The Problem of Low Oil, High Mileage, and Going Green
Economy — By Dustin R. Steeve on November 20, 2008 at 10:26 pmOil prices are dropping. For many, including myself, this comes as a relief. However, there are some for whom dropping oil prices pose a critical problem: American auto makers. A quick case study of Ford Motor Company helps us to see why.
Ford’s best selling product has been their F-Series. In fact, Ford is the most popular truck company in the world if one judges such things by sales figures. In 2004, trucks and SUVs accounted for 70% of Ford’s sales. However, recent dramatic increases in oil prices have altered consumer demand causing the truck and SUV market to decline dramatically. Added to this was pressure from Congress and environmental groups for higher mileage standards on all vehicles. Were these trends to continue, or at least maintain current levels, Ford has an expensive yet simple solution: change their factories to produce smaller, more fuel efficient cars. Ford is currently pursuing this solution and plans to reduce their sales of trucks and SUVs to 34%.
Here’s the problem: what happens when oil prices drop and consumer demand returns to trucks and SUVs?
When oil prices drop and consumer demand returns to trucks and SUVs, Ford will be left with too many factories producing small vehicles
that nobody wants, too few factories producing large vehicles that
everybody wants, and, on top of all of that, millions of dollars in
debt and lost labor hours resulting from the conversion of their truck
plants. Ford faces an additional dilemma. The popularity of the
environmentalist movement and the supposed marketing power of “going
green” means that Ford has to walk a fine line between what popular
culture say consumers want and what consumers are actually buying.
Companies seen as “anti-environmental” are maligned and quickly find
themselves in the midst of a huge public relations battle for survival.
If Ford does not get the fine line between meeting consumer demand and maintaining a positive consumer image, it will lose public favor
and money.
Ford is, first and foremost, a business. Its number one objective is
to make money. If it does not make money, it dies. If it dies, tens of
thousands of people lose their jobs. Fewer vehicles will be produced
and our options will be more limited. Also, the American economy will
take a big hit resulting from the loss of one of its star players. It
is in nobody’s interest to see Ford die, yet what can be done about
Ford’s predicament?
Democrats in Congress claim to sympathize with Ford’s predicament.
They are calling for billions in Government (ie: taxpayer) bailout of
these corporations. Bracket the question of whether or not a bailout
even makes sense (after all, why would the federal government give the
auto makers billions only to turn around and tax them later?) Consider
instead that Democrats are riding high atop the youth and young adult
vote, promoting the “end times”
global warming myth that is bringing along all kinds of new federal regulations and making it difficult for the auto industry
to meet consumer demand. Specifically, Democrats’ call for the rapid
production of high-mileage vehicles means that Ford and other American
auto companies will have to sink millions more into researching,
developing, and implementing new technologies. Al Gore and
President-elect Obama smile as they promise a cleaner tomorrow. Ford,
who has lost $8.6 billion in the first half of this year, is left with
the responsibility and the bill.
I exhort the president elect and his supporters to be aware of Ford
Problem, especially in light of increasing foreign competition. If we
are to re-energize our economy, we will have to do it on more than the
electric idealism of young minds. For starters, we need to move away
from silly ideas like the “cap and trade” carbon system which will hurt
our economy and help foreign economies (while doing nothing to reduce
carbon). We ought to cease silly rhetoric about “tax cuts for the
rich” and embrace large scale tax-cuts for corporations like Ford who
are currently paying among the highest taxes in the world.
Still, at the end of the day, it is up to consumers, via the free
market and not the federal government, to help Ford out of their
crisis. Ford is working hard to comply with government milage standards, but if consumers really want cleaner air, then they must buy the
cleaner air vehicles that Ford and others produce. Furthermore, they
must not malign Ford for not producing cleaner air vehicles when fewer
and fewer people are buying them. Conservatives ought to be about
conservation: conservation of our natural resources, but also
conservation of our economic well being and the well being of those
companies who are powering our economy.
Tags: automaker bailout, Ford crisis
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@qsend *cur
Here’s the problem: what happens when oil prices drop and consumer demand returns to trucks and SUVs?
Here’s the problem, why is this a problem for you? For Ford that is a problem, they have to retool the factories and modify their mix of products as consumer tastes change. That’s no easy task but car companies have been doing that since the days of Henry Ford and before. There was a time when no one drove pickup trucks unless they had some particular type of job that absolutely demanded a pickup. Then it suddenly became the in thing for people whose job consists of sitting in front of a computer screen. Somehow Ford was able to figure out how to make less cars and more trucks. Then it figured out how to go back to cars and no doubt they will be able to return to trucks if need be.
The popularity of the environmentalist movement and the supposed marketing power of “going green” means that Ford has to walk a fine line between what popular culture say consumers want and what consumers are actually buying. Companies seen as “anti-environmental” are maligned and quickly find themselves in the midst of a huge public relations battle for survival
Tobacco companies are probably among those with the worst PR levels yet amazingly they aren’t in a ‘battle for survival’. If, as you claim, consumers are buying non-green cars an autocompany selling them will survive just fine.
Also, the American economy will take a big hit resulting from the loss of one of its star players.
If Ford cannot cover its costs it certainly is not a ‘star player’ in the economy.
We ought to cease silly rhetoric about “tax cuts for the rich” and embrace large scale tax-cuts for corporations like Ford who are currently paying among the highest taxes in the world.
Per http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=F&annual in 2007 Ford’s income tax expense was $1.294B on operating profit of $5.631B. An effective tax rate of roughly 22%. GM’s 2007 income tax expense was actually a credit of $308M (probably due to carrying over losses) meaning they got money from the IRS rather than had to pay money to it. In 2006 it was $653M. Microsoft’s income tax expense, onthe other hand, was over $6 billion. Say what you want but Ford and GM’s problems are not a lack of massive tax cuts and they certainly aren’t paying the highest taxes in the world.
Ford is working hard to comply with government milage standards, but if consumers really want cleaner air, then they must buy the cleaner air vehicles that Ford and others produce.
Because SUVs are classified as ‘light trucks’ Ford doesn’t have to work hard at all to comply with government mileage standards. It is perfectly free to bet their company on gas guzzlers. Also you may want to note that the mileage standards don’t actually require a company’s cars make the standard. It simply requires that the ‘fleet’ of its car sales does or the company pays a penalty. Porsche, for example, almost never makes the standard but since it’s products are highly valued it simply passes the penalty on as a cost of doing business. The mileage standards are hardly exacting anyway. They are phased in very slowly taking years before they fully apply to automakers. There’s ample lead time for retooling, R&D, and all the other requirements. I’m not going to say it is without any cost but there’s plenty of examples of automakers who are able to make decent money under the mileage regime. (Ford isn’t such a bad case, while it had losses in 07 it is nothing like GM’s massive year on year losses and is sitting on billions of cash. I wouldn’t be shocked if they secretly wanted the bailout to falter and GM to end up in bankruptcy)
Ford is, first and foremost, a business. Its number one objective is to make money. If it does not make money, it dies. If it dies, tens of thousands of people lose their jobs. Fewer vehicles will be produced and our options will be more limited.
It doesn’t follow that if Ford goes bankrupt that “tens of thousands of people” will lose there jobs. A more likely outcome will be that someone will buy Ford’s assets and continue production, albeit without the legacy labor costs that Ford is encumbered with. Even if nobody buys Ford, the demand for cars is not going to go away. The “tens of thousands” of jobs lost at Ford will go to Marysville, Ohio; where Honda is able to make Accords at a profit, or to Georgetown, Kentucky, where Toyota is able to make Camrys at a profit (not an extensive list of foreign companies making autos in the US at a profit, but enough to get the point across).
Don’t kid yourself ucfengr, GM going bankrupt will be a massive hit and will take out probably hundreds of thousands of jobs. Yes some other companies will pick up some of the slack and some of the brands will get purchased by them but there’s a credit collapse happening as well as a reduction in demand for all cars…even those made by profitable companies like Honda. No one is going to be eager to pick up huge 40 yr old factories and massive assets for anything beyond scrap value (too bad metal prices have come down too….)
I think at this moment the possible justifications for a bailout would be:
1. This just isn’t the right time for a massive failure. Loan them the $$$ now, if they pay it back great if not the economy can handle the loss in a year or two but not now.
2. It might best the least expensive option for the taxpayer. Consider not only the unemployment insurance, additions to medicare/medicaid and the pension plan failures that the US govt would have to make due on but also the various bonds and other debt we are implicitly on the hook for when we bailed out AIG (one of AIG’s products was to essentially write insurance aganst big companies defaulting on their debts). Add all of this up and it may be cheaper to let GM inch along on lifesupport until the economy recovers and some other company(ies) pick up it up (or it gets up on its own).
I personally would rather go with a ‘bottom up’ bailout that would concentrate on displaced workers, extended unemployment benefits, getting sChip up and running again for children’s health insurance, relocation and education grants. It’s too bad Bush has opposed extending unemployment benefits which would have been at least an indication that the gov’t isn’t going to let the economy go down with GM.
From what I’ve heard of the CEO’s pathetic performance this week in DC the bailout seems like an even worse idea (except for arguments 1 & 2 above).
Hey Boon, not trying to be rude here, just genuinely curious: do you have a job?
Yep, in pharmaceuticals….one place that seems relatively safe…at least for now.
It’s odd that so many evangelicals still want to deny the reality of global warming when even oil companies are starting to admit that the greenhouse effect is real. This is like the tobacco companies admitting that their product causes cancer, while smokers say it’s only a myth.
Putting that aside, an equally important reason to press for higher gas mileage is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. More fuel efficient cars will mean fewer petrodollars for Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Every president since Nixon has argued that kicking our oil addiction is a matter of national security.
Finally, are cap and trade and high taxes the real reason that US automakers are in trouble?
Finally, are cap and trade and high taxes the real reason that US automakers are in trouble?
Well cap and trade has not been implemented so no that is not the reason. As for high taxes, corporate income taxes are impossibly complicated but in general you’re paying taxes on profit so if you’re not making profits your tax problems are going to be minimal. And specifically automakers have done a great job lobbying for just about every loophole and incentive imaginable…maybe oil companies are better at the tax-pork game but don’t cry for Ford or GM there.
I’m a bit disappointed in the whining about global warming. What happened to economic thinkers on the right? We get the same old cartoon economics (see markets good ugggg) combined with the usual hodgepodge of policies that are totally disconnected from reality (let’s have like no taxes man! then everything will be fine!)
The two best policies to address global warming are cap & trade versus a straight carbon tax. Both are highly efficient and many times better than command and control type policies (which is what mileage standards are). They are also both excellent at adapting to new information. If global warming turns out to be less of a problem you simply raise up the caps in cap&trade. If it turns out to be more you lower the caps. Dustin, though, offers nothing of substance other than blind faith that global warming will turn out to be all hype and everything will be ok in the long run. Unlike cap&trade, if his assumptions are wrong we all end up basically screwed.
To blame the auto mess on environmental poilicies is absurd. The whole reason the auto makers are in trouble is because they DIDN’T invest in more efficient cars. They took a shot that gas prices would be forever low and while their competitors were pouring R&D money into hybred drives they were slapping giant boxes on top of truck frames built with 1950′s know how, adding cup holders and TV’s and calling it an SUV. On top of that we have had 8 years of an anti-environmental president who wanted no serious increases in mileage standards (and it wasn’t like they were hiked much under Clinton earlier, the lobbies for both the auto companies and the UAW are just as good buying influence among Democrats as Republicans). The kicker comes when he writes:
Ford is working hard to comply with government milage standards
Is he aware of that the Republican response to the bailout has been? It is that the auto companies should tap the $25B loan program that was passed last year to pay for their retooling to more fuel efficient vehicles! That was before there was even a financial crises!
The biggest problem with this post is thinking that oil is “priced” low and remain so. That is a misunderstanding of pricing v. cost. Oil, and many other commodities cost (in dollars) very low today because the US$ is in a steep deflationary cycle. Everything is starting to cost less. Retail “prices” dropped last cycle nearly 1%. Unheard of. Even gold is dropping in terms of $s…and demand for gold is through the roof. Deflation is a lack of dollars. When the supply of dollars falls then the value of dollars goes up…and prices fall. Oil’s cost and price have both been dropping because of both the deflationary dollar and the reduced consumption which is seasonal. As soon as consumption increases again next year…and the deflationary cycle is flipped because the Fed will dump billions more into the market…you can bet your bottom that the cost and the price of oil will sky-rocket. Expect $5 gas (or more) next summer.
DJ
AMDG
The biggest problem with this post is thinking that oil is “priced” low and remain so. That is a misunderstanding of pricing v. cost. Oil, and many other commodities cost (in dollars) very low today because the US$ is in a steep deflationary cycle. Everything is starting to cost less. Retail “prices” dropped last cycle nearly 1%. Unheard of. Even gold is dropping in terms of $s…and demand for gold is through the roof. Deflation is a lack of dollars. When the supply of dollars falls then the value of dollars goes up…and prices fall. Oil’s cost and price have both been dropping because of both the deflationary dollar and the reduced consumption which is seasonal. As soon as consumption increases again next year…and the deflationary cycle is flipped because the Fed will dump billions more into the market…you can bet your bottom that the cost and the price of oil will sky-rocket. Expect $5 gas (or more) next summer.
DJ
AMDG
The biggest problem with this post is thinking that oil is “priced” low and remain so. That is a misunderstanding of pricing v. cost. Oil, and many other commodities cost (in dollars) very low today because the US$ is in a steep deflationary cycle. Everything is starting to cost less. Retail “prices” dropped last cycle nearly 1%. Unheard of. Even gold is dropping in terms of $s…and demand for gold is through the roof. Deflation is a lack of dollars. When the supply of dollars falls then the value of dollars goes up…and prices fall. Oil’s cost and price have both been dropping because of both the deflationary dollar and the reduced consumption which is seasonal. As soon as consumption increases again next year…and the deflationary cycle is flipped because the Fed will dump billions more into the market…you can bet your bottom that the cost and the price of oil will sky-rocket. Expect $5 gas (or more) next summer.
DJ
AMDG
We are probably in a liquidity trap which means that the market is so spooked that no matter how many billions of dollars the Fed pumps in the money doesn’t get spent which pushes prices down more which depresses things all the more.
The Fed can suck those billions of dollars out of the economy just as fast as it put them in…maybe even faster since the Fed is already pretty close to a 0% interest rate but there’s no limit to how high they can raise rates (to take cash out of the economy). I wouldn’t be on $5 gas next summer but might as well be safe and avoid the gas guzzler….if you got money to buy a new car and someone’s willing to give you an auto loan.
Don’t kid yourself ucfengr, GM going bankrupt will be a massive hit and will take out probably hundreds of thousands of jobs.
GM going bankrupt doesn’t mean that GM stops producing cars. It means they have a chance to reorganize and perhaps restructure some of their legacy costs. GM still produces cars that people want, they just have a hard time producing them at a profit and a large part of that problem is labor costs. Their per-hour costs are significantly higher than Toyota’s and Honda’s US operations and its not because Toyota and Honda operate sweat shops.
No one is going to be eager to pick up huge 40 yr old factories and massive assets for anything beyond scrap value (too bad metal prices have come down too….)
Those factories still produce cars people want to buy. They just don’t do it at a profit and a large part of the reason for that is legacy costs. Yes, if GM goes bankrupt a lot of people will lose their jobs, but more people will keep their jobs, albeit at a lower salary. The retirees will have to take a hit too. It sucks, but these problems didn’t happen overnight, and they are not going to be solved without some pain.
It’s odd that so many evangelicals still want to deny the reality of global warming when even oil companies are starting to admit that the greenhouse effect is real.
I admit it, the greenhouse effect is real. So what? The argument isn’t over whether the planet has a greenhouse effect or whether the climate goes through periods of warming (global warming) and cooling (global cooling), the argument is whether or not man’s actions have a significant impact one way or the other. That is something that is far from proven.
The two best policies to address global warming are cap & trade versus a straight carbon tax.
I disagree, the best policy is to wait and mitigate problems as they arise.
The whole reason the auto makers are in trouble is because they DIDN’T invest in more efficient cars.
That’s really not fair. US automakers have invested in new technologies, but the problem is that their legacy costs make it impossible for them to produce small, high mileage cars for the US market at a profit. Until they can get their costs in line with the non-US companies they won’t be able to. Ford actually does quite well in the European market making small, efficient cars for those markets.
From BP (formerly British Petroleum), the world’s third largest energy company:
- – - – -
Our position on climate change is well defined:
Sustainable emissions reduction
We believe that climate change is a long-term issue, which needs to be tackled over the next 50 years or more. We support urgent but informed action to stabilize GHG concentrations through sustainable long-term emissions reductions at the lowest possible cost. Large-scale reductions in emissions will require the use of both existing and emerging technologies.
. . .
Emissions trading
We advocate the introduction of emission caps and that market mechanisms, such as emissions trading, be used to enable economies to adjust to a carbon-constrained world. In a cap-and-trade system, a cap is set on the total emissions from a group of emitters – whether companies, plants, countries or regions – and participants can trade emissions permits within that limit. Our major European assets already operate within the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme, currently the world’s largest cap and trade system, and we support its extension and development.
. . .
Recognizing the role of fossil fuels
With fossil fuels currently the source of 80% of the world’s primary energy and likely to remain vital to global energy supply for at least 20 to 30 years, innovation to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels can make a major contribution to stabilization. Consequently, energy companies like ours have an important role to play in contributing to policy and education, enabling market mechanisms, developing and deploying new technological and commercial solutions based on both fossil fuel and new energy sources at large scale
From Royal Dutch Shell, the second largest energy company in the world:
Serious global threat
The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious global threat, one that demands an urgent worldwide response. There is now a strong scientific consensus that recent changes in our global climate are almost certainly caused by human activity. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, in particular from fossil fuel use, deforestation and agriculture, are the main contributors.
The science of climate change
The greenhouse effect is a natural process whereby gases present in the atmosphere, such as water vapour, CO2 and methane, trap enough of the sun’s energy to keep the earth warm enough to sustain the abundance of life around us.
