An Inconvenient Truth

[citylover]

At what age do you relinquish your credentials?

you are "crotchety" when you're an old man dying for attention & seeks it by going far outside his proven field to just lay out some off-the-cuff questions in a commencement address to try & be provocative & get some press, rather than doing any real work on the subject.

& idjits take this as somehow disproving accepted science

so most of y'all who are standing w/ the Swiftboat Scientists and the Flat Earthers to deny the proven theories of real scientists might get to be crotchety, if Darwin is wrong & the stupid continue to live long enuff

Obviously, someone has never heard of hyperbole. My post was meant to be humorous.

yeah, but to get it, you need just a bit of intelligence & wit... unfortunately, your intended audience has neither

 

[Randy Whorewald]

CL - Do you have any clue how YOU get the electricity you so enjoy?

Do you have any clue concerning the source of the Fuel to drive your car?

If there weren't some GHG's around, the earth would be uninhabitable. The missing link here is tying such gases, or purported changes in their volume, to any temperature changes, and divorcing it from natural cycles.

 

[sdw]

That's swell, but Canadian CO2 emissions are up by over a third since Kyoto. Much more than the climate Heretics south of the border.

What you believe is irrelevant if you can't put it into action.

Hmm, Why do you think the Harper governments is spending money on Global Warming?

1. Long term commitment to environmental issues?
2. Concern for the effect on people outside of Canada?
3. Possession of a poll that says they'll lose if they don't address Global Warming?

I think number 3.

Let's remember that the Liberals spent as much on Global Warming as they spent on Daycare and actually supporting National Heath Care. Exactly Nothing. We don't need the Al Gore model of concern in Canada.

 

[rollerboy]

Obviously, someone has never heard of hyperbole. My post was meant to be humorous.

The Holocaust was not invoked to prove any theory. I'm just comparing the reasoning used by the naysayers to the reasoning that the Holocaust denyers use. Simply by claiming that a conspiracy is trying to shut them up and playing victim.

I'll simplify my point. There is no reason to do nothing. Whether the doomsayers are right or not we have nothing to lose by looking after the planet that supports us and everything to lose if they're right.

Sorry I didn't get that your post was meant to be humorous.

Of course arguing in such a manner is absurdity, but this is how many of the environmental prophets of doom express themselves, and they are dead serious.

Comparing reasonable skepticism to this insanity to Holocaust denial is equally absurd. It's just dumb, and grievously unethical. Thousands of scientists doubt this theory, and painting them as racist sympathizers of genocide goes beyond the pale.

We have a lot to lose by yielding to absurdities. Diverting trillions of dollars in resources, halting the modernization of the developing world, taking resources and attention away from much more urgent priorities such as education, combating disease, reducing carcinogens and toxic chemical pollution, improving nutrition, fighting addictions, building efficient infrastructure.

 

[rollerboy]

Hmm, Why do you think the Harper governments is spending money on Global Warming?

1. Long term commitment to environmental issues?
2. Concern for the effect on people outside of Canada?
3. Possession of a poll that says they'll lose if they don't address Global Warming?

I think number 3.

Let's remember that the Liberals spent as much on Global Warming as they spent on Daycare and actually supporting National Heath Care. Exactly Nothing. We don't need the Al Gore model of concern in Canada.

What relevance is the Harper government's lip service on Global Warming? It doesn't prove anything beyond the fact that politicians' rhetoric follows the polls of their constituents.

Do you really believe that Canada will reduce it's CO2 emissions by 36% in 5 years? Canadians should make good on their commitment to Kyoto. So far you haven't paid the cost, and so as they say, "talk is cheap."

 

[sdw]

What relevance is the Harper government's lip service on Global Warming? It doesn't prove anything beyond the fact that politicians' rhetoric follows the polls of their constituents.

Do you really believe that Canada will reduce it's CO2 emissions by 36% in 5 years? Canadians should make good on their commitment to Kyoto. So far you haven't paid the cost, and so as they say, "talk is cheap."

There is really no way that Canada will reduce it's CO2 emissions by 36% in any amount of years. That would require no home heating, no natural gas or coal fired power generation and no vehicles powered with petroleum products.

Not going to happen. The mush minds that vote for feel good words won't make the sacrifices necessary to actually accomplish such a goal.

