"There was once a land where the weather was very, very strange."
Like when the Thames froze over all those times between the 15th and 19th centuries? Well, no, not like that. That was too early - you know, before humans were the only things that impacted the weather.
What about the Medieval Warm Period and the Holocene Maximum, when temperatures were much warmer than they are now? Again, that was before humans and their evil cars and evil methods of warming their evil homes dictated climate change, which is evil by the way.
"Scientists said it was being caused by too much CO2, which went up into the sky when the grownups used energy."
"Scientists said it was being caused by too much CO2, which went up into the sky when the grownups used energy."
Wait, all scientists say this? Do any disagree? Could anything else be affecting the climate? What about solar activity, cloud formation and water vapor? Um, yes, all scientists say this - at least those that we've talked to and fund do. Anyway, that's what "consensus" means, and that's why we use it - because it essentially ends the debate. As for those other "factors," we prefer focusing on the "angry CO2 monster" instead, because it really scares the kids, just like in Lost!
"The grownups realized they had to do something."
Like having the government use this taxpayer-funded propaganda video to scare the bajeezus out of impressionable children, forever making them think that humans are solely responsible for any changes in the weather? It's a start, isn't it? Here, take this copy of An Inconvenient Truth, written and produced by a non-blowhard. He won a Nobel Peace Prize, just like Barack Obama!
What does any of this have to do with peace? We have no idea. Not sure why your president got it either. Anyway, watch this movie! Before it's too late!
29 comments:
DRILL BABY DRILL
Scos, you're comically wrong on the science, but I won't bother to explain that and instead I'll just note that you're ass-backwards on policy.
I like the idea of government promoting energy efficiency. It's a hell of a lot cheaper to use less electricity than to spend money building windmills or nuclear plants, or drilling for oil, or burning coal. More efficient energy use also is vital for our national security; we become less entangled and less dependent on the Middle East for oil, and compete less with China.
Energy efficiency and clean energy and energy access, of course, have a great deal to do with war and peace. We know that in the past, energy use and wealth have generally correlated. We know that we have engaged in a couple recent wars with oil at the heart of the rationale. We know that human rights throughout the Middle East are oppressed by sovreigns who enhance their power through oil wealth. More efficient energy use in the West s such a great thing, that to bash it just makes you look silly. Lowering demand should keep oil prices in check, too, helping everyday Americans.
I don't see anything wrong with an aggressive, pro-efficiency stance. Unless you hate America.
"Comically wrong on the science"? Let me get this straight:
- The earth hadn't warmed and cooled before we started burning fossil fuels?
- All scientists agree that CO2 is solely responsible for climate change and that no other factors matter?
As for "ass-backwards" policies, I didn't mention any in this post other than indoctrinating and scaring children probably isn't the best way to go. Happy to discuss the merits and demerits of promoting energy efficiency if you'd like, but that's a whole another topic, one that's much more complex than the synopsis you provided.
snap
1) Why do you hate America so much?
2) DId you read that article you linked to? It describes a petition of 31,000 or so "scientists" who think that global warming is fake. "Scientists" includes anyone with a Phd (including non-science fields) and anyone with a B.S., which in many places includes delightful majors such as physical education. That's pretty much as garbage a definition of "scientist" as I can think of. Global warming is happening. You seem fixated on one of the effects of global warming: climate change. You're right, sometimes the weather does funky things at different points in time. That doesn't disprove global warming. Let's actually look at the big picture instead of cherrypicking random moments in man's history: "[I]t has warmed 1.2 to 1.4°F (0.7 to 0.8ºC) over the past century and projects a further 3 to 7°F (2 to 4ºC) over the 21st century. The increases may appear minor compared to short-term weather changes from night to day and winter to summer. In global climate terms, however, warming at this rate would be much larger and faster than any of the climate changes over at least the past 10,000 years." [Frequent Questions - Effects | Climate Change | U.S. EPA, http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/fq/effects.html]
Snap indeed. Nice, Bmar.
1) Because... hey, wait a second! I love America. You know this.
