The bottome line (climate change) (page 5)

JWoods

What I said was that science in general in 1960s and 1970s was not pointing out possible warming due to CO2. Certainly you can find somebody at any certain time who supports any side of a certain subject. You can find a number of famous scientists in the climate field who feel that CO2 is only a secondary or tertiary cause of climate change now, and they are being stifled because of CO2 paranoia.

What I am saying about funding is that it should not be given political favor (as in marked appreciation for groups which obviously favor warming for political reasons).

Nor should the world economy be driven lemming-like off the cliff of cap and tax without any clear evidence that this can even reduce worldwide CO2, let alone actually change the future climate changes.

besty

Just briefly JWoods - you have said that global warming wasn't the 'prevailing thought' and that 'science in general in the 1960s and 1970s was not pointing out possible warming due to CO2'

I have just posted information from a recent paper showing that your argument is completely false. The paper surveys climate studies from 1965 to 1979 and it finds very few papers (7 in total) predicted global cooling.

So in the 1970s, on the back of 3 decades of cooling, more papers (42 in total) predict global warming due to CO2 than cooling.

Are you able to present any evidence to refute that? Your terms of reference seem a bit woolly - 'prevailing thought' and 'science in general' don't lend themselves to fact-based analysis.

Anyways....

Certainly you can find somebody at any certain time who supports any side of a certain subject.

Agreed. Even when 97.5% of climate scientists agree that humans are contributing to global warming you can still find 2.5% that disagree.

they are being stifled because of CO2 paranoia.

I disagree - the consensus deniers are adept at making their point clearly. That's why 64% of Americans believe that scientists disagree a lot about climate change, when in fact the opposite is true. (Newsweek 2006).

I asked you aside from turning climate science back 40 years how you would propose to allocate funds to research and you talked more about how it shouldn't be allocated. It seems you think cronyism from politicians to scientists is responsible for how funds are allocated?

In terms of the global economy being 'driven off a cliff' by climate legislation - hmmmm - it appears you failed to spot the recent economic meltdown caused by unregulated bankers gone wild? Cap and trade is working effectively in Europe with all but one member country meeting their Kyoto commitment to reduce GHG emissions by 8% over 1990 levels by 2012. They are in fact projected to reduce emissions by 13% by 2012.

http://www.eea.europa.eu/pressroom/newsreleases/non-industrial-emissions-key-for-meeting-kyoto-targets

I haven;t seen any evidence that cap and trade has caused Europe to suffer any more significantly than the USA in the recent economic downturn.

Cap and trade is stick and carrot to get industry to clean its act up and take actions that promote energy efficiency. And of course it was a massive success story when introduced by George HW Bush in the 1990 Clean Air Act. http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1085

With that proud Republican heritage what can be wrong with it? :-)

When you have a minute do some research on energy intensity, and ask yourself if an economy is better served by being more or less energy efficient? I think that is the point of the OP.

villabolo

JWoods:

"What I said was that science in general in 1960s and 1970s was not pointing out possible warming due to CO2. Certainly you can find somebody at any certain time who supports any side of a certain subject."

First off, JWoods, as Besty just pointed out not only did the majority of climatologists believe that global warming was coming in spite of a mild cooling period but that majority numbered 85% at that time. Your phrase " you can find somebody at any certain time who supports any side of a certain subject" is intended to portray the exact opposite of the facts-you haven't collected figures and done the math.

villabolo