Arguments
The View from Germany: Tackling the real questions
Posted on 31 October 2012 by gws
Spending a lot of time on the internet, you do not come across it often. It lurks on some webpage, but most URL content lures you away from it. Your friends try to remind you of it at times. You turn on the TV, but while nine out of ten channels claim they have it, they don't. You get a good dose of it on PBS, but that can be depressing.
Still it is all around you, and you need to face it fairly regularly ... Reality.
If Frontline's recent Climate of Doubt has shown anything, it is that an effective PR strategy funded by the usual suspects is all it needs to create a lala land completely obscuring what actually matters, reality.
To make some progress, we need to accept it first, and then may even embrace it. In a recent blog post by John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas State Climatologist, states that
"... battle lines have been drawn far from the places where society needs to be having intense discussion, ..."
Meaning, far from what the reality of global warming requires us to discuss, such as
“What’s the best way to prepare for the day when fossil fuels are no longer our primary energy source?”
Thanks to much denial of reality in political America, these questions do not get asked, and thus arguably much ground is lost to countries that have started facing reality, such as Germany:
Aside from a few simplifications, such as about nuclear energy (which Germany decided to phase out earlier than previously planned, and with large parliamentary majority last year), the clip contains some simple realities worth repeating here:
1. There is a problem with the current (fossil fuel dominated) energy supply: It runs out sooner or later and it pollutes our atmosphere
2. Ignorance of the issue is not an option (in Germany ...)
3. Renewable energy sources are an obvious solution already at hand; a smart combination of technologies acknowledging the challenges and opportunities allows tackling the problem (and is being pursued in Germany ...)
Want to know more? Sure, one example ...
Combine that with the economic benefits from tackling the problem, the fact that it is the German middle class that drives and profits from the development, and you realize ...
Hey! Reality is cool.
Disclaimer:
The first clip is part of the WissensWerte Project of the german non-profit organization /e-politik.de/ e.V.
By Jörn Barkemeyer and Jan Künzl
Editor Laura Hörath
For more information about the WissensWerte project: http://www.edeos.org/en/index.html
"Wissenswertes" is German for "Things worth knowing", from Wissen=Knowledge and Werte=Values
[DB] The only points worthy of discussion about the Mangano & Sherman paper are:
1. Does the paper add to the understanding of the science in that area?
2. What does the peer-review have to say about the paper?
Your linked blog post at least attempts to deal statistically with Mangano & Sherman. It is a pity that the actual analysis is brief and lost among the spin and rhetoric. Which makes your blog post different from other blog contributions to the literature: Tamino has published rebuttals into the literature (Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, Foster et al 2008), as has Skeptical Science (Nuccitelli et al 2012). Even the estimable Anthony Watts has made a credible contribution to the published literature (Fall et al 2011). Others, such as Climate Audit (still no published replication of the hockey stick in the several years since they began their audit, a task in which others completed in as little as 2 days [Muir Russell Report]), have fallen short of any substantive contribution.
Since you obviously wish to make positive contributions to the literature, I'm sure that you and your linked blog post will be submitting a robust writeup to serve as a proper rebuttal of Mangano & Sherman. If you need suggestions for papers to publish in, just ask and someone will oblige you. Until then, let us discontinue what amounts to an off-topic soliloquy from the OP of this thread.