Can We sue them now?
Can We sue them now?
Appleseed wrote: Louder doesn't mean righter (except when you are.)
tell that to Donny Trump
What I have learned is that it doesn't matter if you are right or wrong when it comes to science, all that matters is that you feel strongly enough and can shout louder than everyone else.
Holy E36 M3. Nambla. Wow. This thread went there.
In reply to Fueled by Caffeine:
National Association of Marlon Brando look alikes?
Datsun1500 wrote:GameboyRMH wrote:It was on the cover of time, and taught in school, but ok, keep believing it was just a few crackpots.MrJoshua wrote: Weren't we worried about Global Cooling back then?Nope, just a few crackpots who got a lot of media attention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
It was. Lots of BS gets on the cover of magazines (See: just about anything diet/health related - Dr. Oz, anyone?) and lots of wrong/outdated stuff gets taught in schools (I was taught about the "tongue map" for example, decades after it was disproven).
One magazine cover plus one mention in a public school course doesn't equal mainstream science.
The thing is - it does not matter if it's man made or it's a naturally occurring thing except to the machinations of man's own need to finger point before getting to the business of what can be done about it. The thing is is that it is real and has very serious side-effects for the way we make assumptions about agriculture, marine food supply and all sorts of other things.
I hope there are smart people working on solving the problems that might result rather than assigning blame so I can use my arsenal to enslave them and use their knowledge for my betterment after the fall of man.
Well, Gameboy does live on an island, so I can imagine rising sea levels would be important to him. Me? It just means I may soon have a beach-house when half of southern NJ goes under.
GameboyRMH wrote:Datsun1500 wrote:It was. Lots of BS gets on the cover of magazines (See: just about anything diet/health related - Dr. Oz, anyone?) and lots of wrong/outdated stuff gets taught in schools (I was taught about the "tongue map" for example, decades after it was disproven). One magazine cover plus one mention in a public school course doesn't equal mainstream science.GameboyRMH wrote:It was on the cover of time, and taught in school, but ok, keep believing it was just a few crackpots.MrJoshua wrote: Weren't we worried about Global Cooling back then?Nope, just a few crackpots who got a lot of media attention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
Nobody said it was mainstream science.
The statement was "Weren't we worried about Global Cooling back then?".
We were. The collective "we".
It makes no difference whether it was true or not, nor whether it was mainstream science or not.
Just like today.
Datsun1500 wrote: The argument now is "that was based on bad science". How do you know that global warming is not based on bad science? If science then could have been bad, it can be bad now too. People would argue how global cooling was a huge issue, an ice age was coming, and if you didn't believe it, you were dumb. Sound familiar?
Global cooling was known to be bad science while it was a popular topic, that's the difference. It was quackery from day one. Similarly, there are people today who will tell you that vaccines cause autism, they get a lot of media attention, they'll tell you you're dumb if you disagree, and they're completely wrong. Same thing.
Everyone knows modern science has all the answers. Anyone that doesn't agree is stupid and ignorant of the TRUTH. /sarcasm
Personally, there's no doubt we are affecting the earth. Whether humanity's population was 1 or 1 billion, you can't exist without affecting your environment. I think we should be good stewards of the earth, but disagree with many climate change advocates that the answer is to bankrupt the nation by mandating "green" technology. Ethanol has its drawbacks vs. gas, solar/wind/hydro/tidal have their drawbacks vs fossil fuels, hybrids/electrics have their drawbacks vs regular cars. Why churn and build and replace and scrap an entire inventory to trade one set of problems for another?
I mostly try to stay out of this whole debate, because to me it amounts to rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, or throwing spitballs at a freight train (pick your favorite metaphor). As long as the world population graph looks like this:
In case the chart doesn't post:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_curve.svg
There are going to be massive changes to the global climate. I have a "green" solution that requires no new technology, doesn't cost a dime of taxpayers money, can be implemented immediately, and is 100% guaranteed to improve things: stop having more than two kids, worldwide.
No? That solution is horrific and against nature and I'm a bad person for even bringing it up? Got it.
I wouldn't say it's "rearranging deck chairs on the titanic" yet, but it's a nasty uphill battle because of that curve and the widely-held opposition to doing anything about it.
In reply to GameboyRMH:
Do you read the stuff you post?
The Wiki article you posted doesn't say anything about crackpots or quackery. It doesn't say the prevailing knowledge base at the time knew it was wrong.
It gives a fairly balanced (though a bit unscientific) view, showing both sides of the equation. It mentions Time, Newsweek, and The Washington Post, but also references reports by The National Science Board, the National Academy of Sciences, the journal Science, and a conference of the World Meteorological Association, among dozens of other books, articles, reports, studies, and teachings, ALL of which mention the possibility of cooling (or warming).
The link is pretty clear... "As the NAS report indicates, scientific knowledge regarding climate change was more uncertain than it is today".
The scientific climate of the '70's was one of great uncertainty regarding the subject of climate change.
Your assertion that it was just a few crackpots is hogwash. My uncle was the Department Head of the Meteorology department at Penn State from 1967-1981. He was one of the premier meteorologists of the day. His expertise was in turbulent processes and the atmospheric boundary layer, and he authored over 100 scientific articles in professional journals. He wrote most of the programs that became the core of the meteorological modeling we still use today.
The most scientific thing my Uncle Al would say to you about the subject of climate change during the '70's is, "We really didn't know". It wasn't his JOB to know. It was his job to learn.