Over the last century the amount of these greenhouse gases (GHGs) in our atmosphere has risen steadily, almost certainly as a result of human activity. For example, CO2 levels have risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) to nearly 380ppm, driven in large part by our usage of fossil fuels. Concentrations of other GHGs, like methane have also risen, mainly because of deforestation and more intensive agriculture.
There is solid evidence that the world is warming as a result – between 0.5 and 1 degree Celsius in the past 100 years. In early 2007, the scientists of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) re-confirmed the scientific consensus – now with more than 90% certainty – that man-made climate change is underway.
How much more the temperature might rise, and what might happen as a result, is largely governed by the eventual concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere. The latest estimates from the IPCC about how high concentrations could go – and the range of possible increases in average temperatures as a result – are summarised below:
Dustin, I hope you won’t be offended if no one pays any attention to your exhortations. I’ve found that it is not often a productive use of time to pay much attention to stupid people who substitute the recitation of wingnut talking points for informed discussion of a subject.
ex, it’s funny how evil oil companies suddenly become responsible global citizens when they agree with you. Anyway, in response here is an interesting article that appeared in the October 22, 2008 edition of National Post. Below are some quotes of interest:
Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, “It’s practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling,” as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an “almost exact correlation” between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost “no correlation at all with CO2.”
and
An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, “Man-made global warming is junk science,” explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year “equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration … This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun’s radiation. This is an insignificantly small number.”
and
“For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA’s eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, “variations in global temperatures since 1978 … cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide.”
ucfengr, that’s a wingnut editorial in a wingnut newspaper; it isn’t even an article in the wingnut newspaper. What the guy did was, he decided what conclusion he wanted to reach and then hunted for people who would support it. Now, that would work if these people put forth evidence of why their views should be given more weight than the consensus view, but they don’t. It’s nothing but an argument from authority that ignores the fact that the vast weight of scientific authority is on the other side.
The reason you glommed onto this editorial and cited it as support is that you are interested in finding sources that you think support your views, you aren’t interested in what the truth is. You have demonstrated this in the past when you proved yourself too stupid to comprehend a page of statistics and, based on your misunderstanding, cited them as supported your viewpoint when they in fact undermined your viewpoint.
ucfengr, that’s a wingnut editorial in a wingnut newspaper;
It might be helpful if you could actually disprove what the sources for the article said, rather than just calling people stupid based solely on the fact that they disagree with you.
ucfengr,
The statements from the oil companies are significant because they are coming from what might be considered a “hostile witness.” When the oil companies said that global warming was no big deal, their testimony was suspect because it happened to coincide neatly with their interests. The fact that even they are admitting that it is real and probably caused, at least in part, by human activity, is very significant. It indicates that the evidence in favor of manmade global warming must be convincing. As I pointed out, the best analogy is when tobacco companies began admitting that smoking is harmful to one’s health. The fact that there are some scientists who still question global warming is not surprising. It would be surprising if a reputable environmental group or someone like Al Gore said that global warming wasn’t real.
GM going bankrupt doesn’t mean that GM stops producing cars. It means they have a chance to reorganize and perhaps restructure some of their legacy costs.
True but when a company goes bankrupt it usually gets special short term loans to keep operating as the courts sort out what pieces of the company are profitable and can be reorganized and which need to be sold as scrap. This credit goes to the top so it gets paid back before all other debts so banks are usually willing to extend it even though it is a loan to a company that can’t pay its debts. The top people in this market have stopped giving out loans and even if they were it isn’t clear they have the funds that can keep a giant like GM going. If a firm can’t get this type of short term credit from the market it goes into immediate liquidation. Everyone’s fired, the factories are shuttered and everything comes to an immediate halt. There’s a lot of talk about Congress basically making a new type of bankrutpcy just to handle GM going down.
I agree that a GM bankruptcy won’t be the end of all GM cars or the end of the world but it’s going to be a bit hit, especially in this market which is not a normal market.
I admit it, the greenhouse effect is real. So what? The argument isn’t over whether the planet has a greenhouse effect or whether the climate goes through periods of warming (global warming) and cooling (global cooling), the argument is whether or not man’s actions have a significant impact one way or the other. That is something that is far from proven.
The question is how much does man contribute to it and how bad will its effects be. The advantage of either cap and trade or carbon taxes is that they put the costs of carbon directly on those who use it. Your ‘solution’ of mitigating the problems as they arise means the people who make the mess don’t have to pay for cleaning it up or preventing it.
That’s really not fair. US automakers have invested in new technologies, but the problem is that their legacy costs make it impossible for them to produce small, high mileage cars for the US market at a profit.
I think arrogance is the real problem, on both the side of management and the union. The performance of the CEO’s in front of Congress….showing up in a private corporate jet, trying to act like $25B is a trivial ‘bridge loan’ are the exact opposite of how Chrysler sold the country on its bailout in the early 80′s. If they aren’t taking this seriously I’d be even more skeptical of an autobailout and would rather see the money directed to individual workers and communities impacted.
It might be helpful if you could actually disprove what the sources for the article said, rather than just calling people stupid based solely on the fact that they disagree with you.
The problem with your global warming position, and Dustin’s and many others like you, is that you have no position. You can’t plausibly argue anymore that it’s all ok and there won’t be any problems so all you pin your hopes to now is doubt. Maybe global warming won’t turn out to be so damaging to us but you provide no backup plan if it does. That’s not much of a plan nor much of a reason to get behind it.
Mitt Romney wrote an interesting essay regarding the problem of Detroit that is worth a read: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html?_r=2.
The quotes from the oil companies are interesting, but here is the problem: I do not see that the evidence agrees with the assertion. At minimum, the evidence does not seem to warrant the strength of the claims being made by environmentalists. Here are a few noteworthy links to evidence my case: 1) Global Cooling? http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm and 2) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/19/january-2008-4-sources-say-globally-cooler-in-the-past-12-months/.
One need only think back to the 1970′s, to the popular notion of overpopulation. People were certain that overpopulation and over consumption of resources would be the end of us all by the arrival of the new millennium. As it turns out, there were unconsidered variables (such as human ingenuity) that have now proven false this brand of hysteria.
