myata

There's no doubt the control freak should go. He's an insult and affront to the very democracy he's ostensibly trying so hard to instruct to barbaric people who simply can't figure it out on their own. The real question is though, who (and what) is there to replace him? Just the "do better" bunch? Or meaningful measures to advance the democracy and bring it more in line with the times? Let's remember that in respect of arrogance towards media and the minority in the Parliament, Chretien PM was just as good as Harper PM. I'm really getting tired of the twiddledum adage. Either one of the duo (easy to guess which) shall come up with a real, practical program of modernising our democracy. Program like: - improving by order of magnitude access to information, perhaps eliminating all discretions by governments on release of information, or making it mandatory to claim any such discretions in the court; - House appointed and responsible independent watchdogs. No more "jobs for agreement" ridicule. - real, not quasi una a la Harper fixed election dates - and elimination or maximum restriction (to emergency, extraordinary nature that again has to be claimed before courts) of government's privileges to interfere with the work of Parliament, media and civil society (via interfering with work of independent watchdogs, preventing access to information, and so on) Let's see. If Iggy comes up with something like the above, and takes on Harper at the first opportunity, I may consider supporting him this one time, despite what I said previously. If not, good luck federal Canadian politics. If this is not the alarm bell to bring the government under examination and check, we'll have to wait for the real one. As other's experience shows, there's always first time.

Harper did not like the media; he despised independent oversight over government's work (AECL, Elections commissioner, Military police complaints commission, RCMPO..). He did not like some laws. And now he's showing that he doesnt really like the Parliament. It must be pretty clear by now that he the one thing he likes is the sheer unchecked and complete power to do as he likes. The problem is not with Harper though but the outdated dysfunctional political system that has no meaningful checks over the government in power.

I already said, there's no need to invest time and mental energy in designing shaky and implausible to varying degrees justifications for inaction - just say it plainly, you aren't interested in any act for any reason other than 1) dire necessity; or 2) direct and immediate gain. It's lot easier and gives all explanations and justifications you'd ever need.

I know you'd love nothing more than to go into another of infinite cycles of pseudo about scientific polemics, but sorry, no such luck and not this time. You had your chance to post meaningful scientific argument against this theory and had it disputed in a meaningful way, you weren't interested, and so it must be clear to anybody thinking with an opened mind, that the position of irrational denial of established reality to the best of our knowledge of the day, the "ostrich" position, is where you are standing, as of now.

It's hard to get I know. The society has established that GHG emissions are undesirable and must be curbed. If somebody, business or individual continue to emit undesirable substance, they contribute to the negative effect on the society and should pay to compensate for the negative impact. The notion of negative effect of the global warming has been established as an accepted scientific theory, and it cannot be negated without scientific argument of merit, something that you folks, at this time simply do not have. And therefore, logically and in plain words, your position is finally reduced to that of denying a rational truth, the "ostrich positon". Of course you can call it "rational" or "justifiable", just as some people think it rational to argue that dinosaurs walked this Earth with humans, or fight crime by building jails, or improve "transparency" of government by fighting tooth and nail against any bit of information being made public. I'm not going to argue the choice of words, but remaining in the logical and rational domain, that's pretty much the only strategy that is left at your disposal.

I already said it, in case you haven't noticed. If the real objective is actual, measurable and significant reduction, there has to be a stimulus for the consumer to use less carbon-emitting products, as for the producer to use more efficient technologies. Just as said, you folks have no notion that anything could happen outside of "zero sum" pattern, i.e. unless we're kicked in the butt, or somebody pays us in return. If that becomes the dominant pattern of thinking (and acting) here, I'd feel really sad for the future of this beautiful country. It'll be left to the others to do things because they are challenged, and interested to overcome it, and because it's the right thing to do, regardless of where the cham next door is going, or what India is doing.

Laugh all you want, it only shows what you have about as much clue about the economy as the matters of high science. Society has the economic mechanisms to charge producer the full cost of their business to the society, be it a clean air standard, fines for pollution, mandatory reforestation, or a tax on tobacco. And of course, the negative effect of GHG for our societies has been established, to the best of our knowledge of today, because it is confirmed by the great majority of professionals working in the field, and you failed to present any scientifically valid arguments to the contrary. And so, that position is very much reduced to denying the obvious, like that ostrich and the sand, because once the problem is recognised, there would be no explanation, nor justification to that inherent abhorrence of change and reluctance to act. And at that I would strongly encourage you (and others sharing similar views, including Mr Harper himself) to stop playing meaningless games and ridiculous justifications, throw off misplaced shame, take pride in yourselves and say it plain and clear, that we folks hate and despise any change and won't do anything until our backs and ar... are stuck firmly against the wall, and that's not because of China and India, but the way we are, i.e. who we are and what we do.

