There are examples where papers on global warming tried to game the system but were found out in short order. For an example see this article where Dr. Roy Spencer sneaked a botched paper past the peer-review system by submitting to an off-topic journal. Because the reviewers were not familiar with the topic they were not aware that the methodology described in the paper had already been refuted by previous literature. Within days the journal editor had resigned: http://science.slashdot.org/st...

“The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extend also in the literature (Trenberth et al. 2010), a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers.”

Why prohibit NASA from developing and launching satellites?

So... you're saying there is no point in studying the carbon cycle further? The science is settled? Really?

What does "spiral out of control" mean? The literature shows that there will be economic consequences to increased warming and that mitigation will be cheaper than adaptation. You will not find "spiral out of control" in the literature.

It is interesting that the same crowd that echos the "we just don't know" refrain gets upset whenever we invest in reducing uncertainty. Ideology will be the death of curiosity.

Who should be developing and launching the satellites for our scientific endeavors if not NASA?

The contempt for curiosity held by one side of this conversation is alarming. You start by noting how numerous and complex the sources of carbon dioxide are but conclude that gathering data on this is pointless.

Quite the opposite. As of 2007, when the American Association of Petroleum Geologists released a revised statement,[ no scientific body of national or international standing rejected the findings of human-induced effects on climate change. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Record levels? Not even close. Not even half: http://euanmearns.com/energiew...

If they had kept nuclear the picture would be even rosier. Hopefully other countries will take a more pragmatic approach, but it is amazing what they have accomplished even while shutting down nuclear.

Solar is being adopted largely by the middle class: http://climatecrocks.com/2013/...

The U.S. is also making strides: http://climatecrocks.com/2014/... . The revolution is being spearheaded by the Tea Party who values independence from government utilities: http://climatecrocks.com/2014/... "Monopoly utilities want to extinguish the independent rooftop solar market in America to protect their socialist control of how we get our electricity.”

In Germany citizens and co-ops own about half of the solar capacity. So it is the average tax payer who both pays for and benefits from the subsides. It represents a real democratization of the energy market. "Not only has energy production in Germany been pried from the hands of the “Big Four,” namely the four utility giants that had dominated the German energy market, but it is now also radically decentralized." - http://climatecrocks.com/2014/...

It is amazing what they have achieved. Especially in the face of doubters who predicted rolling brown outs that never materialized. The next revolution needs to come in storage. I'm optimistic.

Pretty sure the ggp made up the stat about the eagle kills. Found what I could on the internets but perhaps you could dig deeper? Either way, you can't satisfy the Luddites. They would have us raze the buildings and live in the trees if they had their way.

Across North America, the estimated number of migrating birds killed annually in collisions with buildings ranges from 100 million to 1 billion birds. - http://www.flap.org/faqs.php

Somewhere between 0.1 and 0.3 million birds die each year from collisions with wind turbines - http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...

But the real killer ... CATS! Cats may kill up to 3.7 billion birds and 20.7 billion mammals in the United States alone each year, a new study has found. - http://www.cbc.ca/news/technol...

undomod