Is Climate Change a real issue?

[Sandy Braille]

you seem like a pretty smart guy. Did you even understand what I said?

My post was mostly facetious. Hence why I said 'babes'. Not a great joke, don't know if you caught what I meant. Anywho.

A lot of scientists are what I term "trendy", all in a rush to be in the "leading edge" of their field. There's always a lot of hogwash being dumped at the leading edge, and it truly does take some time for the good work to prevail.

Wouldn't say its hogwash, but absolutely. Often people DO try to rush and advance their research so much, that it'll be full of loopholes. Fortunately, peer-reviewing often takes care of this-- but I suppose one could argue what the extent of this is

The level of CO2 was, at 270 ppm, near the lowest in all of earth history. Sea pH had been declining for millions of years, and the oceans have been getting saltier. There were lots of things happening then that had never happened before, probably a lot of sea life dying off and going extinct. We are returning towards the "normal" which existed a hundred million years ago.

You can't say that this study is full of hogwash, and then come up with these random sentences with no scientific support. I'll gladly join your opinion if you offer justification.

Like I said, we should be more concerned about the politicization of science, and the effects of propaganda on the public mind. Fascism depends on having a willing mass of idiots reacting on cue.

If our current definition of propaganda is legalizing same-sex marriage, and taking better care of our planet, then I do not worry for the future.

 

[Sandy Braille]

It takes me about fifteen minutes to get the drift. I read the abstract twice, and look at the tables and graphs. Then I read the concluding paragraph. By then I know pretty much what the point is.

Well duh. But actually READING a paper, being critical, trying to see if the tests they ran through are actually accurate, and don't have much room for error takes much more time. With most papers that I read being in the 10-20 page range, it takes time.

I might think about it for a while, maybe take a walk in the sunshine or something. If I really want to find out if it's valid work, I'll go back and take a really close look at a section called "Materials and Methods" where the equipment used is listed, and maybe the suppliers of a bunch of stuff needed to do the work. It pays to know whether the equipment used is "state of the art" or "old junk". Every piece of equipment has a priniciple and a design,and measurements always have two mathematical factors. . .. an "extensive" factor and an "intensive" factor. The first refers to the operating range and proper operation of the equipment. The second refers to the "scale" of it's measurement, which I suppose could be termed a range of measurements it is capable of.

Theres much more that you should look at. Maybe the intro. The justification for why they are researching things. The previous findings from previous studies that have led them here. What they are looking for, and the route they plan to take to discover it.

To me, this makes more sense than reading 3 sections, and then going for a walk. But to each his own.

The next issue will be the concept involved in the experiment. . . . . the hypothesis being examined somehow. Sometimes they don't even make sense at first blush, but I'm willing to assume others know more than I do until I can see some pretty good reasons to conclude I've placed too much confidence in people who don't deserve it. I might look around at other research papers on the topic, and see how others are approaching it.

Well yes. Which is precisely why you should read the entire paper, so you can understand their entire approach. Once doing so, it will come quite easily to determine what you liked, didn't like, and what seems 'loose'. No scientific paper is perfect.

After a day or two, I'll read the article again, maybe take about two hours on it, and pay attention to the details. I always find that I missed something on the first look, but at least I get an overview the first time, rather than just getting swamped with the details. Third and fourth reading a week or two later will bring me up to speed on the article, but in order to make any judgment I need to do the same with several related articles just to get a feel for the context.

Pretty much the process any good reviewer will do on evaluating any article. Peer or serious investigator.

What, spending only a total of 2 hours on a 16 page paper to go over ALL the details?? Including looking at the other studies that they cited to, when pulling out random factoids *determined by others*??

This paper alone for me took around 3-4 hours to go through, and its only 12 pages long.


Of course, Im younger, and I was going through the paper rather intensely.


To each their own, I guess.

 

[MoreFeasts]

Babe, so you basically are saying that the earth has changed in hundreds of years in ways that should take millions of years, and yet you think that this is perfectly normal, and has nothing to do with man's influence?
and you favor a return to a climate more suited to dinosaurs than the human race?
amiright?

 

[babe]

What, spending only a total of 2 hours on a 16 page paper to go over ALL the details?? Including looking at the other studies that they cited to, when pulling out random factoids *determined by others*??

yes, you do have some good, and some better points about how to go about evaluating a science article. And I would eventually take more time in some cases, for sure. I never just skip the parts you mention, and maybe never do it exactly the same way. I don't have infinite stamina, nor comprehension skills. As my girls' music teacher advises, don't swallow the cookie whole. Break it up into bites you can chew.

 

[CONAN]

I don't think it's as serious as it's made out to be. But I don't think we should ignore it. Would love to see a carbon tax/fee put in place.