Only in your "do nothing till kicked in the a.." zero sum game. The idea though was that all or most rationally thinking, intelligent people would come to understand the importance of action, only in their own time. Certainly possibility of a successful transition would be greatly enhanced if working and practical way was found and could be shared. And now it's back to square one, i.e good old zero sum. Nobody would let go of a piece of their hard won right to burn and pollute unless they get something from somebody else. You win = I lose; and vice versa. Let's see if it'll end up being a more efficient approach. In the end we can always find consolation that we had our share of fun burning, just like that smoker with terminal cancer.

Nothing's been said about "mandated" so I'm not sure where have you picked up the idea? It's only a matter of paying the full cost of production. GHG cost to the society and somebody has to pick up the tab. Why should it be the public, me and you, as opposed to major emitters, like oilsands operations? Alternatives may never become "cheap enough" if polluter is allowed to go on as if nothing happened. Yes there is, if we start looking for solutions as opposed to reasons to not do things. We can invest into developing cleaner technologies and sell them when developing countries start catchning up on the need to change. We can slam equalizing quotes on imports where full cost of production isn't paid. Pointing a finger is the easiest way to do nothing, but isnt' it easier just to say it? Guess not, we want to do nothing and still feel good about it, there, psychology of scepticism popularly explained. You wished it to be, and that's why it's self obvous and needs no further, unpleasant and complicated explanations? "Rig" through making producers pay full cost of production, like cleaning up water, air, production sites, storing safely contaminating materials, and such? Yeah right, who needs that kind of "rigging", would we be so much better off the way things were couple hundred years back?

I think the deal was sunk by the Harperite style approach to seek one common standard for everybody, as opposed to building consensus about the need for a positive change, and a committment to it. The two speed approach proposed in Kyoto (not necessarily to be confused with the trading component of it) had a lot of sense, allowing the second echelon economies to learn and adopt greener technologies developed by the leading countries without risking resources critically needed for their development. In my understanding, the deal started to unwind when developed countries attempted to press (Harper's) idea to replace Kyoto with entirely new deal. For developing countries it meant a great deal of added risk without any confidence in the possibility of practical results (after all, leading economied failed to demonstrate the approaches that would work to reduce emissions, reliably and significantly). At that stage, no better option could be found that the good old buyoff (money for more or less meaningless agreement in principle).

"Most rational" is also in the eye of the decision maker. If the "most rational" for me is to sit on my ar.e doing nothing till I get kicked, then maybe, investing triffle token peanuts into obscure projects would probably be on the top list of my "rationality". If, on the other hand, "rationality" means meaningful reduction in harmful emissions (here and now), one would look for solutions that achieve actual, measurable reductions, rather than publicity stunts and the appearance of doing something while doing nothing (serious). Why would it be "rational" to spend money on developing alternative sources, while there's no market mechanism to ensure that they would be selected over traditional polluting ones? Why is it "rational" to pump subsidies into gazzling projects like oil sands, rather than cleaner technologies, like e.g. the next generation of nuclear reactors? Thinking rationally, one would have to identify the main causes of high GHG emissions, like consumer behaviour and outdated and/or offending technologies, developed in the environment of zero GHG cost. After that, develop a meaningful, market based mechanism to influence these behaviors, correct, by applying meaningful compensating cost to both conumer behaviour (consumption carbon tax) and offending technologies (production carbon tax). Without the former, consumer behavior would never move to a more sustainable model; and without the latter, there would be no market differentiation promoting "green" carbon efficient technologies over the polluting ones. And guess what, the economy will pick up and run along the adjusted directions just as well. This is because in a sensible, rational society the economy works for the people, and not the other way around, as we like to hear from our conservative oracles. In France significant portion of energy needs is generated by nuclear stations, and their emissions per capita are a third of ours. In Europe, they invest massively into creating useful and convenient public transit resulting in significant reduction of car traffic. As said, genuinely and seriously looking for a positive change, we'll need no further reasons other than our committment to do better; and seeking any pretext to sit back and do nothing, we could also relax and stop worrying about plausible justifications, I mean who's interested, people who chose to do something? your children, etc?

