Do any deniers care about the Federal report on Climate Change?
- Thread starter Boomboom521
- Start date
This truck salesmen guy was once pro-life and now he eats unborn babies. So there’s that.
Very cool! I don't need that asshole to procreate any more than he has. Bevis & Butthead were enough but he had to keep going!
Even needy Democrat handout constituents procreate. Isn't that how your party maintains its viability?
I have seven children who were allowed to live... didn't kill any of them! You have one that didn't ask to be born but since that pisses you off you're going to make sure it isn't. (born)
Why don't you invite your neighbors to your slaughtering session? They might gain some tips for their next planned unwanted baby execution watching your unwanted child being dismembered limb by limb. Won't that be entertaining?
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Well then you'd better stop paying for all those abortions or you're going to run out of people!
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If you are upset with me accusing you of being a "baby killer" or "eating human flesh" I'm equally outraged over your accusation that I have sex with my own Daughter!
So I didn't condemn Trump's off color remark? That's your justification for making that outrageous accusation? So where is your outrage or condemnation over Planned Parenthood chopping up fetuses and selling them for profit? Why are you the only one who gets to pick the "outrage" of the day?
I do not support adults having sex with children, especially their own. If you don't support that either then we are even.
If you don't support unwanted children being cut up and sold like pieces of meat why aren't you complaing about that as much as you are about something Trump said in an off color remark and never has actually done?
Give me a break
Yes I sell Trucks if that's OK with you? I also make a lot of money doing it. I do not eat unborn babies, why do you enjoy killing them? Especially when they are your own flesh and blood?
Who are you trying to emulate Dr. Gosnell? What's wrong your regular day job not paying enough? You can visit him in jail for some pointers before you go kill your own Child.
We are planning gender reveal. But instead of popping a balloon filled with pink or blue powder...it will be filled with nothing and we are just going to yell “psyche!!!!”
If you are truly against sex with your own children then why didn't you condemn Trump's remarks instead of doing what you did? See, works both ways. You still, in a way, defend Trump and his statements by calling them "off-color remarks". How do you know that? He's said these things many times, to different people. Yet you still want to make it sound like he's "joking". And, WHO THE F**K JOKES ABOUT F***KING AND DATING THEIR OWN DAUGHTER!
We are planning gender reveal. But instead of popping a balloon filled with pink or blue powder...it will be filled with nothing and we are just going to yell “psyche!!!!”
Why go through all that trouble just offer yourself to kill the next unwanted child that comes along? "I love abortions". Who said that?
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How do you know he wasn't just joking? How do you know he has had sex with his own daughters or even desires to? How do you know I do? This is all YOU are accusing of both him and me, now acting as if it's already happened!
Why?
Because you are simply a miserable, disgusting Leftist liar.
But you do know Planned Parenthood kills unwanted babies and then sells fetus baby body parts for profit.
You do vote for Democrats who grow "outraged" over suggestions about having their tax payer funding cut. You are silent over the slaughter of innocent unwanted children.
Why?
Because you are a miserable, disgusting, Leftist liar.
Your outrage over what outrages you is outrageous.
![[eyeroll]](http://l.yimg.com/j/assets/img/emoticons/rolleye/rolleye0011.r191677.gif "Eye roll [eyeroll]")
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Look at my last sentence: WHO THE F**K JOKES ABOUT F***KING AND DATING THEIR OWN DAUGHTER? I sure as Hell don't.
Who accuses perfect strangers of having Sex with their own Children. Not me! Now just who could that be?
I have not defended any such thing. You as the accuser are using that statement to accuse him and then accuse anyone else who doesn't condemn it as you wish to "impose" as morailty.
So why don't you "impose" your outrage over Democrat politicians who insist on funding the slaughter of innocent children so their body parts can be sold off? Why aren't you "imposing" a statement of condemnation over that butchery? Why aren't you personally condemning that? Does that mean you support it?
No?
So why is your silence or refusal to speak out against that not supporting it, but you suggest my not commenting on Trump joking about his daughter is support of what YOU accuse him and even me of? Having sex with our children or wanting to?
You're casting stones in a glass house with no glass to break, it's already all shattered in a million pieces!
Keeping telling yourself that. And vote for that sicko that talked about being attracted to his daughter........
And you keep saying how much you are against abortion but keep voting for politicians who fund Planned Parenthood chopping up innocent unwanted babies and then selling their body parts like pieces of meat.
Republican senators also voted to fund it........gee whiz, attracted to your own daughter. What a sicko!
