On Apr 22, 10:37 pm, (Doug Bashford) wrote:
** "Fascism should more properly be called
** corporatism, since it is the merger of state
** and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

Words mean something, Cato.

in rec.radio.shortwave, On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 about:
- Global Warming? So What? Remember the Ice Age Scare?

Cato wrote:
It's All A Lie.
The Doomsday Prophets never give up. They will disappear for a
while and then come back with something new to scare us with.
And they have legions of "True Believers". Some of them on this
very list as we can see.
I would be really embarrassed to be one of them and shown to be
a fool.

Truth is the world will warm or cool on its own. And it will be
natural, with little or no help from us.

...snip

Truth? Try a little scientific consensus:
===========

Science 3 December 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1686
DOI: 10.1126/science.1103618Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Essays on Science and Society

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Naomi Oreskes*

Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently
assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an
argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA
administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through
review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate
change" (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected
by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major
uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might
be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality
of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the
World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental
Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a
basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed
and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment,
IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that
Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities
... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that
absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over
the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse
gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)].

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major
scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears
directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the
National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis
of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in
Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air
temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The
report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of
professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion
that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have
been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately
reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue"
[p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American
Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that
the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).
The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities
for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would
diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless,
they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was
tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific
journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the
keywords "climate change" (9).

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of
the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals,
methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position.
Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either
explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with
methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic
climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the
consensus position.

Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying
paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural.
However, none of these papers argued that point.

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed
literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the
public statements of their professional societies. Politicians,
economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion,
disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is
incorrect.

The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of
science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for
failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely
blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic
climate change and failed to do anything about it.

Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there
are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for
understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate
change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the
reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have
repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to
listen.

References and Notes

A. C. Revkin, K. Q. Seelye, New York Times, 19 June 2003, A1.
S. van den Hove, M. Le Menestrel, H.-C. de Bettignies, Climate Policy 2
(1), 3 (2003).
Seewww.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm.
J. J. McCarthy et al., Eds., Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation,
and Vulnerability (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001).
National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Science of Climate Change,
Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (National
Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001).
American Meteorological Society, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 84, 508
(2003).
American Geophysical Union, Eos 84 (51), 574 (2003).
Seewww.ourplanet.com/aaas/pages/atmos02.html.
The first year for which the database consistently published abstracts
was 1993. Some abstracts were deleted from our analysis because,
although the authors had put "climate change" in their key words, the
paper was not about climate change.
This essay is excerpted from the 2004 George Sarton Memorial Lecture,
"Consensus in science: How do we know we're not wrong," presented at the
AAAS meeting on 13 February 2004. I am grateful to AAAS and the History
of Science Society for their support of this lectureship; to my research
assistants S. Luis and G. Law; and to D. C. Agnew, K. Belitz, J. R.
Fleming, M. T. Greene, H. Leifert, and R. C. J. Somerville for helpful
discussions.
10.1126/science.1103618

The author is in the Department of History and Science Studies Program,
University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. E-mail:


--

When one gains a political certainty akin to
a loyal sports fan, one has achieved the final
tranquility of servitude, a joyous slavery.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude better than
the animating contest of freedom,
go home from us in peace.
We ask not your counsels or arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget that ye were
our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, August 1, 1776

Scientific consensus?? Scientific Consensus is
NOT a synonym of "Certain Truth". But when the scientific expertise
to judge a scientific position is lacking,
they're going to rely on the Consensus. Consensus is a collective
opinion. "Scientific consensus" can be wrong. It is NOT scientific
evidence.
Consensus can change. It has in the past.
But what happens with these Global Warming Prophets of Doom, is
that they are True Believers in this new faith. and that is exactly
what it is. They are believing this whole thing on faith, with no
solid scientific evidence that mankind, (oops.... humankind), is
responsible. Except of course for the ones that know it is all a Big
Lie but are using it to further their Socialist political goals. They
are grasping at straw, and when people argue against them, they use
the weapons of the left, such as name-calling and nitpicking apart the
other sides argument. Mud-slinging is a favourite weapon of theirs.
Laugh at the opposition, call them a lot of names, do your best to
make them look stupid. Take advantage of any mistake they make. Fight
dirty if you have to.
Consensus is the OPINION of a groups of people. It is not hard
evidence of anything.
Consensus can change over time.
Consensus is not something that I would want to spend hundreds of
billions of dollars, or trillions of dollars on over a few degress of
warming that has a good chance of being natural, and not man made.
You want to bankrupt the western nations?
Because that is what it would take. And even then, the way Kyoto
is set up, it won't amount to a hill of beans as far as stopping
Global Warming.
Socialists! God they never quit in their quest to place more
and more control over our lives, and gain political control for
themselves. They will use anything and everything to further their
goals.
Cato