future will make a huge differnece. One of the original members of the GCC is even getting in on the action:

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/07/14/14green...

The article below is very interesting - it highlights that policy makers may ultimately have little to do with the outcome - and that industry will bring in the cavalry. Not because they really care - I mean a corporation does not feel sentiment - but the $$$$$$$$$ trail is leading them on and spurring them to action :)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05Gr...

Very interesting articles indeed. Unfortunately, you claimed, "Most of the scientists arguing against it are funded by the companies who don't like the message. " and then proceed to send me a links with a bunch of skeptics which fit squarely in the "well duh" group of people you'd expect to be skeptical. How does this establish that most of the scientists who are also skeptical are paid by these people?

Now if someone were to provide a list of accredited and well known scientists who were skeptics and show a money trail that "most" of them were funded by people you list in these articles, then you would have something. At this point, it's your own conjecture that you state as fact. Why do I point this out? Well because, the conjecture in the discussion is overwhelming and prevents both sides from having any meaningful dialect. It drives me nuts when I read articles on either side of the debate that make totally unsupported claims just because they heard it somewhere else before. So many articles, journals and statements from the global warming believer community have been discredited lately, one does not know what to believe. I can't buy into the idea that it's just a skeptic smear campaign because the errors, mis-statement, and just plain lies are so egregious. Unfortunately, even though, I'm somewhat in the middle of the road, I can still make an even more effective argument that the money trail is leading the "Green" movement. I would not however, state that as fact.

I'm sorry you got caught in a bit of a rant. All I really want is to get to the truth of the matter.

You really must not be American....

Regardless of the subject, that's not the way it works in 'America'....

You can NOT dictate to people what they should and should not believe in , or vote for, or how they should vote....

What you propose is a dictatorship, or at least a class based system, where 'haves' get to dictate to 'have nots' ('have' being money, intelligence, or power... you choose)...

This is 'EXACTLY' what our founding fathers worked to prevent, when they framed the constitution of the U.S.A.

Don't like it.... your S.O.L.

chacha wrote:

Walter Russell Mead wrote:

Science is not a matter of democratic decisions.

If you would give the american people the choice of driving a Porsche and being killed in an accident tomorrow, or drive a bicycle and live for 100 years, most of them would take the Porsche.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/7885...

This scam goes right up to the Pentagon!

dvelasco68 wrote:

You really must not be American....

Regardless of the subject, that's not the way it works in 'America'....

You can NOT dictate to people what they should and should not believe in , or vote for, or how they should vote....

What you propose is a dictatorship, or at least a class based system, where 'haves' get to dictate to 'have nots' ('have' being money, intelligence, or power... you choose)...

This is 'EXACTLY' what our founding fathers worked to prevent, when they framed the constitution of the U.S.A.

Don't like it.... your S.O.L.

chacha wrote:

Walter Russell Mead wrote:

Science is not a matter of democratic decisions.

If you would give the american people the choice of driving a Porsche and being killed in an accident tomorrow, or drive a bicycle and live for 100 years, most of them would take the Porsche.

lolwut? How do you get from a statement of fact, "Science is not a matter of democratic decisions," to dictatorship? Science is facts, and facts are certainly not open to debate. facts simply are. You're confusing science with politics. Science deals in facts, politics deals in opinion. When political tactics (like marketing and PR, i.e. lying) get mixed up in science we all lose. Unfortunately, this has already happened with global warming. Mainly on the side against it because the science doesn't agree with their economic interests, which is to continue the status quo. Ever notice that all these bloggers and "news" people don't actually have a science background? That's your first clue that they're full of crap. Also, Al Gore shouldn't try to speak authoritatively because he doesn't understand the science well enough so he ends up helping the people who would trade short term profits for long term welfare for the planet's people (especially poor 3rd world peeps).

oh, and chaca, your analogy was terrible.

Ice cores show a level of melting in the past 20 years that has not occurred in the past 11,000 years. There's a race to get old cores before they've melted so that the historical record is not permanently lost. 5,000 species a year gone forever, the 6th greatest extinction, and probably the first great extinction due to a single species.

Another blow the the global warming/climate change scam. It looks like even more homoginized data has slipped through the pure as the driven snow hands of the global warming elites.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/...

