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Alex213
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Global warming: The Three degrees....
#5517767 - 04/15/06 12:55 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Not the female singing group unfortunately...
Global temperatures will rise by an average of 3C due to climate change and cause catastrophic damage around the world unless governments take urgent action, according to the UK government's chief scientist.
In a stark warning issued yesterday Sir David King said that a rise of this magnitude would cause famine and drought and threaten millions of lives.
It would also cause a worldwide drop in cereal crops of between 20 and 400m tonnes, put 400 million more people at risk of hunger, and put up to 3 billion people at risk of flooding and without access to fresh water supplies.
Few ecosystems could adapt to such a temperature change, equivalent to a level of carbon dioxide of 550 parts per million in the atmosphere, which would result in the destruction of half the world's nature reserves and a fifth of coastal wetlands Many of Professor King's predictions come from a report published by the UK's Hadley Centre, a world leader in climate change modelling, called Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change.
Tony Blair wants governments around the world to set a target of a rise of no more than 2C - equivalent to 450ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere - in global temperatures. This has already been agreed as an upper limit by the EU but Prof King said that this agreement would be difficult, given the refusal of the United States to cut emissions and those of China and India rising as those countries develop.
Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said that despondency was not the answer. "George Bush won't be in office forever. When he's gone there will be a change of policy inside the United States.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1754276,00.html
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Annapurna1
liberal pussy

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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5517806 - 04/15/06 01:09 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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unless bush starts a "nucular" ice-age first...
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"anchor blocks counteract the process of pontiprobation..while omalean globes regulize the pressure"...
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Phred
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5518080 - 04/15/06 06:04 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998
By Bob Carter (Filed: 09/04/2006)
For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.
Does something not strike you as odd here? That industrial carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of earth's recent decadal-scale temperature changes doesn't seem at all odd to many thousands of independent scientists. They have long appreciated - ever since the early 1990s, when the global warming bandwagon first started to roll behind the gravy train of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - that such short-term climate fluctuations are chiefly of natural origin. Yet the public appears to be largely convinced otherwise. How is this possible?
Since the early 1990s, the columns of many leading newspapers and magazines, worldwide, have carried an increasing stream of alarmist letters and articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as "if", "might", "could", "probably", "perhaps", "expected", "projected" or "modelled" - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense.
The problem here is not that of climate change per se, but rather that of the sophisticated scientific brainwashing that has been inflicted on the public, bureaucrats and politicians alike. Governments generally choose not to receive policy advice on climate from independent scientists. Rather, they seek guidance from their own self-interested science bureaucracies and senior advisers, or from the IPCC itself. No matter how accurate it may be, cautious and politically non-correct science advice is not welcomed in Westminster, and nor is it widely reported.
Marketed under the imprimatur of the IPCC, the bladder-trembling and now infamous hockey-stick diagram that shows accelerating warming during the 20th century - a statistical construct by scientist Michael Mann and co-workers from mostly tree ring records - has been a seminal image of the climate scaremongering campaign. Thanks to the work of a Canadian statistician, Stephen McIntyre, and others, this graph is now known to be deeply flawed.
There are other reasons, too, why the public hears so little in detail from those scientists who approach climate change issues rationally, the so-called climate sceptics. Most are to do with intimidation against speaking out, which operates intensely on several parallel fronts.
First, most government scientists are gagged from making public comment on contentious issues, their employing organisations instead making use of public relations experts to craft carefully tailored, frisbee-science press releases. Second, scientists are under intense pressure to conform with the prevailing paradigm of climate alarmism if they wish to receive funding for their research. Third, members of the Establishment have spoken declamatory words on the issue, and the kingdom's subjects are expected to listen.
On the alarmist campaign trail, the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, is thus reported as saying that global warming is so bad that Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century. Warming devotee and former Chairman of Shell, Lord [Ron] Oxburgh, reportedly agrees with another rash statement of King's, that climate change is a bigger threat than terrorism. And goodly Archbishop Rowan Williams, who self-evidently understands little about the science, has warned of "millions, billions" of deaths as a result of global warming and threatened Mr Blair with the wrath of the climate God unless he acts. By betraying the public's trust in their positions of influence, so do the great and good become the small and silly.
Two simple graphs provide needed context, and exemplify the dynamic, fluctuating nature of climate change. The first is a temperature curve for the last six million years, which shows a three-million year period when it was several degrees warmer than today, followed by a three-million year cooling trend which was accompanied by an increase in the magnitude of the pervasive, higher frequency, cold and warm climate cycles. During the last three such warm (interglacial) periods, temperatures at high latitudes were as much as 5 degrees warmer than today's. The second graph shows the average global temperature over the last eight years, which has proved to be a period of stasis.
The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown. We are fortunate that our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But for more than 90 per cent of the last two million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is far more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming.
The British Government urgently needs to recast the sources from which it draws its climate advice. The shrill alarmism of its public advisers, and the often eco-fundamentalist policy initiatives that bubble up from the depths of the Civil Service, have all long since been detached from science reality. Intern-ationally, the IPCC is a deeply flawed organisation, as acknowledged in a recent House of Lords report, and the Kyoto Protocol has proved a costly flop. Clearly, the wrong horses have been backed.
As mooted recently by Tony Blair, perhaps the time has come for Britain to join instead the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), whose six member countries are committed to the development of new technologies to improve environmental outcomes. There, at least, some real solutions are likely to emerge for improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution.
Informal discussions have already begun about a new AP6 audit body, designed to vet rigorously the science advice that the Partnership receives, including from the IPCC. Can Britain afford not to be there?
? Prof Bob Carter is a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland, engaged in paleoclimate research
Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main....09/ixworld.html
Phred
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Alex213
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Phred]
#5518094 - 04/15/06 06:11 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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An op-ed from Bob Carter? Does anyone still take this idiot seriously?
He's comprehensively demolished here:
http://timlambert.org/category/science/bobcarter/
Carter offers up the usual misrepresentations of the science: urban heat islands contaminate the surface record (no they don?t), equivocation about the word ?consensus?, the ?hockey stick? is broken (no), ice cores show that warming precedes increases in C02 (only partly), the IPCC summary does not reflect the body of the report (yes it does).
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Phred
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5518095 - 04/15/06 06:11 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Climate of Fear Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.
BY RICHARD LINDZEN Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?
The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.
But 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.
To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming.
If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.
So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation.
All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.
Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.
And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.
Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.
M. Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.
Link: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220
Phred
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Alex213
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Phred]
#5518108 - 04/15/06 06:18 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Well that's two infamous global warming deniers you've come up with. Do you have any more?
For anyone who doesn't know, Lindzen charges oil and coal interests $2500 a day for his consulting services, in 1991 Western Fuels paid for his trip to the senate and a speech he wrote denying global warming was underwritten by OPEC.
Take him with the vast amount of salt he deserves.
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Phred
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5518116 - 04/15/06 06:24 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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What's your problem? These guys are experts.
Phred
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zappaisgod
horrid asshole

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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Phred]
#5518121 - 04/15/06 06:25 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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They are shills for the Rovian Oil Empire.
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Alex213
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Phred]
#5518124 - 04/15/06 06:26 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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No, they are very well paid stooges for the oil and fuel industry.
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sparks8
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5518283 - 04/15/06 08:43 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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"In the past year, three landmark reports have called into question the Bush Administration's use of science, charging the Administration with regularly censoring, suppressing and distorting scientific analysis from federal agencies and undermining the quality of scientific advisory panels"
http://www.scientistsandengineersforchange.org/integrity.php
"Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him," the story of NASA's top climate change scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Hansen maintained that "officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists."
http://www.pbs.org/now/science/scienceandpolitics.html
-------------------- buy the ticket, take the ride
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Luddite
I watch Fox News


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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: sparks8]
#5518338 - 04/15/06 09:08 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Global warming cyclical, says climate expert
By Philip Hopkins June 13, 2005
Carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas and has helped produce the "green" world agricultural revolution, according to an Australian climate expert.
Rob Carter, from James Cook University in Townsville, said the rising level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in recent decades had boosted agricultural crop yields.
