"If you look at the signatories of the op-ed, you won't find people more qualified than that," William Happer, a professor of physics at Princeton University and a signatory, told Design News. "These people are really heavyweights of the scientific world." (See a list of the scientists below.)
It's worth noting that the 16 scientists who signed the editorial aren't alone. Happer told Design News that after the editorial appeared, he received calls from colleagues who wanted to know why they weren't given a chance to sign.
The signatories aren't making a case for coal, oil, nuclear, wind, or solar power. They don't mention whether we should buy electric cars or gas guzzlers. By most measures, their opinion seems apolitical. They just believe that CO2 isn't a problem.
"The demonization of carbon has really distorted everything we do," Happer told us. "If we could back off and say, 'CO2 is probably good,' it would change the way we do things. We'd like to get back to an honest economic discussion not based on carbon footprints or assumptions about 'evil CO2.' "
Whether we agree or disagree with that assessment, it has the potential to affect everything that engineers do. Every day, engineers make decisions about the design of cars, trucks, furnaces, refrigerators, washers, dryers, and all kinds of industrial products. And the emission of CO2 plays into all those decisions. So a solid understanding of global warming science is critical.
In the wild world of the Internet, many bloggers argue that the science is settled. It's "incontrovertible," they say. But is it? Most scientists would acknowledge that the First Law of Thermodynamics is incontrovertible. So is the Second Law, Ohm's Law, Newton's laws, Bernoulli's equation, and a lot of other bedrock scientific principles. But does anthropogenic global warming really belong in the same breath as those?
"I order you to try writing a coherent and succinct post refuting AGW. I double dare you to even try."
Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. -Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man" 1791.
Nice try, Jeffbiss. (And you even spelled my name right!) But as I said, if you want it, you have to ask, politely. Last time I checked, by the way, politely requires a bit more than just using "please" while denegrating everything you can think of about the person you are requesting from.
It is sad to say, that if the biggest collection of liars ever assembled in the history of man (our government) says there is global warming, then it must not be true.
The earth is huge! Our impact is generally confined to pollution and construction and deconstruction (war). We are not the gods we think we are. We have been given the responsibility to tend and care for the earth. Yes, we don't always do a good job. But we aren't destroying the earth!
There has been a lot of money made in this Al Gore scam by companies and governments. Lots of money. And lots of people hurt. And it will go on as long as the political correctness dominates science (a plank in the communist platform). We engineers need to make sure we are after truth and not funding...
Many of the skeptic side do routinely point out various errors in data collection by the believers, and if certainly does appear that some of the data is questionable. It is certainly correct to ask for further proof when some data is demonstrsted to be incorrect, or even just potentially incorrect.
What I see is a group of people whoi were for many years crying and complaining about how very unfair it was that those of us in the USA had a living standard that was so much higher than many other people. Thyese folks apparently felt, and still feel, it seems, that we here are somehow guilty of some sort of horrible transgressions by having a much higher standard of living. In a free country they are certainly allowed to believe such things, and not die for believing them. BUT then there are others of us who feel no guilt at all about living in houses with real floors and glass in all the windows. I don't regret having electric lights, either.
My point being that if an individual has repeatedly demonstrated that they have some specific personal agenda, we aould be wise to think that most of their activities would be tending to promote that same agenda. Therefore, it is natural to be a bit skeptical of these folks.
ON a completely different side of the discussion. there are indeed warming and cooling cycles in the history of the earth, and some of them are much longer than others. So is it also possible that we are experiencing the peaks of several cycles rising in unison, which has not happened in quite a while? And note that humans are not responsible for the susn's cycles, we don't think.
Another rambling post. If you're not trying to refute AGW, then what's your point? Why waste our time and thread space? So, I order you to try writing a coherent and succinct post refuting AGW. I double dare you to even try.
Remember that science is NOT about beliefs, it's about providing evidence to back up your claims. You haven't posted anything relevant to the AGW discussion.
"AGW is supported by the research" is only true so far as you have only seen research that supports it.
It always makes me a little nervous to talk to someone who is absolutely sure that something is so because they've never personally seen anything else. It doesn't tell me that it is so, just that they haven't very wide horizons.
But that's a point I was making while you were sitting and waiting for me to refute AGW for you, so you could defeat me, wasn't it?
Since when do I dance to your whip? Y'see, this is why you run off on monologs. I didn't say a thing about AGW: I said plenty about IPCC and the business of publishing scientific papers, and how unscientific science has become. And how you aren't doing anyone any good standing on your own self-carved ivory tower and insisting that no one can say anything unless they produce the papers that haven't been published. Which is, to be blunt, pretty bully-ish.
If you want me to refute AGW, you're going to have to ask politely. I'm not too likely to bother, though. Once you throw away the hockey stick, the bad math that produced it, the bad math that was synthesized to show that the first set of bad math was good math, and the whole of RealScience.com and Argyle and their arrogant associates, it's hard to prove global warming is happening just like you claim, and a lot harder to claim that it's caused by mankind alone. But hey, that's _my_ opinion. I'm not forcing that on you: you're happy with your beliefs, and apparently they empower you.
I am, however, quite willing to challenge your implicit claim that you can dictate to others how they can go about making their points. It's just another way to try to rob someone of their right to free speech without actually admitting that you have no basis for a rebuttal.
If you're saving the real basis for your rebuttal, by all means, play the card. We're all waiting, with bated breath. But put the ad hominem attacks and the school-yard bully aside, and man up.
Get a grip. Climate is the signal and weather the noise. Adding CO2, a greenhouse gas, adds energy to the system and thus disturbs the equilibrium, which then forces the system to "seek" a new equlibrium. One would expect the signal to increase and the noise to become more chaotic, which it apparently does.
AGW is supported by the research and i see that you have nothing to refute it, except your attitude.
Come on, it's democratic in that anyone can get involved, from performing the actual research to reviewing and commenting on the research, which is kinda like voting. So it is a group thing. Also, there are teams of researchers working together, like at CERN.
Still nothing refuting AGW I see. Long post though. Instead of rambling, please succinctly provde evidence that AGW theory is wrong. Nothing more. There's a lot of research out there, so start reading.
Tesla Motors plans to roll out a “compelling, affordable electric car” that will sell for about half the price of its high-profile Model S by the end of 2016, company chairman Elon Musk said last week.
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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