Global Warming? Phooey!
Published by Mike Stark March 27th, 2007 in Uncategorized“It’s just not sound science.”
Yeah, that’s what I expected to hear when I went to a Federalist Society’s event that featured Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Well, that’s not what he said. I’m not really sure what he said, actually. And I think that’s the point.
You see, there’s a new tactic being used by those obsessed with Al Gore and new ways of obtaining Exxon-Mobil’s money.
Confuse. Confuse. Confuse.
It works like this:
Global warming is a huge, multidisciplinary science involving atmospheric scientists, astronomers, biologists, ecologists, physicists, chemists and a whole bunch of scholars that come with 6-syllable titles I just can’t pronounce. For me, and just about everyone else, we’re forced to accept that we can’t possibly know everything, but when over 10,000 peer-reviewed papers are published and they all point to the same conclusion, well… we trust that the scientists are correct.
Not the folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Instead, they look at the forest, find a mushroom and say, “Sheesh, that’s not a tree!! How can this possibly be a forest? Oh, I see… well, so it is. Aha! That proves my I think point!! This mushroom is growing on a dead tree! This forest cannot possibly be a threat if the trees are dead! In fact, this dead tree makes for wonderful fertilizer. We should all celebrate dead trees!! Oh, yes, I see. There are a lot of live, sturdy trees around here, aren’t there? Well, you know, all the same, this isn’t a forest - it’s merely a grove. And, by the way, if it was a forest, it’d cost a lot of money to chop it down.”
Seriously. That’s Myron Ebell’s strength of argument.
He points to data point after disputed data point (the mushrooms) in his efforts to intimate that global warming may not be real. You rebut his data, or present irrefutable data of their own (the tree the mushroom is growing upon), and he moves the goal-posts to suggest that even though global warming is real, it’s certainly no threat requiring any kind of action. In fact, if global warming is real, we’re going to witness a wonderful resurgence of plant life and biodiversity as the carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures combine to form a vigorous greenhouse effect!! (the fertilizer argument). You bring him back to earth by mentioning the migrating parasitic species, deadly heat waves, dying coral reefs and increased freak weather spells (sturdy trees). He minimizes the troubles (cold kills more people than heat, changing climate brings opportunity as well as costs, etc) and falls back on his favorite war-horse - the cost implications of actually doing something about the problem.
I sat through nearly two hours of that pattern playing Solitaire on my computer. You see, I know the right. I expected this treatment.
I was mildly disappointed that the allies I brought with me to the discussion insisted on asking policy, scientific or political questions that Mr. Ebell was clearly well prepared to parry. This is after all, what he does for a living. Like an octopus, he’s particularly adept at clouding the waters with ink. Which made it particularly funny in an ironic sort of way when a pen exploded in his pocket just before he took my question.
He had run out of ink!
“Mr. Ebell, I’m sorry, but I feel like I walked in on you in bed with my wife and you just spent the last two hours asking me if I was going to believe me or my lying eyes.” The crowd (and remember, this was a Federalist Society event) chortled.
“I mean, heat waves killed hundreds or thousands in Europe and Chicago. Coral reefs are dying off. Bark beetles are devastating forests they’ve never been found in before because the temperatures were to cold to sustain them. I don’t have to go through it all, you’ve heard it all before… data point after data point after data point says global warming is a problem.”
“Further, Exxon-Mobil recently admitted to spending $16 million dollars to cloud the science - to propagandize against global warming. And your firm, the supposedly non-partisan Competitive Enterprise Institute was one of the greatest recipients.”
“Which leads me to my next point - your claim of non-partisanship. I’ve heard Senator Inhofe, Richard Pombo, Tom delay when he was there and many others mis-state the science, often while quoting your organization. But I’m looking at your web-page right now, and I see story after story that supposedly debunks Al Gore. Why haven’t you ever had anything bad to say about a Republican? Because to a simple guy like me, well, when I look at the big picture, it looks as if you folks care less about the truth than you do about furthering a pro-business agenda.”
{This is when Mr. Ebell excused himself to wipe the ink off his hands. He turns to address my questions in reverse order.}
First he claimed that, “Oh my gosh, I welcome your examination of my motives, but we are a very small operation. When you compare our resources to NRDC, Sierra Club and Greenpeace’s, well, we just can’t afford to chase down every inaccuracy and we really need to focus…”
I interrupted: “You mean, Exxon/Mobil doesn’t have enough money to get their message out?” (More laughter.)
“Well, I don’t know…”
Me again: “Didn’t they just break every record for quarterly profit by any company, ever, in any quarter, ever?”
“Uhm, yeah, they may have, but it is good that you ask these questions and I think you should be. But you know, cold kills a lot more people than heat, so while we may have the heat waves, humans are adapting at living in heat much better. Not too many people are moving to Minnesota or North Dakota, but Phoenix is booming.”
I couldn’t take it, “Wait a minute - are you standing next to my bed in my bedroom asking me how you could possibly be sleeping with my wife while wearing those ridiculous underwear?” More laughs.
Mr. Ebell was a professional though. He stuck to his script and refused to be thrown off. He was rattled - he clearly isn’t used to being held accountable in such a broad, expansive way. He’s much more comfortable arguing the nuances, highlighting outlying studies and pointing up micro-inconsistencies that support his case. So that’s what he went back to doing.
Upon reflection, I really think there are a couple of lessons for progressives to be found in this five minute exchange.
First of all, when arguing with somebody that either has no credibility or is not arguing a credible position, don’t donate the credibility they need to be seen as your equal.
You see, by calling his credibility into question immediately - and not letting him up for air - well, I’ve got no proof, but I really think that everyone in the room knew that Mr. Ebell had been bettered. When we ask policy or science questions of these charlatans, we give the impression that we care what they think. We don’t. We know they are rank liars, we’re just wondering if they’ll be able to spin a sufficient answer. But these guys get millions of dollars a year from the largest corporate titans precisely because they have the skill to ink up the issue. Why let them show off?
Secondly, don’t go out of your way to be nice or polite. Hell, I won’t afford these profit-gandists any respect on my blog, why the hell should I do it face to face? A large part of their professional career derives from their ability to mock me and the things I believe in. The Competitive Enterprise Institute once liked global warming to “being invaded by space aliens” for example. By addressing these people with the indignant scorn they deserve, you project the moral superiority of your position. To many times it seems that Democratic and progressive pundits are more interested in being our opponents friends than we are in vigorously arguing the issues. In this media environment - when equal time is given to global warming deniers… well, we just can’t afford the small talk.
In the end, these guys are not good people. This isn’t a case of principled people disagreeing. At this point in the global warming debate, the only principled disagreements to be had revolve around what we should be doing to address the crisis. The Myron Ebells of the world - the die-hard denialists… well, we need to move them off the stage by marginalizing them at every opportunity.
122 Responses to “Global Warming? Phooey!”
- 1 Pingback on Mar 27th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
- 2 Trackback on Mar 28th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
- 3 Pingback on Mar 31st, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Leave a Reply
Search
Login
Donations Accepted
Subscribe
Posts- Comments
- Podcast
Good job Mike!
You took a page from the Right wing’s own playbook–Minimize the messenger. It’s not hard when the messenger tries passing off fairy tales as facts.
It’s like my Grandpa always said; “You can’t always catch a thief, but you’ll always catch a liar.”
“By addressing these people with the indignant scorn they deserve, you project the moral superiority of your position.”
Or you project that you’re a jackass.
Seriously, when did addressing people like a ranting six year old become a method to effectively convey “moral superiority?”
I suppose anyone could go around playing the part of the Bitter Crank, getting tossed out of campaign events and being the guy people roll their eyes at during functions, but it seems doubtful anyone is walking away going, “Boy, that angry guy who just insults everyone, he sure is morally superior. Yessir. Not at all mentally unstable.”
Well, Curtis…
you can feel free to lend credence to whatever snake-oil salesman comes along. Buy their stuff, be agreeable, and legitimize all hucksters.
I prefer undiluted forthrightness, integrity and, well, acting like a man. When a politician tells me they’re gonna buy me a pony, I’m gonna question them. And when they don’t do it, well, the next time they make the promise, I’m not going to be so easily mislead. In fact, I might even be a little indignant that they lied to me the first time.
But hey, whatever - the world needs suckers, I guess. Somebody needs to buy the “Get Rich in Real Estate” things you see on late night TV… better you than me…
Mike, this is called “denialism”, I write a blog about it at denialism.com. It a set of methods used to sow confusion about science used by several groups, not just the global warming deniers, but creationists, and HIV/AIDS denialists. They all operate under similar priniciples.
Bravo! It’s about time someone attacked these guys on their _motives_. As Bill Burroughs used to say, you have to examine the vested interests. What’s the vested interest of the global warming deniers? Anwers: $$$$$$ What’s the vested interest of the global warming scientists? Knowledge and a little chump change if they’re lucky.
It is odd that people who see fit to pronounce global warming as some kind of liberal fairy-tale probably couldn’t even tell you how the planet’s basic weather systems even work.
Is it just me, or does ‘Curtis’ seem like a plant?
Mike, you continue to be the best thing that’s happened to activism since the megaphone.
i just read michael crichton’s book ‘State of Fear’. It seems to contain every point that “global-warming deniers” make and contradicts everything I thought I knew about global warming. Now I am a bit confused.
THEESE DENIALISTS REMIND ME OF COPERINUS’ STORY. THE EARTH IS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE! ANYONE WHO WOULD DENY THAT IS A BLASPHEMER. REPENT OR DIE! AT LEAST GALILEO HAD THE SENSE TO REVERT TO THE TRUTH, THE WORLD IS FLAT ETC… AND LIVED TO WRITE IT DOWN. FAITH BASED SCIENCE WORKS BEST! P.S. CONCRETE TREES ARE REALLY COOL, THEY NEVER DIE, DON’T GET THOSE LOUSY LEAFS IN MY POOL, AND NEVER DIE! TAKE THAT ENVIRONMENTALIST WHACKO, MAN MADE IS ALWAYS BETTER!
I’m with you Mike, it is as impossible to have a rational debate with these people as with a three year old. To them facts are something you make up to support your position. It is time that we stopped giving these people respectability and marginalize them any way we can.
I think one reason that the doubt has been able to go on for so long is that scientists and journalists have two very different definitions for the term objectivity. A scientist lets go of a pen and notices that it hits the ground. They then repeat the experiment and get the same result every time. They conclude that pens always fall downwards. (Scientific objectivity.) A journalist reports on the scientist’s findings but feels obliged to show both sides of the story so they find someone that will tell them that pens fall upward. (Journalistic objectivity)
I love what you’re doing but I think what rankles a little, and may be what Curtis was getting at, is your assertion of “moral superiority.” In my experience, people convinced of their own moral superiority are generally slimeballs. We’ve had more than enough of that at the hands of the Religious Right, thank you very much.
I do believe that the strategy of ridiculing pompous “authorities” is very useful. It’s much more effective, even in a room full of people prepared to lap up whatever the “expert” is dishing out, than arguing data with him or even calling him names. You could just as easily have brought a lot of anger into the discussion, at which point that audience would have shut you out. Now they’re in a position of being able to see him on stage in his underwear, clutching a sheet and lying himself blue.
Just lose the whole moral superiority thing.
In reply to Curtis Rick–
How telling to use hit and run tactics to express your disagreement with Mike. There was NO ranting like a six year old. Mike was witty, yet cutting, and the misinformer that you side with was dumbfounded. It is obvious that you didn’t like what Mike had to say–therefor you try to belittle him.
