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Ignoring the facts because they're so uncomfortable. .
I'll say. I've been trying to get the fact that it's not possible to infer cause and effect in this situation catch on since I started coming regularly to this board. I even quoted the IPCC Physical Science Basis report conceding that fact. It is, as far as I can tell, still being ignored.
Lindzen was very wrong in his 1993 paper in which he stated that the climatologists were assuming that the third world countries would become richer and build far more power plants. He veiwed that as very unlikely, and said that the climatologists basing future CO2 levels on that assumption was in error. But here we are today. In a world where Januarys sale of new automobiles in China exceeded those in the United States. And China's total CO2 output now exceeds that of the United States. Lindzen is no closer to being correct today than he has been in the past.
Observation is reality. Observation that the last 11 warmest years have been in the last 13 years. Observation that almost all of the world's glaciers are in rapid retreat. That both the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps are losing ice by the giga-ton at an accelerating rate. Observation that the oceans are becoming both warmer and more acidic.
Don't be too hard on yourself. You've got a big task in front of you. With the scientific consensus being what it is and most of us non-scientific types willing to take notice of scientists who have no particular self-interest in putting forward their views, of course it's going to be difficult to try and obfuscate. Most people understand about vested interests in politics now and they try to follow the money to see what's really going on.
Why would you assume the scientists involved have no particular self-interest in putting forward their views? You don't think James Hansen, for example, has anything at stake in doing what he's doing? You don't think you might be able to follow some money to people involved in climate research on the "consensus" side? Talking about what's necessary to infer cause and effect is not obfuscation. It's a very important principle.
I can't say that I blame people for going along with what the consensus view among scientists in a field is at any particular time. But bear in mind that there is no shortage of examples from history in which what was once the consensus view was later either proven to be wrong or came to be believed to be wrong. But I want to start a separate thread on that so I won't farther on it here.
John, do you understand the principle of greenhouse gases?
And were you to read the many papers published by other scientists, you would see where they have vehemently disagreed with Lindzen. And Lindzen, on this issue, has a reputation of being much more often wrong than right.
Here's Lindzen's side of the story on being "proven wrong:"
Extra - WSJ.com
A quote:
"And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an 'Iris Effect,' wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as 'discredited."'
Of all the charges made against scientists that provide the evidence of the warming that we are experiancing, none angers me more than the charge that they are personally profiting out of providing false evidence. For that is what you people are accusing them of. How does a geologist profit from pointing out the recession of glaciers in a mountain range that he is studying? The same for a meteorologist studying climate records for a section of the nation. When he points out that the temperature and precipitation pattern has been changing, you immediatly scream "profit motive".
Then there is the matter of grants, public and private. I really love this, as I have known many scientists that used the whole of the grant for the instrumentation neccessary for their research, and essentially lived off of baloney sandwiches for the time of the research.
.....
You people no longer have any credibility. You not only deny the science, you deny the very scientists that do the work. Fortunetly, we have a new admin that has put real scientists in agencies dealing with science. Not Quislings for the energy companies.
LOL! Sour grapes. He was discredited.
Lindzen has claimed that the risks of smoking, including passive smoking, are overstated. In 2001,[24] Newsweek journalist Fred Guterl reported, after an interview with Lindzen
He'll even expound on how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking. He speaks in full, impeccably logical paragraphs, and he punctuates his measured cadences with thoughtful drags on a cigarette.[24]
A 1991 article in Consumers' Research entitled "Passive Smoking: How Great a Hazard?" is also sometimes used to characterize Richard Lindzen as a tobacco spokesperson or expert. That article says, "Richard Lindzen, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has emphasized that problems will arise where we will need to depend on scientific judgement, and by ruining our credibility now we leave society with a resource of some importance diminished. The implementation of public policies must be based on good science, to the degree that it is available, and not on emotion or on political needs. Those who develop such policies must not stray from sound scientific investigations, based only on accepted scientific methodologies."