"Carbon dioxide is the best aerial fertiliser we know about," he told the Victorian Farmers Federation in Morwell late last week.
Professor Carter, a marine geologist, is research professor in the university's Marine Geophysical Laboratory.
He said the Kyoto Protocol would cost billions, even trillions, of dollars and would have a devastating effect on the economies of countries that signed it. "It will deliver no significant cooling - less than 0.02 degrees Celsius by 2050," he said.
"The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been the main scaremonger for the global warming lobby . . . Fatally, the IPCC is a political, not a scientific body."
To understand climate change, it was necessary to look at the longer record, he said.
Through an examination of material taken from deep below the ocean floor, marine geologists could study layers of earth's history similar to the way a tree's age could be determined by tree rings.
"We are in a relatively warm period today," he said. "But 20,000 years ago, it was as cold as it has ever been - that was the peak of the last glaciation."
Professor Carter said that over 2.5 million years there had been 50 glacial and interglacial periods. Of the past 400,000 years, the earth had been colder for 90 per cent of the time, with briefer warmer periods of about 10,000 years.
He said the earth was now at the end of a warmer period, and reputable climate-change scientists agreed that the climate was going to get colder. The debate was whether it would take tens, hundreds or even thousands of years to occur.
On a shorter time scale, Professor Carter said the earth had broadly got warmer in the modern period, from 1860 to 2000, although it had also been warmer in Roman and medieval times. There had also been a Little Ice Age between 1550 and the 19th century, when the Thames used to freeze over.
A cooling trend took place between 1940 and 1970, when temperatures began to rise again, reaching a peak in 1998. "This coincided with the biggest El Nino in the 20th century," he said.
However, research by the climate research unit at East Anglia University in Britain had shown that the average global temperature had declined since 1998.
Professor Carter said greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide were not causing the earth to warm up. On both annual and geological (up to 100,000-year) time scales, changes in temperature preceded changes in carbon dioxide, he said. This was true even in the famous 1960-1991 graph showing rising amounts of carbon dioxide.
Professor Carter said that without the natural greenhouse effect, the average earth temperature would be minus 18 degrees Celsius, compared with the average of plus 15 Celsius that had nurtured the development of life and civilisation.
Water vapour made up about 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect.
Carbon dioxide was a minor greenhouse gas, responsible for 3.6 per cent of the total greenhouse effect, he said. Of this, only 0.12 per cent, or 0.036 degrees Celsius, could be attributed to human activity.
Climate had always changed and "always will", he said. "The only sensible thing to do about climate change is to prepare for it."
http://theage.com.au/news/Science/Global...8514924793.html
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Alex213
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Luddite]
#5518659 - 04/15/06 11:12 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Phred already posted this once. Bob Carter is a notorious global warming denier.
Incidentally he isn't a "climate change expert", he is a marine geologist with a side interest in climate change.
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zappaisgod
horrid asshole

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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5518941 - 04/15/06 12:33 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Everybody who denies global warming is a "global warming denier" and thus not credible in Alex's dogma.
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Alex213
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: zappaisgod]
#5518998 - 04/15/06 12:48 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Especially the ones being paid by the oil industry.
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gregorio
Too Damn Old


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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5519711 - 04/15/06 10:52 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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I believe that global warming is taking place, or should I say, there does seem to be some kind of global climate change taking place.
But I think it has more to do with the sun burning warmer and the increase in the intensity of solar storms than anything else.
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blacksabbathrulz

Registered: 05/22/02
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5521040 - 04/16/06 01:39 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
Alex213 said: Well that's two infamous global warming deniers you've come up with. Do you have any more?
For anyone who doesn't know, Lindzen charges oil and coal interests $2500 a day for his consulting services, in 1991 Western Fuels paid for his trip to the senate and a speech he wrote denying global warming was underwritten by OPEC.
Take him with the vast amount of salt he deserves.
Can you please show me your degree from MIT?
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Alex213
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If you want to believe a guy being paid by the oil industry then that's your decision.
Just don't expect others to believe it too.
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zappaisgod
horrid asshole

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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5521282 - 04/16/06 02:46 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Which guy is that?
