“Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”

[RaymondR]

One hears a lot about methane from cows and there is a movement in Australia to get meat eaters driven into PC purgatory (they are busy with christian footballers at the moment but they'll get back to the meat eaters directly) but has anyone seen any peer reviewed papers on the direct contribution of humans. After all there's about 9 billion of us and I break wind once or twice a day and am not a big bean eater, our contribution must be significant.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

One hears a lot about methane from cows and there is a movement in Australia to get meat eaters driven into PC purgatory (they are busy with christian footballers at the moment but they'll get back to the meat eaters directly) but has anyone seen any peer reviewed papers on the direct contribution of humans. After all there's about 9 billion of us and I break wind once or twice a day and am not a big bean eater, our contribution must be significant.

beans heck broccoli really develops bad gas

Best is pickled eggs beer backed up with fresh fruit before bed .
Will kill your cubicle neighbors before lunch.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Assuming that you sort of agree that fossil fuel use should be cut back... any ideas? We're not really seeing any changes from Exile's proposal, which is to DO NOTHING.

There's a thought experiment called the miracle question aka magic wand question question aka [many other names I'm sure]. This exercise has multiple uses, but the basic idea is....when you have a problem or angst about something...you ask yourself "would I recognize it if the problem has actually improved/gone away?" Alternatively, you ask yourself "if I was king for a day, or had a magic wand, what would I do with my power?"

Frequently problems are getting better and we just don't recognize it. Also...you might recognize the magic wand idea as the Chinese curse "may all your wishes come true" such that when you think through the gazillion consequences of waving your magic wand....routinely you start to conceptualize a reality that is actually sort of bad...not what you initially thought. These activities serve to reduce angst/anxiety about a subject and are often used in counseling.

To your call for proposals...I think things are being done in the West and I don't think the West can afford them in the near or long-term. I think that the East can technically afford to do more in the short-term, but it's not, and that it's completely unrealistic to expect developing nations (including those prominent in Asia) to not use FF in their own development. Just my take from studying/reading/traveling about with a keen eye on this concern. I otherwise have a short stack of concerns that makes the worst predictions of AGW appear quite inconsequential, so I don't care to get into this subject.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

The AfD is hard-right, populist, anti-immigrant, and CC deniers. They even have ties to the Heartland Institute. What's not to like, right?

Extremism, hatred & anger beget similar responses from opposing sides. Read some history. Each of the platforms you list above are a direct reaction to their equally extreme counterparts. Hard-left, unpopular, pro illegal immigration, intolerant. Opposing sides of the same coin, but with the exact same affinity for manufacturing enemies, demonizing opponents, manipulating facts, and rejecting compromise or middle ground.

Nothing new to see here from either side. Just another sorry manifestation of human nature.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Fine. Knock me over with your suggestions for how to moderate the growth of fossil-fuel extraction and use, or reducing the amount of single use plastics we discard.


You don't know what I do re emissions in my own life, and I like it that way.

That's because you do nothing to help the environment you claim such passion for. Your only contribution is to drag down every thread you participate in, create ill will, close threads, and encumber any attempt at moderation. If it could be charted, there would be a clear delineation starting at the point of your entry. Too bad, as this particular thread was getting interesting, and actually had a chance of staying on topic. And as least as far as I'm concerned, your divisiveness has nothing to do with your policy positions and everything to do with your intolerance for those of others. Your loss.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Confusingly, many words have multiple meanings, and the intended meaning has to be inferred from the context. When we are having a discussion regarding AGW and I call someone a "denier", I mean that they are a climate science denier, not a holocaust denier. I think you, in fact, already understand that, but for some reason feel the need to defend your painful sensitivity.

Actually, I think it's quite possible that neither you nor others who have thoughtlessly used the denier label over the years intentionally set out to compare CC skeptics with people associated with Holocaust denial. In part because I rather doubt many of you are even aware of its negative historical connotations. I think it's more likely you're just unthinkingly repeating rhetoric from your narrowly chosen sources of information. But I can say with confidence that whoever initially cooked up this pleasant little piece of partisan propaganda knew exactly the hoped for impact of the historical connotation, and could count on the many minions who would soon make it part of the CC lexicon.

So now we are using the term "silly labels". I hope you understand that you are as guilty as any of using unnecessarily provocative language.

You can leave aside the negative historical connotations and still fairly describe the use of the denier label as silly. How exactly does one "deny" a scientific theory? Whether it's a well proven theory or merely a hypothesis, you can criticize, be skeptical, reject, or endorse, but I don't understand how you can "deny." For this to happen it would have to concern a fact which is not only undisputed, but not even amenable to any conclusion other than its truth. The sky is blue, the grass is green, the Holocaust took place, we landed a man on the moon, the allies defeated the axis powers in WW2.

I know you'd love to include CC on this list, but what part of CC theory that people question make them "deniers?" The ones who question the role of CO2? How about the ones who don't question the role of CO2 but are uncertain about the influence of natural forces? Or maybe it's the ones who are already convinced CC is real, that CO2 is the overriding culprit, but don't agree that the impacts you believe are so alarming will be realized? As one of the largest propagators of the label throughout these threads, surely you have some of your own thoughts on this apart from what you've read. If not, then perhaps you can think through how misleading the terminology actually is. Or maybe you understand this too, and are deliberately using the label to divide people with an entire spectrum of opinions into only two distinct camps. Just like religion, you either believe or you don't, and questioning anything in between is not "acceptable." After all, that's where skeptics like to reside, and skeptics need to be labeled deniers so that people will be led to believe they not only reject CC, but also "reject science." Hey, I think I'm catching on!

And yes, I did see Newhaul's post regarding methane released in the production of natural gas. I did respond to it, somewhat indirectly, by posting research that indicates that certain types of arctic thermokarst lakes may be generating far more methane than previously thought, and may do so even with reduced CO2 emmisions. Newhaul subsequently posted some more links and made (questionable) assertions regarding methane, which I did not respond to. There is more I could say about his posts, but this thread wasn't suppose to be about AGW, so I've refrained from further comments about methane. I could be persuaded to change my mind if enough of this thread's participants want to make this YET ANOTHER AGW THREAD. I've bookmarked loads more studies I'd love to post.

What do you think, GordMay?

Naaaa... It's too much work. The deniers are just going to keep doing what they do best.

My question has nothing to do with denial, future methane emissions, or how many add'l articles you choose to post in the thread. You and your scientific articles have been making the case for years that methane emissions from fracking are a problem. Newhaul's posts cited scientific studies indicating that, over the past 10 years, this is apparently not true. I would think that, after all the studies you've linked us to and have presumably read, you would be able to respond intelligently on your own, and not simply link another article about unrelated methane emissions from another region of the world. If Newhaul's source(s) are so "questionable," then it shouldn't require much effort to demonstrate why this is so. It could also get us back on topic, namely which of these opposing research findings on methane emissions may be false.

What the heck SailOar, give it a whirl! Hitting the copy & paste buttons time & again has to be getting a bit tedious, no?

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by newhaul

Now back to the topic of this thread
Is this study right or wrong?
https://www.greencarcongress.com/201...0512-noaa.html
Please provide evidentiary for your views if they are contrary to the study findings.

Newhaul’s study news report:
“NOAA study finds little evidence for large increases in total US methane emissions over the past decade” ~ by The Green Car Congress
☞ https://www.greencarcongress.com/201...0512-noaa.html
The actual study (paywalled):
“Long Term Measurements Show Little Evidence for Large Increases in Total U.S. Methane Emissions over the Past Decade” ~ by Xin Lan et al
☞ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley....9/2018GL081731

A NASA study*1 has found that most of the huge rise in global methane (CH4) emissions in the past decade, is from the fossil fuel industry, and that this rise is “substantially larger” than previously thought.
Methane emissions have been soaring, in recent years, after leveling off around the year 2000. The total methane in the air has been rising by 25 teragrams (27.5 million U.S. tons) a year.
A review of more than 200 earlier studies confirms that U.S. emissions of methane are considerably higher than official estimates, as one 2014 Stanford University analysis*2 explained.

*1 “NASA-led Study Solves a Methane Puzzle” ~ by Carol Rasmussen
➥ https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nas...methane-puzzle


*2
➥ https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/...as-021314.html
“Methane Leaks from North American Natural Gas Systems” ~ by A. R. Brandt et al.
➥ https://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6172/733

See also:
“Shale Gas: Killing Coal without Cutting CO2" ~ by Shakeb Afsah and Kendyl Salcito
“It is well known that natural gas generates only half the CO2 of coal for every MWh of electricity generation. However, there are two offsets that nibble away at these CO2 savings. The first is the component of natural gas generation that displaces nuclear and renewable sources of energy that have no emissions. The second is methane leaks ...”
☞ https://co2scorecard.org/home/researchitem/28


And:

“Quantifying Methane and Ethane Emissions to the Atmosphere From Central and Western U.S. Oil and Natural Gas Production Regions” ~ by J. Peischl et al.
“7. Conclusions ... In cases where we revisited oil and natural gas producing regions, we generally found that the percentage of natural gas produced emitted to the atmosphere decreased compared to previous studies. This may be a function of decreased natural gas production, decreased drilling activity, increased emission control or regulation, or some combination of these factors. Further study will be necessary to assess the statistical significance of these trends."
☞ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley....9/2018JD028622


I'm not quite certain what to think (where on the trajectory right/wrong of Newhaul's source ). Perhaps he'd be willing comment, with supporting evidence.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Exile

That's because you do nothing to help the environment you claim such passion for.

Heh. I guess you'd recognize nothing, being the master of it.

At a minimum, I recognize CC and other problems and want to discuss them and think about solutions, instead of doing handstands to find reasons not to act, as you do. That will always keep me one notch ahead of you.

Sadly, denial is our loss.

[john61ct]

Methane mystery https://undark.org/article/methane-g...hange-mystery/

[GordMay]

Thanks for the link, John. An excellent article.
It seems that my uncertainty places me in pretty good company.

“... the concentration of methane in the atmosphere had been steadily rising since 1983, before levelling off around 2000. “And then, boom, look at how it changes here,” Dlugokencky says, pointing at a graph on his computer screen. “This is really an abrupt change in the global methane budget, starting around 2007.”
The amount of methane in the atmosphere has been increasing ever since. And nobody really knows why ...
... Thanks to the careful measurements of NOAA scientists and others, we know that there are about 1,850 molecules of methane in the atmosphere for every billion molecules of air — typically shorthanded as parts per billion, or ppb — in today’s atmosphere. That’s compared to about 700 parts per billion in the pre-industrial era ...
... Any convincing explanation needs to answer three questions.
What explains the long-term increase in methane levels over the past 40 years? Why was there a pause?
And why was there such an abrupt surge after 2006? ...
... These ongoing scientific disputes reveal the problem at the heart of the methane mystery: Multiple stories can be made to neatly fit the available evidence. “Really good observations can be interpreted in ways that seem contradictory,” says Kort. To sort through it all, scientists must balance the information provided by various categories of clues ..."
From John’s link ➥ https://undark.org/article/methane-g...hange-mystery/

See also:

“Assessment of methane emissions from the U.S. oil and gas supply chain” ~ by Ramón A. Alvarez et al.
“... in 2015, supply chain emissions were ∼60% higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency inventory estimate...”
➥ https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6398/186

“Very Strong Atmospheric Methane Growth in the 4 Years 2014–2017: Implications for the Paris Agreement” ~ by E. G. Nisbet et al.
➥ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley....9/2018GB006009

“Tracing the climate signal: mitigation of anthropogenic methane emissions can outweigh a large Arctic natural emission increase” ~ by T.R. Christensen et al.
“... it is shown that man-made emissions can be reduced sufficiently to limit methane-caused climate warming by 2100 even in the case of an uncontrolled natural Arctic methane emission feedback, but this requires a committed, global effort towards maximum feasible reductions...”
➥ Tracing the climate signal: mitigation of anthropogenic methane emissions can outweigh a large Arctic natural emission increase

[Exile]

Thanks for doing that research John & Gord. I read your posted snippets and will go back & read what I can in the links themselves. I frankly had thought the controversy in the science was over how harmful methane was in the atmosphere given its shorter lifespan(?) than CO2, but that a certain amount of leakage from natural gas production was more or less a given. It sounds like the science is rather controverted, and of course it's an oft-cited issue when the positives of natural gas as a cleaner form of fossil fuel energy is raised.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Newhaul’s study news report:
“NOAA study finds little evidence for large increases in total US methane emissions over the past decade” ~ by The Green Car Congress
☞ https://www.greencarcongress.com/201...0512-noaa.html
The actual study (paywalled):
“Long Term Measurements Show Little Evidence for Large Increases in Total U.S. Methane Emissions over the Past Decade” ~ by Xin Lan et al
☞ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley....9/2018GL081731

A NASA study*1 has found that most of the huge rise in global methane (CH4) emissions in the past decade, is from the fossil fuel industry, and that this rise is “substantially larger” than previously thought.
Methane emissions have been soaring, in recent years, after leveling off around the year 2000. The total methane in the air has been rising by 25 teragrams (27.5 million U.S. tons) a year.
A review of more than 200 earlier studies confirms that U.S. emissions of methane are considerably higher than official estimates, as one 2014 Stanford University analysis*2 explained.

*1 “NASA-led Study Solves a Methane Puzzle” ~ by Carol Rasmussen
➥ https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nas...methane-puzzle


*2
➥ https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/...as-021314.html
“Methane Leaks from North American Natural Gas Systems” ~ by A. R. Brandt et al.
➥ https://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6172/733

See also:
“Shale Gas: Killing Coal without Cutting CO2" ~ by Shakeb Afsah and Kendyl Salcito
“It is well known that natural gas generates only half the CO2 of coal for every MWh of electricity generation. However, there are two offsets that nibble away at these CO2 savings. The first is the component of natural gas generation that displaces nuclear and renewable sources of energy that have no emissions. The second is methane leaks ...”
☞ https://co2scorecard.org/home/researchitem/28


And:

“Quantifying Methane and Ethane Emissions to the Atmosphere From Central and Western U.S. Oil and Natural Gas Production Regions” ~ by J. Peischl et al.
“7. Conclusions ... In cases where we revisited oil and natural gas producing regions, we generally found that the percentage of natural gas produced emitted to the atmosphere decreased compared to previous studies. This may be a function of decreased natural gas production, decreased drilling activity, increased emission control or regulation, or some combination of these factors. Further study will be necessary to assess the statistical significance of these trends."
☞ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley....9/2018JD028622


I'm not quite certain what to think (where on the trajectory right/wrong of Newhaul's source ). Perhaps he'd be willing comment, with supporting evidence.

ok lets have some fun here my posted article and the study report we both posted that the article was based on ( the link to the study is at the end of the NASA article)


your second article
Link. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nas...methane-puzzle

Was how global burn area is affecting the global methane release has naught to do with the USA fracking releases.


Your next linked article is over 5 years old and about leaks in the methane ( natural gas ) distribution pipelines. ( nothing to do with the methane from fraking )

your next article is from 2013 and has to do with what is a great thing and effect from fraking reductions in co2 emissions due to converting to gas from coal for power generation.
( again nothing to do with methane emissions from fraking )

the last link you posted while almost a year old is actually supporting the assertions in the article and study I posted from earlier this month.

Thank you.

So it seems that many issues that the layperson sees as incorrect is actually just misinformation by referencing non related information into the discussion at hand.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Heh. I guess you'd recognize nothing, being the master of it.

At a minimum, I recognize CC and other problems and want to discuss them and think about solutions, instead of doing handstands to find reasons not to act, as you do. That will always keep me one notch ahead of you.

Sadly, denial is our loss.

yes you recognize what the msm is putting out ( garbage in garbage out = msm)

but what are you personally doing about it.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Exile

...My question has nothing to do with denial, future methane emissions, or how many add'l articles you choose to post in the thread. You and your scientific articles have been making the case for years that methane emissions from fracking are a problem. Newhaul's posts cited scientific studies indicating that, over the past 10 years, this is apparently not true. I would think that, after all the studies you've linked us to and have presumably read, you would be able to respond intelligently on your own, and not simply link another article about unrelated methane emissions from another region of the world. If Newhaul's source(s) are so "questionable," then it shouldn't require much effort to demonstrate why this is so. It could also get us back on topic, namely which of these opposing research findings on methane emissions may be false.

What the heck SailOar, give it a whirl! Hitting the copy & paste buttons time & again has to be getting a bit tedious, no?

The alternative to calling you and your buddies Climate Change Deniers is to call you scientific ignoramuses. Here is a summary from the first study that Newhaul posted:

Plain Language Summary

In the past decade, natural gas production in the U.S. has increased by ~46%. Methane emissions associated with oil and natural gas productions have raised concerns since methane is a potent greenhouse gas with the second largest influence on global warming. Recent studies show conflicting results regarding to whether methane emissions from oil and gas operations have been increased in the U.S. Based on long‐term and well‐calibrated measurements, we find that i) there is no increase of total methane emissions in the U.S. in the past decade; ii) there is modest increase in oil and gas methane emissions, but this increase is much lower than some previous studies suggest; iii) the assumption of a time‐constant relationship between methane and ethane emissions has resulted in major overestimation of an oil and gas emissions trend in some previous studies.

From this summary I conclude that methane emissions from oil and gas production is not increasing at a comparable rate to the production itself. (Hallelujah! That's great news.)

Conclusion ii) suggests that there still is some increase in the rate of methane emissions. (not so good)

Conclusion iii) suggests that previous researcher's errors stemmed from (apparently??) measuring ethane emissions (which have been increasing dramatically) rather than methane emissions directly (which haven't increased nearly so much), and assuming that the rate of methane emissions must follow the rate of ethane emissions.

Nowhere that I've read do the researchers say that methane emissions from gas and oil production are zero, or that current methane emissions are harmless, or that they are not making significant contributions to greenhouse gas accumulations, which is what you and Newhaul seem to be implying.

Here is the first paragraph from Newhaul's article:

A study by a team of researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory has found that methane emissions from oil and natural gas production in the United States may not be rising as quickly as had been feared.

Note that the article is basically in agreement with the study. Methane emissions are not increasing as quickly as feared. No mention of whether current emission levels are benign or not.

With your illogical blinders firmly in place you now felt justified in saying all alarms over methane emissions are unwarranted, and you even went further in suggesting that those who have raised concerns about methane emission are not being truthful -- which is a polite way of calling them liars. So, once again, you piously call for mutual respect and a toning down of provocative language, but then turn around and "shovel" out a load of manure.

It turns out that this is about as truthful as the alarmism SailOar has been shoveling out about methane over the past 10 years of natural gas production.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Now let's move on to Newhaul's illogical post regarding methane release from Arctic Lakes. The first thing Newhaul said was:

except that the study is not correct the arctic is not warming any faster than any other place on the plane.... [referring to my article on methane releases from Arctic Thermokarst lakes]

From the first sentence of the first paragraph of Newhaul's first link:

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

Duh...

Further down in the scientific journal article we find that it is difficult doing research on the literally millions of mostly inaccessible arctic lakes:

getting to some logistically very difficult places

So they chose to sample 20 larger lakes (large enough to land float planes in) in just one specific location, Yukon River Flats.

The researchers visited 20 lakes several times over the course of a year in the Yukon Flats

and

the research team flew by floatplane from Fairbanks, Alaska, to a remote location in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge

From their study they found that:

the researchers found that nearly every lake they tested showed no sign of ancient carbon from permafrost, and much less production of carbon dioxide than expected.

However--

the research team saw evidence that many of the lakes were more balanced in production and uptake of carbon dioxide than lakes in other regions. Consequently, the lakes were a smaller source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than is observed in other parts of the world.

"The implications are that not all lakes are hot spots for releasing carbon from land," Butman said. "But we don't yet know how these particular landscapes will change in a warmer climate, since this is the first time they've been studied."

So the researchers admit that their sample size is small (20 lakes), are from just one location (Yukon flats) and are not necessarily typical of all arctic lakes. Furthermore, they admit that they are uncertain how those lakes may change as temperatures increase.

Note also that this article only mentioned CO2 emissions, not methane, which is what you seem to be so in a tizzy about.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Looking at Newhaul's second link, entitled Defusing the methane bomb—we can still make a difference.

The first question that comes to mind is why Newhaul (or you, for that matter) would choose such an article to defend your idea that methane emissions are not a problem? Again, for Newhaul's benefit, from the first paragraph, first sentence:

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet

continuing on with the rest of that first paragraph:

causing the carbon-containing permafrost that has been frozen for tens or hundreds of thousands of years to thaw and release methane into the atmosphere, thereby contributing to global warming. The findings of a study that included researchers from IIASA, however, suggest that it is still possible to neutralize this threat.

Hello... methane threat alert... but I'm sure the scientists are all liars.

Continuing:

"It is important to put the two estimates [methane from human activities and methane from thawing arctic carbon sources] alongside each other to point out how important it is to urgently address methane emissions from human activities, in particular through a phase out of fossil fuels. It is important for everyone concerned about global warming to know that humans are the main source of methane emissions and that if we can control humans' release of methane, the problem of methane released from the thawing Arctic tundra is likely to remain manageable,"......

The results indicate that man-made emissions can be reduced sufficiently to limit methane-caused climate warming by 2100 even in the case of an uncontrolled natural Arctic methane emission feedback. This will however require a committed, global effort towards substantial, but feasible reductions.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Now let's look at the article I posted, Unexpected future boost of methane possible from Arctic permafrost

First paragraph:

New NASA-funded research has discovered that Arctic permafrost’s expected gradual thawing and the associated release of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere may actually be sped up by instances of a relatively little known process called abrupt thawing. Abrupt thawing takes place under a certain type of Arctic lake, known as a thermokarst lake that forms as permafrost thaws.

Here we learn about a little-known mechanism that occurs when lakes form as the permafrost thaws. That implies that: 1) it hasn't been studied in detail before, so previous greenhouse gas estimates will not have taken this process into account; and 2) themokarst lakes are newly formed, and this not likely to be big enough for float planes to land on them, thus not included in the study that Newhaul mentioned.

And one of the study's "alarming" conclusions:

"We don’t have to wait 200 or 300 years to get these large releases of permafrost carbon. Within my lifetime, my children’s lifetime, it should be ramping up. It’s already happening but it’s not happening at a really fast rate right now, but within a few decades, it should peak."

and

They found that the abrupt thaw process increases the release of ancient carbon stored in the soil 125 to 190 percent compared to gradual thawing alone. What's more, they found that in future warming scenarios defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, abrupt thawing was as important under the moderate reduction of emissions scenario as it was under the extreme business-as-usual scenario. This means that even in the scenario where humans reduced their global carbon emissions, large methane releases from abrupt thawing are still likely to occur.

Unlike the study that Newhaul presented, which only studied 20 lakes in one area in Alaska, this research studied lakes both in Alaska and Siberia.

Walter Anthony and her colleagues captured methane bubbling out of 72 locations in 11 thermokarst lakes in Alaska and Siberia

Finally:

Because the thermokarst lakes are relatively small and scattered throughout the Arctic landscapes, computer models of their behavior are not currently incorporated into global climate models. However, Walter Anthony believes including them in future models is important for understanding the role of permafrost in the global carbon budget. Human fossil fuel emissions are the number one source of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and in comparison, methane emissions from thawing permafrost make up only one percent of the global methane budget, Walter Anthony said. "But by the middle to end of the century the permafrost-carbon feedback should be about equivalent to the second strongest anthropogenic source of greenhouse gases, which is land use change," she said.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So, once again, I am dumbfounded by your and Newhaul's arguments. I call you deniers, because it is a short word with a lot of relevant implications. But it may be that you are simply scientifically illiterate, or perhaps you have a major problem with reading comprehension skills? Either way, your arguments are so far from reality that having a scientific discussion with you two is about as useful as .... well, all of the examples that come to mind will probably get people all riled up again for being a personal attack.

I often wonder whether readers of these AGW threads on CF find the alarmist viewpoint or the denier viewpoint more persuasive? Maybe some would find it informative to read this book review of INCONVENIENT FACTS: The Science That Al Gore Doesn't Want You To Know.

It’s Easy to be Tricked by a Climate Denier
Here’s what to watch out for…

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Heh. I guess you'd recognize nothing, being the master of it.

At a minimum, I recognize CC and other problems and want to discuss them and think about solutions, instead of doing handstands to find reasons not to act, as you do. That will always keep me one notch ahead of you.

Sadly, denial is our loss.

Huh, can't recall a single thread involving environmental issues where you've shown any interest in "discussing" anything. It was pulling teeth just to get you to recognize why otherwise conscientious boaters had legitimate criticisms over No-Discharge Zones. Until then, they were merely selfish, uncaring, lazy "yachties" who "didn't care about the environment." I guess if it "sounds" like it's "pro-environmental" it's an opportunity for you to preach your gospel to others, and so why bother trying to understand the next level of analysis when you can so easily reply with .

Likewise, it sounds like there's quite more to the methane issue than what we've been fed by SailOar given what appears to be conflicting research findings. I'm sure this frustrates you, but if you can refrain from personalizing or politicizing it, some of us who view fracking technology as an extremely positive stopgap might actually temper their enthusiasm. And at the same time, those who have a hate-on for anything related to fossil fuels might develop a more balanced understanding of fracking's pros & cons. That's how "discussions" and "thinking about solutions" actually works, at least amongst adults who share your overall concerns but have different ways of looking at potential solutions.