Man Made Global Warming

[camber]

Originally Posted by Bewolf

This thread is more surreal then watching Glenn Beck.

The amound of conspiracy attributed to numerous orgnaisations and proffessions is worse then kennedy, moon landing and Area 51 combined.

I am a professional genetic scientist/protein engineer. I started out working next to a new research institute, all swoopy architecture and weird piping poking out the top. Security was tight. We all wondered, what really went on in there? Alien ship on the top floor with frozen bodies? Cold fusion reactor?

I started working there a couple years ago and it turned out to be pretty boring, just the same thing again. Floors and floors of modestly paid scientists on depressing short term contracts, delegating work to attractive young students, trying to find objective truths about problems small and large in scope. No alien ship on the top floor, just a ping pong table (but a nice view area and BBQ).

We Scientists (not a climatologist btw) just try our best, for reasons we doubt ourselves sometimes, to present the closest to the objective truth we can produce and hope someone actually reads it. From our clever predecessors we know all the ways that humans can delude themselves in technical arguments when they want something to be true, and we pounce on other scientists in meetings when they make those mistakes. We can be smartarses in forums pointing out when non scientists show these argument biases again and again and again.

But it's not our fault when politicos try to produce policies that benefit their cronies or increase taxation while sounding green. Or when a weatherman says that the hurricane last month was because of global warming, or that the cold snap last week disproves global warming. Or if a coal mine closes, then reopens with the coal dyed green, marketing them as "antiwarming green gaia powerrocks (tm)"

The scientific consensus on global warming is very clear, and has been verified by multiple avenues of research and multiple groups of scientists who probably don't like each other that much. Sorry.

camber

P.S Global warming actually got me into trouble during my PhD. I calibrated my CO2 analyser using a textbook that gave the 1975 atmospheric content of CO2. After my data was a bit weird my boss pointed out I better check, it had gone up a lot since then