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Alex213
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: zappaisgod]
#5523260 - 04/17/06 01:12 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Read the thread.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero


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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5523569 - 04/17/06 06:28 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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> If you want to believe a guy being paid by the oil industry then that's your decision.
So instead, I should believe a guy being paid by the environmental groups? Seems to be a double standard here.
I have a pretty simple system for calibrating my bullshit meter. I don't pay attention to pro or con viewpoint. I don't even pay attention to who payed for the study. Instead, I look for a few key words... "global climate change" versus "global warming" for example. Nobody knows what the climate is doing any more than anybody knows what Iran is planning with respect to their uranium enrichment program. We aren't even certain that the climate is changing, though it does seem to be. When I see somebody use "global climate change," I know that this person is keeping an open mind rather than being led by a preconception.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Alex213
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Seuss]
#5524361 - 04/17/06 11:13 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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So instead, I should believe a guy being paid by the environmental groups? Seems to be a double standard here.
No double standard. The article I posted was by the UK governments chief scientist. Nothing to do with environmental groups. The article Phred posted was by a guy paid by the oil companies.
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gluke bastid
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Seuss]
#5524799 - 04/17/06 12:50 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
Seuss said: > If you want to believe a guy being paid by the oil industry then that's your decision.
So instead, I should believe a guy being paid by the environmental groups? Seems to be a double standard here.
That's the problem with this debate for most of us (myself included) who aren't scientists. Global warming (if it exists) is a scientific phenomenon that is observable only to those who study it, so we just have to make a decision which scientists we want to listen to. I mean, just look at this thread. Phred found a couple of articles stating global warming doesn't exist, but Phred can't prove with his own words that it doesn't exist, just as Alex can't prove with his words that it does exist.
Having said that, there are some things to acknowledge. First of all, no scientist will argue that the greenhouse effect exists. If they do, they aren't scientists. The greenhouse effect is what keeps our planet warm. If we didn't have an atmosphere, we would be a frozen hunk of ice. Secondly, no scientist will argue that increased levels of CO2 (the primary greenhouse gas and the primary gas released by the burning of fossil fuels) in the atmosphere will result in a warmer temperature.
What is under dispute is this: Are humans burning so much fossil fuel that that we are causing global warming? And if so, is the ecosystem's ability to process C02 being overwhelmed? And if so, are we in danger of irrepairably damaging our ecosystem, or creating catastrophic climate change that could have dire consequences?
These are the questions that are under dispute by a wide array of scientists, politicians and everyone else. And for obvious reasons. They bring up issues that deal with a lot more than just science.
I don't know if catastrophic global climate change is imminent, but I still support the ideas put forth by scientists, ecologists and politicans that believe it is. Namely, that we need to switch over from unsustainable fossil fuels that will eventually run out and that we need to keep fighting wars in the middle east over, to renewable energy sources that are available in our own backyard, cause harm to no one, save the country money, are more efficient and less costly than fossil fuels. Seems obvious to me.
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Society in every form is a blessing, but government at its best is but a necessary evil - Thomas Paine
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero


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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: gluke bastid]
#5525002 - 04/17/06 01:26 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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> No double standard. The article I posted was by the UK governments chief scientist.
A real winner, too. He has been given money by Greenpeace... oh wait, no double standard.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/murray200407230903.asp:
Quote:
The scene was a scientific workshop set up to discuss the science of global warming. It took place in a non-Western country and was convened by the country's Academy of Sciences. Delegates came from all over the world. Yet the delegation from one major Western power behaved in a most undiplomatic fashion. The way the science was being presented was inconvenient to their political agenda, so they tried to get the scientists they disagreed with silenced. The organizers refused, so the delegation went to its government to exert political pressure. The organizers still refused, so the delegation disrupted the conference. When it became apparent they weren't going to get their way, they walked out. The chairman of the conference told the press that the leader of the disruptive delegation "had brought several scientists along with him and he insisted that the program should include among the speakers only those scientists and no other. So, he came over, selected scientists at his discretion, scientists who were to be given the floor in his opinion and scientists who were to be denied an opportunity to speak." A top official of the host government commented, "For some participants the main goal was the search for the truth, understanding of real processes. Other people had the task of disrupting the seminar, so that other people who were seeking the truth could not do so."