Democrat Senators refused to sign a bill banning partial birth abortions. Sick Zombie walking Flesh eating Baby killers and YOU support them with your enthusiastic vote!
What a demented tortured mind you have! :scream:
Republicans still weren't 100% against Planned Parenthood funding. So..........you want to go down this road? You voted for a man who is attracted to his daughter......sicko bastard.
Yes you Baby killing flesh eating Zombie, let's go down that road!
You're "Pro Gay rights" correct?
You're also "Pro Choice" but you don't think you should "impose" your morality onto others correct?
So tell me, doesn't a little unwanted "gay fetus" deserve the "choice" for Life? (they are born gay right?) Aren't you Pro Life for Gays too? Don't you want little unwanted gay babies to live?
Or are you OK with its two Gay boy Parents deciding instead to let Planned Parenthood dismember their little unwanted gay fetus limb by limb, then sell the unwanted gay pieces to Zombie walking gay baby flesh eating Zombie swamp dwellers looking for dinner that evening?
@MountaineerWV "hey Zombie Wife honey...what's for our sludge filled supper tonight?"
"Oh, we're having broiled freshly sliced "gay baby" livers & tendons."
@MountaineerWV "Yuuuum...mmmmy"!!!!!!!
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Kills then eats his own children, or at least supports the "choice" of others who do.
(even if they're Gay):scream:
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You are leaving out Republicans, since some of your party voted in favor of it too. Just wear a condom ......sicko.
Would you like fries with that freshly broiled gay baby liver? Just ask they're free with your entree.
I'll take whatever your Republicans are taking since they voted with Democrats......
Oh trust me if we're in a contest for who kills the most babies you Democrats win hands down! You all have such gracious hearts too, demanding other people pay for the murders.
How generous of you!
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Give me all the Democrats who ran trying to be Republicans and we have our House majority back. Except for the tax cuts you all still don't like the idea of people keeping their own money so you Democrats all voted against that!
Yes CO2 is so prevalent human beings can make enough of it on their own to turn Earth into Venus on steroids.
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We are planning gender reveal. But instead of popping a balloon filled with pink or blue powder...it will be filled with nothing and we are just going to yell “psyche!!!!”
I wonder how many who posted in this thread have actually bothered to examine ALL the facts behind this issue?
Ans: I suspect, very few...especially if they're on the Left.
Climate Science is NOT settled Science
By
Steven E. Koonin
Sept. 19, 2014 12:19 p.m. ET
The idea that "Climate science is settled" runs through today's popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.
My training as a computational physicist—together with a 40-year career of scientific research, advising and management in academia, government and the private sector—has afforded me an extended, up-close perspective on climate science. Detailed technical discussions during the past year with leading climate scientists have given me an even better sense of what we know, and don't know, about climate. I have come to appreciate the daunting scientific challenge of answering the questions that policy makers and the public are asking.
The crucial scientific question for policy isn't whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter: The climate has always changed and always will. Geological and historical records show the occurrence of major climate shifts, sometimes over only a few decades. We know, for instance, that during the 20th century the Earth's global average surface temperature rose 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
Thousands Hit New York City Streets in Climate Change March
Tens of thousands of people marched in New York City Sunday to raise awareness and demand action on climate change ahead of Tuesday's United Nations Climate Summit. Photo: AP
Nor is the crucial question whether humans are influencing the climate. That is no hoax: There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon-dioxide emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. There is also little doubt that the carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for several centuries. The impact today of human activity appears to be comparable to the intrinsic, natural variability of the climate system itself.
Rather, the crucial, unsettled scientific question for policy is, "How will the climate change over the next century under both natural and human influences?" Answers to that question at the global and regional levels, as well as to equally complex questions of how ecosystems and human activities will be affected, should inform our choices about energy and infrastructure.
But—here's the catch—those questions are the hardest ones to answer. They challenge, in a fundamental way, what science can tell us about future climates.
Even though human influences could have serious consequences for the climate, they are physically small in relation to the climate system as a whole. For example, human additions to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the middle of the 21st century are expected to directly shift the atmosphere's natural greenhouse effect by only 1% to 2%. Since the climate system is highly variable on its own, that smallness sets a very high bar for confidently projecting the consequences of human influences.
A second challenge to "knowing" future climate is today's poor understanding of the oceans. The oceans, which change over decades and centuries, hold most of the climate's heat and strongly influence the atmosphere. Unfortunately, precise, comprehensive observations of the oceans are available only for the past few decades; the reliable record is still far too short to adequately understand how the oceans will change and how that will affect climate.