Your outrage for that which you accuse Mike of doing is the same thing your ilk defends. It’s on AM talk radio all day long. It appears that this isn’t objectionable to you as long as you agree with the message. This makes you a hypocrite–not suprising, as so many right wingers are.
Moral superiority comes only to the person who is stating truth. Mike stated truth to Myron Ebell’s lies. Still, Mike gave him an opportunity to correct his misinformation. Ebell chose to continue his confuscation in order to earn his pay.
I wonder. Since I often roll my eyes at things spoken by Rush Limbaugh, and since I often think that Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Michael Savage seem mentally unstable, does that mean that they truley are? Is it mentally unstable for some unknown poster to take my name, reverse it, then attack the messenger because he/she can’t argue the merits of the debate?
THEESE DENIALISTS REMIND ME OF COPERNICUS’ STORY. THE EARTH IS AT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE AND ANYONE WHO DISAGREES IS A BLASPHEMER AND DESERVES TO DIE. AT LEAST GALILEO HAD THE SENSE TO REPENT FROM HIS FOOLISHNESS AND LIVED TO WRITE ABOUT HIS RIDUCULOUS THOERY. FAITH BASED SCIENCE IS BEST! P.S. CONCRETE TREES ARE BETTER. THEY NEVER DIE, DON’T DROP THEIR LEAVES IN MY POOL, AND MAKE GREAT CELL TOWERS! TAKE THAT YOU ENVIRONMENTAL WHACKOS! MAN MADE IS ALWAYS BETTER.
“If global warming is real, we’re going to witness a wonderful resurgence of plant life and biodiversity as the carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures combine to form a vigorous greenhouse effect!! (the fertilizer argument).”
Of all anti - global warming / climate change arguments I’ve heard this one is the most infuriating. And recently I’ve heard it plenty.
“Well Ms Nussbaum you’ve got colorectal cancer. But look at all the money you’ll be making the hospital during your stay.”
“I’m sorry Mr. Blevins but you house burned down this morning and your wife was not able to get out in time. But you’ve just given a job to a grave digger, an insurance adjuster, an electrician and a plumber.”
But looking on the bright side of a catastrophe BEFORE the catastrophe has occurred or when it’s possible to avoid is worse, far worse, in fact, just plain PSYCHOTIC!
I’m with you Mike, you can’t have a rational debate with someone who thinks that facts are just things you make up to support your position. It is long past time to treat them as though they have any legitimacy.
One reason that the ‘controversy’ over global warming has been able to go on for so long is that scientists and journalists have completely different interpretations of the meaning of objectivity. A scientist lets go of a pen and notices that it hits the ground. They then repeat the experiment numerous times, eliminating any factors that might be influencing the motion of the pen. When they get the same result every time they conclude that pens fall downward. (scientific objectivity) When a jounalist reports on the scientist’s results they feel that they aren’t being balanced unless they also find someone that will tell them that pens fall upward. (journalistic objectivity)
” But you know, cold kills a lot more people than heat, so while we may have the heat waves, humans are adapting at living in heat much better. Not too many people are moving to Minnesota or North Dakota, but Phoenix is booming.”
Yeah, places like Phoenix and Vegas are blooming.But what happens when they run out of water? The Colorado river is already stretched beyond its supply capacity. Meanwhile Minnesota has lots of water… Just a thought.
Nice job on your part there Mike!
Talk about your good times. For me the key sentence is this: In the end these guys are not good people. Yes, I have been convinced of that for some time now. These greedy, avaricious people no longer hide in the dark like they used to. They are brazen and defiant. The M.O. is all things money and they constantly look for new ways to increase their net worth by diminishing yours. Keep up the good work Mike. Always truth.
Great job, Mike! It is a great tactic to discredit scum like that right off the bat.
And if the troll in here wants to post under the name “Banales Rick”, it shows what little imagination you need to spout talking points…
Great job, Mike! It is a great tactic to discredit scum like that right off the bat.
And if the troll in here wants to post under the name “Banales Rick”, it shows what little imagination you need to spout talking points - how about posting under your own name?
I’m offended weekly by CEI hack Chris Horner on my local radio station EVERY week. I long to send him a rebuttal e-mail about his insane rants, but CEI NEVER lists email addresses for their employees. Recently, he has made the leap to frequent Sean Hannity guest and, while his snarling drivel regarding Al Gore nauseates me, I take my hat off to the make-up artists at Fox News: You can’t see the coal-stained fingers or the oil leaking from his pores. He’s a whore and they are able to hide that. They are creative geniuses at Hannity and Colmes.
Do some reasearch people,Claims that scientific opinion is nearly unanimous on the subject of global warming are wrong. The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine received signatures from over 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, to a document saying, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
The question I often ask or use to make a point quite often baffles those most in denial (mostly on the Right, who woulda thunk?)
I ask…
Do you honestly believe that pouring Tens of Thousands of Tons of Chemicals into the Atmosphere each year does no damage at all?
I’ve yet to hear a reasonable answer.
But let’s face it, the main personality trait and the One thing that connects virtually all those on the Right is the fact that they are nearly all “Delusional”.
Many, honestly believe that the War in Iraq is going swimmingly, many honestly believe that George W Bush is an honest person, many honestly believe some of the most incredible things.
I honestly believe, that One could not possibly believe all their crap unless they are delusional.
Pick any person on the Right, from Bush to Coulter to O’Reilly to Myron Ebell. The One thing they all have in common is that they suffer from Delusional Thinking.
How were you allowed to continue to question this man? Usually anyone who tries a follow-up question is ignored so that “we can have another question from that lady in lavender”–especially if you seem to challenge the speaker. Or the speaker being questioned will give a three-word answer and then immediately take another question. THAT’S what I see more than anything. I was at one of Colin Powell’s shuck-and-jive appearances, and he only took pre-submitted questions. But he’s Colin Powell, after all: he don’t need no stinking questions.
Good job Mike. I thought you were taking some time off, I read about this on Crooks and Liars.
Mike, not to take credit for what you have said, but I have been saying this for years - (though I haven’t your skill at delivering this message) and well, I have even less patience. LOL, I get right in their ugly faces and tell them what I think of them.
By addressing these people with the indignant scorn they deserve, you project the moral superiority of your position.
Yes! This is exactly what I want to see more of in the media. Why are progressives so fucking polite? So often nowadays we are talking to people who would not know respect if it were given to them. People whose only purpose is to attack us… why be nice to these excuses for human beings?
The hoax of the doctrine of man-made global warming that is being foisted upon the world by decree, and the junk science that is manipulated to support it, represents a creeping fascism whose agenda to stifle open debate betrays the fact that climate change hysteria is a farce intended to crush freedoms and further centralize global power.
There’s a local message board in my hometown in West-by-gawd-Virginia that accompanies a local right wing radio show (which got cancelled recently). Anyway, my friends and I would both call in and post on the message board refuting every wingnut stance.
Global warming was no exception. In fact, these people trotted out every denier line…from consensus does not equal science….to Mars is warming also! I understand that it may be difficult to understand some of the science, or that the peer-reviewal process certainly trumps an opinion piece from the National Review that quotes the likes of Fred Singer, but Mike is absolutely right about how to deal with these guys. Don’t give them any credence. Expose their wingnuttery and absurdness at their most basic level.
scoop is obviously a deluded non-thining right-wing extremist, as he acutally references the “Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine” which in real life (if you actually go there and visit) is a couple of former scientist cranks living of the corporate welfare of their secret donors. Their IRS forms from 1999 show $355,244 income for the entire ‘Institute’, and their head ’scientist’ revieved a whopping $16, 691 in pay. The raison d’etre for this fake ‘Institute’ is to supply extremist homeschooling families with propaganda about how the entire US school system is a communist plot.
OSI’s ‘petition’ was thoroughly debunked by 2005, when actual scientists determined that once all the fake names were removed and the remaining signers were tracked down (no small feat since the ‘petition’ refused to identify any professional association of the ’signers’) it was determined that maybe 200 scientists believe this crap.
scoop obviously has not been outside for the last 20 years, for anyone paying the slightest modicum of attention has already seen the climate change in their area.
I live in Vermont, our two biggest industries are skiing and maple syrup. Both of these industries are struggling to survive because climate change has screwed up Vermont’s ecosystems. As any hunter or farmer (they are almost always die-hard Republicans, and we have lots of them [farmers and hunters] here) who has been outside on the land will tell you, the climate is changing.
And I would love to hear what you would say to the residents of the Marshall Islands that are being subsumed by the rising oceans, they haven’t been able to raise a garden because the rising salt water has contaminated the ground water. And what about the atoll that had to be evacuated last year because the ocean has risen high enough to cover it. Are they just making it up to take over the world?
Even the Pentagon knows catastrophic climate change is coming, they have been planning for these upcoming disasters for years and issued a report two years ago about their response to global coastal flooding.
scoop, if you want to see “creeping fascism whose agenda to stifle open debate … intended to crush freedoms and further centralize global power” then look no further than George Bush and the anti-American cabal that controls this country. That’s all they have been doing for the last six years, or are you unable to see that blatant reality right in front of your eyes, too?
Scoop & Curtis Rick
Just an FYI….you won’t be able to breathe, drink, eat your money…in case you’re wondering…if the ’science is right’….
Morons
Questions/Response to/for the non-believers…
Claiming its a political issue, is in a word, stupid. The list of conservatives that believe in the global climate crisis grows everyday…
Recently Paul Wolfowitz joined that group, along with Pat Robertson, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, National Association of Evangelicals (a conservative group representing 45,000 churches in U.S.), fortune 500 CEOs (most of whom are big GOP donors), and too many more to list (etc).
You can go against climate scientists that have spent their life researching this, the Pentagon, NASA, Insurance Industry (whose main purpose for existence is risk management & the costs involved), UN reports (because its such a ‘bad organization’), even against the latest report (of which 3 more will be following this year) that states with 90% certainty/consensus that man made factors are the major cause of the global climate crisis….
You can watch the ‘great global warming swindle’, listen to talking heads with no scientific background, to scientists that were offered $10,000 to dispute global warming on the record http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2004399,00.html
….but it would beg the question why you’re listening to AEI, CEI, & ExxonMobil paid sources of information (gee…why would they want to spend all that money to dispute…why are their ‘facts’ not good enough on their own????)
Really there are two choices…you can go to ‘junkscience.com’ or go to a place where real climate scientists debate the particulars… http://realclimate.org/
where scientists that are pro & con debate the level of crisis we find ourselves at…which contrary to moronic right wingnut belief is a much clearer present danger than international terrorism to not only US national security, but global security http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html
But hey…its your choice to remain in ignorance of the facts & your own fault for your selective stupidity
The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine received signatures from over 17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, to a document saying, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
This is from the notorious “Oregon Petition”. This was a big con job perpetrated by The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, one of many bogus “think tanks” with important sounding names that are nothing but cover organizations for big business spin.
The phrase emphasized in the quote above, “catastrophic heating”, is the key misleading statement. There is nothing in the statement that says that global warming isn’t happening, just that there is insufficient scientific evidence that the consequences of the release of CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by human beings would be “catastrophic”. In other words, the Oregon Petition is a classic case of lying using half-truths.
When the petition was sent out, it was attached to an 8-page manuscript described as a “research review” of global warming evidence. This “review” was formatted in the style of articles from The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the peer-reviewed journal published by the NAS. However the article was never peer-reviewed and had never appeared in Proceedings. In response to the petition drive, the NAS issued a strongly worded statement saying that the organization had nothing to do with the bogus review and that the petition did not reflect the conclusions of expert reports published by the Academy.
The “review” was co-authored by the aforementioned Oregon Institute and a group called the George C. Marshall Institute (the late General Marshall–an honorable man smeared by the McCarthyites in the 1950’s–must be rolling over in his grave over that one). The largest single contributor to the George C. Marshall Institute is–not surprisingly–Exxon Mobil Corporation.
The Guardian did a terrific series on the global warming denial industry, you can read the first part here.
Tim Lambert’s terrific science blog, Deltoid, does a great job of debunking right-wing junk science.
Edward Kelly, yep, it’s mass delusion - and I believe it is largely caused by that damn lying TV and from other numerous sources of peer pressure - such as is found in many church’s - For far too many people, the mass-media is their educational system.
Scoop, ya know I’d be more willing to listen (to you) if not for the FACT that what you just said is a talking point that so frequently comes from the disgusting mouth’s of lying liar neocons that I know to be wholeheartedly in support of fascism.
atheist, you should read some of my responses on shourtwire.com When these idiots start lying and calling me names, I have no hesitation in telling them to go to hell and to kiss my ass. They want respect, then they have to (honestly) give it as well - something that they simply cannot do, due to the (often horrific) positions that they take which can only be defended by lies and deception (and often personal attacks as well).
And hey, Mike, while I’m here, I hope that you don’t mind if I plug my videos. I spent years putting this together, please check it out.
Rose Colored Glasses: A New & Unique Video Series. This unique, simple, and straight forward video series is the ultimate visual indictment of the Bush Administration/the Neo-Cons and the Republican Party. Nowhere will you find another series that covers so much ground and backs it up like this series does. And you don’t have to believe me/take my word for it; This series has hundreds of pictures and a picture really does “speak a thousand words.” It also has lots of damning video and great music as well. Watch RCG and see-for-yourself, what they have done. Available here: http://www.rosecoloredglasses.org
The way I respond to a skeptic generally depends upon my purpose in doing so and the forum in which I am debating. Your purpose here was to discredit an obvious lost cause, so I guess I can understand your approach there. I am generally more concerned about what a neutral person will think when they see or read the exchange. I know Ebell is a lost cause, but what if someone who had not made up their mind was watching or reading the exchange? Would it make more sense to attack Ebell, or to simply lay out the facts and allow Ebell to lay out his “facts”, and then let the audience decide? This kind of leads into the next consideration.
Your approach also seemed to work, given that you were alloted a limited amount of time to address Ebell verbally. However, if the discussion took place in writing, I would probably prefer to be a bit more cordial. In your situation, I can see where if you laid out some scientific facts, he could just counter with misleading statements, which you would not have near the amount of time to completely debunk. However, in a written forum, one can reply with links and quotes, which can be followed by someone who is honestly looking for an answer.
Also, I think your demeanor can be a determining factor in whether a lay person might decide to agree with you. I know I am more easily swayed by someone who politely presents a reasonable argument, than someone who just shouts insults and accusations. Again, in your situation, I think this may not have worked as well. However, in other instances, such as in written form, one has the time to collect one’s thoughts and lay out a rational argument that is supported by verifiable sources. I think that is much more effective if the purpose is to inform the general public.
That said, it was refreshing to see a dishonest denier stumble over himself. Nicely done.
Here’s a link to the Sourcewatch article on OISM. From the article:
In other words, only a handful of climate scientists were hoodwinked by the misleading petition and bogus ‘research review’.
This is like a really bad version of ‘The View’ with Rosie spewing all kinds of crap and lies. No science, just politics the last thing this Global Warming disscussion should be about. But of course politics is all it is about, along with lying and propaganda to further your agenda. The disservice you are foisting on the world will be evident soon, and being the expert BS artists you are, you will deflect blame easily. Lets just hope the damage you have done is not too great. What pure asses you will look like.
Scoop ecrite:
“What pure asses you will look like.”
Indeed, the purity of our asses will far surpass that of your own.
There’s got to be a joke in here about motes and beams, teaming up with asses and donkeys, or something. I just can’t line it up quite right . . .
Where’s Jeff when we need him, or does Scoop not even deserve his time, I imagine that’s the case. Scoop, you’re late for your Flat Earth Society meeting.
Couldn’t have anything to do with the sun that is going through a major hot period could it. And while we’re at it if this is the dreaded greenhouse effect going on now, why is the hottest part of the atmosphere not at the top but at the bottom.
But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.
But it wasnt so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.
Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
I meant to say, why isn’t the upper atmosphere temp changing in accordance with the lower atmosphere temp which has risen slightly.
scoop says: “Couldn’t have anything to do with the sun that is going through a major hot period could it.”
Does scoop even deserve an answer?
The sun’s irradiance has not increased in *at least* 30 years….arguably maybe even 50 years. We’ve been able to measure the sun’s irradiance since 1978 when satellites first started being used to measure it. So it ain’t the sun. http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant
Take the time and edjumacate yourself, scoop, rather than listening to the SAME tired talking points that are continuously circulated over the internet tubes and the MSM. Casting doubt and asking irrelevant questions does nothing to squash the global warming science. Here’s some more references about the sun:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/08/did-the-sun-hit-record-highs-over-the-last-few-decades/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/
Next!
You are wrong, the sun is getting hotter at the moment. I”ll Take NASA’s word that it is not your lefty newsletters. Listen kids you may think you are all that but you are still just learning. Keep studying and accept the facts, no more fake graphs to make your point.
scoop:
But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.
This is another refrain repeated by global warming deniers: the infamous “broken hockey stick” argument. First of all, neither McIntyre nor McKitrick are climate scientists. McIntyre works in the mining industry, and McKitrick is an economist; not surprisingly, both have been the recipients of wads of cash from Exxon-Mobil. Second, the study scoop cites failed to stand up to peer-review and was rejected by the respected journal Nature.
An in-depth debunking of the “broken hockey stick” boondoggle can be found here.
To keep track of the bogus arguments such as the ones “scoop” has posted, check out the Global Warming Sceptic Bingo page (Clicking on the “#” at the end of each of the standard global warming sceptic spin-points in the “BINGO card” takes you to a page debunking that spin-point).
scoop:
You are wrong, the sun is getting hotter at the moment. I”ll Take NASA’s word that it is not your lefty newsletters.
You want some proof from NASA? Okay.
http://www.cnn.com/NATURE/9904/13/solar.enn/
NASA researchers have found the link between solar activity and Earth’s climate — it was blowing in the wind.
[snip]
“When we added the upper atmosphere’s chemistry into our climate model, we found that during a solar maximum major climate changes occur in North America,” said Shindell. The climate changes were being caused by stronger westerly winds. In addition, Shindell said wind speeds and directions all over the Earth’s surface were influenced.
The sun has an 11-year cycle where it goes from a solar maximum to a solar minimum. The energy released by the sun during this cycle only fluctuates one-tenth of one percent.
When the solar cycle is at a maximum, it puts out a larger percentage of high-energy radiation, which increases the amount of ozone in the upper atmosphere. The increased ozone warms the upper atmosphere and the warm air affects winds all the way from the stratosphere to the Earth’s surface.
“The change in wind strength and direction creates different climate patterns around the globe,” said Shindell.
But what effect does this have on global warming?
None, said Shindell. His study confirms that changing levels of energy from the sun are not a major cause of global warming.
Got that? The solar cycle affects wind strength and direction, cuasing changes in climate patterns. However it is NOT a major cause of global warming
Hope this isn’t a double post…..
Scoop is naturally cherry picking the data the NASA study concluded. The NASA-funded study published FOUR YEARS AGO in Geophysical Research Letters shows the Sun’s irradiance has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s and the increase would only be significant to Earth’s climate if it has been going on for a century or more.
The study’s leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher, cautioned, “That does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor.”
In other words, the deniers don’t have to rely on any sort of substantial scientific consensus or data. They only need one or two “studies” to cast doubt and/or infer that it could be something else. Could be dinasour farts too. lol
So as it shows, computer models are quite unreliable as to causes of temperature change, Co2 has little to do with the miniscule amount the temperature has risen. We are only at the cusp of starting to learn about climatic change, you know that and so do scientists.
If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000…This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. — Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)
Why is there so much concern when temperatures have been much higher on this planet than they are now. For 500 years between c.950 andc.1450AD according to Villalba (1990,1994) and Soon&Baliunas (2003) the mediaeval warm period was warmer by up to 3C. and why is it missing from the UN’s graph of temperature over the past 1000 years. wWhy is the Little Ice Age also absent from the graph.
Are the ices growing or melting? The simple answer is that there exist studies that point to both directions, perhaps indicating that scientists know relatively little about global climate. But what counts to most ordinary people is what media is reporting, and media is often highlighting the most alarming studies and seldom report of studies that go against the notion that human activity leads to global warming. To put it simply, the news is filtered through an environmentalist view of the world.
Oz Mar 28th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Is it just me, or does ‘Curtis’ seem like a plant?
Mike, you continue to be the best thing that’s happened to activism since the megaphone.
HEY OZZIE!
GET YOUR NOSE OUT OF MIKE’S ASS! He doesn’t need a pat on the back from you.
And Mike, speaking of snakeoil salesmen, I have some some carbon offset credits (trees to absorb the CO2) to sell you so you therefore you won’t feel guilty for driving a gas powered car.
While I have posted, Al Gore’s mansions have used millions of kilowatts of electricity, what a HYPOCRITE!
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!
In other words, the deniers don’t have to rely on any sort of substantial scientific consensus or data. They only need one or two “studies” to cast doubt and/or infer that it could be something else. Could be dinasour farts too. lol
crystal dawn
HEY crystal Meth! What are you doing to reduce the effects of global warming?
Why will Al Gore not debate any scientists that have opposing views? Because he will get his ass kicked just like every other liberal who debates a conservative head-to-head!
Tell Gore to sell his private jets and his mansions and to stop buying Occidental Chemical stock and then we on the right will listen to his stupid ass!
Because he will get his ass kicked just like every other liberal who debates a conservative head-to-head!
If that’s actually the case, why did you clowns lose both houses on Congress?
Scoop is evidently quite insane. :-))
I respectfully suggest the “skeptics” download the powerpoint at the IPCC website. The actual number of submitted research papers was a bit over 1500 and they were all previously published in peer reviewed journals world wide. The review process was open and 600 reviewers participated. Open means that Behe, Ebel and company were able to participate and contribute their collective wisdom if they desired. Working group one (WG1) had the job of compiling, reviewing, and summarizing the science only. The conclusions was that there was over a 90% probability that anthropogenic sources were forcing globabl warming.
In 2003, the study group concluded that global warming did in fact exist and that the degree of certainty about anthropogenic warming was about 66%.
I didn’t read it on the internet. I didn’t hear it on the news. I sat and listened to Susan Soloman while she went through the slides on a powerpoint that differed by only one or two slides from the one you can download. The part about the number of papers was from introductory remarks and is not in the document.
I also attended a presentation on the Stern Report. The brits put on a nice feed and had door prizes.
Scoop is delusional. The IPCC report committee reviewed 1500 peer reviewed research reports. The review was open to the public and Ebel, Behe, and other deniers had the opportunity to contribute their vast knowledge of whatever it is they may possibly be best at. There were 600 reviewers. The search was world-wide and every government on the planet was invited to contribute as well.
There is a powerpoint at the IPCC website that is substantially the same as the one I sat through while Susan Soloman ran down the facts. Working Group One reviewed the science in 2006 and concluded that the probability that anthropogenic contribution to forcing was over 90%. In 2003 the same process yielded a conclusion that global warming was incontrovertible and anthropogenic contribution being a principal forcing agent was in the neighborhod of 66%. Things changed, but they became more obvious rather than less so.
Scoop wants the outliers to go away and the world to be all neat and tidy. I suspect that it may be one of the reasons that fundamentalists want the same thing out of religion. It is comfortable. Unfortunately if you wait for that to happen, it will be very expensive to moderate.
I also attended a presentation on the dreaded Stern Report. The brits put on a good feed and had door prizes. All you need know about the Stern report is that it says that the longer you wait to change, the more expensive it will be.
This is a situation where conservatism will probably turn out to be a fatal disease.
I was talking to a conservative aquaintance recently. He was complaining about all the huge gas guzzlers on the road. I reminded him it was his people who refuse to increase the CAFE standards. His first responce was “Ah bullshit” his next was “what’s a CAFE standard”. So much for conservative thought.
Why do you keep going on about religion and politics. This is about the sham that is the IPCC Just because papers are peer rewiewed does not make them correct. Science decried by poll is a doomed science at best. If everything you point to is from the IPCC, then there can be no debate at all, you are always right and anyone that questions your findings is wrong. If the papers are peer reviewed by the same scientists that are funded because of their pro Global Warming stance, then where is the credibility.
By Tom DeWeese
November 8, 2006
NewsWithViews.com
They call us the “astro-turf” crowd –those of us who dispute the dire claims of global warming. Let one of us get on the radio or in front of an audience and the accusation is made: “You’re just a lackey of big business.” Nothing we say can have any serious meaning because we are paid by big oil or some other corporation and so must have an ulterior motive.( By the way, I or the American Policy Center have never received a single dime from big oil corporations). Of course, there is always a double standard in the name calling business.
Now comes this report from Senator James Inhofe, Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. In a speech before the Senate, Inhofe told of the media’s double standard in reporting on the global warming issue.
Said Inhofe, “On March 19 of this year ‘60 Minutes’ profiled NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen, who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush administration. In the segment, objectivity and balance were again tossed in favor of a one-sided glowing profile of Hansen.”
Inhofe continued, “The ’60 Minutes’ segment made no mention of Hansen’s partisan ties to former Vice President Al Gore or Hansen’s receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz. There was no mention of Hansen’s subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004.”
Concluded Inhofe, “Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen’s huge grant for the left-wing Heinz Foundation. The foundation’s money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media makes a distinction between oil money and ketchup money.”
“Science decried by poll is a doomed science at best.”
HUH? Science shamed by a poll is doomed? Did you mean decreed by poll? Is it possible that you don’t know what peer review is Scoop? A poll is where you ask a bunch os clueless retards for their opinion. Here is what peer review means:
“A review of trial reports by scientists who aren’t involved with the trial. The findings of a trial usually are reviewed before being accepted for publication. When the work is either published or presented at a conference, the researchers open both their study protocol and results up to critical review by the scientific community at large to verify the merit of each study.”
Just because the research papers authored by people who do what they do for a living for God’s sake are reviewed by other people who do the same thing for their living at different places and can be considered to be rivals in their fields? That makes them part of a vast conspiracy? Like you KNOW they are Liberals or something? A lot of those poeple weren’t even in the U.S. so they weren’t Liberals.
And that’s not as fair as the (certifiable) James Inhoffe citing a paltry few geologist friends? Of course! And the 600 reviewers? No they weren’t the same people. I said that the review process was OPEN. That means wingnuts were invited. They didn’t attend because they are engaging in a deliberate strategy and being paid reasonably well.
People who work at the CEI are not lackeys of industry. They are contract employees of Exxon. You can find Steven Milloy’s name on a list of contractors on their annual report. I have seen memos and letters discussing the obfuscation of cancer research on behalf of Lorilar from the same group of people who now man the ramparts of global warming skepticism. The documents were entered into evidence in tobacco litigation and are now public record.
Hansen is in NASA’s climatology division. Official. Period. It’s his job. His statements are ex cathedra and not personal so Inhoffe’s objection serves only to obfuscate the real issue.
Al Gore, on the other hand is not involved in the science. He is no more than a cheerleader like Scoop and Inhoffe. And me of course. I have the advantage of actually seeing some of the evidence and hearing from the people who are directly involved.
I’m not saying that the broadcasters are right. NBC and ABC are wrong to spin it like they do, but FOX is wrong for spinning it back in the other direction. Quoting a blogger who is quoting Inhoffe’s publicist is just not working Scoop.
To sum it up. Literally thousands of real climatologists, oceanographers, botanists, geologists and other researchers who have dedicated their lives to the betterment of mankind versus what? Milloy, Spencer, and two or three others being paid by Exxon through a well documented network of corporations set up for the express purpose of blowing smoke.
Imagine that all the variables about global climate are known with less than 100 percent certainty. Let’s be wildly and unrealistically optimistic and say that climate scientists know each variable to 99 percent certainty! (No such thing, of course). And let’s optimistically suppose there are only one-hundred x’s, y’s, and z’s — all the variables that can change the climate: like the amount of cloud cover over Antarctica, the changing ocean currents in the South Pacific, Mount Helena venting, sun spots, Chinese factories burning more coal every year, evaporation of ocean water (the biggest “greenhouse” gas), the wobbles of earth orbit around the sun, and yes, the multifarious fartings of billions of living creatures on the face of the earth, minus, of course, all the trillions of plants and algae that gobble up all the CO2, nitrogen-containing molecules, and sulfur-smelling exhalations spewed out by all of us animals. Got that? It all goes into our best math model.
So in the best case, the smartest climatologist in the world will know 100 variables, each one to an accuracy of 99 percent. Want to know what the probability of our spiffiest math model would be, if that perfect world existed? Have you ever multiplied (99/100) by itself 100 times? According to the Google calculator, it equals a little more than 36.6 percent.
The Bottom line: our best imaginable model has a total probability of one out of three. How many billions of dollars in Kyoto money are we going to spend on that chance?
I can’t even begin to understand how your analysis scenario could be useful or proper.
Given the fact that the trick you argue with is quite common where I come from, I will not dignify it with a response. Using a specious return to what should be a basic assumption of fact after simply years of working forward from that fact is a really sneaky thing to do and only works with people who are completely ignorant that anybody else has ever had a thought about it, like politicians. It used to work with Mark Foley - I can attest to that.
I hope you never fell for it yourself.
Literally, the chance of your being right is actually the inverse of what you calculate the error to be. That is, about the same as winning the powerball lottery. That should be simple enough to make sense to you.
Lets take a look at the Oregon Institute of Science & Medicine, shall we?
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine
I’ll give the greatest hits:
In addition to the bulk mailing, OISM’s website enables people to add their names to the petition over the Internet, and by June 2000 it claimed to have recruited more than 19,000 scientists. The institute is so lax about screening names, however, that virtually anyone can sign, including for example Al Caruba, a pesticide-industry PR man and conservative ideologue who runs his own website called the “National Anxiety Center.”
When questioned in 1998, OISM’s Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, “and of those the greatest number are physicists.” This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science - such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology - and almost none were climate specialists. The names of the signers are available on the OISM’s website, but without listing any institutional affiliations or even city of residence, making it very difficult to determine their credentials or even whether they exist at all. When the Oregon Petition first circulated, in fact, environmental activists successfully added the names of several fictional characters and celebrities to the list, including John Grisham, Michael J. Fox, Drs. Frank Burns, B. J. Honeycutt, and Benjamin Pierce (from the TV show M*A*S*H), an individual by the name of “Dr. Red Wine,” and Geraldine Halliwell, formerly known as pop singer Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls. Halliwell’s field of scientific specialization was listed as “biology.” Even in 2003, the list was loaded with misspellings, duplications, name and title fragments, and names of non-persons, such as company names.
Is there a scientific basis for Robinson’s claim that increased carbon dioxide levels will contribute to increased growth of some plants? Some research has gone into investigating this possibility, but the evidence does not point to the type of reassurance that the OISM is peddling. Fakhri Bazzaz, a plant physiologist at Harvard, has found that carbon dioxide-enriched air accelerates short-term plant growth, but his studies were carried out under controlled greenhouse conditions and are difficult to translate to a larger scale. Plant growth in natural systems may be constrained by a shortage of soil nutrients despite the greater availability of carbon dioxide. Moreover, Bazzaz’s experiments involved carbon dioxide concentrations at levels 100% greater than those now existing in our atmosphere, whereas the greenhouse warming we are experiencing right now results from only a 20% increase in world carbon dioxide levels. Clearly, it is irresponsible to predict “benefits” from increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when such “benefits” may only appear after we suffer the consequences of a five-fold increase over current anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Finally, Bazzaz found that different plant species vary dramatically in their response to increased carbon dioxide. Plants such as sugar cane and corn were not improved, but weeds were stimulated. There is not much real benefit in warming the planet by several degrees just so we can maybe make it easier for weeds to grow.
Notwithstanding the shortcomings in Robinson’s theory, the oil and coal industries have sponsored several organizations to promote the idea that increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is “good for earth” because it will encourage greater plant growth. The Greening Earth Society, a front group of the Western Fuels Association, has produced a video, titled “The Greening of the Planet Earth Continues,” publishes a newsletter called the World Climate Report, and works closely with a group called the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
If you want to debunk the right wingnuts, you have to have the firepower to do so; another good source:
http://words-of-power.blogspot.com/2007/04/hard-rain-journal-4-1-07-hartmann.html
Debunk the Swindle that is “The Great Global Warming Swindle”
So lets get this right, the U.N has a sort of contest. They invite all the scientists in the world to give their theories as to why the temperature has risen a tenth of a degree in the last hundred years. Many brilliant scholars have theories but don’t bother to show up, so out of the ones that do show up, all their theories are put to the test by scientists that pick out the ones that most closely match their agenda that blames man made carbon emissions for the minuscule rise in temperature.
Then using computer models that are extremely unreliable and proven to show pretty much what you make them show, as in climatic research all available data would have to be fed into the computer but there is just so much missing ie. amounts of precipitation etc. So they come up with a flawed model and produce a graph that shows the relative constant temperature for the last 1000 years, then a sudden and sharp rise in the temp starting when man really began the industrialization era.
Except the graph leaves out the hot period in mediaeval times and the cold period known as the Little Ice Age.( didn’t fit the theorie?)
Then they make a graph showing the Co2 levels, and when Al Gore goes around preaching the doom and gloom of Global Warming he puts the graph over the temperature graph, and behold they match. When temperatures are hottest the Co2 levels are the highest, except that’s not true either is it.
So they have taken Co2 the gas that has the least to do with the greenhouse effect, the gas that makes up a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, a gas that is responsible for life on earth and they make it a pollutant. How clever.
When this scam is finally uncovered for the hoax it is, the damage and mistrust of science and scientists that will ensue will set the world back immeasurably.
This scam makes the U.N Oil for Food swindle look like a walk in the park. Why do you people keep falling for it?
Yes, yes, yes, Scoop! It is just a huge conspiracy!
Just as in the previous example, you have mistaken the image in the mirror for someone else. You are either part of it or a dupe. Take your pick.
If you had read any of the research and the articles on the refinement of technique and adjustments made for previous error, you would understand that the IPCC Working Group 1 report has refined and gathered more evidence rather than less. Unfortunately it doesn’t “closely match your agenda.”
Every objection you have posted has been refuted time and time again in many forums. Repeating it will not give it strength. If you are interested in learning more about cmimatology, go to realclimate.org and just read, don’t post.
Just keep smoking those cigarettes and telling yourself that your genes are stronger than your environment. Scoop, your friends at Exxon have taken a page from Lorilar’s book and are presently swindling not you but your children. The money it costs to care for people with lung cancer and related diseases due to smoking and second hand smoke are nothing in comparason to what it will cost us if we delay cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions. I sincerely hope that the people at the public relations groups that are fueling this can see that the future of their children is a risk too.
NASA’s findings in space come as no surprise to Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. Pulkovo — at the pinnacle of Russia’s space-oriented scientific establishment — is one of the world’s best equipped observatories and has been since its founding in 1839. Heading Pulkovo’s space research laboratory is Dr. Abdussamatov, one of the world’s chief critics of the theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions create a greenhouse effect, leading to global warming.
“Mars has global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians,” he told me. “These parallel global warmings — observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth — can only be a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance.”
The sun’s increased irradiance over the last century, not C02 emissions, is responsible for the global warming we’re seeing, says the celebrated scientist, and this solar irradiance also explains the great volume of C02 emissions.
“It is no secret that increased solar irradiance warms Earth’s oceans, which then triggers the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So the common view that man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations.”
Which would be totally absorbing if it were true. It isn’t.
This is merely CEI FUD from around December or January when they tries to get people to believe that the climatologists didn’t take solar effects into consideration.
Mke Stark’s post here on the blog just about takes us up to date on attempts to pull something new out of teh CEI collective ass. The only thing you can do now is go back to the 1960’s global cooling didn’t happen argument or the hockey stick is wrong, or the Middle Ages mini ice age, or CO2 isn’t bad because it makes the trees grow. Whatever!
Keep tossing the slow pitches Scoop. It’s a chump game now.
whew, I ‘m glad you are always right and as long as you say everything that disproves Global Warming theory has been debunked we should all jump aboard the scam.
You never disprove any arguments against it , you point to the same radical left crap that has produced the scam in the first place. The Debunk the Swindle piece was real evidence of your tactics,no science just a reporters view.
No matter how much you want to believe that Global warming is the latest siren of doomsday it is still only a theory, not fact as the IPCC has irresponsibly convinced the MSM and the gullible, remember that. It is sad that so many have made the scam their careers, but when this is fully exposed perhaps they could jump on the 911 conspiracy, there will be lots of room for them there.
Yes, it’s sad that all those career scientists at universities and research institutions all over the world have bought into global warming. They couldn’t possibly be right, could they? Oceanographers, climatologists, solar researchers, atmosphere researchers, physicists, biologists, marine biologists, and even some rogue geologists who refused to be bought off by Exxon.
Yes, global warming is only a theory. Just like Natural Selection is only a theory. Just like smoking causing cancer is only a theory. Just like relativity is only a theory.
You sir, are a layman. Let’s take the miniscule rise in global average temperature for instance. Figure the mass of the ocean, the atmosphere, and the land down to about 100 feet or so. The earth is a huge storage device that takes many years to change substantially. The very small difference we have observed is then outrageously important as it will take years to first slow and then stabilize if it is even the right thing to do. We may actually need to sequester carbon. The best we can expect is to control anthropogenic factors and ready ourselves to experience changes that will occur. Delay will mean huge expense to ourselves and others.
The Senator’s photograph of the little girl with the cold house is a great example. When the little girl has grandchildren, it may cost ten times more to heat her ancestral manse without even figuring increases due to additional cost to extract crude from shale or whatever is available in Canada or China. The little girl’s daddy needs to insulate, caulk, and use passive ground heat NOW. If the senator cared, he would be using that pathetic photograph to fund home improvements for poor people, not oil subsidies.
global warming is most likely a crock. Some of us are old enough to remember similar hysterics over air pollution, overpopulation, and universal famine, none of which ever came to pass. The science behind warming is so full of lacunae, speculation, and outright fraud (e.g., the famed “hockey stick chart” purporting to show temperature levels over the past millennium while conveniently dropping both the medieval warm period and the Little Ice Age) to be in any way convincing.
One curious element involves certain facts that, on first consideration, would appear to be crucial but never seem to come up in debate. I have spent several years trying to track down the actual values of two numbers - the annual amount of carbon dioxide emitted by all human activities, and the amount of carbon dioxide already present in the atmosphere. There are as many answers as there are sources, the first ranging from 3 billion to 28 billion tons, the second from 750 billion tons to 2.97 x 1012 tons, a number so large that there’s no common English word for it. Variations of this size - up to three orders of magnitude - suggest a serious lack of basic knowledge. The fact that it never comes up suggests that scientists are well aware of this. (It’s doubtful we’ll see the question addressed in this week’s IPCC report either.)
Scoop, scoop, scoop. I am so disappointed in you my boy.
Outright plagarism, and not just this one but previous ones as well. I knew it when you used the work “lacunae.” It was such an un-scoopish word.
When I took another statistically improbable phrase from a different post, it showed up 57 times. Big *lol* there buddy.
I guess I never thought that people would actually plagarize ignorant cant so I never tried to search for it, but this takes the cake. There is a guy who says he is a scientist and he says his nom de plume is James Lewis.
There is no way he is a climate scientist. He just makes fun of other people’s work at a place called “American Thinker” where he cranks out this shit like tiolet paper. And scoop has the unmitigated nerve to say I am just repeating what I have heard! Look, I’m no scientist and I can poke holes in what he says easily. There is nothing original at American Thinker.
Once again, scoop you are looking in a mirror, thinking it is somebody else.
One of the funniest parts is where he calls climate modeling a hypercomplex system. If he were an actual scientist he would know about nonlinear modeling and state change. When you learn to analyze this kind of thing you see that data group around a point and when the system changes, it doesn’t settle around the same point again in the first place. In the second place there is a point of rapid variation when the system displays certain behavior traits and the suddenly jumps to a new state where it settles loosely around a new point.
Do you want me to shoot some more holes in your tin god scoop? I am a f***ing high school Internet & Society teacher and I know more than your so-called scientist about this. Let’s do the hockey stick he dislikes so much next time scoop. I can’t defend its poor methodology and mathematical mistakes, seriously! But I do know about how it was reviewed and who reviewed it.
I look into my crystal ball and predict: dollars to doughnuts James Lewis works for the Dolphin Group.
American Thinker has a whois protection service:
RegisterFly.com - Ref-R# 37413719
Whois Protection Service - ProtectFly.com (afypv2tgru8uc1y@protectfly.com)
1.9737362545
Fax: 1.9737361355
404 Main Street
4th Floor
Boonton, NJ 07005
US
They are evidently afraid to let people know who is really behind it.
w00t
I read this page with interest and thought it might be good to have a less extreme comment.
Yes, the global temperature is increasing. Did it get colder to end the last Ice Age approximately 10,000 years ago? Did humans cause that warming, too? Was it not warmer when the dinosaurs roamed the earth than it is now? Did the dinosaur industrial complex cause that climate change?
For someone to believe, much less ‘claim’ that the oceans will rise 20 feet in 10 years is just the hieight of conceit. How can anyone think those kind of changes are going to occur in climatic cycles that run over thousands and millions of years?
No, we should not ignore our environment. Logic and common sense. Litter is wrong and against the law. Is one wrapper going to destroy the planet? No, but again, common sense, if everyone threw their trash out the window it would be much worse. In the same manner, we should not go looking for ways to make matters worse, nor should we cease life as we know it to try to control the earth’s temperature. If you think you can, good luck with that , Alice.
Perhaps we should look at the climate cycles over the past few hundred thousand years. They show a pattern of valleys and peaks that repeat with peaks of warm and valleys of cold that last for hundreds of years at each extreme.
And anyone who believes that any politician, left or right, makes statements on these topics is doing so for reasons other than to raise money is naive. It puts them in the headlines where they get more attention and more donations. There always have been and always will be those who are good at taking advantage of situations to fleece people. Asking a politician for advice on saving anything is like asking these brilliant scientists advice on picking up supermodels in a bar.
Anyone want to make a wager on the ridiculous 6 meters ocean level increase over 10 years? I see the potential of a great windfall for me.
Ron, As far as I know, nobody is claiming that. If you are interested in the actual information, go to the IPCC website and download the powerpoint. I think the figure is on the order of 125 years.
Sea level rise is the result of water expansion, not melting ice. The sea level rise that we have experienced already is happening in the South Pacific somewhere. That particular map isn’t on the powerpoint I got but it was on Susan Soloman’s Powerpoint. I live in South Florida and should be more attentive to this.
Actually the most important thing that has happened in our area is coral bleaching and algal mats taking over the shallow waters. When I stick my head under water, I feel like an Indian looking at a strip mine where his home used to be. When I was a kid, we free dove and it was gorgeous. Today, it looks like the bottom of a septic tank. These changes are not even necessarily a part of global warming. They are evidence of a corrupt government allowing coastal waters to become severely polluted. Fortunately, we have had sever arrests and convictions of those officials, but the damage was done over a period of over twenty years and the mood of the people is not to spend money on remediation right now.
The efforts of Steven Milloy and others have been guiding the weak-minded into supporting the Administration’s efforts to derail progress. You can find documentation of what has happened to science at the Union of Concerned Scientists website.
Your cheerleader for the cause, Al Gore is saying that in his mockumentary movie. This Liberal Elite, these Anointed, believe that they alone possess enlightened vision. They believe that they alone should rule and lead us lesser beings, because we cannot hope to understand their higher awareness.
These people will do whatever it takes to see that their vision is the only one implemented. As judges, they will break the law, ignore the Constitution in order to rule in a way that furthers their agenda. As educators they will lie, distort history, brainwash the children to further their agenda. As Environmentalists, they will fake evidence, threaten the livelihoods of dissenting scientists in order to silence debate to further their agenda. As filmmakers, writers and story-tellers they will twist the truth, honor evil and catigate good to further their agenda.
It’s nice to see you doing some *normal* conflation of the principal actors. It’s obvious that the neoconservative philosopphy and the Leninist philosophy are strikingly similar when it comes to science. “If you aren’t with us, you’re against us.” So everybody is against your cause scoop, regardless of how irrational it might be to think so. That’s how the Soviets completely blew their agriculture, biology, and physics establishments into near oblivion. They required everybody to subscribe to a litmus test of ideology. Close to a quarter of all of their science establishment was purged because of liberal beliefs. Liberal beliefs included Einstein’s Theory of Relativity as well as Quantum Uncertainty and Genetics of all things. Similarly, our Administration refers to the high dose birth control pill as an “abortion pill” and prevented its approval on moral grounds.
As far as I can tell, the people who have consistently ingored the constitution, lied, distorted, faked evidence, and threatened are Bush appointees like the temporary head of the FDA in 2005. Literally hundreds of government employees who have tried to do their jobs have been pressured, often illegally to distort the proper functioning of the government. The president himself substituted “megatons” for “gigatons” when referring to CO2 emissions in his 2006 State of the Union address (see faking evidence above). He has a degree from an Ivy League university scoop. He isn’t dumb but he is stupid. Stupidity is when you know the facts and choose to do something else.
The problem is going to be that other evil people will replace the ones we get rid of whether they be Democrats or Republicans or something new. The important thing that we all must do is support the rule of law and prevent it from being subverted as you fear. I do too.
Please get rid of the hard-on for Gore. He is irrelevant. And if you don’t like the vision of the academics that I put forward, you must understand that it is an open framework, if slow, and it resists influence in an admirable way. That’s what makes the deliberations of the IPCC and the review process bulletproof. It could possibly be wrong, but it isn’t likely at all and simply EVERYBODY was invited to the process. So if our friend at the Amerikanski Thinker was actually a scientist who knew beans about any of the disciplines, he would have been a reviewer.
scoop:
You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As we say in Texas. I’ll bet you couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won’t go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.
You’re a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.
You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselfs in recognition of what they had done.
I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?
Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.
You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you ckoke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.
You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You’re a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won’t have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.
And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?
You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.
On a good day you’re a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.
You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off, pillock. You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john. You clouted boggish foot-licking twit. You dankish clack-dish plonker. You gormless crook-pated tosser. You churlish boil-brained clotpole ponce. You cockered bum-bailey poofter. You craven dewberry pisshead cockup pratting naff. You gob-kissing gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted clapper-clawed flirt-gill.
You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away.
I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I’m sorry. I can’t go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don’t have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh.
the only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped away most of your of what you wrote, because, well… it didn’t really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective… Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us “normal” people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are “challenged” persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn’t have been “right”. Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you.
(used without permission)
You got me there Bob. I did not (and shall not) watch Mr. Gore’s film. I was merely repeating quotes I have seen in a mulititude of places with the same 6 meter/10 year phrase and assumed that if that many people in different parts of the world (and web) were saying the exact same thing, then it was likely espoused in Gore’s movie.
I can understand someone in Florida being a tad more interested in water levels. I worry about specific things to my life as well, but just because they are of more import to me does not necessarily mean they are going to happen either.
I have read a lot of the expert opinions from the past…flying cars, solar power, computers as small as a car…experts can be wrong. Anyone who tries to see the future will in all probability be wrong. I think things are gonna go pretty much the way they have throughout the earth’s life. We will be hit by a asteroid or whatever, but I really doubt any of us will be here for it. The sun will cease to function as it does now and go out, blow up, something. I bet we dont see that one either.
I guess what bothers me most is that many who purport to be ‘leaders’ take advantage of their position to meet their own personal and often financial agenda. The sky is not falling, life is good, we are a fortunately blessed people. I think I am happier today than I would be living in a cave somewhere much further south to stay out of the way of a glacier mowing down my mountain.
Ron, go ahead and watch Gore’s video. It isn’t painful unless you know exactly what he is messing up. For the most part the information is accurate and you just have to take the drama with a pinch of salt. But then what have you seen on TV that isn’t that way? But yeah, Al Gore IS a drama queen and he sidesteps the length of time it would take to flood South Florida.
Talk about drama queens, I was looking at Rush Limbaugh’s piece on global warming and he is just awful! It would be fun to take a bunch of the right AND left wing nutcases and put them on an island somewhere and watch them reveal their true colors. I can just see Michael Moore reverting to cannibalism, hunting down an elderly William Bennett for dinner.
scoop
Apr 5th, 2007 at 11:51 am
whew, I ‘m glad you are always right and as long as you say everything that disproves Global Warming theory has been debunked we should all jump aboard the scam.
You don’t get it scoopy.
It isn’t that Bob is always right,but that you are consistantly dead assed wrong on this issue.
It hurts,I know. But you should be used to it after the last six years.
The funny thing about global warming skeptics is they think disagreement among scientists over something like the scale of a diagram or the interpretation of data means they disagree over the larger issue which doesn’t necessarily follow.
Not that I’ll admit to being actually wrong, mind you. As you said, after six (three say I) years of this…
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let’s pretend that global warming is a matter of opinion. As everybody knows, opinion, however ignorant should be valued in our culture. Right?
If we *were* to believe that global warming is a scam, it would mean that somebody is going to profit from the deception. So the questin is, who profits?
In the case of global warming skeptics, the money trail has been discovered and published. But who has really worked at uncovering the funding of the scam?
If it had been discovered then Rush Limbaugh would have been johnny on the spot telling everybody about it or the Wall Street Journal would have ppublished something at least.
Is it the Hot Toddy lobby? The Home Insulation lobby? Do the Home Builder’s have a plan to renovate every home on the planet as a massive markup? Surely it is not the New World Order? *shiver* Maybe it is the United Nations. hmmmm.
Those who profit are the same as always. The very same who profit from baby seals, homeless, wetlands, Health care, you name the cause. And I am not speaking of the actual organizations who are working to help with whatever the problem may be. It is the political attention hounds, be they republican or democrat. We have allowed the creation of an environment where those who talk the most and stir up the most sentiment get the most money. Honestly, is it something to brag about that you have raised the most money for a campaign than anyone previously? $35 million. It is about money. Sorry, I know I sound very negative. I do believe that people are predominately good and decent for the most part, but that is not the kind of person we reward by placing in a position of authority.
Granted, I was not around back then, but for some reason I doubt that many politicians were asking people to send them money so they could get elected to fight the Great Depression, or to help them develop a polio vaccine. Al Gore and his ilk are asking for (and getting) the money for themselves. Think about it; they dont ask you to send money to a scientific institute or research university. Instead send the money to them and when they get elected they promise to spend our tax dollars to fund the issue.
I go back to something I said before, do you think that if there had been a PAC back before the Ice Age, it could have been averted? Vote for me and I will make the glaciers retreat back to Canada where they belong! Nope, no political entity is ever going to change the earth’s climate. Even if mankind develops a way to control the earth like the thermostats in our homes, it will most assuredly not be a politician who makes it happen, but you can rest easy knowing that he will get rich by telling you it was his idea.
LOL, thank God that Mr Gore invented the internet so we can send these thoughts out for others to read and stimulate each others thinking. As long as ManBearPig doesnt get me now.
Since you are on the topic of who profits:Senator James Inhofe, ranking Member of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, called the IPCC report “the corruption of science for political gain” and said the process is completely lacking in scientific integrity.
He notes that page 4 of “Appendix A to the Principles Governing IPCC Work” includes the following: “Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter.”
This means that the scientific data may be altered to conform with what has already been published.
Instead of highlighting the lack of scientific data to support the man-made global warming assertions, our media are trying to discredit critics of the report by trying to tie them to oil companies. Such stories never mention the billions of federal dollars being showered on advocates of the man-made global warming theory.
scoop makes a Freudian slip!:
Yeah that’s right.
Trying to tie them to Oil Companies? They did that themselves. Accepting sixteen million dollars from Exxon is not the same as going out to dinner.
Your outright theft is obvious once again from another right wing rag. This time from the February 7th National Ledger which is prior to the release of the WG1 report. The criticism is once again wrong.
WG1 does the scientific analysis. It hands said analysis which is called, strangely enough, the “Summary for Policymakers” over to the politicians who are guess what - policy makers. It says they can’t change the stuff scientists say. The Summary did not exist until AFTER the WG1 report was issued.
This is a well known logical fallacy; post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Well, duh. That was when that retard Inhoffe was trying to say that because the scientists handed over their study analysis to the politicians who would then read it and formulate their POLICY, there was somethng sneaky going on. It was his least successful diversion and he abandoned it within a day or two.
Somebody told you that you had found another piece to rip off that I couldn’t find huh? You only had one success. It is so easy to tell. The problem is that your great wingnut strength is also your great wingnut weakness. I’ll leave it to you to figure that one out.
Anyway let me make a point here. Inhoffe made this mistake because he doesn’t understand or trust other people to behave in an honest way. If he were criticising politicians, nobody would notice. Unfortunately he is criticising people who make their living by thoughtful plodding, careful analysis, unvarying routine, and constant criticism of one another. Everything they do is open to attack and it is built for it. Senator Inhoffe honestly thinks this stuff is written by his enemies. He thinks the theories are full of holes and unsupported.
The last time they came at him and his friends in 2003, he won because the scientists thought 66% was good enough to start people to thinking about turning down the heat and lowering output of fine particulates. This time they got in excess of 90% certainty. Lots of the senator’s friends have turned on him. More will leave his side as it becomes increasingly uncomfortable. Finally his staff wil give interviews like other former Bushies.
You, scoop will be left standing there like a fool because Inhoffe isn’t going to remember you in his will. Even Fox News is publishing global warming stories.
You don’t seem to understand that everyone I mention, you say he’s this and that and a hack and a fraud ect. I’m saying all of your so called scientists that have jumped on the Global warming is caused by man bandwagon are less than credible or have a monitary interest in that side of the issue. We are even.
You keep going on about big oil paying out millions to scientists, While scientists that support the theory of Global warming get billions. If it’s a money thing which you keep ranting about, then your side loses because they are the most heavily funded.
It’s like you find it odd that big oil has scientists at all, don’t you think it more odd that a peace keeping organisation now has thousands of scientists involved with it.
One of my students said I was wasting my time on a troll who couldn’t possibly be real. Some say my opinion of human diversity is optimistic because I believe in variation. In my world, for every person who is as smart as Jim Gates, there has to be somebody like scoop to maintain symmetry.
scoop is to be commended for original text here:
This isn’t even a job for Mike. It is beyond stupid. I go on about big oil paying millions to idiots, not scientists. I don’t believe I ever used the word scientist to describe Ebel or Milloy. Again, send me proof that “my side” has global warming research funded by entities that will benefit from CO2 reduction strategies.
So big oil has somebody speaking for them now? I never knew you were admitting it.
For your information, the World Meteorological Organization is NOT a peacekeeping org. like NATO or the UN. And I do not find it surprising since many meteorologists are also scientists and not all work for TV stations or wear plaid jackets.
The fact is that I am bored. There are subcultures on the Internet that are marginal but don’t believe it. It is because the community they belong to is mentally incestuous. One of the obvious traits is
C’mon Bob I’m not being rude to you, you sure do a lot of name calling, If you don’t stop being so rude to me I will not have these wonderful talks with you anymore.
Just tell me this, when the U.N starts to impose a tax on gasoline, say 35 cents a gallon which will soon be 50 etc. and they say they will be the ones that collect it will your eyes open up a little and maybe start to question that wonderful institution you hold so dear to your heart?
I just stumbled across this post, and I hate to say it, but you’re a little off base there Mike. It’s easy to play for the crowd here and get laughs by making irreverent remarks, but that does not actually strengthen your position. In fact, it detracts from it. Would it not be better to take the high road and not stoop to such childish tactics? While attacking his credibility might win you points among your friends, it loses points for the cause. The only way to have your viewpoint taken seriously is to treat the matter with seriousness. For every person that might laugh at your antics, there are two that have just stopped listening to you.
Pete, While it is true that a strategy of embracing and education can be effective, trolls are a different matter. “scoop” is a troll, not a real person it *could* be somebody like Mark Morano for instance.
As I understand it, there are around 700 scientists who subscribe to creationism as an ideology. These people are a proper object of affection and support. Unfortunately many of them probably have an income derived from industries that grow fat from ignorance.
B
When the Global Warming era pushes the price of gas through the roof, who do you think will profit? Big oil of course. So your constant blame of Big oil impeding the Global Warming scare mongerers is foundless don’t you think.
The summaries’ distortion of the IPCC chapters compounds another distortion that occurred in the very writing of the scientific chapters themselves. Dr. Lindzen’s description of the conditions under which the climate scientists worked conjures up a scene worthy of a totalitarian state: “throughout the drafting sessions, IPCC ‘coordinators’ would go around insisting that criticism of models be toned down, and that ‘motherhood’ statements be inserted to the effect that models might still be correct despite the cited faults. Refusals were occasionally met with ad hominem attacks. I personally witnessed coauthors forced to assert their ‘green’ credentials in defense of their statements.”
To better understand the issue of climate change, including the controversies over the IPCC summary documents, the White House asked the National Academy of Sciences, the country’s premier scientific organization, to assemble a panel on climate change. The 11 members of the panel, which included Richard Lindzen, concluded that the science is far from settled: “Because there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current estimates of the magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward or downward).”
Scoop’s source is a newspaper article from Canada in December of 2006. Source: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=bc93abca-79cd-4a7b-b7a8-357d4e98f3f3
The statements are credited to Richard Lindzen, professor of Meteorology at MIT. Ross Gelbspan reported in 1995 that Lindzen “charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled ‘Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,’ was underwritten by OPEC.” (”The Heat is On: The warming of the world’s climate sparks a blaze of denial,” Harper’s magazine, December 1995.)
The problem with Lindzen is that he is a member of just about every far right organization in the universe in addition to being a real scientist. It appears to me that his emotional outbursts are just that. Here is a list of his memberships:
The Anapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy
The Cato Institute
Tech Central Station
George C. Marshall Institute
Heartland Institute
The Cato Institute is the only place I would consider remotely normal. The rest are nuts, most especially Tech Central Station which is a zombie created by a public relations form at the behest of the ExxonMobil corporation. But the Cato Institute was co-founded by Charles Koch who owns the largest privately held oil company in the U.S. The face they put on global warming is that that it exists and there is no way to stop it. That’s a direct quote.
Tech Central Station is the place I started out on this journey. I was happily doing some research one day several years ago on something I actually know about when I read what appeared to be a reasonably good article at Tech Central Station. But as I read on, I found errors of fact in the body that led to some oddball conclusions. So being a nice guy, I wrote to the fellow and told him where to find the correct information. He wrote back nicely enough but firmly told me that he had no intention of changing his opinion in the face of overwhelming fact.
I though that odd.
If you are interested in the Heartland Institute, here is a real gem:
Walter F. Buchholtz, an ExxonMobil executive, serves as Heartland’s Government Relations Advisor, according to Heartland’s 2005 IRS Form 990, pg. 15. http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2005/363/309/2005-363309812-0295fbb2-9.pdf
Here’s another gem of information on the George Marshall Institute: Total funding to George C. Marshall Institute from Exxon corporations since 1998: $US 630,000
Like I said before, the roster of skeptics runs to about seven hundred and there are more on the global warming side whose first name is Steve. The reference to this is the “Three guys named Steve” schtick from Boston Legal wherein the Homeland Security folks tell a guy named Steve that he is on the no fly list and his lawyer says he can find three other guys named Steve who could fix the problems associated with Homeland Security’s system in a heartbeat.
The problem being that there is no “Will to do Good” on the part of the government. I seriously feel that the Steve problem is central to the global warming denial argument as well.
Here is a link to an article that addresses Lindzen’s article point by point:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/lindzen-in-newsweek/#more-435
Watching the technorati summary of blogs that reference the article is entertaining. Got to stop…. OMG
So If funding comes from big oil, It’s wrong. How scientific Bob.
Despite such obtuseness Lindzen fights on, defending the science at what is undoubtedly a very considerable personal cost. Those who toe the party line are publicly praised and have grants ladled out to them from a funding pot that overflows with US$1.7-billion per year in the U.S. alone. As Lindzen wrote earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal, “there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.”
This is a comment from that article, this is my point.
Other than in demogogic activities, I fail to see how a top-rated professor being asked to consult for oil companies or OPEC or whomever at ballpark going rates degrades his credibility. Maybe his credibility is affected in other objective ways; maybe not. But degradation through association is a silly (though popular) proposition.
There is association and there is association, if you know what I mean.
Let’s say you voted for Al Gore. Does that make you a liberal commie-pinko religious-ecology freak? Maybe.
On the other hand let’s say you are a friend of Osama Bin Laden. Does that make you indictable? Probably.
Other than the Cato Institute, the organizations I mentioned are variously full of crap to one extent or another. One is overflowing so badly I can’t say there is any question people working there are only very loosely in touch with reality.
Take that article on universal health care by the Cato Institute guy in Tech Central Station for instance. Although he is introducing material to his readers, he doesn’t make the studies he quotes available to them with links. Things are just stated baldly such as 30% of publicly paid health care bills are due to uncollected bills from insured persons. Or the statement to the effect that longevity can’t be proven to improve with universal health care. That one is a serious boner. First of all it is strongly correlated. Second there is no basis for disproving it. So why use it as a “proof” that universal health care is a bad idea? I have only four words for that. Japan, Norway, Finland, Sweden. All have greater longevity, all have universal health care. Maybe it’s the water.
So it is true that if you criticize the IPCC you will be labled a crackpot you barley mentioned Dr. Lindzen is one of the most distinguished climate scientists in the world: a past professor at the University of Chicago and Harvard, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a lead author in a landmark report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the very organization that established global warming as an issue of paramount importance.
Bob, you keep making my point:Many in the “science is settled” camp claim that the skeptics are untrustworthy — that they are either cranks or otherwise at the periphery of their profession, or that they are in the pockets of Exxon or other corporate interests. The skeptics are increasingly being called Deniers, a term used by analogy to the Holocaust, to convey the catastrophe that could befall mankind if action is not taken. Increasingly, too, the press is taking up the Denier theme, convincing the public that the global-warming debate is over.
Good observation, poor reasoning.
The style of argumentation in similar if not identical.
Projections of future warming from carbon dioxide are based on computer models whose reliability and accuracy are completely unknown. As a scientist who has done computer modeling and studied geophysical inverse theory, I find it alarming that people are seriously considering restructuring our entire civilization on the basis of computer models that cannot even be tested.
John, you must realize as a scientist that your statement regarding modeling is awfully broad.
As a scientist you must realize your statement “restructuring our entire civilization” is overly broad.
If you wish to discuss a critical lack of data points in a model, you discuss it with the modeling community. You wouldn’t just say that all models are bunk. You know which are and which aren’t.
This is “Calling All Wingnuts” not “Real Climate.”
Consider the impact of the restrictions still promoted by some. The U.S. would have to put a 50 to 100 % tax on gasoline, heating fuels, and most electricity. Local farmers and landowners will face bureaucratic restrictions hindering the use of land. In south Texas, the result would just be massive inflation and unemployment. In the developing world, suffering economies would cause starvation and death. And for all this, the restrictions can’t be shown to make any difference to world climate.
The primary advocates of global warming remain the environmentalists. They propose a drastic solution to a non-existent problem–a solution which is, amazingly, the same political policy they have unsuccessfully sought to impose for decades. Many of their leaders oppose free markets and seek to limit human development, and global warming is currently the best means to these ends. If people are hurt in the process, so be it.
I have two words for you:
Stern Report
Get it. Read it.
The cost will only go up, but that’s not the worst part.
Man-made global warming is a joke. Just take a look at the data.
http://copiousdissent.blogspot.com
Been there, done that. Your friend is way behind the times. This has been rehashed so many times it isn’t even yawn-worthy.
If it is actually new to you Mr Devil, why not read something with meat. Try realclimate.org where there are a great number of posts on every bit of the science concievable.
Al Gore is not part of the science. Articles that discuss him and his opinions are not productive or useful.
Now imagine two lines on a piece of graph paper. The first rises to a crest, then slopes sharply down, then levels off and rises slowly once more. The other has no undulations. It rises in a smooth, slowly increasing arc. The first, wavy line is the worldwide CO2 tonnage produced by humans burning coal, oil and natural gas. On this graph it starts in 1928, at 1.1 gigatons (i.e. 1.1 billion metric tons). It peaks in 1929 at 1.17 gigatons. The world, led by its mightiest power, the USA, plummets into the Great Depression, and by 1932 human CO2 production has fallen to 0.88 gigatons a year, a 30 per cent drop. Hard times drove a tougher bargain than all the counsels of Al Gore or the jeremiads of the IPCC (Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change). Then, in 1933 it began to climb slowly again, up to 0.9 gigatons.
And the other line, the one ascending so evenly? That’s the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, parts per million (ppm) by volume, moving in 1928 from just under 306, hitting 306 in 1929, to 307 in 1932 and on up. Boom and bust, the line heads up steadily. These days it’s at 380.There are, to be sure, seasonal variations in CO2, as measured since 1958 by the instruments on Mauna Loa, Hawai’i. (Pre-1958 measurements are of air bubbles trapped in glacial ice.) Summer and winter vary steadily by about 5 ppm, reflecting photosynthesis cycles. The two lines on that graph proclaim that a whopping 30 per cent cut in man-made CO2 emissions didn’t even cause a 1 ppm drop in the atmosphere’s CO2. Thus it is impossible to assert that the increase in atmospheric CO2 stems from human burning of fossil fuels.
Devil’s advodate, Bob only accepts information that comes from the left leaning pro GlobalWarming, realclimate.org. That is why he is never wrong, you show him data, he points you to where realclimate.org says your data is wrong, off with your head, you are a witch, burn em’ at the stake.
Does anybody remember the Club of Rome?, a group of environmentalists started in the seventies who warned that the earth’s resources were running low. This kind of madness has happened from time to time in the past. It was thought then that there would be severe shortages of all raw materials and unless something was done, there would be mass starvation, pestilence and wars.
It didn’t happen, and although the Club of Rome still exists, nobody is making laws based on their predictions. The green debate is a passing fad that will soon fade into the national memory. People get carried away by these things, and eventually as time goes by, they realise how foolish they’ve been. People will come to their senses, but it will take a bit of time.
John: I’m not familiar with them, but I often hear of this and similar arguments about malthusian growth…
The arguments are correct, they were simply ahead of their time. The last 75 years of human history have been unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. In the 70’s, the human population hit 4 billion. Today, we’re over 7 billion. India and China are emerging from third world status and have become largely consumer nations. In other words, billions more people are extracting exponentially greater amounts of resources from the planet and dumping a corresponding amount of waste back into the environment.
This is the best thought experiment I’ve encountered in terms of really driving the point home:
Imagine you are a single microbe in a bottle of nutrient solution. Everything you need is provided for. Under such ideal conditions, your species reproduces in such a way as to double your population every day. In order to reproduce, each microbe requires one unit of nutrient. To begin with, there are one trillion units of nutrient, and one microbe. After the first day, there are two microbes and 9,999,999,999,999 units of nutrient… After the second day, four microbes and 9,999,999,999,997 nutrients… The third day, 8 microbes, 9,999,999,999,993 nutrients, and so on… Eventually, we get to a point of equilibrium - 500,000,000,000 microbes, 500,000,000,000 nutrients… What happens the next day? One trillion microbes, zero nutrients… The next day? Everyone dies.
How long did it take for that process to transpire?
40 days.
On the 20th day, the microbes had used less than 1/100,000th of 1% of their resources…
On the 30th day, 10 days before their doomsday, they had used almost 1/100th of one percent of their resources…
On the 34th day, they finally had used 1% of the resources they had started with.
So… my question to you is… How smart do you think we humans are? If the earth is our nutrient bottle, on what day do you think we’ll realize that our population/consumption curve is leading to a place where we’re gonna run out of resources?
Keep in mind that already, 90% of large fish have been fished out of the oceans… That we haven’t discovered any significant oil field in decades… That the rainforest is disapperaing at an alarming rate…
One of the most amazing things I see today is the use of the adjective environmentalist as a pejorative. The funny thing is that nobody I know isn’t an environmentalist in some way or another. Yet there is a substantial stream of invective that tries to cast them as a religious movement.
My conclusion is that the invective is cast by a group that understands the world in religious terms alone and can’t unshackle themselves from their common sense beliefs.
I’m using common sense in terms of believing only the evidence of one’s senses. Pundits like Bill O’Reilly are very big on common sense.
This was brought home to me today when I read an article - I am posting the abstract with the issue information for those who wish to read the whole article:
So you can see that it is to be expected in populations where practical knowledge is highly valued as well as faith-based organizations or groups of young people. This is why we have such a terrible time convincing people that the world is old and anthropogenic warming is a fact. We have to bring them up to speed by filling in gaps in their education; and this is assuming they are willing to learn.
Probably the majority of people who do accept evolution as a fact do so because they accept authority in a different way than the people who do not accept natural selection. Trust and authority.
These two words are my mantra in my Internet and Society classes. Without developing the ability to discern the good from the bad, a person has no signposts and wanders in search of meaning.
Mike, There is no doubt that climate change is occurring, it’s just that you cannot say that
Co2 emissions are the major contributing factor, it is just not proven. To be chasing a theory with such doom and gloom prediction and so much time and money wasted on other theories as how to change the climate is absurd.
You state “Keep in mind that already, 90% of large fish have been fished out of the oceans… That we haven’t discovered any significant oil field in decades… That the rainforest is disappearing at an alarming rate…” It would seem to anyone with an ounce of sense that these things need to be addressed this minute. When food fishes are gone from the oceans and there is no rainforests left, the temperature of the earth in 400 years is hardly going to matter. You will say, “These matters must be dealt with as well,” But they won’t be when all energy’s are deflected towards the cult of Global Warming.
I want you to read this piece I found that would be a more realistic way to proceed with the question of climate change in a sensible way, your faith in the human quest for survival is a bit worrisome to me.
The idea of adaptability was another feature of Lawson’s speech to the CPS. Instead of spending billions trying to stop climate change, we should invest money in dealing with the global transformations that would ensue if the IPCC’s predictions came to pass. The “central guess” of the IPCC’s assessment, says Lawson, is that the world’s average temperature could rise by 2.5ºC over the next century. As an example of how humans adapt, he compares two cities: Helsinki, with an average temperature of 5ºC, and Singapore, with an average of 27ºC. If human beings can thrive in temperatures as varied as this, Lawson argues, there is no reason why a 2.5ºC rise over a century should be unmanageable. “In different parts of the world, in different climates and in different periods of time when the climate has been different, man has managed to adapt,” he says.
He adds that modern technology – for example, improved agricultural techniques – will come into play to combat the inevitable rise in temperature. Lawson says flood defences and water management are more than advanced enough to cope with Stern’s predicted quarter of an inch rise in sea levels: “It’s what the Dutch have been doing for hundreds of years,” he says.
Given that Lawson thinks human beings are capable of weathering the storms that climate change will bring, it’s no surprise to learn that he thinks the government’s decision to legislate on the matter is irresponsible.
Mike, let me do this.
John, the speaker is Lord Nigel Lawson. But you knew that. Because that’s where you got the “Club of Rome” quote. You also know that every respectable scientist in Great Britain lines up and took a potshot at this arse. Here is an example of his slightly irrational speech:
I don’t believe that even Myron Ebel would utter that canard!
The real problem is that you plagarized the article the first time without citing it or allowing the readers to look at it and draw their own conclusions. Hmmmm sure looks like scoop again.
Bob, I was talking to Mike, I am not a Scoop, and the jist of the piece was adaptation by man to changing climate. Why the dire scenarios? Temperatures have been higher in the past.
Bob you do have a problem with attacking the messenger, and not discussing the message, don’t you think? Even Einstein wasn’t correct 100% of the time.
My point was that the message was irrational. There is nothing to talk about since he is addressing adaptation and global warming predictions have nothing whatsoever to do with human adaptation. It has to do with the earth’s systems and the way they react to the warming. Not people. Lord Lawson makes a common sense leap by associating temperature increases to human survival. Big mistake. Everybody jumped on him over it. Move on.
You speak of me attacking you. (If you regard yourself as a messenger or Einstein, I can’t tell.) I attacked your method of argumentation which consists of leaving supporting data out as well as using arguments from an irrational dotard. As you search the internet, you should recognize resources that are supported by good arguments and use them. Before you use the information, you should check on http://scholar.google.com to see if the author has a credibility. Scholar gives a count of citations. Next check to see if the resource publishes is a peer reviewed journal. These are a couple of simple things you can do to avoid stepping in it.
If you do these things, you will find only a few respectable scientists or economists who inveigh against global warming. The vast majority say anthropogenic contribution is huge. You, of course will counter by saying that there are examples of brave souls who counter the tide and are proven to be correct. Fine! It’s a valid argument but it has to be backed up with facts because as soon as you move to that level, you must abandon faith in the messenger and learn enough to evaluate the fairness of what he or she told you.
Finally, don’t expect Myron and Steven to be inventing any more FUD because ExxonMobil has announced that the plug has been pulled on funding the denial machine. Steven has put a PayPal button on his website. w00t
So I say, “When it gets cold outside , wear a coat, and you say, “When it gets cold outside, lets try to change the earths temperature. And my message is irrational!
I didn’t say you were irrational. I said you are accepting an irrational argument from Lord Lawson.
He decoupled the argument for conservation of carbon and attached it to something quite different and you accept it. You shouldn’t have accepted it.
There is noting in the global warming debate that addresses the need for humans to adjust their garments or housing to either increased or decreased temperatures for the purpose of comfort. The adjustments have to do with extreme weather.
You are correct that you will be able to live comfortably whatever the temperature. Humans are very adaptable. Unfortunately some things we enjoy are not.
You may not enjoy coral but I do. For the first thirty years of my life I enjoyed the ocean nearby. Today due to increased temperature and nutrients, our coral is mostly dead and has been replaced by a nasty algal blanket. You see, while you can put on a jacket or take off your shirt, my coral can live only in a VERY narrow band of temperature and salinity. It only took a couple of degrees.
Here is a link to a website you may not like since the members are academics who like to yell at the president and call him names but they are really good at what they do:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/early-warning-signs-of-global-warming-coral-reef-bleaching.html
If you like first hand experience, come to Florida and stick your head under water. It’s gross.
This is an example of how dire extreme weather is an exagerated ploy being foisted upon the gullable populace by the IPCC.
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post
You’re a respected scientist, one of the best in your field. So respected, in fact, that when the United Nations decided to study the relationship between hurricanes and global warming for the largest scientific endeavour in its history — its International Panel on Climate Change — it called upon you and your expertise.
You are Christopher Landsea of the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory. You were a contributing author for the UN’s second International Panel on Climate Change in 1995, writing the sections on observed changes in tropical cyclones around the world. Then the IPCC called on you as a contributing author once more, for its “Third Assessment Report” in 2001. And you were invited to participate yet again, when the IPCC called on you to be an author in the “Fourth Assessment Report.” This report would specifically focus on Atlantic hurricanes, your specialty, and be published by the IPCC in 2007.
Then something went horribly wrong. Within days of this last invitation, in October, 2004, you discovered that the IPCC’s Kevin Trenberth — the very person who had invited you — was participating in a press conference. The title of the press conference perplexed you: “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity.” This was some kind of mistake, you were certain. You had not done any work that substantiated this claim. Nobody had.
As perplexing, none of the participants in that press conference were known for their hurricane expertise. In fact, to your knowledge, none had performed any research at all on hurricane variability, the subject of the press conference. Neither were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability, you knew, showed no reliable upward trend in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. Not in the Atlantic basin. Not in any other basin.
To add to the utter incomprehensibility of the press conference, the IPCC itself, in both 1995 and 2001, had found no global warming signal in the hurricane record. And until your new work would come out, in 2007, the IPCC would not have a new analysis on which to base a change of findings.
To stop the press conference, or at least stop any misunderstandings that might come out of it, you contacted Dr. Trenberth prior to the media event. You prepared a synopsis for him that brought him up to date on the state of knowledge about hurricane formation. To your amazement, he simply dismissed your concerns. The press conference proceeded.
And what a press conference it was! Hurricanes had been all over the news that summer. Global warming was the obvious culprit — only a fool or an oil-industry lobbyist, the press made clear, could ignore the link between what seemed to be ever increasing hurricane activity and ever increasing global warming. The press conference didn’t disappoint them. The climate change experts at hand all confirmed the news that the public had been primed to hear: Global warming was causing hurricanes. This judgement from the scientists made headlines around the world, just as it was intended to do. What better way to cast global warming as catastrophic than to make hurricanes its poster child?
You wanted to right this outrageous wrong, this mockery that was made of your scientific field. You wrote top IPCC officials, imploring: “Where is the science, the refereed publications, that substantiate these pronouncements? What studies are being alluded to that have shown a connection between observed warming trends on the earth and long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity? As far as I know, there are none.” But no one in the IPCC leadership showed the slightest concern for the science. The IPCC’s overriding preoccupation, it soon sunk in, lay in capitalizing on the publicity opportunity that the hurricane season presented.
You then asked the IPCC leadership for assurances that your work for the IPCC’s 2007 report would be true to science: “[Dr. Trenberth] seems to have already come to the conclusion that global warming has altered hurricane activity and has publicly stated so. This does not reflect the consensus within the hurricane research community. … Thus I would like assurance that what will be included in the IPCC report will reflect the best available information and the consensus within the scientific community most expert on the specific topic.”
The assurance didn’t come. What did come was the realization that the IPCC was corrupting science. This you could not be a party to. You then resigned, in an open letter to the scientific community laying out your reasons.
Next year, the IPCC will come out with its “Fourth Assessment Report,” and for the first time in a decade, you will not be writing its section on hurricanes. That task will be left to the successor that Dr. Trenberth chose. As part of his responsibility, he will need to explain why — despite all expectations — the 2006 hurricane year was so unexpectedly light, and at the historical average for the past 150 years.
look scoop, canada dot com is the saqme place that published the oh so scary story about the lady who was attacked by the liberal dogs of the EPA and made to spend thousands of dollars remediating her house after Hg contamination.
Except it turned out to be a lie.
I’ve got to tel you that Susan Soloman, the co-chair of WG1 says the incidence of hurricanes has only a peripheral relationship to global warming. But that’s only a person I have talked to who is a climatologist and not a real conservative PR flack. Landsea withdrew from the IPCC committee he was on in 2005 because a guy at Harvard made some stupid remarks about hurricanes being more fierce because of global warming. Landsea thought it was over the top and stepped back in protest in order to get the publicity hogs to back down. As far as I know, they did.
There is no documentation on this story. Nobody seems to know anything about it except the people who get the mysterious talking points emails and equally meyteriously post them on their blogs within a half hour of one another.
Hey I found out something really interesting today. I talked to a lady whose sister was a Bush appointee. Her sister told her about getting a talking points memo every morning that instructed her to say things that were often incorrect and against what her judgement would indicate. But she was an appointee and she did her job but it got to be too much and she left like many others.
Look scoop, just because scientists disagree with one another, it doesn’t mean you understand why. Reading the papers about it doesn’t help. You have to talk to an actual scientist who does climate for his living. Not goddamn geologists, not goddamn vegetation modelers and not a guy who works as a PR flack for the stupidest senator in the solar system.
After checking on some articles in canada.com by the same guy, it appears that he writes articles that claim scientists reject global warming theories. However in the cases I saw, they were not what amybody would call global warming deniers.
*sigh* what a waste of time. Good thing I’m on vacation. I spent the day in sunny Fort Lauderdale by a swimming pool. I think I’m going out in the kayak if the water is high enough. I *could* claim the rainfall is low becasue of global warming. lol
This article is from the financial post not canada.com. Are you trying to say the Financial Post prints undocumented stories.