The Great Global Warming Swindle

[Lightbearer]

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

 

I've been wanting to post this for awhile, seeing the consensus on global warming and the lack of tolerance of anything contradictory to it.

 

I wanted to know your thoughts and opinions, and to ask everyone here to consider the idea that man-made global warming might be a lie. There is alot of talk about open-mindedness here, I hope you apply that concept to this issue.

[Piprus]

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

 

I've been wanting to post this for awhile, seeing the consensus on global warming and the lack of tolerance of anything contradictory to it.

 

I wanted to know your thoughts and opinions, and to ask everyone here to consider the idea that man-made global warming might be a lie. There is alot of talk about open-mindedness here, I hope you apply that concept to this issue.

Very timely that you posted this, LB. I'm not entirely convinced about the human aspect of global warming. Oh yeah, it's become an overnight mantra for some, and has elevated Al Gore almost to the status of a saint in the eyes of some, but I'm inclined to think we're seeing the cycles of nature at work. The most plausible explanation I've heard yet for the evidence of global warming is that global warming here is related to the cyclical activity of the sun. It's not a constant...solar radiation oscillates, which in turn causes the climate of the earth to cycle through periods of global warming and global cooling. And global cooling is far more dangerous for us than warming. (Can you say "Ice Age?") I've also heard that the period of global warming experienced in the middle ages led to the age of exploration and an unprecedented period of trade and prosperity culminating in the Renaissance. Prior to that, the preceding warming period led to the peak of the Roman Empire.

 

So it may not be so bad as the gloom crowd would have us believe, unless we allow the fanatics currently occupying the center stage to get the best of us and impose needless social and economic shackles on us. Doomsday has not arrived yet. For those who are worried about it, look before you leap. There's a lot of information out there that isn't making it to the evening news.

[Dave]

Humans are intelligent..... just not intelligent enough.

[Amanda]

Lightbearer, great topic! I've been wondering the same thing. Hey, I'm with minimizing pollution from fossil fuels, yet to blame the whole global warming on us... I don't know.

 

We've had 4 ice ages, and at least one time the axis of the earth shifted 50 degrees and the equator was glacial. 40 million years ago, Antartica was a mild forested landscape. More details on these kinds of events on this timeline here.

If we are contributing to some kind of "greenhouse" effect, I think most of it is coming from other countries. So what are we going to do about that? US may be one of the greatest consumers of oil, yet I've visited countries that the air pollution was unbelievable. Some years ago I visited Jakarta in Indonesia, and they certainly didn't have the antipollution devices on their means of transportation like we do! Exhaust poured out like black clouds! I'm sure there are many other countries like this too.

[♦ nivek ♦]

OMFG!! gL0BuLL WarMIN!!!!!

 

Might be one slight 'splination why the various reporters sound the same..

 

kFL

*********************

 

 

Pulling the wool

 

Andrew Bolt

 

March 28, 2007 12:00am

 

AFTER years of working for Rupert Murdoch, I'm coming clean.

 

You were right. I am being told what to write.

 

In fact, I've even been threatened with the law if I don't toe the line on global warming, which news outfits like ours now use to sell themselves to young readers.

 

"Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence - it is a crime against humanity, after all," mused a colleague, a Green.

 

But thankfully this threat came not from a Murdoch minion, but Margo Kingston, who is not my boss but merely an independent columnist with a fashionably totalitarian bent.

 

And it's indeed journalists like her, not media moguls, who have done most to bully and cajole colleagues into promoting the "right" views.

 

Murdoch, you see, has not once - in letter, conversation or wink - so much as hinted I should write this or that. Or, for that matter, told Jill Singer to see sense.

 

But influential fellow journalists can't stop trying to herd stragglers like me into the sheep-fold, and devote whole TV segments, radio chats, gossip columns and coffee sessions to the effort.

 

Much of the herding you never see. Like the hissing one conservative had to endure in walking through the newsroom. Like the way another conservative was assaulted at a black-tie media event by drunks enraged he was so . . . conservative.

 

Of course, some of us have broad shoulders and lovely colleagues, and biff as furiously as we're boffed.

 

But have you ever wondered why so many journalists sound so politically same-same?

 

I was sharply reminded of this by the column on Saturday of Michael Duffy, an engaging man who confessed he would cast a vote for the first time, in the NSW election. And guess for which lucky party?

 

Before you try, know this: Duffy's modest fame lately comes from having been hired by the ABC to be its token conservative.

 

The idea was that as a warrior of the "Right", he might in some small way balance the overwhelming Leftism of so many ABC presenters, which is why his weekly Radio National show is called Counterpoint.

 

It might now need a new title. The ABC's token "conservative" turns out not only to be a former anarchist and admiring biographer of crazed Labor leader Mark Latham, but after a couple of years with the ABC has given his first-ever vote to -- surprise! not! -- the Greens.

 

The ABC at last has just the conservative it always wanted. Or the one it finally wore down.

 

Of course, I expect Duffy's fine show will continue to be balanced. And that's what they all promise -- that whatever their leanings, they report things straight.

 

But see what they actually do, when the subject is close to their ideological heart.

 

That's right - when the subject is global warming.

 

Then their eyes are seared shut, stopping them from even seeing contrary arguments, let alone reporting them. Here, for example, is how the Sydney Morning Herald's environment writer, Wendy Frew, last week reported a sceptic's doubts:

 

A senior Federal Government minister has expressed serious doubts global warming has been caused by humans, relying on non-scientific material and discredited sources to back his claim . . ."

 

Gosh, that minister, Senator Nick Minchin, sure sounds like a crackpot.

 

But it turns out Minchin's "non-scientific material" was actually newspaper columns he'd sent someone about the research of physicist Henrik Svensmark, head of Denmark's Centre for Sun-Climate Research, who suspects the sun is to blame for much recent warming.

 

And Minchin's "discredited sources" was a long, scholarly review by prominent scientists, climate experts and economists.

 

Why did Frew call this report "discredited"? Because one of the 14 distinguished authors was on a committee of Melbourne's Institute of Public Affairs, whose many donors over the years have included oil and tobacco companies.

 

Which means not only that he's conflicted, suggests Frew, but so are his co-authors. No need to consider their arguments, then, and she doesn't.

 

Get enough journalists to repeat this malicious witchsniffery often enough and it's no wonder even Michael Duffy is driven to vote Greens.

 

And how often it is repeated. Want examples?

 

A Four Corners documentary last month falsely alleged that many of 60 experts who'd warned that claims of dangerous man-made warming were a bit hot had once worked for Big Tobacco, and suggested they were now on the take from Big Oil.

 

Then we had the Guardian's environment reporter dismiss the hit British documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, which put the sceptics' case.

 

"I didn't watch the program", David Adam boasted. "I quite like my television and didn't think it would work so well with a hurled plant pot nestling where the screen used to be."

 

Don't like. Won't look.

 

In fact, many environment reporters seem to share Adams' hatred of even the notion of balance.

 

As The Age explained of its own Melissa Fyfe: "She worries that the global warming issue has been distorted in some sections of the media. In the pursuit of balance, climate-change sceptics are so often approached for comment it seems there is a 50-50 split of scientific opinion."

 

Balance is at least one criticism you couldn't make of The Age, where Fyfe is now state news editor. Not one of her colleagues publicly dissents from the paper's messianic line on global warming.

 

It's much the same story at the ABC, whose chief science presenter is Robyn Williams, host of The Science Show and Ockham's Razor.

 

Williams has used his shows repeatedly to spread the gospel of catastrophic global warming, with guests even arguing for culling humans, and this month finally let on the first sceptic I can recall in a long time. But not before first calling him "shameless".

 

And, being that shameless heathen, I asked Williams if he truly believed warming would cause the seas to close over our heads: "I ask you, Robyn, 100 metres in the next century . . . do you really think that?"

 

Replied Williams, seriously: "It is possible, yes."

 

I mention this because Williams is our most influential science journalist, even once heading the Australian Science Communicators.

 

Yet even he is so unused to listening to counter arguments that he repeats the most Chicken Little nonsense without the slightest suspicion he could be contradicted. But as it happens, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts seas to rise this century not by 100 metres but by 59cm at worst.

 

And when Williams got a sea-level alarmist onto his show last Saturday to back him up, Prof Jason Overpeck of Arizona University had some bad news.

 

He said he feared the seas might actually rise not by 100 metres but just six, and even then "it will take centuries". Perhaps even "millennia".

 

Williams will survive the embarrassment, of course. Which journalist will dare rebuke him, when even the ABC's one conservative now votes for the Greens?

 

Media Watch, you say? After all, its host, Monica Attard, did tell me last year she wasn't gunning just for sceptics: "Media Watch would take to task the 'green preachers' if their claims were found to be either baseless or based upon recanted research."

 

But in more than a decade of looking, it hasn't found a single such example, and I doubt Attard will start with "100 Metres" Williams.

 

Yet if I've made a single mistake in this column, ouch. Be sure she'll tell you.

 

Unless, that is, I repent and find Gore. And so we each of us are driven to do a Duffy. They may say Murdoch orders, but the call of the journalists' pack is what calls the wanderers home.

 

Join Andrew at blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt

[RedPillAddict]

If you guys want to remain blind, and not admit that Global Warming is a part of all of our lives...then that is fine. But, don't come crying to me when you die and arrive in El Nino, and Global Warming is standing there to judge you. You have been warned!

 

 

wait a sec....

 

Global Warming Bullshit......GWB

George Walker Bush...........GWB

 

Coincidence? I think not!

[Mongo]

I find the temperature and CO2 emission graphs quite convincing and fairly straightforward.

 

If we argue that it is part of a natural cycle, we are compelled to ignore the question of coincidence which I find hard to believe it is.

 

Could the global warming model be flawed? Of course it could. It is possible that the a significant rise in temperature will cause little harm... maybe.

 

The same could be said for the ozone hole. We reduced CFCs and now it has stablized. The graphs show a correlation but maybe it was just a conincidence and maybe it wasn't such a big deal to have a hole in it anyway... maybe.

 

I'm quite happy not knowing whether scientests have made a mistake over (under) the ozone hole. I don't want to test it out.

 

Neither do I want to test out global warming. It is not like we are completely guessing.

 

Science has some pretty sophistocated tools. We are able to correlate differences in ocean floor silt to Greenland ice core samples and match that to "super" volcanoes of thousands of years ago. That's pretty slick shit. When these things kick creationist ass, we're all jumping up and down with glee.

 

Sooo.... if evidence that supports the flipping of the magnetic poles were posited as evidence of global warming, I'm sure that would be questioned too. After all... it is a computer model that demonstrates that phenomenon... not "real" evidence. But since it doesn't and only kicks young earth creationist butt, we can all accept the science.

 

I've simply been listening to the scientests for a long time and while they makes mistakes, I find far fewer flaws in their counsel than that of most any other category of people. Journalists, politicians, business people or the average Joe who finds "god" a more "reasonable" answer to where we came from than a 4 billion year tale of solar system evolution.

 

Although I'm willing to listen to evidence to the contrary, all I hear is theories of where science "might" have gone wrong.

 

There are very few things that one can't theorize an error or flaw. It is really quite easy. What is really really really hard to do is create a theory like global warming AND have it receive acceptance without solid evidence. That truely would be an amazing coincidence.

 

So although I believe science may have yet made a erred projection of the affects of global warming, I find it difficult to believe they are blatently wrong.

 

Mongo

[Amethyst]

I think there is global warming. I even think that humans are at least partly responsible for it. However, I'm unconvinced that there is anything that humans can do to stop it.

 

There are too few people who will do anything, so what people actually do (such as recycling and switching to lower polluting cars or taking public transportation instead) is going to be offset by all the ones that don't do anything.

 

And it's impossible to simply convince every human being around the world to do all the things necessary that it would take to actually stop global warming. There are just too many people who don't do anything. In other words, I think that trying to stop it is futile.

 

IMO, we are better off preparing to survive whatever comes as a result of it.

[Mongo]

I think there is global warming. I even think that humans are at least partly responsible for it. However, I'm unconvinced that there is anything that humans can do to stop it.

 

There are too few people who will do anything, so what people actually do (such as recycling and switching to lower polluting cars or taking public transportation instead) is going to be offset by all the ones that don't do anything.

 

And it's impossible to simply convince every human being around the world to do all the things necessary that it would take to actually stop global warming. There are just too many people who don't do anything. In other words, I think that trying to stop it is futile.

 

IMO, we are better off preparing to survive whatever comes as a result of it.

 

Dang Amethyst. You're one smart broad.

 

I agree fully with your assessment of the human race.

 

I laugh at the Pollyannas who support Keyoto which can never ever work better than OPEC which is rife with cheaters.

 

That said... there is nothing like a global crisis to bring about one world government . Perhaps a world wide dictatorship or perhaps a coalition of dictators.

 

The first solution people will gravitate to is war. Or will it be god? Or will global warming bring about the ultimate religious orgasm - a world wide theocracy curtesy of a sword weilding super-cleric?

 

Wouldn't that be ironic... you know, the very religious people who were last to admit there was a thing as global warming become so convinced that only they could solve the problem that they band together to stage a world wide coup-d'etat. After all, it was the rabidly consuming atheists that created the problem wasn't it?

 

OK time to come back from the future.

 

Mongo

[pandora]

I think there is global warming. I even think that humans are at least partly responsible for it. However, I'm unconvinced that there is anything that humans can do to stop it.

 

There are too few people who will do anything, so what people actually do (such as recycling and switching to lower polluting cars or taking public transportation instead) is going to be offset by all the ones that don't do anything.

 

And it's impossible to simply convince every human being around the world to do all the things necessary that it would take to actually stop global warming. There are just too many people who don't do anything. In other words, I think that trying to stop it is futile.

 

IMO, we are better off preparing to survive whatever comes as a result of it.

 

That's depressing. But I gotta admit it's realistic.

[Dave]

If you guys want to remain blind, and not admit that Global Warming is a part of all of our lives...then that is fine. But, don't come crying to me when you die and arrive in El Nino, and Global Warming is standing there to judge you. You have been warned!

Have you ever tried to have discussion with a creationist? It's no different than talking to the anti-global warming crowd. It's no use. I've given up trying. I've given up recycling because someone that doesn't know what they're talking about convinces ten others not to. I'm going to go out and get a gas guzzler to replace my high mpg car. I try to save gas and some fool goes out and buys a fleet of HumVees. The really bad stuff will happen in about 25 years. I'll be dead by then so the hell with it. Why bother?

[Dave]

I think there is global warming. I even think that humans are at least partly responsible for it. However, I'm unconvinced that there is anything that humans can do to stop it.

I wish I could agree with you. There are just too many ostriches.

 

There are too few people who will do anything, so what people actually do (such as recycling and switching to lower polluting cars or taking public transportation instead) is going to be offset by all the ones that don't do anything.

So why bother? I go through all that trouble just to have it undone?

 

And it's impossible to simply convince every human being around the world to do all the things necessary that it would take to actually stop global warming. There are just too many people who don't do anything. In other words, I think that trying to stop it is futile.

 

IMO, we are better off preparing to survive whatever comes as a result of it.

I'll agree with that.... but I'll be dead in 25 years which should be just before the oil runs out and Florida goes under water.

[Vixentrox]

I'm for pollution control/clean-up for it's own sake, not becuase of this supposed global warming. Earth managed to have many periods of global warming/cooling without the help of humans before. Do modern humans contribute to it? Probably some. Would it still happen even if every nation on earth made every effort to clean up their act? Yes it would.

[Vigile]

I'll agree with that.... but I'll be dead in 25 years which should be just before the oil runs out and Florida goes under water.

 

I agree with you Dave that trying to reason with those who claim scientific claims are nonsense is akin to arguing with a creationist. But Florida under water in 25 years? I find that hard to swallow. Do you have any reliable projections from scientists who make this prediction?

[Amethyst]

The first solution people will gravitate to is war. Or will it be god? Or will global warming bring about the ultimate religious orgasm - a world wide theocracy curtesy of a sword weilding super-cleric?

 

Wouldn't that be ironic... you know, the very religious people who were last to admit there was a thing as global warming become so convinced that only they could solve the problem that they band together to stage a world wide coup-d'etat. After all, it was the rabidly consuming atheists that created the problem wasn't it?

 

I think it'll be both religion and war, much like it is now, with religious extremists first causing problems abroad, and then bringing them closer to home.

[Amethyst]

There are too few people who will do anything, so what people actually do (such as recycling and switching to lower polluting cars or taking public transportation instead) is going to be offset by all the ones that don't do anything.

So why bother? I go through all that trouble just to have it undone?

 

My point exactly. The ones who don't do anything screw it up for everyone who actually does something, and yet you can't force them to do something. While I agree with the effort on the face of it, I don't think that anything we as humans can do is going to stop global warming. I think it's already too late.

 

Save the ostriches if you want, but if the global warming people are right and mass extinctions eventually happen, it won't matter.

 

IMO, it would be better to figure out how to colonize other worlds to get humanity spread out more, instead of putting all of our eggs in the proverbial basket.

[Amanda]

I'll agree with that.... but I'll be dead in 25 years which should be just before the oil runs out and Florida goes under water.

Florida isn't going under that fast! I live in the interior of Florida, and I won't have ocean front property in my life time, nor my children's, nor theirs...

 

I understand the biggest problem with global warming is its effect to the currents in the ocean, which moderate global tempreatures, determining what our climates are. I saw a documentary that showed extended winter weather up north and devastating most of our crops. I forget all the details.

 

I remember when they were saying aerosol sprays were damaging our ozone layer. A lot of products went to roll ons and pump sprays. Yet it seems no one mentions that any more. Does anyone else remember all that?

 

Doesn't everyone want to keep the planet as pollution free as possible, for our children and their children? I've heard it takes a plastic grocery bag 300 years to decompose, is that true?

[HuaiDan]

I remember when they were saying aerosol sprays were damaging our ozone layer. A lot of products went to roll ons and pump sprays. Yet it seems no one mentions that any more. Does anyone else remember all that?

 

It's because CFC regulations were put into place and the ozone layer depletion was mitigated to a certain extent. The news doesn't report on the airplanes that land safely. Does anybody really miss CFC's? Didn't think so.

 

A point I want to make is this: even if it is a natural trend, then does it mean it's nothing to worry about? You'd be a fool to think so. Glaciers in Greenland, the arctic, and the antarctic ARE melting at an alarming rate. You don't think Florida is at risk? Just ask the folks in Venice, Italy if rising sea levels are nothing to worry about. Even if it is completely natural, it's still a huge catastrophe in the making.

As it were, I really don't think it is a natural cycle. The correlation between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature rise is quite straightforward, as is the recorded elevation of atmospheric CO2 levels since the beginning of the industrial revolution, as is the actual documented oceanic and atmospheric temperature rise. Coincidence my ass.

 

Those of you here who believe GW is non-existent or a natural phenomenon seem to be taking a libertarian, government-get-off-my-ass attitude toward the issue. I have no love for government either, however politicizing an issue that requires extensive scientific inquiry is as foolish as would be turning it into a religious issue.

 

Allow me to analogize. The police can arrest someone on probable cause, and it's fairly obvious to say an arrest based on probable cause is not a conviction. An arrest is merely the beginning of a procedure whereby evidence is collected and deliberated to determine guilt or innocence.

Back to global warming. Something is running afoul with the environment which will have disastrous consequences if left unchecked, it can't be denied.The probable cause is in, folks, but we need to collect evidence and deliberate before we can reach a solid conclusion on the identity of culprit. To say it's a non-issue we should just forget is pleading from ignorance.

[Dave]

I agree with you Dave that trying to reason with those who claim scientific claims are nonsense is akin to arguing with a creationist. But Florida under water in 25 years? I find that hard to swallow. Do you have any reliable projections from scientists who make this prediction?

No, it's just a number I pulled out of the air. This story that just came out today says 2080. Here's a nice National Geographic article. None of the articles I scanned gave a date. Just by the warming that has gone on so far, which is nothing compared to what's coming, the oceans have risen 4 to 8 inches.

[Dave]

My point exactly. The ones who don't do anything screw it up for everyone who actually does something, and yet you can't force them to do something. While I agree with the effort on the face of it, I don't think that anything we as humans can do is going to stop global warming. I think it's already too late.

It took us about 150 years to screw it up, it will take longer than that to fix it. The carbon cycle can take up to 100 years and by the time we cut emissions there will be so much carbon and too few recyclers that that time frame could double.

 

Save the ostriches if you want, but if the global warming people are right and mass extinctions eventually happen, it won't matter.

A self fulfilling prophecy.

 

IMO, it would be better to figure out how to colonize other worlds to get humanity spread out more, instead of putting all of our eggs in the proverbial basket.

The best we could do now is multi generational ships with no where to go.

[Dave]

Florida isn't going under that fast! I live in the interior of Florida, and I won't have ocean front property in my life time, nor my children's, nor theirs...

 

I understand the biggest problem with global warming is its effect to the currents in the ocean, which moderate global tempreatures, determining what our climates are.

That's right. The thermohaline circulation. When that is disrupted, or stopped, the shit is going to hit the fan. Ice caps will melt and Florida will be gone.

 

I remember when they were saying aerosol sprays were damaging our ozone layer. A lot of products went to roll ons and pump sprays. Yet it seems no one mentions that any more. Does anyone else remember all that?

That's part of the problem today. People no longer think about the problems we created in the past. People look at the clear skies today and forget about the smog of the 60's. Why is there not much smog anymore? Thank those awful, idiotic, brainless, ecofreaks that forced the government to force the auto companies to clean up their cars emissions.

 

Doesn't everyone want to keep the planet as pollution free as possible, for our children and their children? I've heard it takes a plastic grocery bag 300 years to decompose, is that true?

It may be true. I helped clean up an old dump site. Someone pulled out a newspaper that was over 100 years old. Under certain anaerobic conditions, nothing will decompose. But don't worry. Those bags use up about 12 million barrels of oil/year to make. We'll be running out of oil by the end of the century. (I say sooner.)

[Ouroboros]

Talking about running out of resources, some very specific metals needed for production of electronics (computers, cellphones, TV ...) are also running out, so we will see a very strong move into recycling of electronics the next 10 years. Because of the simple reason that ... we have to, to make more stuff.

[Dave]

Talking about running out of resources, some very specific metals needed for production of electronics (computers, cellphones, TV ...) are also running out, so we will see a very strong move into recycling of electronics the next 10 years. Because of the simple reason that ... we have to, to make more stuff.

There is also going to be more people wanting more stuff.

[Alice]

I've given up recycling because someone that doesn't know what they're talking about convinces ten others not to. I'm going to go out and get a gas guzzler to replace my high mpg car. I try to save gas and some fool goes out and buys a fleet of HumVees. The really bad stuff will happen in about 25 years. I'll be dead by then so the hell with it. Why bother?

 

I really wasn't sure if you are really saying this or if it's a form of humour inaccessible to me! You don't mean this do you?! Hope not (and forgive me if you were actually pointing out that one shouldn't give up!)

 

I started recycling ten years ago when I was the weirdo eco freak amoungst my friends and peers. Today all but a couple of my friends recycle - its easier these days because the council join in and collect items from home - things are changing. The more people who recycle the more useful and productive it becomes. It gets people thinking for a start. Reverse the trend - convince twenty people to incorporate recycling into their lifestyle!

 

When I started recycling it was a pointless exercise in terms of reducing waste - my little absent contribution to land fill wouldn't have been noticed but I do think I was part of a small sea change that has swelled to something almost significant in this nation and one day soon will grow into something that can make a difference. That's why bother

 

 

The probable cause is in, folks, but we need to collect evidence and deliberate before we can reach a solid conclusion on the identity of culprit.

 

Loved your whole post

[Dave]

I really wasn't sure if you are really saying this or if it's a form of humour inaccessible to me! You don't mean this do you?! Hope not (and forgive me if you were actually pointing out that one shouldn't give up!)

No, sadly, no humor. Now I only recycle because I have to haul my garbage to the dump myself. I have to pay per can and if I take out the recycling it's much cheaper. There are far too many people out there that actually believe that this whole global warming fiasco is purely political. They absolutely cannot understand. Anything anyone says that might be slightly perceived as "environmental" is automatically seen by them as absolutely wrong. Like I said, it's like arguing with a creationist. They have the same mental blocks and complete ignorance of science. I'm not going to waste my time trying to do good for the future generations when it is just being undone by these people.