[rachelbythebay]

I don't know about them, but I know someone from a different company who has it all figured out. Every time their company does something nasty, they just donate to the EFF.

Must be nice to have it wrapped up all tidy like.

[CamperBob2]

It seems like a legitimate way to reconcile one's conscience with the realpolitik of modern IT employment, engaged as we are in building the surveillance state/police state/nanny state we were all warned about by 20th century novelists and historians.

I try to do this when I buy an RIAA-published album or watch a Hollywood film. I make sure I donate an equivalent amount to civil-liberties orgs (EFF, ALA, and others) during that year.

"Carbon credits," basically.

[guscost]

Kinda funny, when I inadvertently buy a TV show or movie that features global warming propaganda, I donate the same amount of money to Climate Audit or Bishop Hill.

[lancewiggs]

I have to admit it is quite astonishing to see someone denying climate change is a huge issue on a site dedicated to computer-logic based businesses that are future-focused, a site populated by many under 30.

Climate change is the primary challenge for the next few generations, and once we move on from 'debate' we see that there are a wealth of opportunities in mitigation, reduction of CO2 output and coping with the impact. Just ask Elon Musk.

[guscost]

I emphatically disagree with the "overwhelming judgement of science" when it comes to this issue. And I'm thoroughly disgusted by the profiteering that accompanies the global warming campaign. Let's see who is in denial 20 years from now.

Permalink For Great Justice: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1990/to

[Karunamon]

Which of these scenarios do you think is more likely?

That a group of nonprofits and academic institutions all colluded over a decade or three to make money in a very roundabout way for groups they don't have any direct involvement with?

-or-

That a group of oil industry types, in a nod to the junk science used by big tobacco for years, colluded over a decade or three in an attempt to discredit something that will directly impact their bottom lines in a bad way?

Follow the money. Hell, follow human nature.

[CamperBob2]

Or, that everybody was wrong because they were working from an incorrect or incomplete model.

That's what has actually happened a few gazillion times throughout human history, unlike either of the other two scenarios you posit.

The best thing we can do is force the climate scientists to make specific predictions, then look back in a few decades and evaluate those predictions. Predictive power isn't everything, it's the only thing.

So far, the predictive power of the vaunted "scientific consensus" has been mixed. Personally, I'm not as satisfied with the quality of the models or the data as I would like to be, given the magnitude of the changes to global economics that are being demanded on the basis of those models and data.

[ZenoArrow]

Permalink for Great Justice? Here's a graph from 1970 (rather than 1990), using a more up to date version of the database you referred to... http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/to Notice the upward trend?

Let's go back even further, to 1900... http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to The upward trend in temperature is clear, the question then becomes why it is happening. What is your theory on this?

[CamperBob2]

What is your theory on this?

I don't have one, but what is your theory on this?

http://i.imgur.com/5hPqZQh.png

Now, here's the whole 12-hour graph, rather than just a three minute excerpt from the very end:

http://i.imgur.com/npSuZd9.png

Whatever your theory was, does it still hold up?

[guscost]

Why stop there? http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3553

For the record, my theory is that "average global surface temperature" has a nonlinear response to various known and unknown forcings.

[ajb]

http://woodfortrees.org/notes#trends

[bitcartel]

Ask Freeman Dyson, he might surprise you.

[1] http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pa...

[sp332]

You shouldn't be too surprised. Odd politics are rampant in computer science. Stallman, Chomsky, etc.

[vl]

Just to clarify, you think that there is no "climat change" a.k.a. "global warming"?

[CamperBob2]

There is a wide gulf between "thinking that there is no climate change" and agreeing with the politicization of the issue at every opportunity by authors, actors, and journalists who often are not particularly well-informed on the subject.

Your comment's actually a pretty good illustration of the effect the grandparent is (probably) talking about.

[guscost]

CamperBob2 gets it. You're playing with a straw man and a neologism.

[Snoptic]

What movies have this?

[guscost]

The first episode of The Walking Dead comes to mind. I'd also volunteer Waterworld and The Day After Tomorrow, but those are a bit too obvious and not worth the money.

[arankine]

Conscience offsetting.

[meaty]

Ugh. Very insightful.

It wouldn't surprise me if some startup starts trading conscience futures!

[CamperBob2]

Considering that the movement of money is all that ever changes anything in today's world, I don't think that's a bad idea. I'd listen to their pitch, put it that way.

[kirubakaran]

Prior art: Church selling indulgences in the middle ages.