That doesn't change the reality that it's desirable to reduce the amount of CO2 we dump into the air.

 

[citylover]

CL - Do you have any clue how YOU get the electricity you so enjoy?

Mine comes directly from a big wind farm machine parked right outside your door. It is very cheap electricity but I have to keep replacing the machine, it gets wore out so many times from the big blowhard that it taps.



WTF, this is the level of argument from these guys, & their brilliant deductions on why Global Warming don't exist:

"If you use any energy in any way, shape, or form, you CAN'T whine about the environment. The only really good environmentalist who really believes in the environment will commit suicide to protect the planet."

"If Gore is ever seen in an SUV, that means he's really lying about Global Warming cause he don't plow his own back 40 w/ mule power"

"If we cave into the environmentalists on THIS issue, who knows where they'll stop? We'll soon have a SOCIALIST DICTATORSHIP fostered by ENVIRO-NUTS who will then crown Gore as our King! (Despite the fact of the wide range of non-oil businesses & investors pushing for action on global warming, they're ALSO all secretly for SOCIALISM)"

"The only good science comes from the Swiftboat Scientists who switched bosses from Big Tobacco to Big Oil, All the official bodies of scientists who insist on following the scientific method & say we got a problem & should be held accountable for our conclusions are just idiots."

"The fact that most, if not all, of the Swiftboat Scientists are guilty of distortion of evidence, fabrication of data, outright lying, or inaccurate testing just shows the environmentalists go WAY TOO FAR in insisting on truth, facts, and objectivity. We got too much of that in your hysterical old-fashioned science, anyway, this is the era of Swiftboat Science. 2+2=6, muthafukah."

"How dare you keep pointing out that Big Oil funds these studies, which can't get in real science journals, but must be disseminated thru PR firms in popular media who can't check up on the absurd claims being made"​

Luckily, scientific bodies & most gov'ts recognize the partisan ideologues for what they is, biased stooges. The "skeptics" stand arm in arm w/ the Creationists, the Tobacco Scientists, and the right wing ideologues dithering about the War on Christmas.

.

 

[Gandalf]

Karma's a Beoch!

For you naysayers, karma is a bitch. Nuf said. For the happy couple, good luck and here's to many happy years together. Life's short, so grab on with both hands, you'll love the ride

 

[Gandalf]

wtf?

How did my post end up here? Ah well, shit happens.

 

[rollerboy]

There is really no way that Canada will reduce it's CO2 emissions by 36% in any amount of years. That would require no home heating, no natural gas or coal fired power generation and no vehicles powered with petroleum products.

Not going to happen. The mush minds that vote for feel good words won't make the sacrifices necessary to actually accomplish such a goal.

That doesn't change the reality that it's desirable to reduce the amount of CO2 we dump into the air.

It's not the feel good words that bug me. It's the hysteria and the intimidation. "Submit to the True Faith, or burn in hell as a heretic and the murderer of humanity."

I don't know that adding CO2 to the air is overall harmful to humans, in fact there are reasons why this might prove beneficial. The cycle of glaciation/Ice Ages is driven by Milankovitch Cycles, which lead to recurring Ice Ages with a period of about 100,000 years. These Ice Ages are typically much longer than the interglacial warm periods where the ice retreats. Humanity would almost certainly do better with a prolonged interglacial warm period, rather than a return to Ice Age conditions. CO2 and Greenhouse gases do not initiate warmings, they prolong and intensify them. They cannot prevent the Milankovitch Cycle from eventually plunging us into the next Ice Age, any more than they can prevent Winter from being cold in the Arctic.

I wonder if Ms. Bancroft was expecting to find it warm and balmy up there.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070312/ap_on_sc/polar_trek_1

Out of the thousands of toxic chemicals which come out of a tailpipe, the only exhaust which concerns me less than CO2 is water vapor.

 

[Randy Whorewald]

I've heard both sides of the argument and watched an Inconvenient Truth along with related documentaries and read up on it a great deal. I really doubt if we could even do anything about it if it is true.

We don't even know if GW is occuring, much less whether we have anything at all to do with it. In fact it's highly unlikely that we have anything to do with it

Mine comes directly from a big wind farm machine parked right outside your door. It is very cheap electricity but I have to keep replacing the machine, it gets wore out so many times from the big blowhard that it taps.

.

I thought so.

The "big oil" meme is ridiculous. As a matter of fact, "big oil" funds many of the foundations that support research on evidence of Global Warming, so one might just as profitably argue that the Church of Global Warming is funded by big oil too. Like most of the "quit smoking" programs are supported by tobacco companies, but whenever someone points out that "secondhand smoke" is less harmfull than standing on the curb at rush hour on any busy street in Canada, someone is always ready to point and holler that they must work for "Big Tobacco". It's just more cheap ad hominem. It's like me claiming you work for the Global Warming industry; it's meaningless and probably not true. So yeah, maybe it's all a big plot by Big Oil. But it's much more likely that it's not. If there is a big plot involved, it's far more likely to be that of a self-serving grant industry that penalizes researchers who refuse to buy into the nonsense. In fact, it's a measure of the weakness of the Global Warming case that the new name is "Climate Change". That way we can blame hot, cold, warm and tepid on "Climate Change". In fact, the only thing we DO know for sure is that climate has always changed...since long before we discovered fire.

 

[Tatortot]

In fact, the only thing we DO know for sure is that climate has always changed...since long before we discovered fire.

Precisely and it always will and there's not ONE thing we can do about it.

 

[SilkyJohnson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU

theres plenty we can do!?!?!?!?!?

 

[Randy Whorewald]

More inconvenient truth...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BjrOi4vF24&mode=related&search=

 

[Randy Whorewald]

The lefties are gettin' serious, this whole climate change meme is becoming another religion:

'Scientists who questioned mankind's impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community.

They say the debate on global warming has been "hijacked" by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.

Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change.

advertisement
One of the emails warned that, if he continued to speak out, he would not live to see further global warming.

"Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened," said the professor.

"I can tolerate being called a sceptic because all scientists should be sceptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal."

Last week, Professor Ball appeared in The Great Global Warming Swindle, a Channel 4 documentary in which several scientists claimed the theory of man-made global warming had become a "religion", forcing alternative explanations to be ignored.'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/11/ngreen211.xml

 

[OTBn]

Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada,

details, details..... now retired (since 1996) - a former Professor of Geography at UofW who has not had any other official position at any university... not now a Professor of Climatology and never was.

Interesting Sourcewatch commentary on Tim Ball

 

[aznboi9]

So yeah, maybe it's all a big plot by Big Oil. But it's much more likely that it's not. If there is a big plot involved, it's far more likely to be that of a self-serving grant industry that penalizes researchers who refuse to buy into the nonsense.

Ok, this needs a reality check, as this isn't the first time you've put this argument forward. So, you believe that, somehow, these “ecoterrorists” have managed to create the greatest conspiracy in the history of mankind by convincing thousands of scientists worldwide to buy into the idea of forgoing all scientific integrity and, therefore, falsify their scientific research in not one, not two, but thousands of studies. And, in the process, are able to still manage to dupe the peer-review process, not once, not twice, but thousands of times in getting these flawed studies published. Not only did they manage to get collusion amongst thousands of climate scientists who work independently; but also amongst the thousands of other scientists like biologists who, apparently. are also publishing studies that are supposedly supporting the same theory. All this, not for any actual money; but only for the possibility of maybe getting more grant money, which they still have to apply for anyway. And this is all during the process of about 10-20 years, which is about how long this “conspiracy” has been going on now. Wow, are these guys ever patient.

And yet, this is supposed to be much more plausible than the idea of oil and gas companies hiring a handful of scientists, most of whom don't seem to have conducted any research in years, to write opinion pieces on websites or news editorials where THEY CAN BASICALLY MAKE UP ANYTHING THAT THEY WANT in order to create a culture of doubt in order to protect a financial interest in which oil companies are already in control.

This is one of the silliest ideas I have ever come across in this entire thread. How desperate do you really need to be in order to even contemplate this idea as an argument against climate change theory?

 

[Randy Whorewald]

Ok, this needs a reality check, as this isn't the first time you've put this argument forward. So, you believe that, somehow, these “ecoterrorists” have managed to create the greatest conspiracy in the history of mankind by convincing thousands of scientists worldwide to buy into the idea of forgoing all scientific integrity and, therefore, falsify their scientific research in not one, not two, but thousands of studies. And, in the process, are able to still manage to dupe the peer-review process, not once, not twice, but thousands of times in getting these flawed studies published. Not only did they manage to get collusion amongst thousands of climate scientists who work independently; but also amongst the thousands of other scientists like biologists who, apparently. are also publishing studies that are supposedly supporting the same theory. All this, not for any actual money; but only for the possibility of maybe getting more grant money, which they still have to apply for anyway. And this is all during the process of about 10-20 years, which is about how long this “conspiracy” has been going on now. Wow, are these guys ever patient.

And yet, this is supposed to be much more plausible than the idea of oil and gas companies hiring a handful of scientists, most of whom don't seem to have conducted any research in years, to write opinion pieces on websites or news editorials where THEY CAN BASICALLY MAKE UP ANYTHING THAT THEY WANT in order to create a culture of doubt in order to protect a financial interest in which oil companies are already in control.

This is one of the silliest ideas I have ever come across in this entire thread. How desperate do you really need to be in order to even contemplate this idea as an argument against climate change theory?

It is equally obvious that you know very little about the subject of "climate change" yourself. If Global Warming were happening, the weather would actually get milder, not rougher. That's why the term in usage has changed from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change", so that things like the fact that the US just had the coldest winter in decades ( http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/2007/...pping-the-news/ ) can skip by un-noticed. One of the more hilarious logical gymnastics was when the Bancroft-Arnesen trek to bring attention to GW was called off because one of them got frostbite. They had even brought swimming suits so they could swim through open stretches of the arctic ocean. Their response to the unexpected cold: "They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070312/ap_on_sc/polar_trek_1 So in effect we can blame EVERYTHING on Global Warming, including frostbite and cold winters. This kind of thing is the height of disingenuity, and the Church of Global Warming seems to have lost all sense of irony.

details, details..... now retired (since 1996) - a former Professor of Geography at UofW who has not had any other official position at any university... not now a Professor of Climatology and never was.

Interesting Sourcewatch commentary on Tim Ball

Sounds like pretty scientific credentials to me.

 

[OTBn]

details, details..... now retired (since 1996) - a former Professor of Geography at UofW who has not had any other official position at any university... not now a Professor of Climatology and never was.

Interesting Sourcewatch commentary on Tim Ball

Sounds like pretty scientific credentials to me.

certainly - another one of your science guys... committee affiliate to those working for energy industry clients, scientific advisory to the oil industry...

but Randy, what about your science guys quote, the one where he states, "...climate change and global warming would be good for us. "A warmer Canada would improve our lives in these and other ways too numerous to list. Global warming? Let's hope so".

Randy, many of us have totally misinterpreted you - all along you're a proponent for, as Tim Ball highlights, the climate change potential benefits to Canada:

Tim & Randy's climate change potential benefits to Canada

- Reduced heating costs.
- Reduced fuel bills for travel.
- A longer growing season, allowing a greater variety of crops.
- Less frost damage and crop loss.
- A greater variety of plants for gardens and other uses.
- More rapidly growing forests and an increased rate of reforestation.
- Less frost damage to streets and roads.
- The potential for direct access to world markets through northern ports.
- Reduced construction costs in an ameliorated climate.
- A longer summer season for tourism, and for cottagers and campers.​

​

... cottagers and campers... Randy's got your back

 

[rickoshadows]

It is equally obvious that you know very little about the subject of "climate change" yourself. If Global Warming were happening, the weather would actually get milder, not rougher. That's why the term in usage has changed from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change", so that things like the fact that the US just had the coldest winter in decades .

Speaking of displaying your ignorance. Heat is the energy behind weather. As the average temperature around the globe rises, storms will be more frequent and of greater intensity (ie. hurricanes and typhons). The debate in the scientific world is whether global warming is casued by human action or part of a geological cycle. The fact that the average global temperature is increasing is well established. Climate models indicate that as the average global temperature rises, weather will become more severe (both colder and hotter). The world is not yet as warm as it was during the 11th century, we still have a ways to go. But when it gets there, I doubt all will be sweetness and light here in Canada as our prairies dry up and become deserts. Northern communites will suffer as the winter road system begins to fail. No doubt we will adapt to these changes and some will even be beneficial. But in the end it will cost money and cause a lot of economic hardship and displacement.