HEEman wrote:

Another blow the the global warming/climate change scam. It looks like even more homoginized data has slipped through the pure as the driven snow hands of the global warming elites.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/...

lol, you should read the end of the article... "It is important to keep this in perspective, however. This dramatic revision of the estimated impact of urbanisation on temperatures in China does not change the global picture of temperature trends. There is plenty of evidence of global warming, not least from oceans far from urban influences. A review of recent studies published online in December by David Parker of the Met Office concludes that, even allowing for Jones's new data, "global near-surface temperature trends have not been greatly affected by urban warming trends."

Keenan accepts that his allegations do not on their own change the global picture. But he told the Guardian: "My interest in all this arises from concern about research integrity, rather than about global warming per se. Jones knew there were serious problems with the Chinese research, yet continued to rely upon the research in his work, including allowing it to be cited in the IPCC report."

or, in other words, there was some sloppy science but the new information doesn't change the fact that the earth is warming (and we're at least in part to blame).

Supramark,

Do you have problems with implicit and explicit statements... do you not understand the idea of "in context" and "out of context" statments?

Are you not American either?....

Basically chacha is calling Americans idiots (for wanting to choose a Porsche over a bicycle), and explicitly states that they would likely choose a quick death over a long life - over a Porsche...

The subject is that of "Decisions", and "in context", chacha implicitly states that scientists are above democratic decisions "to lofty", and lowly "Americans" are "too stupid" to make their own...

On the bright-side selective reading is a strength that I grant you do possess...

supamark wrote:

lolwut? How do you get from a statement of fact, "Science is not a matter of democratic decisions," to dictatorship?...

chacha wrote:

Science is not a matter of democratic decisions.

If you would give the american people the choice of driving a Porsche and being killed in an accident tomorrow, or drive a bicycle and live for 100 years, most of them would take the Porsche.

Just a thought, but it occurs to me that most of the ice on our planet lies near the poles. If this melts, it effectively results in the transfer of a huge mass of water into the seas, and a rise in sea level around the equator (and everywhere else of course) This would increase the moment of inertia of the earth and slow down its rotation.

Not by much of course. My back of an envelope calculation gives me about a second on the day, but there are major simplifications involved and I'd say its an order of magnitude rather than an accurate figure. Nevertheless it shoud be measurable.

There are other effects which cause the earth to slow down in all probability, mainly the moon and the effect of tidal friction, but these are calculable, and can be allowed for.

If the slowdown is greater than these effects can explain, then perhaps this can be taken as an indication that significant melting is indeed occurring, and we can hopefully forget arguments about whether glaciers are smaller now than they were fifty yars ago etc.

I have no axe to grind here, by the way. I merely suggest a gross measurement by which we can estimate whether melting on a significant scale is occurring or not.

The Arctic's floating ice melting does not rise sea level. That's why you more about Greenland when it comes to sea level rise.

I ignored arctic ice for that reason. Just lumped greenland and the antarctic land area and assumed about 2km of ice over the lot.

I told you it was a rough estimate!

Haven't decided what its effect - if any - on the tilt is likely to be. That might be an interesting one to consider!

Tec wrote:

Just a thought, but it occurs to me that most of the ice on our planet lies near the poles. If this melts, it effectively results in the transfer of a huge mass of water into the seas, and a rise in sea level around the equator (and everywhere else of course) This would increase the moment of inertia of the earth and slow down its rotation.

Not by much of course. My back of an envelope calculation gives me about a second on the day, but there are major simplifications involved and I'd say its an order of magnitude rather than an accurate figure. Nevertheless it shoud be measurable.

There are other effects which cause the earth to slow down in all probability, mainly the moon and the effect of tidal friction, but these are calculable, and can be allowed for.

If the slowdown is greater than these effects can explain, then perhaps this can be taken as an indication that significant melting is indeed occurring, and we can hopefully forget arguments about whether glaciers are smaller now than they were fifty yars ago etc.

I have no axe to grind here, by the way. I merely suggest a gross measurement by which we can estimate whether melting on a significant scale is occurring or not.

So are you claiming that if the day were 1 second longer it will add up to more heating? Last I checked the time keepers at NIST add a leap second or so every few years.

the one thing i hate is the politicalization of science.

this damn thing has turned into a religion for people, and will do anything to further their beliefs. all those grants have bribed the scientists to twist data to get funding, who have turned into prostitutes.

they have put a big smear on science. they should go to jail.

dvelasco68 wrote:

Supramark,

Do you have problems with implicit and explicit statements... do you not understand the idea of "in context" and "out of context" statments?

Are you not American either?....