A third fundamental challenge arises from feedbacks that can dramatically amplify or mute the climate's response to human and natural influences. One important feedback, which is thought to approximately double the direct heating effect of carbon dioxide, involves water vapor, clouds and temperature.
But feedbacks are uncertain. They depend on the details of processes such as evaporation and the flow of radiation through clouds. They cannot be determined confidently from the basic laws of physics and chemistry, so they must be verified by precise, detailed observations that are, in many cases, not yet available.
Beyond these observational challenges are those posed by the complex computer models used to project future climate. These massive programs attempt to describe the dynamics and interactions of the various components of the Earth system—the atmosphere, the oceans, the land, the ice and the biosphere of living things. While some parts of the models rely on well-tested physical laws, other parts involve technically informed estimation. Computer modeling of complex systems is as much an art as a science.
For instance, global climate models describe the Earth on a grid that is currently limited by computer capabilities to a resolution of no finer than 60 miles. (The distance from New York City to Washington, D.C., is thus covered by only four grid cells.) But processes such as cloud formation, turbulence and rain all happen on much smaller scales. These critical processes then appear in the model only through adjustable assumptions that specify, for example, how the average cloud cover depends on a grid box's average temperature and humidity. In a given model, dozens of such assumptions must be adjusted ("tuned," in the jargon of modelers) to reproduce both current observations and imperfectly known historical records.
We often hear that there is a "scientific consensus" about climate change. But as far as the computer models go, there isn't a useful consensus at the level of detail relevant to assessing human influences. Since 1990, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has periodically surveyed the state of climate science. Each successive report from that endeavor, with contributions from thousands of scientists around the world, has come to be seen as the definitive assessment of climate science at the time of its issue.
There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon-dioxide emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. Pictured, an estuary in Patgonia. GALLERY STOCK
For the latest IPCC report (September 2013), its Working Group I, which focuses on physical science, uses an ensemble of some 55 different models. Although most of these models are tuned to reproduce the gross features of the Earth's climate, the marked differences in their details and projections reflect all of the limitations that I have described. For example:
• The models differ in their descriptions of the past century's global average surface temperature by more than three times the entire warming recorded during that time. Such mismatches are also present in many other basic climate factors, including rainfall, which is fundamental to the atmosphere's energy balance. As a result, the models give widely varying descriptions of the climate's inner workings. Since they disagree so markedly, no more than one of them can be right.
• Although the Earth's average surface temperature rose sharply by 0.9 degree Fahrenheit during the last quarter of the 20th century, it has increased much more slowly for the past 16 years, even as the human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen by some 25%. This surprising fact demonstrates directly that natural influences and variability are powerful enough to counteract the present warming influence exerted by human activity.
Yet the models famously fail to capture this slowing in the temperature rise. Several dozen different explanations for this failure have been offered, with ocean variability most likely playing a major role. But the whole episode continues to highlight the limits of our modeling.
• The models roughly describe the shrinking extent of Arctic sea ice observed over the past two decades, but they fail to describe the comparable growth of Antarctic sea ice, which is now at a record high.
• The models predict that the lower atmosphere in the tropics will absorb much of the heat of the warming atmosphere. But that "hot spot" has not been confidently observed, casting doubt on our understanding of the crucial feedback of water vapor on temperature.
• Even though the human influence on climate was much smaller in the past, the models do not account for the fact that the rate of global sea-level rise 70 years ago was as large as what we observe today—about one foot per century.
• A crucial measure of our knowledge of feedbacks is climate sensitivity—that is, the warming induced by a hypothetical doubling of carbon-dioxide concentration. Today's best estimate of the sensitivity (between 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) is no different, and no more certain, than it was 30 years ago. And this is despite an heroic research effort costing billions of dollars.
These and many other open questions are in fact described in the IPCC research reports, although a detailed and knowledgeable reading is sometimes required to discern them. They are not "minor" issues to be "cleaned up" by further research. Rather, they are deficiencies that erode confidence in the computer projections. Work to resolve these shortcomings in climate models should be among the top priorities for climate research.
Yet a public official reading only the IPCC's "Summary for Policy Makers" would gain little sense of the extent or implications of these deficiencies. These are fundamental challenges to our understanding of human impacts on the climate, and they should not be dismissed with the mantra that "climate science is settled."