Our knowledge base today is completely based on the efforts of those who have preceded us. THEY did the work, because they did not know. We are standing on the shoulders of giants, and should be careful how we portray the past, and seek to LEARN, rather than presume we know not only how things were (or are), but what they were thinking.
In reply to SVreX:
Very well said.
I have read it, and it does say that the prevailing knowledge at the time knew it was wrong (example)
The kinds of predictions that led to "ice age fallacy" thinking - that the climate was on a long-term cooling trend and was headed for an ice age - were indeed quackery spouted by crackpots. None of the reputable sources you mentioned agreed with those predictions. There was a lot of uncertainty then compared to now, but not nearly enough to make those claims seem plausible.
I don't think I'm misrepresenting the past. The ice age scare predictions weren't based on theories that seemed reasonably correct at the time but were later found to be wrong and replaced by better ones. They were based on theories that flew directly in the face of the best knowledge at the time and never had a leg to stand on.
In reply to GameboyRMH:
I guess that is a reasonable conclusion if you read every other line of that article you posted.
In reply to GameboyRMH:
Your "example" link includes this quote:
GameboyRMH's example said: "However, climate scientists were aware that predictions based on this trend were not possible - because the trend was poorly studied and not understood"
This clearly does not support your assertion.
Sure the first half does, but the second half does not. Read all the lines, not just every other one.
In the 70's we (including the scientific community) did not know. Now, we THINK we do.
What good support is there for ice age scare predictions in that article? They recognized that there was a short-term cooling trend and there was a fair bit of uncertainty over long-term trends, but there was never any mainstream support for long-term cooling trends leading to an ice age. There was a lot of evidence against it.
BTW, the idea that the scientific community could have any kind of consensus on computer modeling during the 70's is absurd.
Desktop computers were not introduced until 1983, and the internet began developing much later than that. The military was interconnected, but most scientists were working on mainframe computers that were not connected to each other. The sharing of data simply didn't exist in the same dynamic as it does today.
Scientists shared data through peer reviewed papers and published articles. There was no way for scientists to have comprehensive knowledge of the body of works that everyone else was working on with actually reading every published article, then compiling the data manually.
Journalism followed suit.
Scientific knowledge base has in many ways exploded exponentially BECAUSE of the internet. Consensus was very difficult to establish.
The world has changed a lot in just a few years.
10,000-20,000 years ago, the ice cap extended down across the northern half of the US. Why did it go away? Who do we blame for causing that? Long before that, the coastline of SC was just south of Columbia, about the middle of the state. Where did all that water go?
Hell yes the climate changes. It always has and always will.
SVreX wrote: In reply to GameboyRMH: Your "example" link includes this quote:GameboyRMH's example said: "However, climate scientists were aware that predictions based on this trend were not possible - because the trend was poorly studied and not understood"This clearly does not support your assertion. Sure the first half does, but the second half does not. Read all the lines, not just every other one. In the 70's we (including the scientific community) did not know. Now, we THINK we do.
Actually the second half does as well. In science "Poorly studied and not understood" doesn't mean "this is plausible and needs more attention," it means "this is not well supported and needs more work if it's going to be taken seriously." More work might lead to more support, or if the idea was nonsense as in the case of the ice age scare theories, it might cause the whole thing to unravel.
Every time you see that kind of language about uncertainty, that's what it means. The uncertainty over long-term climate trends didn't support the ice age scare predictions any more than today's uncertainty over quantum physics supports Time Cube Guy.
So this is going to become another wind tunnel/drone business/startup thread where we all bang our heads against the wall?
I'm out, it's Friday and there's better things to do. I'll buy any GRMer a beer that wants to meet at Stewart's brewery in DE this afternoon! 
spitfirebill wrote: 10,000-20,000 years ago, the ice cap extended down across the northern half of the US. Why did it go away? Who do we blame for causing that? Long before that, the coastline of SC was just south of Columbia, about the middle of the state. Where did all that water go? Hell yes the climate changes. It always has and always will.
Thank you for saying this. It's possibly the most intelligent thing said so far.
There are lots of examples of pretty obvious evidence that the global climate is not even close to constant.
Flynlow wrote: Everyone knows modern science has all the answers. Anyone that doesn't agree is stupid and ignorant of the TRUTH. /sarcasm Personally, there's no doubt we are affecting the earth. Whether humanity's population was 1 or 1 billion, you can't exist without affecting your environment. I think we should be good stewards of the earth, but disagree with many climate change advocates that the answer is to bankrupt the nation by mandating "green" technology. Ethanol has its drawbacks vs. gas, solar/wind/hydro/tidal have their drawbacks vs fossil fuels, hybrids/electrics have their drawbacks vs regular cars. Why churn and build and replace and scrap an entire inventory to trade one set of problems for another? I mostly try to stay out of this whole debate, because to me it amounts to rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, or throwing spitballs at a freight train (pick your favorite metaphor). As long as the world population graph looks like this:
I'm kinda with this guy. At least with what he said in the first half.
No matter what, we need to be good stewards. To me that doesn't mean you have a 2 kid mandate max, but we need to incentive/ deter good and bad behaviors as well as change social norms with what's ok.
Flynlow wrote: So this is going to become another wind tunnel/drone business/startup thread where we all bang our heads against the wall?
Ouch 
Edit: Well say what you like about the other threads, but this one is not about business ideas, opinions, or feelings. If you remember the personality types test thread, mine is INTJ so I'm one of those people who finds bending facts to suit feelings or opinions abhorrent. That's the wall you can bang your head against in this thread.
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