Basically chacha is calling Americans idiots (for wanting to choose a Porsche over a bicycle), and explicitly states that they would likely choose a quick death over a long life - over a Porsche...

The subject is that of "Decisions", and "in context", chacha implicitly states that scientists are above democratic decisions "to lofty", and lowly "Americans" are "too stupid" to make their own...

On the bright-side selective reading is a strength that I grant you do possess...

supamark wrote:

lolwut? How do you get from a statement of fact, "Science is not a matter of democratic decisions," to dictatorship?...

chacha wrote:

Science is not a matter of democratic decisions.

If you would give the american people the choice of driving a Porsche and being killed in an accident tomorrow, or drive a bicycle and live for 100 years, most of them would take the Porsche.

lol you do you have a problem with reading comprehension? I think you do. I was speaking to YOU, not chaca (except that last sentence that was apart from the rest mentioning how bad his analogy is)... and you're crazy statement about dictatorships re: his statement about science ≠ dem. decisions. why do you think I included your statement as the first one? also, how does whether or not I live in America (I do, btw, and have for my entire 42+ years since birth) have to do with anything?

so, go back and re-read my response keeping in mind that I AM SPEAKING DIRECTLY TO *YOU*

also, Chaca explicity states that science is not something you vote on - not democratic decisions. science is about objective facts, not subjective opinons and popularity. his analogy was a (poor) way of saying americans choose short term gratification over long term happiness and had nothing to do w/ the prior sentence.

Jesus F'in Christ is it too much to ask for someone to actually read AND comprehend before running their mouth? also, it isn't supRamark - I'm not into Toyotas...

Last edited Tue, 02 Feb 2010, 8:13pm by supamark

lol supamark. you are cool.

eeshock wrote:

lol supamark. you are cool.

lol, like the other side of the pillow... ;)

unipres wrote:

Zagar wrote:

unipres wrote:

Zagar wrote:

Most of the scientists arguing against it are funded by the companies who don't like the message.

Zagar,

I'm not saying your wrong here but I'm not willing to accept a broad statment like this from either side of the debate without some evidence to back it up. Please send me some sort of reference. I've been seeing the accusations from both sides about the money trails with no good evidence to date. (exception Al Gore and T-Boon pickens both have significant $'s riding on their message)

This evidence should not be a one off case either since you say "most" and they should not be opinion pieces but rather something with sources.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Glob...

Check out the Global Climate Coalition funded by Industry to refute the science of global warming. backed by the companies with the most (in their view at the time) to lose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Climate_Coa...

Industry funding scientists to refute the accepted view - its a strategy employed by the tabacco companies in the past to naysay the link between smoking and cancer.

I am not arguing that there is a lot of money riding on climate change - some of the worst polluters are now investing in technologies which in the future will make a huge differnece. One of the original members of the GCC is even getting in on the action:

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/07/14/14green...

The article below is very interesting - it highlights that policy makers may ultimately have little to do with the outcome - and that industry will bring in the cavalry. Not because they really care - I mean a corporation does not feel sentiment - but the $$$$$$$$$ trail is leading them on and spurring them to action :)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05Gr...

Very interesting articles indeed. Unfortunately, you claimed, "Most of the scientists arguing against it are funded by the companies who don't like the message. " and then proceed to send me a links with a bunch of skeptics which fit squarely in the "well duh" group of people you'd expect to be skeptical. How does this establish that most of the scientists who are also skeptical are paid by these people?

Now if someone were to provide a list of accredited and well known scientists who were skeptics and show a money trail that "most" of them were funded by people you list in these articles, then you would have something. At this point, it's your own conjecture that you state as fact. Why do I point this out? Well because, the conjecture in the discussion is overwhelming and prevents both sides from having any meaningful dialect. It drives me nuts when I read articles on either side of the debate that make totally unsupported claims just because they heard it somewhere else before. So many articles, journals and statements from the global warming believer community have been discredited lately, one does not know what to believe. I can't buy into the idea that it's just a skeptic smear campaign because the errors, mis-statement, and just plain lies are so egregious. Unfortunately, even though, I'm somewhat in the middle of the road, I can still make an even more effective argument that the money trail is leading the "Green" movement. I would not however, state that as fact.

I'm sorry you got caught in a bit of a rant. All I really want is to get to the truth of the matter.

Firstly I provided one link - to Wikipedia outlining the Global Climate Coalition and their involvement in trying to debunk the evidence of climate change.

