Want to take a wild guess as to the answers I get to these very basic questions?
When I talk about using nuclear power, I get a bunch of anti-science rhetoric and it isn't coming from the "deniers".
And while you talk about the deniers using only blogs, I reference rebutable GOVERNMENT sites when showing that the number of hurricanes has not increased, the number of tornadoes has not increase, the number of droughts has not increase, the number of floods has not increased. And the crop that are being destroyed?? Oh yeah the crop production is actually increasing.
I would love to be able to ask serious questions about the science, and ask for serious speculation about the edges of the science, and what might, likely or not, lie beyond. For example, I've seen some excellent books about astronomy and microscopy based on powers of 10. So something I'd like to see is this:
Take the point where you are standing, and extend a line straight up to interplanetary space, and straight down toward the center of the Earth 1 mile/kilometer, whichever you're most familiar with. Tell me what goes on, climatologically, all along that line which is 1 molecule wide.
That line becomes the center of a square column 1 mile/km across. What goes on in the air column, and what goes on at the surface of that column?
Increase the size of the column side to 10, 100, 1000... and tell me what goes on inside and at the surfaces, including the top and bottom.
That is exactly the question I'd like to ask. And when I got the answer to what happens, I'd ask "why?"
The truth is that, in America today, the discussion is how to change the politics so that the things you are concerned about can be addressed. Think about how much money the Koch brothers, and others are spending to prevent politicians from doing anything that might make a dent in their obscene profits. That's the first thing that has to change. Until that does happen, there's not a lot that America, and congress, will be able to do to mitigate climate change. Sad, but that's the reality of the country today.
I actually agree with you and have been attempting to do just that. I have to admit I do still have a tendency to post in nonsensical questions now and then though. Of course people that think as that will still post in their questions. I have a feeling this idea wouldn't work too well as each thread would just be rallying cries from other similar thinkers. I like Trevors technique in that he doesn't react to others he just tells it like it is from a scientific standpoint.
Your disillusioned because we wont agree with you, which is rather childish.
Before you can mitigate and manage risks, you have to know what the risks are, or even if there are any risks.
For a start nobody can even agree on whether global warming would be bad, what evidence is there that it would be dangerous or catastrophic. the only evidence I can think of is to look back 6 to 9 thousands years ago which is the last time our Earth was substantionally warmer,
Do we really think we can maintain our climate at a certain level, a certain temperature and would we want to.
Would it not be better to adapt to a changing climate, than try and prevent change.
There are a lot of questions to be answered before we even think of actions or policies.
You are correct. When I stumbled across this section I was shocked at some of the misinformation that was being spread. I politely gave answers about the science but was shot down by others because of their political views.
Most of the people that ask the questions have no interest in actual answers.
It would be good to get rid of this section.
Perhaps ou could ask questions along those lines. I think they have been more frequent than you suggest.
If you mean the category "global warming," presumably when YA started nine years ago, someone thought global warming would be trendy, and perhaps as popular as "Alternative Fuel Vehicles" and "Green Living."
YA generates 1% of Yahoo's overall traffic, 0% of its revenues, close to 0% of its investment of time, personnel and resources, but they monkey around with little face lifts and small revisions every once in a while, so it would be a reasonable assumption that Yahoo itself does not know what the point of YA in general or YA Global Warming in particular, is, or what to do with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Answ...
"Yahoo! Answers (formerly known as Yahoo! Q & A) is a community-driven question-and-answer (Q&A) site or a knowledge market launched by Yahoo! on June 28, 2005 that allows users to both submit questions to be answered and answer questions asked by other users. However, the number of poorly formed questions and inaccurate answers has made the site a target of ridicule....One journalist observed that the structure Yahoo! Answers provides, particularly the persistence of inaccuracies, the inability to correct them and a point structure that rewards participation more readily than accuracy all indicate that the site is oriented towards encouraging use of the site, not offering accurate answers to questions. The number of poorly formed questions and inaccurate answers has made the site a target of ridicule. Likewise, posts on many Internet forums and Yahoo! Answers itself indicate that Yahoo! Answers attracts a large number of trolls."
If you are asking why people come here, that varies of course. The largest single group are the anti-science crusaders (three of the still active nine most profilic "top answerers" (those with the most "best answers" in "global warming" ) belong to this group; see the little box that pops up on the right when you click on a global warming category link. One of those three is fairly intelligent, and nowadays fairly selective in his Qs and As. The other two are among the dumbest 20% of all posters above level 2, and are retired geezers with grudges. Clearly, these three get some satisfaction from their anti-intellectual ranting against scientists, whom they pathologically equate with politically motivated environmental extremists, following the bible of such idiocy http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc... Other anti-science regulars adhere to a pattern more indicative of a desire to improve the credibility and packaging of their formulaic fossil-fuel-industry-serving denial of science, by collecting little snippets of valid science with which to sugar coat their lies, half-truths, and trickeries lifted from Wattsup.
Other groups are smaller in number. A significant number of posts are devoted to arguing, usually but not always pointlessly, with the science deniers, but the posters of such denier-rebuttal do so from such a wide array of different directions, it is difficult to summarize their diverse motives and modus operandi. Students are not as common as they used to be, and most of their activity falls into the "Do my imminently due homework for me" classification. Genuine scientists have become almost an endangered species, but a few still appear regularly here, though even they mainly address aspects other than science.
Although Yahoo has recently made them much harder to access, the past Qs and As of this category are a potentially very rich source for future historians studying what could well become the greatest mass delusion of all time (the myth that a century of massive science study and findings are a hoax), so I would not support closing the category. But it should be easy to limit users to an average of say 10 Qs and As per month, and less for lower level or infrequent users. Such a reduction in volume would make it easier to crack down on multiple account cheating. In my experience, "reporting," like thumbs-downing, mainly serves as a vehicle for abuse and I would favor abolishing it completely. I would also prefer that thumbs up and down be dropped as well OR extended to Qs.
EDIT: In my fairly consistent experience (there are many examples of this) my questions that are straight science, and genuine (e.g. where the answer is not obvious or easily googleable, etc.) get FAR LESS response (from the pro-science folks!) than do my rhetorical questions. Your otherwise commendable idea to get people to agree to only post serious bonafide questions is, I surmise, dead on arrival unless more qualified scientists can be lured here, and the chances of such busy people spending time here are nil, unless there is moderation to kick out the irrelevancy and juvenile delinquent sabotage of the anti-science clowns running rampant here now, and such moderation is highly unlikely to happen because it would require financially strapped Yahoo to invest money in a service that has never made money for it.
Personally I was hoping that section would address genuine concerns with climate change, perhaps raise some serious questions about how to mitigate and manage the risks, and maybe one or two threads on "what is it?"
However, it is obvious this thread is not about any of this (well we may get the odd question every 6 months or so).
I personally think this section now needs to be removed. We have one "side" that disregards any information that doesn't come from a blog, and another "side" that disregards most things that come from a blog. Time to 'agree to disagree' and actually talk about genuine questions and get some genuine answers regarding climate change.
I will not be addressing any more questions of these pointless matters, and I suggest others do the same so we can have some serious questions in this section again!
Do people want to actually ask genuine questions or simply continue these pointless discussions (which are against Yahoo Answers policies)?