Most certainly, "doing nothing" is a valid option, just as collective praying to miscellaneous gods (or PM of the day). There isn't really right or wrong answer - it depends on our view of the world, which is ultimately determined by who we are. So let's first separate the question from justification (of already predetermined answer) and ask instead: Should we be doing somethinhg simply because our rational minds are telling us that we could do better, have a cause and opportunity to improve? Or Should we not do anything until and unless somebody (or something) kicks us in the a.. and there isn't anywhere to run away (or behind - like China and India, in the Harper's approach)? It's all in the mind of the beholder, take your pick, which btw will tell of who you are (and where you'll most likely to end up). I believe that more than anything, this challenge demonstrates that idealistic view of "united humanity" may not be exactly what the future holds in store. More likely, it's going to be another point of separation, just like any number of critical points in our species evolution. Some will move on, creating more advanced, sustainable, sophisticated future for themselves and their descendants. And like always, there will be those lagging behind hoping that the challenge would go away and things would return to their good old familiar and uneventful selves. If we decide to act, we won't be needing reasons other than our own understanding of the need to do better. And if we're of the second category, why not being honest with ourselves (nothing shameful about it) and just state plainly that nothing is kicking us in the butt just yet, and we still have room to run around, so we aren't going to be doing anything simply because that's the way we are, who we are?

And more than anything, a perfect illustration of how far the notions of rationality, objectivity and responsibility shall be put away, once ideological blindfolds are set firmly on. Once I know that my guy is the epitome of honesty incarnate, and by definition, I only need to forget, not notice, filter out all those episodes abovementioned; plus more, like kicking out "independent" oversight supposed to keep an eye on government's activities, so very honest - if you say that I'm honest you stay; if you try to dig around, not heeding the honest advice, you're out, and things return to their "honest" state again. No, unlike the author of OP, I do not believe that one side of the duopoly equation is any better, cleaner, opener and angel like, than the other. On the contrary, I see that arrogance, secrecy of the former Liberal government can only be matched, if not surpassed by those of the current conservative one. And that should come as no coincidence or surprise in the political system that sets no restraints, limits or meaningful oversights on the government in power. It - the system - will be changed, by us, citizens, as there seem to be nobody else seriously interested, or the circle (and circus) of "honesty" and "transparency" necessarily followed by a grand scandal is bound to repeat itself forever - may be as a reward for our extreme attachement to the status quo and reluctance and inability to change?

But of course it does. We have a wide consensus of scientific community confirmed by all main academies of science, research centers and so on. And we have a bunch of predominantly Web based people who'd invent a "school of thought" in a flick and on demand, none ever published or peer reviewed, and blog post it as a meaningful argument against mainstream scientific theory. Take out 1) cyclical arguments going forever over the same, many-times-over debunked fallacies, 2) unverified references to blogs and non professional publications, and 3) plain clueless junk, like quoting yesterday's weather report, and what's left? Why don't we see for ourselves, in an experiment of a sort? Let's start counting every example of scientifically meaningful argument (where the point relates to science, as opposed to e.g. policy) and see how far we'd get?

One would think (also maybe not using unverified references as a way to avoid endless cyclical arguments), but what if that (endless cyclical argument) is the whole, pure 100% of the logical content of that position?

For once I would agree (in my understanding of the state of the science) that it does not make detailed predictions about the consequences of climate change in each specific geographic area (though some global patterns do seem to be a consensus of most scientists, such as significant warming up, and melting of ice leading to significant raise in ocean level). We also have an example, in one of our nearest neighbour planets, where greenhouse climate pattern has worked to the extreme. I can actually agree with that. Science, rational information is only one of a miriad of possible motives and drivers that can influence the decisions of our societies. For example, instead of removing the rake or changing one's path around them, one may choose to pray to avoid another painful encounter, or "adapt" by inventing oinments and balsams to soothen the point of impact. Again, there isn't any one "right" decision, very simply put, the nature rewards us for the choices we make as species with opportunities for advancement and progress on one side, and one way ticket to extinction on the other. Most of our the experience so far has been that rational choices enhance probability of success, but of course we can always try something else for a change (not that there would be any novelty in such approaches).

Few of which (if any) though would stand the simple common sense convetions of meaningful, disciplined and productive scientific debate. No, as has been already pointed out, in the matters scientific quantity not necessarily equals quality. This is because anybody with sufficient determination can produce volumes of erroneous, flawed or plain meaningless pseudo scientific gibberish which would take unrealistically high measures of time and effort to examine. The process that has ensured progress of science so far exists and it'll take much more than publicity campaigns by a few "sceptics" to undermine it. The problem is much more serious, it's about our society's ability to make rational decisions and execute them. Showing little aptitude for either can be another sign (along with general laziness, apathy, lack of interest to anything that does not result in my entertainment or gratification) that our societies are on the downward end of their lifecycle, where preservation of status quo becomes paramount over all other aspects of life. As obvious as it is, we seem to starting to forget (or wilfully ignore) the truth that nothing in this life is granted automatically and forever, and once we stop making conscious choices of being informed, open minded and willing to act when necessary, there'd be only one road left to us, down.