While the past two decades have seen progress in climate science, the field is not yet mature enough to usefully answer the difficult and important questions being asked of it. This decidedly unsettled state highlights what should be obvious: Understanding climate, at the level of detail relevant to human influences, is a very, very difficult problem.
We can and should take steps to make climate projections more useful over time. An international commitment to a sustained global climate observation system would generate an ever-lengthening record of more precise observations. And increasingly powerful computers can allow a better understanding of the uncertainties in our models, finer model grids and more sophisticated descriptions of the processes that occur within them. The science is urgent, since we could be caught flat-footed if our understanding does not improve more rapidly than the climate itself changes.
A transparent rigor would also be a welcome development, especially given the momentous political and policy decisions at stake. That could be supported by regular, independent, "red team" reviews to stress-test and challenge the projections by focusing on their deficiencies and uncertainties; that would certainly be the best practice of the scientific method. But because the natural climate changes over decades, it will take many years to get the data needed to confidently isolate and quantify the effects of human influences.
Policy makers and the public may wish for the comfort of certainty in their climate science. But I fear that rigidly promulgating the idea that climate science is "settled" (or is a "hoax") demeans and chills the scientific enterprise, retarding its progress in these important matters. Uncertainty is a prime mover and motivator of science and must be faced head-on. It should not be confined to hushed sidebar conversations at academic conferences.
Society's choices in the years ahead will necessarily be based on uncertain knowledge of future climates. That uncertainty need not be an excuse for inaction. There is well-justified prudence in accelerating the development of low-emissions technologies and in cost-effective energy-efficiency measures.
But climate strategies beyond such "no regrets" efforts carry costs, risks and questions of effectiveness, so nonscientific factors inevitably enter the decision. These include our tolerance for risk and the priorities that we assign to economic development, poverty reduction, environmental quality, and intergenerational and geographical equity.
Individuals and countries can legitimately disagree about these matters, so the discussion should not be about "believing" or "denying" the science. Despite the statements of numerous scientific societies, the scientific community cannot claim any special expertise in addressing issues related to humanity's deepest goals and values. The political and diplomatic spheres are best suited to debating and resolving such questions, and misrepresenting the current state of climate science does nothing to advance that effort.
Any serious discussion of the changing climate must begin by acknowledging not only the scientific certainties but also the uncertainties, especially in projecting the future. Recognizing those limits, rather than ignoring them, will lead to a more sober and ultimately more productive discussion of climate change and climate policies. To do otherwise is a great disservice to climate science itself.
Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama's first term and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. His previous positions include professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, as well as chief scientist of BP , where his work focused on renewable and low-carbon energy technologies.
Ans: I suspect, very few...especially if they're on the Left.
Climate Science is NOT settled Science
By
Steven E. Koonin
Sept. 19, 2014 12:19 p.m. ET
The idea that "Climate science is settled" runs through today's popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.
My training as a computational physicist—together with a 40-year career of scientific research, advising and management in academia, government and the private sector—has afforded me an extended, up-close perspective on climate science. Detailed technical discussions during the past year with leading climate scientists have given me an even better sense of what we know, and don't know, about climate. I have come to appreciate the daunting scientific challenge of answering the questions that policy makers and the public are asking.
The crucial scientific question for policy isn't whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter: The climate has always changed and always will. Geological and historical records show the occurrence of major climate shifts, sometimes over only a few decades. We know, for instance, that during the 20th century the Earth's global average surface temperature rose 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
Thousands Hit New York City Streets in Climate Change March
Tens of thousands of people marched in New York City Sunday to raise awareness and demand action on climate change ahead of Tuesday's United Nations Climate Summit. Photo: AP
Nor is the crucial question whether humans are influencing the climate. That is no hoax: There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon-dioxide emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. There is also little doubt that the carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for several centuries. The impact today of human activity appears to be comparable to the intrinsic, natural variability of the climate system itself.
Rather, the crucial, unsettled scientific question for policy is, "How will the climate change over the next century under both natural and human influences?" Answers to that question at the global and regional levels, as well as to equally complex questions of how ecosystems and human activities will be affected, should inform our choices about energy and infrastructure.
But—here's the catch—those questions are the hardest ones to answer. They challenge, in a fundamental way, what science can tell us about future climates.
Even though human influences could have serious consequences for the climate, they are physically small in relation to the climate system as a whole. For example, human additions to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the middle of the 21st century are expected to directly shift the atmosphere's natural greenhouse effect by only 1% to 2%. Since the climate system is highly variable on its own, that smallness sets a very high bar for confidently projecting the consequences of human influences.