If you want to disagree with me on the point, you cannot merely point to the cacophony of voices who agree with you, I already agree that many people believe Global Warming is a man made disaster on our horizon. You will need to point to me evidence supporting your claim that I am crazy. Also, merely using hostile language (wingnut) proves nothing… other than perhaps one never learned the art of argument beyond kindergarten.
The statements from the oil companies are significant because they are coming from what might be considered a “hostile witness.”
I disagree. Big corporations like government regulation. Any costs can be passed on to the consumer and the additional regulations serve to raise the entrance cost for potential competitors, like the small start-up that had developed a way to extract bio-fuel from algae, for example. Also, they can afford to hire enough lobbyists to ensure that any legislation passed will be to their advantage. Plus, they get to earn some “greenie points” by appearing to support environmentalism. For them there is no real downside to supporting it.
Before we open up a debate about global warming it is important to acknowledge that no one here (probably) knows what they are talking about. Dustin doesn’t need anyone to provide him with ‘evidence’. There’s plenty of scientific studies out there that he can easily access if he understands what he is reading and can evaluate it critically.
Those of us who are laymen are confronted with the fact that we have good cause to think the experts are on to something, the CO2 and other gasses causes global warming and global warming can have negative effects on us in the future. Dustin’s advice to us is to simply engage in wishful thinking….maybe all the science is wrong or blown out of proportion so do nothing. Sometimes the science is wrong, then again how many people are wasting away with lung cancer today because they thought maybe all those stories about smoking were wrong too.
The proper response is not simple wishful thinking but to take some simple steps now, early on in the game as we collect more information. Should we discover we are headed for diaster we ratchet up our efforts, if we discover everything’s going to be all right we breath a sigh of relief and move onto other problems. In essence, you buy a bit of insurance in the face of uncertainity.
The problem with your global warming position, and Dustin’s and many others like you, is that you have no position.
No, my position is that little or no man-made global warming is occurring.
You can’t plausibly argue anymore that it’s all ok and there won’t be any problems so all you pin your hopes to now is doubt.
But that’s exactly what the scientists cited in the article I linked to argue.
Maybe global warming won’t turn out to be so damaging to us but you provide no backup plan if it does.
The planet goes through warming and cooling cycles, and the evidence is starting to point to the sun, not human activity, driving it. If that is the case, nothing we do can make a difference because there is nothing we can do to effect the Sun, nor should we want to.
The planet goes through warming and cooling cycles, and the evidence is starting to point to the sun, not human activity, driving it.
So ucfengr is yielding to science and science is telling us the solar cycle is the cause of global warming and when the solar cycle switches to cooling warming will reverse and everything’s ok. So so what does ucfengr do if science says that’s not the story?
http://www.science-spirit.org/archive_cm_detail.php?new_id=291
Note that the idea that the solar cycle drives earth’s temperature is NOT clearly accepted. See http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11650 for example:
So maybe ucfengr and Dustin are right just as maybe those people who said smoking doesn’t give you cancer were right 20, 30 years ago. Want to bet your lungs on it? At least with smoking if you wanted to bet the science was wrong you were just wagering your own life here, though, you’re mostly wagering other people’s lives and well being. Do you have a right to take bets like that on nothing but wishful thinking?
So maybe ucfengr and Dustin are right just as maybe those people who said smoking doesn’t give you cancer were right 20, 30 years ago.
Well, those people were right, smoking doesn’t give you cancer. What it does is increase the risk of contracting certain types of cancer. It is just this type of scientific illiteracy that is largely driving the “climate change” (can’t use “global warming” because IIR the “consensus” is that we are looking at a decade or so of cooling before we start warming again) debate. Saying “smoking causes cancer” is a lot like people accepting Al Gore’s movie as the likely outcome of “climate change”. IIR from the last UN report, the worst case is 18 inches or so of sea level rise and a few degrees of temperature increase over 100 years. Not really a big deal; certainly not the end of the world as we know it. Plus they ignore potential positive impacts of global warming, like longer growing seasons. So, just for the moment, lets accept “global climate change” as fact, and dismiss the new research questioning it as the work of oil company stooges. What is the proper risk strategy. Well, if we are looking at a few inches of sea level rise, some slightly higher temperatures, and longer growing seasons, then the proper strategy is probably to do nothing. If, on the other hand, it is the risk is “the end of the world as we know it”, them I am not sure what we can do short of adopting a Hobbesian-type pre-industrial lifestyle. Certainly, none of the current Kyoto-type protocols, as their sponsors will tell you, will have an meaningful impact.
Digressing a bit, I think a big part of the problem is the lack of seriousness on the part of “climate change” advocates. They talk about the “end of the world as we know it”, but they haven’t shown any seriousness in solving the problems. They support using solar and wind power, but they oppose stringing power lines to get energy from where the wind blows and where the sun shines to where people actually live. They also oppose nuclear, which is currently the only “clean” energy source that can replace carbon fuels. They hold big concerts to raise awareness, but ignore the “carbon footprint” involved in holding the concert, and getting all the attendees there, including private jets for the “environmental-ati”. It all smacks of a new feel good movement for a post-religion culture rather than people that actually want to solve any problems.
They support using solar and wind power
On reflection, this might even be an overstatement. Most support the concept of solar and wind, not the reality. If you were to actually try to build a solar or wind farm somewhere you would quickly find that protecting the woolly, spotted, horned toad is more important than generating clean energy.
Well, those people were right, smoking doesn’t give you cancer. What it does is increase the risk of contracting certain types of cancer.
A distinction without a difference. You don’t contract cancer, you get it. Contract means you get it from somewhere else like a cold or flu. Smoking gives you cancer by damaging the cells in your body thereby increasing the chances that some of them will go cancerous and grow out of control.
Digressing a bit, I think a big part of the problem is the lack of seriousness on the part of “climate change” advocates. They talk about the “end of the world as we know it”,
Lack of seriousness? Your ‘sun is behind warming and cooling’ theory was demolished with a trivial google search. Your solutions are premised on nothing more than wishful thinking. No one here has asserted the world is going to end because of global warming, both proposed solutions (cap and trade and carbon tax) are sophisticated enough to be open to uncertainity and risk and can be quickly modifed as needed while your approach is to assume a foolhardy confidence, assume everything is ok, risk of error is 0%, and if things do go wrong let someone else pay for the mess. If the errors of the last 8 years could be distilled into a single type of mindset this is it.