A link (below) to the scientists in the employ of the GCC states that the findings (in favour of climate change) were ignored because it went against the message they were attempting to disseminate.

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/04/27/g...

And I know you don't believe much of what you read from posted links - and can say that the links are biased......and FWIW many sources are biased. But sorting out the BS from the truth is something that each person has to do for themselves. Organisations like the New York Times have a code of ethics for the reporting of news, and this says that they should always validate their sources, and should never knowingly mislead their readers. That is why the articles I posted came from what many would consider a reputable source.

I just wonder how the polititians in Europe are going to sell to the public that the still will have to pay all the taxes and extra costs that were introduced based on the Eco and CO2 fairytales of the IPCC..... and a lot of companies/ organisations that make big money of the whole scam.

I was impressed with the sage advice given for a totally tranperant "do-over" here:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010...

Supramark,

Have you read my sig? no, you probably haven't, because again you are the master of "out of context", while you have every right to rant, at least from where I sit here in America, you typically pick on a single sentence, such as chacha's first sentence and make it all about that...

I on the other hand was talking about his entire post as a whole...

"If you would give the American people the choice"...

That's what makes America so wonderful... You do have the choice, "land of the free and home of the brave" insert my opinion: for the most part...

"Science is not a matter of democratic decisions" - what I read based upon the entire post and thread: We should use it (science) as a means to push forward our agenda, and force people to do what they are unwilling to do, because we are smarter and above them, and we know better...

How do I come to the above thoughts, by reading this entire thread, and disseminating all the points of view... I am also analyzing human nature when coming to my conclusions, for which your passive aggressive behavior could be turned into volumes...

But again, you have the right to display your thoughts and beliefs, just as I do...

supamark wrote:

chacha wrote:

Science is not a matter of democratic decisions.

If you would give the american people the choice of driving a Porsche and being killed in an accident tomorrow, or drive a bicycle and live for 100 years, most of them would take the Porsche.

lol you do you have a problem with reading comprehension? I think you do. I was speaking to YOU, not chaca (except that last sentence that was apart from the rest mentioning how bad his analogy is)......

dvelasco68 wrote:

Supramark,

Have you read my sig? no, you probably haven't, because again you are the master of "out of context", while you have every right to rant, at least from where I sit here in America, you typically pick on a single sentence, such as chacha's first sentence and make it all about that...

I on the other hand was talking about his entire post as a whole...

"If you would give the American people the choice"...

That's what makes America so wonderful... You do have the choice, "land of the free and home of the brave" insert my opinion: for the most part...

"Science is not a matter of democratic decisions" - what I read based upon the entire post and thread: We should use it (science) as a means to push forward our agenda, and force people to do what they are unwilling to do, because we are smarter and above them, and we know better...

How do I come to the above thoughts, by reading this entire thread, and disseminating all the points of view... I am also analyzing human nature when coming to my conclusions, for which your passive aggressive behavior could be turned into volumes...

But again, you have the right to display your thoughts and beliefs, just as I do...

supamark wrote:

chacha wrote:

Science is not a matter of democratic decisions.

If you would give the american people the choice of driving a Porsche and being killed in an accident tomorrow, or drive a bicycle and live for 100 years, most of them would take the Porsche.

lol you do you have a problem with reading comprehension? I think you do. I was speaking to YOU, not chaca (except that last sentence that was apart from the rest mentioning how bad his analogy is)......

dude, the first sentence is the only part where your comment applies. the example/anecdote he gave was about americans being short sighted live for today and screw tomorrow people on the whole. that has nothing to do with democracy. oh, and try to get the nickname correct - supamark, not supra... I ain't a Toyota.

kthxbye

Last edited Wed, 03 Feb 2010, 6:31pm by supamark

And that they shouldn't be given the freedom to choose...aka Democracy (implied: they are too dumb to be given the right to choose)...

Science on the other hand is above democratic decisions...

If chacha wasn't comparing the two (drawing some analogy) he would not have included them both in one 'very short' post...