A second challenge to "knowing" future climate is today's poor understanding of the oceans. The oceans, which change over decades and centuries, hold most of the climate's heat and strongly influence the atmosphere. Unfortunately, precise, comprehensive observations of the oceans are available only for the past few decades; the reliable record is still far too short to adequately understand how the oceans will change and how that will affect climate.
A third fundamental challenge arises from feedbacks that can dramatically amplify or mute the climate's response to human and natural influences. One important feedback, which is thought to approximately double the direct heating effect of carbon dioxide, involves water vapor, clouds and temperature.
But feedbacks are uncertain. They depend on the details of processes such as evaporation and the flow of radiation through clouds. They cannot be determined confidently from the basic laws of physics and chemistry, so they must be verified by precise, detailed observations that are, in many cases, not yet available.
Beyond these observational challenges are those posed by the complex computer models used to project future climate. These massive programs attempt to describe the dynamics and interactions of the various components of the Earth system—the atmosphere, the oceans, the land, the ice and the biosphere of living things. While some parts of the models rely on well-tested physical laws, other parts involve technically informed estimation. Computer modeling of complex systems is as much an art as a science.
For instance, global climate models describe the Earth on a grid that is currently limited by computer capabilities to a resolution of no finer than 60 miles. (The distance from New York City to Washington, D.C., is thus covered by only four grid cells.) But processes such as cloud formation, turbulence and rain all happen on much smaller scales. These critical processes then appear in the model only through adjustable assumptions that specify, for example, how the average cloud cover depends on a grid box's average temperature and humidity. In a given model, dozens of such assumptions must be adjusted ("tuned," in the jargon of modelers) to reproduce both current observations and imperfectly known historical records.
We often hear that there is a "scientific consensus" about climate change. But as far as the computer models go, there isn't a useful consensus at the level of detail relevant to assessing human influences. Since 1990, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has periodically surveyed the state of climate science. Each successive report from that endeavor, with contributions from thousands of scientists around the world, has come to be seen as the definitive assessment of climate science at the time of its issue.
There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon-dioxide emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. Pictured, an estuary in Patgonia. GALLERY STOCK
For the latest IPCC report (September 2013), its Working Group I, which focuses on physical science, uses an ensemble of some 55 different models. Although most of these models are tuned to reproduce the gross features of the Earth's climate, the marked differences in their details and projections reflect all of the limitations that I have described. For example:
• The models differ in their descriptions of the past century's global average surface temperature by more than three times the entire warming recorded during that time. Such mismatches are also present in many other basic climate factors, including rainfall, which is fundamental to the atmosphere's energy balance. As a result, the models give widely varying descriptions of the climate's inner workings. Since they disagree so markedly, no more than one of them can be right.
• Although the Earth's average surface temperature rose sharply by 0.9 degree Fahrenheit during the last quarter of the 20th century, it has increased much more slowly for the past 16 years, even as the human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen by some 25%. This surprising fact demonstrates directly that natural influences and variability are powerful enough to counteract the present warming influence exerted by human activity.
Yet the models famously fail to capture this slowing in the temperature rise. Several dozen different explanations for this failure have been offered, with ocean variability most likely playing a major role. But the whole episode continues to highlight the limits of our modeling.
• The models roughly describe the shrinking extent of Arctic sea ice observed over the past two decades, but they fail to describe the comparable growth of Antarctic sea ice, which is now at a record high.
• The models predict that the lower atmosphere in the tropics will absorb much of the heat of the warming atmosphere. But that "hot spot" has not been confidently observed, casting doubt on our understanding of the crucial feedback of water vapor on temperature.
• Even though the human influence on climate was much smaller in the past, the models do not account for the fact that the rate of global sea-level rise 70 years ago was as large as what we observe today—about one foot per century.
• A crucial measure of our knowledge of feedbacks is climate sensitivity—that is, the warming induced by a hypothetical doubling of carbon-dioxide concentration. Today's best estimate of the sensitivity (between 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) is no different, and no more certain, than it was 30 years ago. And this is despite an heroic research effort costing billions of dollars.
These and many other open questions are in fact described in the IPCC research reports, although a detailed and knowledgeable reading is sometimes required to discern them. They are not "minor" issues to be "cleaned up" by further research. Rather, they are deficiencies that erode confidence in the computer projections. Work to resolve these shortcomings in climate models should be among the top priorities for climate research.