2) Of course I read it! Are all of them garbage scientists? All 31,000? What about S. Fred Singer, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia? Richard Lindzen, Atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology? John R. Christy, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alabama? Do these guys have any idea what they’re talking about? Or, are they just pawns of the oil industry?
To play devil's advocate, is everyone at the UN's IPCC a legitimate climatologist? How about everyone at the EPA? Any bureaucrats working there who may have their own agenda, or do they all have PhD's in atmospheric science?
The point here is that climate is an extremely complicated subject and there are many views out there. To say that the "science is settled" is simply not true, even though the alarmists will argue otherwise.
And I never "denied" or tried to disprove global warming. In fact, I just said that earth has always warmed and cooled, and will continue to do so. Whether we humans are driving any change and what we can and cannot do about it are the important questions, which, unfortunately, have increasingly become politicized.
As for your projections, I linked to a NYTimes(!) article a few weeks back that opened: “The world leaders who met at the United Nations to discuss climate change on Tuesday are faced with an intricate challenge: building momentum for an international climate treaty at a time when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.” The problem here is that most models predicted the opposite: that the earth would continue to get warmer at an even faster pace. The fact that it hasn’t should make you wonder how accurate these models – and the assumptions driving them – are.
I agree that we should work harder on alternative energy. I mean, seriously, super efficient solar cells could power the entire country without the need to import energy. Plus, we have a lot of dead spots (the Dakotas, for example) that would look way cooler covered in silver panels.
I agree with Scos, though, that our understanding of climate change is very hazy. We can't even get an accurate 7-day forecast, for Christ's sake! I also agree that scaring the funk out of babies isn't the best way to go about affecting policy-making.
Let's just all agree that British kids, left to their own devices, are super creepy.
Scos, this is comedic gold! Did you actually read the bios of these guys or did you just select them randomly for their affiliations with institutions of higher learning?
Singer, for example, is a real peach:
"A 2007 Newsweek cover story on climate change denial reported that: "In April 1998 a dozen people from the denial machine — including the Marshall Institute, Fred Singer's group and Exxon — met at the American Petroleum Institute's Washington headquarters. They proposed a $5 million campaign, according to a leaked eight-page memo, to convince the public that the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty."
Mission Accomplished, looks like!
He also doesn't believe that second-hand smoke is bad for you and has written op-eds to that effect for Philip Morris!!!
@WOHJR To be fair, second-smoke--although not good for you--is hardly the killer it's made out to be. I've never met a single person who knows another person who was ill affected by second hand smoke, yet they claim it kills 50,000 adult nonsmokers per year. There are a lot of smoking "facts" that I really, really question.
Oh jeez Block, not you too!
This just came out this week:
“Even a small amount of exposure to secondhand smoke can increase in blood clotting, constrict blood vessels and can cause a heart attack,” said Dr. Neal L. Benowitz, a professor of medicine, psychiatry, and biopharmaceutical sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the panel. “Short-term exposure can make a big difference.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/health/16smoke.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=secondhand%20smoke&st=cse
Read what you wrote. See the word "can" in there? Yes, second-hand smoke is bad and it CAN do bad stuff. But seriously, 50,000 deaths with second-hand smoke being the primary cause? That's ridiculous.
A hot dog CAN cause cancer. A boat ride CAN cause drowning. A bee sting CAN cause paralysis. Second-hand smoke CAN cause clotting. But death? Maybe, but not 50,000 adult nonsmokers per year. Not a chance.
The CDC and a panel of scientists say exposure to secondhand smoke increases the risk of coronary heart disease by 25-30%. That is a lot. They arrived at this number by studying the effects of smoking bans on the rate of "acute myocardial infarctions" (heart attacks) in various localities both inside and outside the US.
I didn't come up with that 50,000 number, you did. Do you have any serious doubt to cast on secondhand smoke research or are you just going with your gut feeling that wherever you pulled that 50,000 sounds "really high"?
Are you saying that Singer is justified in holding his position on secondhand smoking? On climate change in general? I'm not sure what you're going for here...
WOHJR, I see you know how to use wikipedia. I'm not sure citing two sentences from a Newsweek hit piece is enough to discredit his entire life's work, which includes setting up the American weather satellite system, but maybe it is for you. Have you ever read anything by Singer? He's got two pretty interesting books, Hot Talk, Cold Science and Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years. You should check one out.