Au contraire, you are taking the post out of context by looking only at the part that you wish to focus on...

whether or not my analysis is consistent with what chacha meant to say, it's what's contained in his post... implicitly and explicitly... From my point of view...

supamark wrote:

dude, the first sentence is the only part where your comment applies. the example/anecdote he gave was about americans being short sighted live for today and screw tomorrow people on the whole. that has nothing to do with democracy.

kthxbye

Lets change the subject a little bit. Suppose the enviro treehugging elites were to get everything they asked for,(cap and trade, coppenhagan, kyoto, zero growth population, world tax, etc.). How will we measure the success of the programs and how will we know when to press for more or abandone them? What I am asking is there a certain ideal global temperature that we can stand down and begin to breath again without enviro guilt.

svetan wrote:

I just wonder how the polititians in Europe are going to sell to the public that the still will have to pay all the taxes and extra costs that were introduced based on the Eco and CO2 fairytales of the IPCC..... and a lot of companies/ organisations that make big money of the whole scam.

The same companies that are massively profiting from the new "green technologies" will employ people and the wheels of commerce will turn as they ever have. So the system will adapt to the new sources of income, and governments will get bigger and fatter and CEOs will still get bonuses that would make a Saudi Prince blush.

And out of that we will hopefully get to a point of saying, now we have reached a point where catastrophic climate change is no longer a possibility......lets not keep gambling that the science is wrong. A scientific concencus is in - lets get busy making things better for future generations.

HEEman wrote:

Lets change the subject a little bit. Suppose the enviro treehugging elites were to get everything they asked for,(cap and trade, coppenhagan, kyoto, zero growth population, world tax, etc.). How will we measure the success of the programs and how will we know when to press for more or abandone them? What I am asking is there a certain ideal global temperature that we can stand down and begin to breath again without enviro guilt.

The whole issue is the problem of energy. If energy could be generated cleanly, and without emissions or burning fossil fuels then we could say that the war is won.

Reforesting large tracts of deforested land might help too.

@ supamark:

Disclaimer: The views / opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not claim to represent those of the poster in any way, if you want to bash the author go ahead.

How climate-change fanatics corrupted science
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
February 3, 2010

Quick, name the most distrusted occupations. Trial lawyers? Pretty scuzzy, as witness the disgraced John Edwards, kept from the vice presidency in 2004 by the electoral votes of Ohio. Used car dealers? Always near the bottom of the list, as witness the universal understanding of the word "clunker."

But over the last three months a new profession has moved smartly up the list and threatens to overtake all. Climate scientist.

First came the Climategate e-mails made public in November that showed how top-level climate scientists distorted research, plotted to destroy data and conspired to prevent publication of dissenting views. The British government concluded last week that the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit violated the nation's freedom of information act, although the violations occurred too long ago for prosecution.

The CRU has been a major source of data for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which for 20 years has issued alarms about supposed global warming. The e-mails conclusively establish the intellectual dishonesty of the climate scientists at the CRU and their co-conspirators.

Recently there have been even more shocking revelations. The IPCC has claimed that warming will cause the Himalayan glaciers to disappear by 2035. It turns out that that claim was based solely on a pamphlet published by the World Wildlife Federation, based on no science at all. The head of the IPCC was informed that a 1996 report said those glaciers could melt significantly by 2350, not 2035, but he let the claim stand.

As Christopher Booker writes in the Telegraph of London, "A Canadian analyst has identified more than 20 passages in the IPCC's report which cite similarly non-peer-reviews WWF or Greenpeace reports as their authority." Similarly, the Times of London reports that a claim that warming could endanger "up to 40 percent" of the Amazon rain forest came from an anti-smoking activist and had no scientific basis whatever.

"The global warming movement as we have known it is dead," writes Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations in The American Interest. "The movement died from two causes: bad science and bad politics."

Some decades hence, I suspect, people will look back and wonder why so many government, corporate and media elites were taken in by propaganda that was based on such shoddy and dishonest evidence. And taken in to the point that they advocated devoting trillions of dollars to a cause that was based on flagrant dishonesty and dissembling.

There was some basis for concern. If carbon dioxide emissions were the only factor affecting global climate, it is clear that increased emissions would tend to produce warmer temperatures over time. Those temperatures could create problems that rational societies would want to address.

But carbon dioxide emissions are not the only factor affecting global climate. Solar activity and water evaporation and countless other things do too. Climate scientists do not fully understand those things, and how they interact. It is rational for society to want to learn more.

Unfortunately, the cadre of climate scientists who have dominated public discussion and have controlled the IPCC have been demonstrated to be far, far less than trustworthy. Like the theorists who invented epicycles to explain away the failure of Ptolemaic theory to account for astronomical observations, they have distorted science in the interest of something that resembles religious dogma.