Yet a public official reading only the IPCC's "Summary for Policy Makers" would gain little sense of the extent or implications of these deficiencies. These are fundamental challenges to our understanding of human impacts on the climate, and they should not be dismissed with the mantra that "climate science is settled."
While the past two decades have seen progress in climate science, the field is not yet mature enough to usefully answer the difficult and important questions being asked of it. This decidedly unsettled state highlights what should be obvious: Understanding climate, at the level of detail relevant to human influences, is a very, very difficult problem.
We can and should take steps to make climate projections more useful over time. An international commitment to a sustained global climate observation system would generate an ever-lengthening record of more precise observations. And increasingly powerful computers can allow a better understanding of the uncertainties in our models, finer model grids and more sophisticated descriptions of the processes that occur within them. The science is urgent, since we could be caught flat-footed if our understanding does not improve more rapidly than the climate itself changes.
A transparent rigor would also be a welcome development, especially given the momentous political and policy decisions at stake. That could be supported by regular, independent, "red team" reviews to stress-test and challenge the projections by focusing on their deficiencies and uncertainties; that would certainly be the best practice of the scientific method. But because the natural climate changes over decades, it will take many years to get the data needed to confidently isolate and quantify the effects of human influences.
Policy makers and the public may wish for the comfort of certainty in their climate science. But I fear that rigidly promulgating the idea that climate science is "settled" (or is a "hoax") demeans and chills the scientific enterprise, retarding its progress in these important matters. Uncertainty is a prime mover and motivator of science and must be faced head-on. It should not be confined to hushed sidebar conversations at academic conferences.
Society's choices in the years ahead will necessarily be based on uncertain knowledge of future climates. That uncertainty need not be an excuse for inaction. There is well-justified prudence in accelerating the development of low-emissions technologies and in cost-effective energy-efficiency measures.
But climate strategies beyond such "no regrets" efforts carry costs, risks and questions of effectiveness, so nonscientific factors inevitably enter the decision. These include our tolerance for risk and the priorities that we assign to economic development, poverty reduction, environmental quality, and intergenerational and geographical equity.
Individuals and countries can legitimately disagree about these matters, so the discussion should not be about "believing" or "denying" the science. Despite the statements of numerous scientific societies, the scientific community cannot claim any special expertise in addressing issues related to humanity's deepest goals and values. The political and diplomatic spheres are best suited to debating and resolving such questions, and misrepresenting the current state of climate science does nothing to advance that effort.
Any serious discussion of the changing climate must begin by acknowledging not only the scientific certainties but also the uncertainties, especially in projecting the future. Recognizing those limits, rather than ignoring them, will lead to a more sober and ultimately more productive discussion of climate change and climate policies. To do otherwise is a great disservice to climate science itself.
Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama's first term and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. His previous positions include professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, as well as chief scientist of BP , where his work focused on renewable and low-carbon energy technologies.
See here on the Left, you aren't even allowed to disagree on this so called "climate change" as settled science. Never mind that educated & trained scientists have looked at this from all sides and are just as convinced it is NOT happening as those who have decided it IS happening. However if you disagree with the Left's conclusions, you're a "climate denier"...stupid, uneducated, uncaring, irresponsible and essentially a reprobate!
Meanwhile the Earth and the Sun, the two most important players on what if any "climate change" actually occurs just keep on doin' what they do to make that 'ol CO2 without any permission or approval required from any human Leftists deciding how warm or cool the planet should be or even will be! Isn't that amazing how that works?
I'm so glad they (Leftists) don't control the Earth or the Sun because neither would have much chance of functioning if either dared to disagree with the Left about "climate change" or "global warming" or exactly how warm or cool we should be based on what the omniscient Left suggests.
The Sun and the Earth thankfully answer to a much higher authority, and are governed by much more realistic & accommodating laws of nature, physics, and Science than those developed by or insisted upon by Leftist "climate controllers".
Meanwhile the Earth and the Sun, the two most important players on what if any "climate change" actually occurs just keep on doin' what they do to make that 'ol CO2 without any permission or approval required from any human Leftists deciding how warm or cool the planet should be or even will be! Isn't that amazing how that works?
I'm so glad they (Leftists) don't control the Earth or the Sun because neither would have much chance of functioning if either dared to disagree with the Left about "climate change" or "global warming" or exactly how warm or cool we should be based on what the omniscient Left suggests.
The Sun and the Earth thankfully answer to a much higher authority, and are governed by much more realistic & accommodating laws of nature, physics, and Science than those developed by or insisted upon by Leftist "climate controllers".
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