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Justin Gillis reports at the NYT that in the long-running political battles over climate change, the fight about what to call the various factions has been going on for a long time with people who reject the findings of climate science dismissed as “deniers” and “disinformers" and those who accept the science attacked as “alarmists” or “warmistas". The issue has recently taken a new turn, with a public appeal that has garnered 22,000 signatures asking the news media to abandon the most frequently used term for people who question climate science, “skeptic,” and call them “climate deniers” instead. The petition began with Mark B. Boslough, a physicist in New Mexico who grew increasingly annoyed by the term over several years. The phrase is wrong, says Boslough, because “these people do not embrace the scientific method.”
Last year, Boslough wrote a public letter on the issue, "Deniers are not Skeptics." and dozens of scientists and science advocates associated with the committee quickly signed it. According to Boslough real skepticism is summed up by a quote popularized by Carl Sagan, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” "[Senator] Inhofe’s belief that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” is an extraordinary claim indeed," says Boslough. "He has never been able to provide evidence for this vast alleged conspiracy. That alone should disqualify him from using the title skeptic."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gnuman on Monday February 16 2015, @05:41AM
H2O is not part of global warming at all, because it is saturated. It's not controllable. If we had pools of CO2 on the planet, CO2 would be saturated in the atmosphere too and no one would be talking about it. It only matters because it is a trace gas.
As to policies and AGW, well, there is only ONE policy that stops it. Stop emitting CO2 dug up from sequestered sources - fossil fuels. That's all. The rest, like "Carbon tax" or "Carbon credits" or other crap, that's all minutia of politics and economics. Climatologists know nothing about it. But it takes politics to make changes like this. We have the ozone layer because of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol [wikipedia.org] . Politicians didn't want to retire to UV Index 60 vacations so they did something about it. But Global Warming? Great-great-great-grand children problem.
Ozone depletion also had many deniers. Spending millions on ads and how government would kill all jobs by regulating CFCs. Many of the CFC deniers switched side when their patent on CFC production expired, and they secured patents on refrigerants that weren't banned by Montreal Protocol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon#Regulation_and_DuPont [wikipedia.org]
In conjunction with other industrial peers DuPont sponsored efforts such as the "Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy" to question anti-CFC science, but in a turnabout in 1986 DuPont, with new patents in hand, publicly condemned CFCs. DuPont representatives appeared before the Montreal Protocol urging that CFCs be banned worldwide and stated that their new HCFCs would meet the worldwide demand for refrigerants.
The bottom line is,
1. AGW exists
2. Human CO2 emissions is the reason
3. If you deny the above, you are a denier of reality. You may as well start proclaiming that HIV is "god's wrath on gays" or that vaccines cause autism because you'll be in that crowed.
4. What you do, if anything, about AGW, that's politics. The question is basically, is the map of Earth as in Cretaceous Hot House acceptable or not?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_forests_of_the_Cretaceous [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_forests_of_the_Cretaceous#mediaviewer/File:Blakey_90moll.jpg [wikipedia.org]
You can see which parts of continents get somewhat flooded, though continents were slightly in different places than today. (India by Madagascar, for example) But arguing that such a map of the world is ok is fine in my book. Much better than putting your head in the sand and claiming that climatologists, geologists, paleontologists, physicists and others know shit about their professions.
PS.
The proof is complicated and so can't stand public scrutiny.
Science is not about proofs - it's about evidence. And if public can't evaluate the evidence, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If you don't understand how transistors work it doesn't mean that computers are mythical. And unless you have at least an undergrad degree in physics, you don't know how transistors work.
(Score: 1) by BK on Monday February 16 2015, @05:55AM
Wrong. There is at least one other. Geoengineeriing the climate to be the way we want it to be in the face of whatever method we want to use to obtain energy would also work. Honestly, I think it is the more likely solution (as in more likely to be implemented, not "the best") in the long run.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday February 16 2015, @05:56AM
Um... what? You haven't paid attention to physics classes, have you? Liquid water has the maximum specific heat - 4.1813 kJ/(kg x K).
What do you think the Pacific Ocean has done in the last decade [smh.com.au]?
We'll see how it goes when that amount of warm water can't cool anymore (e.g. when not enough ice at the poles, those pesky polar bears used all of it as a float).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford