dimossi

On January 24 at 11:00 PM ET/PT SHOWTIME will present the controversial new series PENN & TELLER: BULLSHIT! Master showmen Penn & Teller promise an aggressive, irreverent expose of taboo topics using the duo's trademark humor, knowledge of carnival tricks and con-artistry, as well as hidden cameras and blatant confrontation.

Using undercover operatives, scrupulous research and a healthy dose of skepticism, the Vegas headliners and world-famous magicians blow the lid off popular notions about alien abductions, Ouija boards and end of the world predictions. They expose the bogus science behind such widely accepted canards as creationism, the purity of bottled water, global warming, miracle-workers and religious cults.

Check out the Preview at: <a href="http://www.sho.com/screeningroom/play_window.cfm?include=ptbs&filename=/ptbs/ptbs_trailer&archive=no" target="_blank">http://www.sho.com/screeningroom/play_window.cfm?include=ptbs&filename=/ptbs/ptbs_trailer&archive=no</A>

lowmagnet

Figures... Realplayer. My Mac doesn't do realplayer. ah well... will have to wait for the premiere

GunnerJ

I soooo wish I got Showtime.

Oh, and the preview is really not that great.

theyeti

Please, please tell me that it's the global warming denalists and not global warming that's being called bullshit. They will discredit the entire program if it's the latter.

theyeti

nixon

Thats biased too. There is a lot of bogus science about global warming.

theyeti

Like what? I have little doubt that it's exaggerated by some environmental groups, but this is hardly a reason to call "bullshit!" about the whole science of climatology. From what I've learned, there's much, much more bullshit coming from the denialists.

theyeti

Dark Jedi

To me, both sides are full of bullshit, so far.

I hold my opinion until more data is presented. So far the warmers haven't shown that global warming is outside the normal cycle. The problem is that the normal cycle is not quite established.

The denialists haven't debunked ozone depletion and greenhouse gas buildup.

All in all, I am not yet panicing, but choose to be careful of pollutants and such as best I can.

Gregg

Yep. For example, Rush Limbaugh claimed that the Mt. Pinatubo eruption put more pollutants into the atmosphere than all the pollutants humankind has put there since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Thing is, volcanic pollutants wash out of the atmosphere. Many manmade pollutants don't.

Limbaugh also argued that if the polar icecaps melted, this wouldn't cause flooding because "when an icecube melts in a glass of water, it doesn't overflow." Idiot. He doesn't even know that Antarctica is an ice-covered LANDMASS. It's amazing that anyone listens to the fat fool.

Gregg

thebeave

As I've heard it from reliable, scientific based sources, it does seem like there is a warming trend going on right now. Like many processes though, it is not a straightline increase. It is a slow increase, with a lot of "noise" (fluctuations) on it. Such a progression makes it real difficult to separate the "signal from the noise". Further, no one knows how much is due to a natural warming cycle, and how much is man-caused. Remember that the earth has gone through many cooling (ice ages) and warming cycles (droughts) over the years... long before man ever came on the scene. It wasn't that long ago that we were in the midst of an ice age, and we could just be coming out of that.

theyeti

True enough, but this actually has to do with ozone depletion and not global warming. Not only is the issue irrelevant for the reasons you mentioned, but Rush didn't even know which volcano he was talking about. Read all about it <a href="http://www.fair.org/press-releases/limbaugh-debates-reality.html#sec1.1" target="_blank">here</a>. It's quite hillarious.

This is also true, but most of the increase in sea level will come from thermal expansion of the water. Not that this makes things any better. The expected increase is somewhere between 1 and 3 feet in the next century IIRC, which will be enough to flood many low-lying coastal regions. If anyone cares, you can read through <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=57&t=000523&p=" target="_blank">this thread</a> to find lots of info about global warming, and the arguments surrounding it. Thebeave's questions are answered there, for instance.

Anyway, I've got a bad feeling that Penn and Teller are just going to spread some more misinformation about the whole thing, and there's tons of it out there already, thanks to a multi-million dollar campaign by the fossil fuel industry. Simply crying "Bullshit!" is not really the most effective way to go about debunking. It takes detailed analysis and careful explanation of the underlying science. If they have cared enough to do this, they'd see that global warming is not a "myth" or "bullshit" but rather something that we should be taking seriously, though not going ape-shit over of course. Unlike the other "Bullshit" that they take on (creationism, miracle workers, the purity of bottled water, talking to the dead, etc.), this is one where the vast majority of the scientific community is convinced that it's reality.

theyeti