Yet another example of arrogant America disrupting the world's attempts to solve the climate change program? No. The delegation in question was that of the United Kingdom, and the conference was that held last week in Moscow, hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The British delegation was led by Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to Her Majesty's government. Sir David has gone on record as saying that, "Global warming is worse than terrorism." As far as Sir David and Tony Blair's government is concerned, there should be no need for any further scientific debate on global warming. They have taken the scientific consensus that global warming is happening and cheerfully conflated it with the debatable argument that it will be catastrophic for mankind unless we suppress energy use now.
The religious fervor with which Tony Blair's government is acting on this belief has many Britons unnerved. Dr. David Bellamy, one of the titans of the British environmental movement, wrote in the Daily Mail that he considers global warming alarmism "poppycock." Analysts predict a 40 percent rise in electricity prices as a result of the government's energy suppression policies. British manufacturers foresee having to put thousands out of work as they lose out in competitiveness to overseas suppliers. The Times's economics editor has written that the environmentalists pushing these policies "are like the medieval monks who favored self-flagellation as the road to virtue. For a Government to enshrine such thinking in policy is truly perverse."
In equally medieval fashion, adherents of the environmentalist religion have launched an inquisition against scientific views that they consider heretical. Hence, Sir David's outrageous behavior at the Moscow conference. On learning of the program arranged by the Russian Academy, he proposed a different program that would censor the voices of scientists who do not believe global warming is a worse threat to the world than terrorism. Such delegates included Paul Reiter of the Paris-based Pasteur Institute, who presented the predominant view of the world's malaria experts that global warming is not a major factor in the increasing incidence of vector-borne diseases.
Sir David even got British foreign secretary Jack Straw to intervene on his behalf. It did no good. The Russian Academy, used to seeing dissent crushed for political means, refused to kowtow to Sir David's demands. So, in the words of Russian economic adviser Andrei Illarionov, "Other attempts were made to disrupt the seminar. At least four times during the course of the seminar ugly scenes were staged that prevented the seminar from proceeding normally. As a result we lost at least four hours of working time in order to try to solve these problems." The disruption was serious enough that at the press conference one questioner asked why the security guards did not handle the situation.
Sir David apparently walked out with his delegation in mid-answer to one question. Commenting on this display, Illarionov said, "It is not for us to give an assessment to what happened, but in our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government, and the reputation of the title 'Sir' has sustained heavy damage."
If Americans had behaved this way, the world would be full of stories charging America with arrogance, boorishness, and disdain for the spirit of free inquiry. Yet Sir David King continues on his way, the Torquemada of the global-warming inquisition.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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blaze2
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Seuss]
#5525266 - 04/17/06 02:26 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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global warming isnt going to make it that much hotter, because once the ice melts and shuts down teh gulf stream things are going to get colder not warmer. Peace
blaze2
-------------------- "Religion without science is blind, Science without religion is lame." Albert Einstein "peace is not maintained through force it is acheived through intelligence." Albert Einstein "Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." Thomas Jefferson "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." --Thomas Jefferson
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Alex213
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Seuss]
#5528206 - 04/18/06 02:34 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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A real winner, too. He has been given money by Greenpeace... oh wait, no double standard.
I wouldn't take what Iain Murray says too seriously. He's renowned as being barking mad.
Where does it say Greenpeace paid King by the way?
The religious fervor with which Tony Blair's government is acting on this belief has many Britons unnerved
This is laughable. Blair has miserably failed to meet any of his emissions targets and is now pretty much saying he won't do anything but wait for technology to save us. If anything the british public are alarmed that Blair isn't doing anything.
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Seuss
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5528309 - 04/18/06 04:48 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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> Where does it say Greenpeace paid King by the way?
On greenpeace.org.uk ... they paid him to give a lecture on global warming.
> I wouldn't take what Iain Murray says too seriously. He's renowned as being barking mad.
Because he doesn't agree with King? How about something from the Guardian... surely you trust them? 