On the bailout again: What I think is being missed here is that we are not in a normal economic environment. When a building is on fire and filling with smoke of course the people with asthma, the people with weak hearts and lungs are going to get hit first and hard. The fire department doesn’t try to figure out whose healthy and whose not, they open up the net and tell the people hanging out the window to jump and they try to catch them.
Check out http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2008/11/18/the-return-of-the-70-per-hour-meme?tid=true for example. GM workers do not make $70 an hour, they make about $28 and benefits do not push that up to $70. The $70 figure is coming from retired workers of which GM just made a deal with the UAW to set up a retirement trust that the UAW will manage and be responsible for handling retiree health benefits so that cost is coming down. The retirement costs are also essentially fixed so the $70 figure is coming from dividing the costs by the number of hours worked. If you cut back the hours the ‘cost per hour’ goes up but if you work more hours the cost per hour falls. Unfortunately car sales are dropping, so that means fewer production hours and higher costs per hours but it isn’t obvious that the business model was unworkable. In normal times GM and the others might have just been able to squeek by .
But this isn’t a normal time and just like when you get an extreme cold spell or heat wave the first people that drop are those who were already kind of weak or sick… In a normal time the hospital might say the obese 69 yr old woman with kidney failure and a heart problem is not a candidate for a kidney transplant. When the roof’s on fire, though, you rescue everyone you can…even if some of them would have died in a short time from natural causes anyway.
I’d do a different type of bailout than giving GM and others a $25B loan but if the choice was doing nothing we’d be better off doing the bailout. As John Maynard Keynes wrote in the Great Depression:
Of course right now we don’t really need more houses with the collapse of that bubble but you get the idea I hope.
A distinction without a difference.
No. Driving a car increases my risk of getting in a car accident, but driving is not the cause of all car accidents. Some people that have never been exposed to cigarette smoke get lung cancers and other people that chain smoke, don’t.
Lack of seriousness? Your ‘sun is behind warming and cooling’ theory was demolished with a trivial google search.
Not really. Even the article you cited allowed that the sun caused 50% of the warming since 1900. So much for demolishing it. Also, other scientists, like the ones quoted in the article I cited, disagree with the premise that human activities are responsible for “global climate change”. Also, the source you cited, “Science & Spirit” Magazine seems a bit “new agey”. Not something I would use in trying to argue science. I suspect without too much effort I could find a very interesting article on the healing powers of crystal.
No one here has asserted the world is going to end because of global warming,
Here in this thread? Okay. But much of the premise of global warming is based on Manhattan being the next New Orleans. How many people are going to be willing to double their heating or transportation bill now, to fight 18 inches of sea level rise and a few degrees warmer temperature 100 years from now? Not so many.
No one here has asserted the world is going to end because of global warming, both proposed solutions (cap and trade and carbon tax) are sophisticated enough to be open to uncertainity and risk
If “climate change” is not an “end of the world” problem, doesn’t that argue against immediate action, especially as the former consensus on “global warming” is starting to become more fractured? I do question your trust that any government is going to be able to come up with a cap and trade plan that is “sophisticated enough to be open to uncertainty and risk”. It will more likely be like every other government plan; in other words it will tends to hurt the people it is designed to help or exacerbate the problem it is intended to solve.
I’d do a different type of bailout than giving GM and others a $25B loan but if the choice was doing nothing we’d be better off doing the bailout.
Why not just have the government bail out every troubled company? That way no company would ever go out of business, nobody would ever lose their job or pension, and the country would never have an economic downturn. Houses and 401k’s would never lose value, and surely sweetness and light would follow.
No. Driving a car increases my risk of getting in a car accident, but driving is not the cause of all car accidents. Some people that have never been exposed to cigarette smoke get lung cancers and other people that chain smoke, don’t.
Who cares? The fact is smoking causes cancer and if people didn’t smoke there would be millions of fewer cancer cases. Yes there are other causes of cancer but one addresses what the significant causes that are under their control. CO2 is a significant source of global warming and it is under our control.
Also, the source you cited, “Science & Spirit” Magazine seems a bit “new agey”. Not something I would use in trying to argue science.
Actually that wasn’t the source but only a site that reported on the source. You are free to track down the actual scientist and publications and address that if you wish but this is a red herring. Neither of us are qualified to give anything more than a bs evaluation of the science but we can examine what people who are qualified have said and average their opinions together. To stick with cancer if you were diagnosed with it you would probably seek the advice of two or three doctors and work with the opinions they give you. You may google them and try to do some preliminary analysis of their qualifications but you wouldn’t try to out expert them yourself without good cause.
Here in this thread? Okay. But much of the premise of global warming is based on Manhattan being the next New Orleans. How many people are going to be willing to double their heating or transportation bill now, to fight 18 inches of sea level rise and a few degrees warmer temperature 100 years from now?
Or how about a 5% increase to have 50% fewer Katrina like hurricanes between 25-150 years from now? That’s the nice thing about having some flexibility, you get something better than an all or nothing choice. You seem to have an odd opinion of fossil fuels, as if they are like milk that goes bad after a few days in the fridge. They’ve been in the earth for millions of years and aren’t going anywhere. If we refrain from burning a ton of coal or barrel of oil today it doesn’t disappear. If 5 years from now we find there’s no need to worry that ton or barrel is still there waiting to be used.
If “climate change” is not an “end of the world” problem, doesn’t that argue against immediate action, especially as the former consensus on “global warming” is starting to become more fractured?
What you have is a probability distribution, assign probably a low chance of an ‘end of the world’ outcome and varying other probabilities to other outcomes ranging from really bad, bad, little bad, neutral all the way up to good. There will never be a consensus on the distribution so you treat it like an insurance policy.
I do question your trust that any government is going to be able to come up with a cap and trade plan that is “sophisticated enough to be open to uncertainty and risk”.
It’s not so much about trust as the basic fact that the two plans have inherent flexibility. If things seem less dangerous you can increase the caps, or lower them if the reverse. Most of the actual decisions happen by the market which increases the odds that the solutions would be more efficient than any other type of plan.
It will more likely be like every other government plan; in other words it will tends to hurt the people it is designed to help or exacerbate the problem it is intended to solve.
Shoving your head in the sand is a policy too.
Why not just have the government bail out every troubled company? That way no company would ever go out of business, nobody would ever lose their job or pension, and the country would never have an economic downturn. Houses and 401k’s would never lose value, and surely sweetness and light would follow.
Normally you’d be right. I don’t think this is a normal time.
“ucfengr, that’s a wingnut editorial in a wingnut newspaper;
It might be helpful if you could actually disprove what the sources for the article said, rather than just calling people stupid based solely on the fact that they disagree with you.”
I don’t have to disprove what the sources said; every opinion isn’t entitled to equal consideration, and the statement of an opinion doesn’t put the burden of disproof on opponents. All I have to do is to point out that you can’t find and sources other than wingnut editorials to support your position, and to further point out that it’s possible to find three people to state any position, particularly if there’s wingnut welfare involved. The scientific consensus, however, is solidly against your position.
And obviously I point out that you’re stupid not simply because you disagree with me, but because you have demonstrated that you are too stupid to read a page of statistics.
I don’t have to disprove what the sources said; every opinion isn’t entitled to equal consideration,
Nice cop out there, Mike. I notice you do that a lot. Your style of arguement reminds of a large ape. Lots of yelling, chest beating, and arm waving, but nothing that could be construed as rational discourse.
ucfengr, I notice you fail once again to cite any support for your positions other than wingnut editorials; that failure leads me to once again ignore your arguments.
Mike,
Please point to me where you see this consensus. Media outlets do not count, after all often times reporters are not themselves scientists or possessing of special knowledge/evidence that you or I do not also have available. Please name me the authoritative voice of science that has rendered consensus on the issue of global warming.
I notice you fail once again to cite any support for your positions other than wingnut editorials;
I notice you fail once again to cite any support for your position that the article I cited was “wingnut”. Again, the big ape method of arguing; lots of hooting and arm waving, not so much rational discourse.
The fact is smoking causes cancer
No, smoking increases the risk of getting certain types of cancer. If smoking caused cancer, then everybody who smoked would get it. Not everybody who smokes, ergo, smoking doesn’t cause cancer. If you want to have a meaningful discussion on science, you really need to get the basic concepts right.
Or how about a 5% increase to have 50% fewer Katrina like hurricanes between 25-150 years from now?
Well, an article from that well know home of right-wing wingnuttery, CBS News, cites a prominent NOAA scientist, and critic of the Bush administration’s position on global warming as questioning the link between global warming and increased hurricanes. He posits that global may actually reduce the number of hurricanes making landfall. So I would respond should we spend 100s of billions of dollars every year to have a 5% increase in the risk of having 50% more Katrina like storms 25-150 years from now?
What you have is a probability distribution, assign probably a low chance of an ‘end of the world’ outcome and varying other probabilities to other outcomes ranging from really bad, bad, little bad, neutral all the way up to good.
The insurance concept doesn’t really work here, because by buying the insurance against the slightly bad (cap and trade, unless you make use of carbon prohibitively expensive, won’t mitigate against the catastrophic), you ensure that you want have the possibility of the good. In this case, the good caused by slightly longer growing seasons, and more inhabitable land, like Greenland for instance.
No, smoking increases the risk of getting certain types of cancer. If smoking caused cancer, then everybody who smoked would get it. Not everybody who smokes, ergo, smoking doesn’t cause cancer. If
I can’t figure out why you insist on reading “smoking causes cancer” as saying “smoking is the only cause of cancer” or “smoking, in all cases, will always cause cancer”. Does consuming arsenic cause death? What if I shoot you in the head a moment after you consumed a fatal dose? Ohhh wait, you probably think that getting shot in the head doesn’t cause death, it just increases the ‘risk of death’. Good thing we have Dr. Science here to help us with this stuff.
The insurance concept doesn’t really work here, because by buying the insurance against the slightly bad (cap and trade, unless you make use of carbon prohibitively expensive, won’t mitigate against the catastrophic), you ensure that you want have the possibility of the good. In this case, the good caused by slightly longer growing seasons, and more inhabitable land, like Greenland for instance.
As I said coal or oil you don’t burn today doesn’t go anywhere. If it turns out that global warming will produce fantastic results then go ahead. It might even make sense to take capNtrade or the carbon tax and flip them….creating a subsidy for burning carbon if you can show that the odds are the results will be great.
As for mitigating against the catastrophic, you don’t really know. There very well might be a tipping point where warming goes from being a slight pain to a massive diaster (think a slightly less silly version of “The Day after Tomorrow”). Marginal costs tend to increase. Reducing CO2 by 5% is almost certainly more than half as cheap as reducing it 10%. What does this mean?
Say we think today we should cut by 10% but we aren’t really sure. Cutting by 5% is relatively cheap. You do that now as you collect and refine your information. If it turns out you need to go to 10%, well you’re already halfway there. Cutting 5% on the easy stuff may buy you a bit more time to get better tech online to make the next 5% a bit easier than if you had to swallow the whole 10% pill at once because decades ago they listened to some idiot who said “do nothing and just deal with it when and if it becomes a problem”.
If it turns out that 5% was sufficient then we don’t have to do the other 5% and we can all celebrate. Finally if it turns out that your idea is right….that the wonderful possibilities of growing more stuff in Greenland is just so lucative….well just burn the stuff you saved and you’ll get there soon enough.
Are you really this ignorant about global warming, Dustin?
Try http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=6229
I find it hard to believe that anyone with a modicum of intelligence and curiosity and an internet connection can’t find the evidence for global warming.
Then again, I find it hard to believe that anyone with the same tools could possibly be a creationist.
I can’t figure out why you insist on reading “smoking causes cancer” as saying “smoking is the only cause of cancer” or “smoking, in all cases, will always cause cancer”.
