Well, I know several people, for around the price of a nice SUV, that outfitted their homes to be both electricity and carbon-neutral. They have a nice high-efficiency refrigerator and freezer and regular oven and heat their water by solar power.

They have solar panels with a 75 year lifespan that actually put power BACK INTO the grid for most of the day and the freezer cycles off during while they're sleeping, relying on residual heat and good insulation to keep everything frozen while solar power isn't available. A small bank of non-toxic batteries in the basement provides power for LED lights and a computer or two during the evenings and heat-pumps buried deep into the soil keep the internal temperature VERY nice winter, fall, spring and summer.

But their neighbor installed a big pool and a home theater and bought a Porche.... spending roughly the same amount, but with no environmental benefits.

Which should we encourage, as a culture?

Right now we strongly encourage the latter.

Is that right?

ROFL!!! I was reading with at least an eye for factual statements... but wow... this is just silly

What a fucking retard. Thermodynamics applies to CLOSED SYSTEMS. This paper is a giant crock of ignorant blogger spooge.

There are HUNDREDS of rebuttals online. The simple fact is that in the caculations, they used equations that ASSUME a radiative black body is at "thermal equilibrium" (which the Earth is not) and then use those calculations to prove that..... get this... the Earth is at thermal equilibrium and therefore cannot heat up.

You must recognize that their claim of the invalidity of the atmospheric "greenhouse effect" is absolute bullshit. The moon maintains an average surface temperature of -31C, which is consistent with the net solar absorption and radiation of a similarly constituted black body (because it does not have an atmospheric greenhouse) and the Earth maintains a notably higher temperature due to that same atmospheric effect that they concluded (and also assumed) was invalid. Not to mention Venus which maintains a temperature almost 300 degrees too hot, due to its dense atmosphere.

Oh my GOD, I can't believe they published that. What a crock of shit.

You should know that it was not "peer reviewed". That journal uses an "invitation review" which means all they did was submit a few friend's reviews along with it, which was sufficient for that particular journal, but they were refused publication in about a dozen others first.

What a fucking tool.

Uhm.

The scientific basis of climate change in the IPCC paper (the GW1 paper) has been more thoroughly peer reviewed than any scientific study in the history of mankind.

However, the later sections, which try to establish the POLITICAL RAMIFICATIONS of the proven research are what we're talking about here, and they were stated to have used "grey sources" from non-government publications, non-reviewed estimates, etc.

In fact, it was the scientists themselves (from the original GW1 paper) who found these newest errors.

You seem to see some sort of vast cabal of conspiring scientists... when I think you're just digging for bites to troll on.

Hah.

This sounds like my 5 year old niece trying to reason out why she shouldn't have to put shoes on to go outside.

"you NEVER let me do what I want. I hate you." :-)

I'm sorry? In College Station, Texas, the humidex today is 52C

Yikes.

Ahh yes, but alarming everybody into a panic over domestic terrorist that has killed fewer people than FREAK WIND EVENTS during the last 10 years is totally justified, I guess.

There are very few scientists who will side with you here, but you can keep shouting if you want. I wouldn't want you to feel maligned or unimportant.

Again, the paper in question was not investigating the scientific basis of the climate change, that paper has never been found to have significant errors.

This is a DIFFERENT section of the report, which is designed to use "non-scientific" input in order to ascertain a POLITICAL impact of potential changes that were concluded in the scientific paper, separately.

Try to keep them separate, because they are.

The scientific paper (WG1) is different than this paper. The scientific paper discussing potential changes in temperature and sea level have been peer reviewed and HAVE NOT been found in error in any way.

The paper that is referenced is a different one, trying to understand the POLITICAL consequences of the concluded changes. These errors were made in this document, which by it's stated purpose, would use "grey" material from non-reviewed sources in order to try to build a broader picture.

The conclusions ARE NOT in question here, merely the potential political consequences.

Make sure you understand the difference.

I have to point out... (and as someone said above)

There are four volumes in the report, the report of which you speak uses "grey material" from goverment, industry and private sources that cannot be found anywhere else. In this case they used a government source for the percentage of land below sea level, unfortunately the Dutch govt got it wrong but that is about impacts and has nothing to do with the science. The scientific volume (WG1) only uses peer-reviewed sources and nobody has yet pointed out any errors in WG1, in fact the people who pointed out the 2035 error were contributors to WG1.

Note the prominent link directly above the reports to their statement about the 2035 mistake. The IPCC paper is widely recognised by scientific institutions as one of the most robust peer-review exercises ever conducted and it has been forthright about recognizing its mistake.

Agreed. BUT, throwing out the conclusions is advocated by many, which probably isn't a pragmatic solution either. That's called ignorance.

Then again, it seems pretty ignorant to claim Holland will be under water in 10 years too.

The truth (as fucking always) is probably smack in the middle between the blow-hards.

Neat how that is almost ALWAYS the truth, isn't it?

I agree with your point to a limited extent, but your tone is one of "neener, neener" which likely enhanced the quick-finger reaction of the troll mods.

Perhaps that's just a sensitivity to this topic that I have, because both sides of the argument have a very high quantity of argumentative dicks who are completely ignorant, except their particular brand of political talking points.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. You know... . CO2 is clearly bad, but the world won't end in 8 years. Perhaps it's 1,000 years, it's still not OK to do, in my opinion.

*shrug*

Supply and demand are a short-term adjustment, not a long term one.

There is absolutely nothing (other than perhaps some sort of "speculative warehousing" schemes) that would allow supply-and-demand adjust to prevent the depletion of a non-renewable resource.

Helium, for example, is priced based on how easy and cheap it is to extract it from the ground immediately, right now, rather than on what its real time-value is when considering the value of potential important industrial, medical and scientific usage 100 years from now when the stuff will be impossible to obtain, because too many people stuffed it into party balloons and party favours and a billion other random uses today.

Yes, and a book placed on the teacher's door is likely to cause more damage.

The act of placing a bottle in a place where people are going to be around when it pops is the issue.... and it's EXACTLY the same issue as putting a heavy book on top of the door. Yes, it CAN injure someone. Yes, it IS wrong to do.

No, making dry ice and soda (or a combination of them) a felony and arresting the parents for child endangerment... that's not the solution. Not even close. Not even in the same solar system...

That's absolutely not true.

The "theory of relativity" is just a theory because we can't MATHEMATICALLY prove it from some fundamental basis, but it has withstood TENS OF THOUSANDS of experimental results.

The "theory of gravity" is just a theory because, while it works PERFECTLY in the real world, we do not yet know how to derive it from a more fundamental law and we find VERY subtle changes in it at relativistic speeds and subatomic distances.

It's not so much about observing or testing. It has a lot more to do with the fact that a scientist has a very high bar for what is "proven". This should be obvious when the forces such as gravity and electromagnetism are "theories" despite having very lasting and real-world demonstrable consistencies that conform to known mathematical rules for the most part.

It has nothing to do with experimental.

When a drug is prescription, it costs a lot more. It's just a rule in the drug market.

Drug companies fight HARD to make sure that while the drug is patented (first 7 years) that it is prescription so they can sell it for a higher price while they have a monopoly on the product.

When the 7 years is running out and generics are about to come out, they fight HARD to make sure it is over-the-counter, because they have a better chance of beating out generics when they don't have informed pharmacists and doctors notifying patients that the generic is identical and cheaper.

It's all about the Benjamins.