Quote:
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 25th October 2005
I report this with sadness: Sir David King has lost his bottle. Until a few weeks ago, the chief scientific adviser looked to me like one of the few brave souls in the British government. In an article in Science at the beginning of last year, he argued that ?climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today ? more serious even than the threat of terrorism? and criticised the Bush administration for ?failing to take up the challenge?(1). In response, he was viciously attacked by the Exxon-sponsored climate change denier Myron Ebell(2). Being viciously attacked by Myron Ebell is something to which all self-respecting scientists should aspire.
Last month he was attacked again, and this time he deserved it. At a meeting of climate change specialists, Sir David announced that a ?reasonable? target for stabilising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 550 parts of the gas per million parts of air. It would be ?politically unrealistic?, he said, to demand anything lower(3).
Simon Retallack, from the Institute for Public Policy Research, stood up and reminded Sir David what his job was. As chief scientist, his duty is not to represent political reality ? there are plenty of advisers schooled in that art ? but to represent scientific reality. Retallack?s own work, based on the latest science, shows that at 550 parts per million the chances of preventing more than two degrees of global warming are just 10-20%(4). To raise them to 80%, carbon concentrations will have to be stabilised at 400 parts. Two degrees is the point beyond which most climate scientists predict catastrophe: several key ecosystems are likely to flip into runaway feedback; the biosphere becomes a net source of carbon; global food production is clobbered and two billion people face the risk of drought. All very reasonable, I?m sure.
Sir David replied that if he recommended a lower limit, he would lose credibility with the government. As far as I was concerned, his credibility had just disappeared without trace. By shielding his masters from uncomfortable realities, he is failing in his duties as both scientist and adviser. Anyone who has studied the BSE crisis knows how dangerous the cowardice of scientific counsellors can be.
As if to prove that his nerve has gone, on Friday Sir David made his clearest statement yet that he sees nuclear power as the answer to climate change. With the right carbon taxes, he said, nuclear power would become cheaper than coal. ?It?s important we do take the public with us on the environmental debate,? he said. ?That is why I?m trying to sell it?(5).
Sir David may have political reasons for ?trying to sell? new nuclear power stations ? at the Labour Party conference Tony Blair said he wants to re-examine the nuclear option(6)- but he would, I suspect, have as much trouble identifying a scientific case as he had at the meeting last month. The figures leave him stranded.
Let us forget, for the moment, that nuclear power spreads radioactive pollution, presents a target for terrorists and leaves us with waste that no government wants to handle. Like Sir David I believe that while all these problems are grave, they are not as grave as climate change. Let us concentrate on the money.
It seems clear that new nuclear power stations will not be built unless the government supports them. A recent review by the economics consultancy Oxera shows that even if you exclude the cost of insurance and include the benefits of emissions trading (which attaches a price to carbon dioxide), ?a programme of public assistance ? would be needed to boost predicted [rates of return] to a level that is acceptable to private investors?. The consultants suggested that ?1.6 billion of grants might be enough to tip the balance in favour of a new nuclear programme(7).
The first ?even if? is a big one. Private insurers will not cover the risk. Three international conventions limit investors? liability and oblige governments to pick up the bill on their behalf(8). According to a report commissioned by the European Parliament, the costs of a large-scale nuclear accident range from 83 billion euros to 5.5 trillion(9). They would have to be met by us.
But let us also forget the costs of insurance. If the public sector (or for that matter, given that funds are limited, the private sector) invests in nuclear power, is this the best use to which the money can be put? This is the question addressed in a new paper by the physicist Amory Lovins(10).
He begins by examining the terms of reference used by people like David King, who compare nuclear power ?only with a central power plant burning coal or natural gas?. If the costs of construction come down and if the government offers big enough subsidies and makes carbon emissions sufficiently expensive, Lovins says, nuclear power might be able to compete with coal. ?But those central thermal power plants are the wrong competitors. None of them can compete with windpower ? let alone with two far cheaper resources: cogeneration of heat and power, and efficient use of electricity.?