Nice strawman, but I never said that. What I said was smoking increases the risk of cancer, in other words, it is a contributing factor, not a cause. Note, significantly less than 50% of even long term smokers get lung cancer. If you want to talk about science, it is important to be able to understand this distinction.
As I said coal or oil you don’t burn today doesn’t go anywhere.
How is that relevant? Food I don’t eat doesn’t go anywhere either, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense to starve to death while I wait for manna to fall from heaven if I have a pantry full of canned goods?
There very well might be a tipping point where warming goes from being a slight pain to a massive diaster (think a slightly less silly version of “The Day after Tomorrow”)
The problem is that for the last 10 years the earth has been cooling, not warming (even the head of the IPCC acknowledges this), while carbon emmissions have increased. If carbon is driving global warming, you would expect to see the opposite. That is not to say that there is no global warming or that there is global cooling, only that before we start spending trillions of dollars to solve a problem, we better be sure there actually is a problem.
I find it hard to believe that anyone with a modicum of intelligence and curiosity and an internet connection can’t find the evidence for global warming.
Wow, it’s like a Mobius strip of strawmen, an article full of strawmen to knockdown your own strawman. Dustin didn’t ask for evidence of global warming, he asked for evidence that there is indeed consensus among climate scientists that global warming is occurring, as opposed to consensus among politicians and reporters.
Nice strawman, but I never said that. What I said was smoking increases the risk of cancer, in other words, it is a contributing factor, not a cause. Note, significantly less than 50% of even long term smokers get lung cancer. If you want to talk about science, it is important to be able to understand this distinction.
And people who are infected with HIV that die in car crashes or plane crashes will likewise add to the portion of people infected who have HIV but do not develop AIDS and do not die from AIDS. This does not show that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS & death, only ‘increases the risk of it’. Like smoking, HIV does indeed cause that but other causes can slow it down, stop it or knock you off before it plays out.
How is that relevant? Food I don’t eat doesn’t go anywhere either, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense to starve to death while I wait for manna to fall from heaven if I have a pantry full of canned goods?
Well actually food you don’t eat rots unless you invest a time and energy into long term storage. Oil and coal you don’t burn today literally doesn’t go anywhere. If you learn tomorrow that your conservation efforts were unneeded you simply can turn your thermostate up.
The problem is that for the last 10 years the earth has been cooling, not warming (even the head of the IPCC acknowledges this), while carbon emmissions have increased. If carbon is driving global warming, you would expect to see the opposite.
Suggest you consult http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/01/uncertainty-noise-and-the-art-of-model-data-comparison
That is not to say that there is no global warming or that there is global cooling, only that before we start spending trillions of dollars to solve a problem, we better be sure there actually is a problem.
Which is the problem with the head in the sand approach. You will never be sure of anything until after it has passed so you must work with probabilities. If you’re 90% sure spend trillions of dollars, if you’re 10% sure spend hundreds of billions and if you’re 1% spend tens of billions. Notice how ucfengr’s arguments revolve around the false choice fallacy. Either do nothing or throw out the gas station and find a muel to pull your car to work! The problem is that both cap & trade or a carbon tax can be set at 1%, 10% or 90% as needed.
A few excerpts from
http://logicalscience.com/consensus/consensus.htm
Dr. James Baker – NOAA
“There’s a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know – except maybe Newton’s second law of dynamics”.
Jerry Mahlman, NOAA
“Global warming is almost a no-brainer at this point,” said Mahlman, who lives now on a mountain in Colorado. “You really can’t find intelligent, quantitative arguments to make it go away.”
NASA’s Gavin Schmidt
“Regardless of these spats, the fact that the community overwhelmingly supports the consensus is evidenced by picking up any copy of Journal of Climate or similar, any scientific program at the AGU or EGU meetings, or simply going to talk to scientists (not the famous ones, the ones at your local university or federal lab). I challenge you, if you think there is some un-reported division, show me the hundreds of abstracts at the Fall meeting (the biggest confernce in the US on this topic) that support your view – you won’t be able to. You can argue whether the consensus is correct, or what it really implies, but you can’t credibly argue it doesn’t exist.”
Stephen H. Schneider Ph.D. – Professor at Stanford University
A handful of “contrarian” scientists and public figures who are not scientists have challenged mainstream climatologists’ conclusions that the warming of the last few decades has been extraordinary and that at least part of this warming has been anthropogenically induced. What must be emphasized here is that, despite the length of this section, there are truly only a handful of climatologist contrarians relative to the number of mainstream climatologists out there.
Federal Climate Change Science Program, 2006 – commissioned by the Bush administration in 2002
Studies … show clear evidence of human influences on the climate system (due to changes in greenhouse gases, aerosols, and stratospheric ozone). … The observed patterns of change over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural processes alone, nor by the effects of short-lived atmospheric constituents (such as aerosols and tropospheric ozone) alone.
The best source for assessing the scientific consensus on climate change (global warming) is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report over the previous 6 years. These people included more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 800 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors. [wikipedia]
Here are some excerpts from their most recent report
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.
Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized, although the likely amount of temperature and sea level rise varies greatly depending on the fossil intensity of human activity during the next century (pages 13 and 18)[14].
The probability that this is caused by natural climatic processes alone is less than 5%.
ex, I can (and have) cite an equal number of scientists that argue that man-made global warming is not happening or not a problem. I’ve also cited scientists that state the the planet isn’t warming, but cooling. So what, does that mean I have a consensus? No, but neither do you, and in any case, science is not decided by consensus, but by empirical evidence. What your side has is a lot of computer models, what it doesn’t have is a lot of empirical evidence.
The best source for assessing the scientific consensus on climate change (global warming) is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Why is it the best source?
Did you take the time to go to the links I provided? If you do, you will see that your statements in the previous two postings are false.
Did you take the time to go to the links I provided? If you do, you will see that your statements in the previous two postings are false.
Well, then show me actual data, as opposed to models, that show temperature rise over the past decade, or even the past 1,000 years. You can’t, because there is none.
ucfengr asks “Why is it the best source? ”
He seems to have ignored ex’s original statement:
People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report over the previous 6 years. These people included more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 800 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors.
Since in 46 you claimed you can cite an equal number of scientists with the opposite POV I ask you to do so now.