The secular religion of global warming has all the elements of a religious faith: original sin (we are polluting the planet), ritual (separate your waste for recycling), redemption (renounce economic growth) and the sale of indulgences (carbon offsets). We are told that we must have faith (all argument must end, as Al Gore likes to say) and must persecute heretics (global warming skeptics are like Holocaust deniers, we are told).

People in the grip of such a religious frenzy evidently feel justified in lying, concealing good evidence and plucking bad evidence from whatever flimsy source may be at hand.

The rest of us, and judging from polls that includes most of the American people, are free to follow a more rational path. In his State of the Union address, Barack Obama alluded to "the overwhelming evidence on climate change." But he felt obliged to add, "even if you doubt the evidence" -- an admission that the evidence is less than overwhelming. On a par with, it seems, the claims of trial lawyers and the assurances of used car salesmen.

Michael Barone, The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His columns appear Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/How-climate-change-fanatics-corrupted-science-83396362.html#ixzz0eazXNFjB

All this "climategate" stuff is nothing else but the result of a desinformation campaign of US neocons against scientific results that do not fit to their ideology. It's made of the very same spin doctors from the very same neocon think tanks that previously already were very successful with other campains like that of the famous "weapons of mass destruction" or that to justify torture.

I think HEEman's question is the heart of the matter. Climatology is a young and very immature science. Entire mechanisms are still missing from their models. Cloud formation and moisture transport are two of the more glaring mechanisms that are only handled by numeric adjustments, no complete theory or equations exist to include in the models, and let's not even discuss desertification or El Ninos. What exactly is the normal temperature?

The leaders of this young science observe ice floes and glaciers melting and a few other phenomena, they collect statistics that maybe indicate a long-term trend, then they latch on to one particular mechanism of climate, the greenhouse effect, which can produce the observable phenomena. Since direct temperature measurements only go back ~125 years, they can't say with any confidence how long this warming has been happening. Are we still in the recovery from the Little Ice Age? Who knows? Are we above the historic (1,000-2,000 year) average? Is this a natural effect or a man-made one?

Now we have to invent a new science from scratch, Paleoclimatology, which tries to extract historic temperature data from multivariable proxy sources. Now we're in it deep. How can we compensate for factors we have no information on? We can try to normalize the data by picking adjustment factors within a site or a region, or we can exclude oddball samples. Now are we correcting the data or corrupting the data? Who's to say? And if a 'hockey stick' turns up and starts to scare folks, and suddenly newspapers are calling and people without PhDs suddenly know your name, is that such a bad thing? And if your peers want their names in the paper too, and want to be as popular as their physics colleagues at CERN, maybe their data can show a hockey stick too.

Meanwhile, back at Climatology Proper, the decision is made that this is not a natural phenomena. This is unprecedented and unnatural warming. Our formulas show that 100ppm CO2 will produce 1.8W/m2 additional heating of the planet, which will be the end of the human race. We can prove we're right because our models show stratospheric cooling when enough CO2 gets to a high enough altitude to provide some shielding from long wave radiation.

And sure enough, NASA has detected stratospheric cooling recently. But isn't that good? Won't the planet benefit from the upper atmosphere cooling both by convection cooling the lower atmosphere and from the shielding CO2 radiating long wave radiation back into space? But that's bad if you want the newspapers to keep calling.

So now we have not one, not two, but three theories to explain stratospheric cooling. We have CO2 radiating infrared back into space. We have depletion of stratospheric water vapor because water vapor absorbs infrared and heats the upper atmosphere, and we have ozone depletion, since ozone absorbs ultraviolet and heats the upper atmosphere. Two of these processes will end soon (we're talking decades here), water vapor will eventually reach a minimum, and ozone will be restored because chlorinated chemicals are banned. If all these theories have some merit, soon we will have high concentrations of both CO2 and ozone and very little water vapor. Which effect will dominate, CO2 shielding of LW radiation or O3 absorption of SW radiation? Who knows? Will the planet gain heat or lose heat because of these effects? Who knows? A lot of unanswerable questions here, and a lot more not listed, to base policy on.

Maybe when climatology matures to the point where they don't need statistics and numerical analysis we can begin to trust their science. Statistics and numerical analysis are for engineers. Scientists should be producing differential equations to describe these types of mechanisms.

And if we do manage to reduce atmospheric CO2, and if the planet does start to cool because of that, why stop there? Why not hold a global election and decide what level of CO2 to set as the official norm? If the greenhouse effect is the dominant determinant of temperature on the planet, effectively select the average global temperature.