 

[babe]

My post was mostly facetious. Hence why I said 'babes'. Not a great joke, don't know if you caught what I meant. Anywho.






Wouldn't say its hogwash, but absolutely. Often people DO try to rush and advance their research so much, that it'll be full of loopholes. Fortunately, peer-reviewing often takes care of this-- but I suppose one could argue what the extent of this is




You can't say that this study is full of hogwash, and then come up with these random sentences with no scientific support. I'll gladly join your opinion if you offer justification.



If our current definition of propaganda is legalizing same-sex marriage, and taking better care of our planet, then I do not worry for the future.

In the context of a reasonable discussion I'm willing to retract the excess baggage. "full of hogwash" was not a good choice of words. Words do matter,and the context we place them in. I should have said "there appears to be some hogwash in the way these facts are being presented". Saying "There's always a lot of hogwash being dumped at the leading edge" is insupportable. Not "always", just a possibility that is sometimes the fact.

you're right about the necessity for bringing in some scientific support for what I say. And I don't actually expect you to be bowled over by a few items on one side of the issue.

 

[babe]

Babe, so you basically are saying that the earth has changed in hundreds of years in ways that should take millions of years, and yet you think that this is perfectly normal, and has nothing to do with man's influence?
and you favor a return to a climate more suited to dinosaurs than the human race?
amiright?

There's no such thing as "ways that should take" anything. I can think of natural events that could drive changes one way or another, and I can think of explanations for whatever are the facts of history. . . . but this is not a moral issue of the kind where our ideas of what is right or acceptable should dominate the discussion.

I think we have had an impact, and I just note that volcanism has had an impact within our capacity to obtain data and make correlations in the past, and that carbon dioxide levels in the air and water have changed over time. Where we are having impacts, I might believe there are some things we should do, and have opinions about how we should go about doing that.

I think I made a mistake about the way I stated my view.

I would suspect, in my understanding of buffer capacity and ongoing increases in salinity in the oceans and the carbon dioxide data we have, that we have never been exactly where we are now. We may have had lower pH values, or higher, at some times. And it may have in either case been a challenge or threat to some existing life forms.

Pretty much, the oceans continually effect a flow of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into the limestone being formed in the oceans, and pretty much the level of salinity has been on an increasing trend as chlorides have been eroded from the land mass.

If you are going to say all the ill effects are only the result of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, I think we need more scientific study and probably in the long run we'll have to start addressing other natural processes as well.

 

[Beantown]

Again, the debate should never have been about climate change. It should have been about air pollution. Air pollution is easy to see and the effects are real. Look at Utah. Every time I visit Utah in the winter I end up hacking up a black lung. It would be hard for me to ever live in SLC again because of it. The air is that bad.

 

[scootsy]

I just want to say that Science is probably the most boring journal name they could have come up with.

I also want to say that my dad's generation grew up fearing an impending ice age. Wow their scientists were so wrong LOL!!

 

[One Brow]

I also want to say that my dad's generation grew up fearing an impending ice age. Wow their scientists were so wrong LOL!!

There was never a scientific consensus on an impending ice age. There was some popular media about the possibility, though.

 

[MoreFeasts]

I won't bother to rehash basic chemistry here, but I would frankly say this sentence contains a lot of hogwash. Oh, the pH has dropped in the past hundred years, and I'm sure there have been continual changes following carbon dioxide pressures over the water across all time. And like I said, we should study these things and what is happening with all life on our earth. Maybe even improve the way we do things to minimize impacts on nature. Probably we should look at the load of hype in our rhetoric, though. This guy is phrasing the facts in alarmist garb.

The level of CO2 was, at 270 ppm, near the lowest in all of earth history. Sea pH had been declining for millions of years, and the oceans have been getting saltier. There were lots of things happening then that had never happened before, probably a lot of sea life dying off and going extinct. We are returning towards the "normal" which existed a hundred million years ago.

Like I said, we should be more concerned about the politicization of science, and the effects of propaganda on the public mind. Fascism depends on having a willing mass of idiots reacting on cue.

So the state of the world a hundred million years ago is normal, and the state of the world during the million or so years during which humanoids have existed is the aberration. I gather from your post that in a hundred years or so we have made significant shift away from the state our species has known, and towards dino utopia. This is normal. How fast is this transition expected to occur? Your goal is to encourage complacency with the prospect of reversing millions of years of change in just hundreds of years?

 

[scootsy]

Isn't global warming a top 3 concern for the DoD? I think I remember reading that somewhere, something like parts of the world will become uninhabitable and will force mass-emigration and that the US is in the climate zone that should expect mass-immigration. Too lazy to check my facts.