"If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect," said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.
Um, doesn't that pretty much sum up the data supporting man-made climate change?
Yep, only it is one hundred years out of billions rather than ten out of a hundred. Both sides are full of it.
Also, are they using the "corrected" data, or the raw data? Are they accounting for misreported margins of error for the monitoring stations? Did the statisticians actually check for warming trends as well?
Because I won't say it is cooling, but if you stop taking out the fudge factor, it basically looks like the rest of the historical charts and extrapolated data from core samples.
Good! So we now know that global warming and global cooling are both hoaxes! Now will everybody kindly shut up about the weather.
*claps hands*
We need a smiley for that.
A good way to look at this is the Does Smoking Cause Cancer controversy of the 1980's.
Beginning in 1961, the Surgeon General linked cigarette smoking with cancer. The tobacco industry worked very hard to tell the public that the link between tobacco and cancer was not proven. Both sides had their scientists and their data.
In the 80's the debate (a totally unnecessary debate because behind the scenes both sides already knew for certain that smoking causes cancer) got very heated, when supposedly independent scientists (secretly funded by Big Tobacco)declared the link between smoking and cancer to be a hoax and a fraud.
These people found small mistakes and even outright cheating in some of the research that supported the link, which these people loudly and aggressively pointed out as proof of a effort by mainstream science to hoodwink the public on behalf of do-gooders who wanted to deprive Americans of their God-given right to smoke. And other similar nonsense.
Here is the point; all along while this phony debate was going on, those who were smoking were slowing giving themselves cancer. All the talking points didn't change the fact that use of tobacco increases the risk of many types of cancer. The 'debate' was irrelevant, a stalling tactic.
The phony debate on climate change is a carbon copy of the tobacco debate. While individuals who get money from energy companies aggressively insist that the Earth isn't getting warmer, the ice continues to melt. At some point, the truth will be known, but the deniers hope that by then it will be too late to do anything about it, and their money will have already been made.
If you argue about taking a dime from the big corporate bucks people will throw fits.. It really not about what best for the world. It all about whats best for my check book today, screw tomorrow.. That the attitude i keep seeing...
Sad thing is, sometimes tommorow comes today. We will see what happens in the long run, to me it a bit of Russian Roulet from a gun really far away.. It could take that bullet a bit to hit, and the gun might not even be loaded.. But are you really willing to pull the trigger??
I think the tobacco analogy is a very good one too. While agree that cigarettes, much like pollution, are bad, politicians only look at solutions to these types of "problems" in terms of "what's in it for us".
Just like the global warming scare, they announced that cigarettes will kill you and proceed to turn cigarette companies into the bad guys. They sue cigarette makers for billions, but not enough to put them out of business... just enough to get a huge piece of the pie.
Not happy with that slice they work the other end and raise taxes on smokers, ostensibly to encourage people to stop smoking. The government portrays smokers as no better than Nazis or pedophiles and proceeds to extract any amount they think smokers will still pay.
The dirty little secret is that they do not want to keep people from smoking or they would simply make cigarettes illegal. No, they just want to extract another piece of pie from people who are, now, so looked down upon that they have no voice sticking up for them against this massive taxation.
If anything the government did were to actually save lives and those smokers that were dying in their 50s and 60s started living to their 70s and 80s, guess what happens to government entitlement programs that are already going under because the politicians won't be fiscally responsible?
The answer to your next question is NO. I do not and I have never smoked cigarettes. But, I am a Libertarian and a fan of freedom for all. Not just the political elite.
TrulyCdn
Awesome. If the world freezes over at least I'll be prepared.