That number comes from the CDC and that means that 1 in 6,000 Americans dies from second-hand smoke every year and they basically never touched a cigarette. I'll bet that living in a smoggy city is more likely to give you lung cancer. I also don't know how they identified that second-hand smoke was the cause of death.
My one and only point is that you shouldn't have to be a genius to know that every statistic that is easy to find is likely biased and should be taken with a grain of salt.
I believe that human interaction is the driving force behind climate change. I also believe that there is a lot more that we need to learn on the subject. I also know that Britain doesn't matter in the scheme of things because of countries like India and China. Scare their kids with PSAs, not British kids! Britain is a drop in the bucket!
I also believe that second-hand smoke is detrimental to health and that long term exposure will likely lead to health issues. I just don't believe that it's to the point of 1 in 6,000 American, adult non-smokers being KILLED by it. How do you even attribute a death to second-hand smoke? Do you follow someone around for ten years and wait for someone to puff in their face? Isn't it possible that people lie about their smoking? I do. Isn't it possible that there are other things that contribute even more so than second-hand smoke?
I live in a smallish city of 60,000 people. We should be losing ~10 people a year to second hand smoke. I'm just not seeing it. I don't hear about ANY second-hand smoke deaths... EVER! Have you?
Be careful throwing around stats and "facts," that's all I'm saying.
Scos, you and I both know there is more in that article than those words. I realize it is easier to dismiss the whole thing by simply calling it a "hit job" but that term usually implies some factual inaccuracies. Could you point out some of those?
Block- isn't that like saying people don't die from the stab wound but rather from the blood loss?
Your own state says there is a causal link. Read that with as much or as little salt as you desire:
ash.org/CAEPAProposal.pdf
I'm done wasting electrons on this, you guys take the last word if you dare
My beef is that "causal link to poor health" and "cause of death" are very different. If I spend my last day sitting next to a dude smoking a fat cigar, then I hang out in the San Fernando Valley sucking down pollution, then I smoke some pot, then I install fiberglass insulation in my attic and THEN I get lung cancer, what caused it? We lead very complicated lives and to say that something definitely killed 50,000 people every year is extremely misleading.
Lots of this stuff is misleading. I know there's a link, I've said that several times now. I'm not saying second-hand smoke is innocuous, just that it's not quite the killer it's claimed to be.
By the way, saying "Your own state says X" is a ridiculous argument tactic. My own state does, says and enacts a lot of stuff I don't agree with. It's California; I'm here for the weather, not the scientific research institutions.
The last word? Really? Thanks.
I'll let Newsweek's own contributing editor, Robert Samuelson, take this one: "Against these real-world pressures, Newsweek's 'denial machine' is a peripheral and highly contrived story. Newsweek implied, for example, that Exxon Mobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was discredited long ago, and Newsweek shouldn't have lent it respectability. (Exxon Mobil says it knew nothing of the global-warming grant, which involved issues of climate modeling. And its 2006 contribution to the think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, was small: $240,000 out of a $28 million budget.)" The link to his article is here. Looks like I can google too.
Anyway, I enjoyed this debate. Thanks to all for keeping it (somewhat) civil. Hopefully the whole thing encourages people to do more research on their own.
Against my better judgment, I am jumping into this debate. It is lazy to disregard scientific consensus on this issue simply because one cannot be bothered to find out how the research was conducted and how the conclusions were drawn. In fact, the 2006 Surgeon General’s report on the Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke does take into account many of the questions raised here and does conclude that secondhand smoke causes premature death and disease in children and adults who do not smoke. (Report is here: http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/report/index.html)
“I also don't know how they identified that second-hand smoke was the cause of death.”/ “How do you even attribute a death to second-hand smoke?” / “Isn't it possible that there are other things that contribute even more so than second-hand smoke?”
