"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?
"My doubt is that we on earth are significantly contributing to that warming."
Bob, if that is the case, it is very bad news. The reason being is that AGW is inevitable from our interfering with the historical 'status quo' of the atmosphere; (CO2 up 43% already, probably 100% within 50 years), and when AGW finally does kick in, it will be ON TOP OF your 'natural' global warming.
Hang on to your seats!
Why should the position of so many be 'we must be absolutely sure that a train is coming and it will run over and kill our kids' before we say 'hey kids, don't play on the train line'?
Apparently enough eyeballs on ads to justify perennially repeating the lie. Ironically, much of this industry's growth is tied to lower carbon emission technologies. Count how many times you see the word "green" in product blurbs, often with a graphic of a green leaf of some sort. Constituent pollutants (traditional non-greenhouse toxins which can be removed) are not the big problem being addressed. It's all about carbon emissions, the burning of fossil fuels. This is the problem.
Many big polluters and fossil fuel companies, including ExxonMobil, even like to brag about lowering carbon emissions all the while they deny there's any problem at all resulting from GHGs! Why do they spend millions to say they're reducing them??
Do the proponents of that position (or anybody) have an indefinite pass (from god, perhaps?) to shit in their own nest? I can assure you that responsiblity for knowingly promoting damaging false theses will be unlimited and indefinite.
Design News (one of my favorite websites, for its normally 'scientific' approach) is discrediting itself, by continually running this long discredited story. How much do you get for running it?
Why does UBM continue to spam out this old anti-science post as a "new" email? I receive it at least once a month, as I did again today. I understand controversial publicity is still publicity, but this shows an ugly editorial bias that is pro-fossil fuel industry, pro-business as usual, pro-lies, and pro-ignorance. UBM's scientific credibility can't go any less than zero, I guess. So, Congrats on that! You've lost it all unless you refute this post with a factual mea culpa that aligns with real climate science instead of Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, and Rush Limbaugh. So far, you're just amid bad company no better than those clowns of scientific integrity.
i think we are going to reach a point of unsustainable population growth soon. this is the factor that will doom us eventually. over population will strain an already strained food and water supply system, and, although you can produce enough energy, it won't be affordable to most. we will see world changing starvation, war, and epedemics before we see global warming come to fruitation. society is not currently equipped to deal with over population, except through starvation, war, and epidemics. when we learn to manage our population in a more humane way, we will see alot of the other challanges become more manageable.
This cycle of global warming started over 65,000 years ago. The oceans salinity is changing oceans currents will slow down the chilling will start over the ice will come and the process will repeat.
Really, what is your prolem? Where is any evidence that the science is wrong? There are a lot of points that add to the line implicating human activity to this climate change, not just one point of research. So, it should be easy for a person who claims to be a physicist to provide evidence specifically where something is incorrect.
If you are a physicist, then confront the researchers! Here's a link to New Research Shows Complexity of Global Warming that names names! So, you can contact them and confront them with their ignorance! In fact, if you search sciencedaily.com you'll find a lot of research articles that all name names! You can tell them how far out on a limb they are with their process and procedures!
Rather than bloviating here, what with all your physics knowledge, why not confront these scientists? And keep us informed with your discussions with them. To date, you've provided NOTHING to refute the science behind global warming research and that reveals something about you and your argument.
You assumed incorrectly. It was easy to prove the cold fusion theorists (chemists in over their heads) were wrong without proving cold fusion is impossible.
There are a lot of people in over their heads at the moment. It is even in the words and names. You say "global warming research" instead of climate research. You are missing half the scientific method, which you seem to hold to a rigid standard. Newton once wrote
"The best and safest method of philosophising seems to be, first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiences and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only on explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them; unless so far as they may furnish experiments."
Where are the experiments? Thus my previous comment about the need for a planet duplicator and a 4 billion year experiment. Climate researchers are way out on a limb when it comes to scientific method. This has to come down to insight and judgement. You can't do the experiment side of the equation.
Does it bother you that no one has ever solved the equations for turbulence, yet these researchers are modeling a turbulent atmospher and hydrosphere over very long periods of time?
You claim to be some sort of physicist and yet you say that you're puzzled about the notion that you must prove the theorists, I assume that you mean "the theory", wrong. I think that you need to discover what the scientific process is before I waste any time dealing with that notion. If you really were a physicist, then you'd have learned that in school, high school.
So, you're job is to provide evidence that global warming research has one or more errors in it. So far, they've bolstered their theory with hard data. If you don't agree, then show where they're worng with hard data.
"You're an Ayn Randian ethical egoist". Well, you got something right! Yes, I believe in the use of reason to understand the world, not magic.
"You simply don't like the potential for government control because you believe in failed free market theory and nothing more." That is certainly telling. Saving the planet is a very good excuse for collectivists to excercise control over the toiling masses. Next best thing to space invaders.
But I am still puzzled by this notion that I must prove the theorists wrong, otherwise they are right. And that by showing the size of the error bars I am a "denier". You don't even understand the kinds of problems that can lead to a proof versus a conjecture. When the Earth was at the center of the universe, Copernicus was a "denier". Newton was a "denier", quantum mechanics was a conspiracy of "deniers". The consensus was against them all. Now, I can see that a collectivist would find consensus attractive. But really, such thinking has killed hundreds of millions of people in the USSR and China with consensus ideas about agriculture and genetics instead of science and reason. Their leaders had an ideology and a plan. The modern elites and collective advocates just have an idea backed by ignorance. I think you are less dangerous. The ignorance leads to confusion when things go wrong. The idealists were not confused, they just doubled down and millions starved.
By the way, there is no media conspiracy. You don't need a conspiracy when 98% of the participants are in agreement. You should read some Feynman and marvel at clear thinking.
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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