No, you don't have to be told everything! You, one, everybody always has a choice to study, read, find out, make up your own mind and convince the others. All this research is published in magasines, papers, books, and so on, that are freely available in your library. The only thing that doesn't work, i.e. it doesn't make any rational sense, is to deny validity of a research without having sufficient knowledge and skill, time or caring to understand it. This is really the main point of the debate. If "critics" have serious, meaningful arguments against any particular aspect, research or conclusion of that science, they only have to present them to the critical consideration of scientists, researchers, professionals like themselves, who have necessary knowledge and skills to fully understand it. That they mostly decide to put it to general public's discussion instead makes no sense from the point of view of establishing their validity and greatly diminishes the likelihood of any serious scientific merit in them.

The truth (facts, etc) is in the eye of the beholder (once removed all rational, critical obstacles to such).

Would that imply that biology, sociology, some areas of psychology and probably many other disciplines should also be declared un-scientific because they fail to fit your narrow and oftentimes clueless, in the context of some disciplines, understanding of "experiment"? As said repeatedly, I've little time or interest for generic pseudo about scientific musings that could (and will) go on forever without bringing any verifiable result. Virtually anybody here can create loads of pseudo quasi scientific gibberish but it in no way means that anybody has any obligation to read it. The conventions for a meaningful discussion were posted and if they are of no interest, I do not believe there's much to discuss, in the matters of sciense in question, with that poster. My suggestion would be to open a blog.

Indeed, just as particle scientists verify their theories by the number and character of scintillations recorded in water or gas tanks, climate scientists can verify theirs by any number of indirect observations, be it the retreat of glaciers, melting of polar ice, global temperature trends, rising of oceans, change in composition of water, change in ecosystems, etc. No more "unverifiable" than the theory of particles before you could actually see one, or the theory of evolution before you had a chance to touch a living dinosaur (as some still think). Your lack of understanding that there're many indirect ways of verification that are just as valid as seeing with your own eye only highlights the incompetence to comment on matters scientific.

Granted, if and when one cannot talk substance a load of unrelated and irrelevant noise could certainly be the argument of choice. To JF: it all comes down to intelligence, i.e. seeing and reacting to patterns of connections and causality in the Universe. E.g. of one cannot see the connection between stepping on a rake and the blister on their forehead, "adapting" to regular hits may be the only option.

Most certainly if my life was at stake and the consensus of medical professionals recognised it as such. In our lives we make many decisions that we've never tested ourselves (like e.g. not walking off the roof), having to rely on other people's conclusions and experiences. There's nothing wrong with it, if those conclusions are rational and the best we can have. I won't be commenting on "unverifiable" coming from non-professional in the subject area, modern science uses many complex and indirect methods of verification (e.g. nobody actually can actually "see" or touch elementary particles, verification of their existence comes from complex pattern of interactions with existing materials) to discuss which one'd need reasonable level of knowledge in the field.

Thanks for the reference. I wouldn't like to prejudge the conclusion on reading the report, but the question appears to be legitimate in at least these perspectives: 1) What is the exact meaning of "probability categorisation"? If the report is a summary of a certain (set of) results presented to general public, what methodology was used to translate the original research into the "90%" probability? Does that methodology stand the scrutiny? Another question is how good, i.e clear, accurate and convincing it is in conveying the meaning of the original research? 2) Assumption that the conclusions of the report are based on original peer reviewed research (validity of which can be addressed only in a professional forum and could not be discussed here in any meaningful way) would also need to be verified by a critical reader. Regarding #1, prior to reading the report I can only note that it can be interpreted in two ways, again, as a "public" summary of certain expert conclusion (with methodology used to summarise/present it yet to be explained) or as a statistically meaningful statement about correlation of two processes, observed general warming of our planet, and human activity in releasing GHG. Finally, to noahbody's question of science "being settled or not", let me point out that even the most solid, reliable science - the mechanics, a brilliant summary of our daily experiences in moving our bodies, driving vehicles, operation of factories, construction, etc still cannot be considered 100% settled. In the sense that if I throw a ball at a glass three feet away and it knocks it over, the mechanics won't guarantee absolutely certain causal relation between my act and the consequence (due to eg. effects of Brownian motion). It is true that it guarantees it with a certainty of such tremendous precision that it settles it to be taken as true in our everyday lives. Which lends to another legitimate question that can and needs to be discussed in public forums, what level of confidence (to the best of science of the day) in the projections of catastrophic global climate change should the science provide to make majority of population aware of the problem and willing to do meaningful act to avoid or at least mitigate it? Do we have to see and live the catastrophe to start doing something (however useful it'd be at the time), or would we find sufficient intelligence and will to act when our rational minds tell us to, even if our lazy bodies would be looking for any way or excuse to avoid meaningful act?

OK, thanks! We have an actual, specific question to look into (however we cannot really start investigating it until we have looked at the statement in question in its entirety, so I'd kindly appreciate a reference to the source in which that statemnt is made).