Let’s look at lung cancer, which is one cause of death associated with secondhand smoke. The report reviews “more than 50 epidemiologic studies [that] have addressed the association between secondhand smoke exposure and the risk of lung cancer among lifetime nonsmokers.” These studies “included men and women of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and were conducted using heterogeneous study designs in some 20 counties of North America, Europe, and Asia” and document a “20 to 30 percent increase in RR of lung cancer in association with secondhand smoke exposures during adulthood.” The authors point out that this “consistent association obtained in different populations under diverse circumstances strengthens a causal interpretation because different patterns of potential bias and confounding would be expected across different populations.” (p. 439)
In other words, by conducting many studies that control for many different confounding factors (e.g. smog), researchers are able say that secondhand smoke causes death in some number of cases.
“Isn't it possible that people lie about their smoking? I do.”
In fact, the report finds that potential bias due to the misclassification of some current or former smokers as lifetime nonsmokers has been “repeatedly considered and found not to explain the association of lung cancer with secondhand smoke” and that “the proportion of former smokers who classify themselves as lifetime nonsmokers is low.” (p. 445)
“I live in a smallish city of 60,000 people. We should be losing ~10 people a year to second hand smoke. I'm just not seeing it. I don't hear about ANY second-hand smoke deaths... EVER! Have you?”
This is probably because their deaths are merely attributed to lung cancer or heart disease. Are you really surprised that “Spouse of Smoker Dies of Lung Cancer” is not front page news?
With all this said, I am no scientist nor do I have any special knowledge of this issue professionally, so reading this report is probably as far as I will delve into the topic. I agree that individuals should come to their own conclusions on important issues, but I also think it is unfair to claim that research put out by the CDC is “likely biased and should be taken with a grain of salt” without citing any specific disputes with the methodology.
Jesus Christ, Sars. For a person named after a respiratory disease, I'd think you'd get what I'm saying.
For the billionth time: Second-hand smoke is bad. I know this. Second-hand smoke CAN cause cancer and death. I know this too. My only point is that a lot of numbers get thrown around by important sounding groups that
Here are the real facts. The CDC says, "Secondhand smoke causes almost 50,000 deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year" and they cite a California EPA study (the one that WOHJR linked to). If you actually read the study, it says this, "Adding the mid-point of the ranges for lung cancer deaths and heart disease deaths, and including the SIDS point estimate, one can attribute about 50,000 deaths from ETS [Environmental Tobacco Smoke]-associated disease per year in the United States."
Do you see how those two statements are different? One says that the second-hand smoke CAUSED the deaths. The other, the SOURCE, says that diseases associated with second-hand smoke (i.e.g. heart disease and lung cancer) caused the death. Heart disease, especially, can be caused by lots of things or even nothing.
If you get stabbed (to use WOHJR's metaphor) the stab wound/the knife/the blood loss is the cause of death. It's directly attributable to one thing. If you die of heart disease and were exposed to second-hand smoke, then this study counts that as a death associated with second-hand smoke. It doesn't mean that second-hand smoke killed you, just that you died from a disease that second-hand smoke can aggravate.
There is a big, big difference there. A knife kills you, it doesn't potentially exacerbate your death. Cause: stab, result: death. It's not the same relationship with second-hand smoke. The way the CDC frames the results of this study is MISLEADING, not completely without merit.
My only point is that information, especially second-hand information (i.e.g. the CDC reporting from a California EPA study) is often misleading and sometimes wrong. Never believe anything you read blindly just because it sounds official or comes from an official-sounding body or individual. That's all I'm saying.
I believe in human influenced climate change and I know that second-hand smoke is bad for you. However, that doesn't mean everything reported about either is the gospel, unbiased truth.
Whoops. Looks like I didn't finish a sentence in there. It was going to say:
"My only point is that a lot of numbers get thrown around by important sounding groups that frame the facts in the most favorable light for them."
But, whatever, I repeat myself a lot in that comment so I'm sure you get what I'm going for. Btw, I'm especially proud of the lame "SARS" joke I made.
Wow. I'm getting in on this late, but re Block and others questions about second-hand smoke: Let's first get something straight. Without quoting plenty of New England Journal of Medicine articles, smoking's greatest "harm" isn't lung cancer. Smoking actually increases your risk of dying from OTHER diseases (CAD, PVD, PE etc.) more than it increases your risk of getting lung cancer. I think that is the most important point in thinking about second hand smoke. It does kill lots of people. Sidestream smoke (from a cig butt) and mainstream smoke (exhaled) contribute to the adverse effects, so it's not just blowing smoke in someone's face that makes people sick.
Re Global Warming, there are varying opinions out there, as Scos and Bmar have pointed out. But to add my varied opinion to the mix, I think where we're not sure of the science is more in terms of predicting how much temps will rise and by when. These are the estimates that keep varying from the world's leading scientists from one report to the next. What seems more stable from a overall standpoint, is the scientific community's consensus that temperatures are rising at an alarmingly fast rate, and one that can be attributed to man-made CO2. Democrats shouldn't be the only ones waiting for Armageddon. Conservative Christian Republicans are going to be F****d too.
LOL. I always appreciate a good SARS joke.
Ok so...I understood the report to be saying that the 50,000 deaths are the numbers of deaths due to lung cancer and heart disease that can be attributed exclusively to secondhand smoke, e.g. the diseases and subsequent deaths would not have happened if second-hand smoke did not exist.
So if there are around 160,000 lung cancer deaths in the US every year and 630,000 heart disease deaths, we can estimate (based on what we know about the extent to which exposure to secondhand smoke increases risk of these diseases) that 50,000 of those deaths are caused by secondhand smoke. Right?
That is how I understood it at least.
I mean, whatever. At the end of the day, I still smoke sometimes and hang out with smokers and think it's bullshit that people can't smoke in Five Olde anymore. Just because it's bad for me doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to do it.
I’m getting a bit fed up and will make this my last comment.
It seems everyone is refusing to see my point: I don’t care about second-hand smoke, I just hate that a study says that X is a factor that contributes to 50,000 deaths getting changed to “50,000 people a year die of X.”
I could have used anything as an example of contrived framing of statistical data but I chose second-hand smoke. Clearly, that was a mistake because now [apple symbol] is telling me about the physics of second-hand smoke and the semantics of my use of “blowing smoke in someone’s face” as hyperbole.
Forget I said anything and pretend I used an example about something less polarizing.
PS: Sars, I appreciate your last comment, however, you can't account for all or even most variables when studying subjects in real life. You can only "draw causal relationships" which is different from "identifying causes." Think of it this way, rats had a causal relationship to spreading the plague. As it turns out, the cause of the plague was actually the fleas on the rats. Rats don't cause the plague even though there is a causal relationship. So, those 50,000 people still may have died and may have died from heart disease or lung cancer. Probably some of them wouldn't but we'll never know for sure because we don't live in a vacuum.
Alright, I'm done with this topic. Thanks for making it interesting people.
Alright, who farted?!
I decided not to write about about drawing scientific conclusions when you have a large number of degrees of freedom. Because really the bigger question is what are we arguing about? Secondhand smoke is bad for you, and we burn too many fossil fuels. Hopefully this can be agreed upon by all. So we should reduce exposure to secondhand smoke and use less energy. Second hand smoke deaths is an impossible number to nail down with the accuracy you want for all the reasons you said. If the "real" answer is 30,000 people per year, would it change this? 10,000? My problem with all of this is the same as my problem with politics, which is that people choose their sources, and whether you are liberal or conservative, they will readily supply you with "facts" and blog-quotable lines to keep you comfortable with your opinions. But honestly, what are we arguing about?
Less politics, more porn jokes?
I'll keep it short and say I'm with ghahn on this one - statistics can be biased and misleading but it's pretty obvious to me that everyone can work to decrease their use of energy and consumption.
Well said ghahn. My vote for COTW.
I was just trying to make the point that scaring the sh!t out of British kids with environmental propaganda isn't such a good idea. This created some controversy, and then people started using a lot of exclamation points. Perhaps we should just conclude that using propaganda is ok, if we believe the cause is noble.
But rather than open that can of worms again, I'm just gonna heed Makens' suggestion.
Is there anything more pathetic than staying home on a Friday night, masturbating to porn and crying because you're so gut-wrenchingly lonely? Yes: doing that, but using your tears as lubricant because you're too lazy to go out and buy soap, lotion or butter.
Happy Friday.
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