Ten cents of investment, he shows, will buy either 1 kilowatt-hour of nuclear electricity; 1.2-1.7 of windpower; 2.2-6.5 of small-scale cogeneration; or up to 10 of energy efficiency. ?Its higher cost than competitors, per unit of net CO2 displaced, means that every dollar invested in nuclear expansion will worsen climate change by buying less solution per dollar.? And, because nuclear power stations take so long to build, it would be spent later. ?Expanding nuclear power would both reduce and retard the desired decrease in CO2 emissions.?(11)
Already, the market is voting with its wallet. ?In 2004 alone,? Lovins notes, ?Spain and Germany each added as much wind capacity ? two billion watts ? as nuclear power is adding worldwide in each year of this decade.? Though the nuclear industry in the US has guzzled 33 times as much government money as wind (12)and has ?enjoyed a regulatory system of its own design for a quarter-century?, it hasn?t fulfilled a single new order from the electricity companies since 1973(13). And, unlike nuclear power stations, wind, cogeneration and energy efficiency will all become much cheaper.
It?s certainly a good idea, as people like Sir David recommend, to have a ?diversified energy portfolio?. But, as Lovins points out, ?this does not mean ? that every option merits a place in the portfolio purely for the sake of diversity, any more than a financial portfolio should include bad investments just because they?re on the market.? Building new nuclear power stations in the United Kingdom would be a political decision, not a scientific one.
So what has happened to the man who once bravely did battle with the new Inquisition? A memo sent by Tony Blair?s private secretary, Ivan Rogers, a month after Sir David?s article was published in Science, instructed him to stop criticising the Bush administration on the grounds that it ?does not help us achieve our wider policy aims?(14). Mock interviews Sir David conducted with his political minders, which were found by a journalist on a disk dropped by his press secretary, show him learning to recite the government?s line(15). Could he have had his arm twisted over the nuclear issue too?
I hope not, and I hope he can produce some robust figures to support his contentions. But I fear that the government?s chief scientist is mutating into its chief spin doctor.
So is he a scientist or a politician? I vote for the later.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Alex213
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Seuss]
#5528326 - 04/18/06 05:33 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Isn't this article saying King is a sell-out and not doing his best for the environment? You'd think if he was relying on Greenpeace for his wages he'd be saying the opposite.
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Rogues_Pierre
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5528363 - 04/18/06 06:21 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Average Winter Snow Depth in Siberia has Doubled That’s what the headline should say, but instead, it says: Arctic water flow speeding up 6 Apr 06 - A team from the University of Alaska, which included two Russian scientists, analyzed records of precipitation, snow depth and runoff in the catchment area of the Lena River, east of the Ural mountains in Siberia. They found that the average winter snow depth there has doubled [italics mine] to 44 cm from 22 cm in 1940. See Siberian Snowfall . . Snowfall in California mountains smashes previous records - 9 Apr 06 See daily listing of Record Low Temperatures across the United States.
. . Global warming stopped in 1998 - 9 Apr 06 - The biggest part of the "global warming" problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. "Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia , that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero)."
Click here to read more of this great article by Professor Bob Carter, a geologist at James Cook University. Global_Warming_Stopped_in_1998 . .
Hail the size of golf balls in Israel - 5 Apr 06 See what's happening in other parts of the world .
http://www.iceagenow.com/
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Seuss
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5528587 - 04/18/06 08:25 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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> You'd think if he was relying on Greenpeace for his wages he'd be saying the opposite.
Getting paid to give a lecture is a far cry from paying his wages. I was pointing out the greenpeace part to illustrate that everybody gets paid by somebody that has ties to some special interest. It doesn't matter if the person is pro or con.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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afoaf
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Rogues_Pierre]
#5528601 - 04/18/06 08:35 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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c'mon R_P, don't you know that it's man's job to control the natural temperature fluctuations of the earth!?
-------------------- All I know is The Growery is a place where losers who get banned here go.
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Alex213
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Seuss]
#5528914 - 04/18/06 10:44 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Getting paid to give a lecture is a far cry from paying his wages. I was pointing out the greenpeace part to illustrate that everybody gets paid by somebody that has ties to some special interest. It doesn't matter if the person is pro or con.
I think it does make a difference. If the oil companies are paying you and you continue to state that oil companies are destroying the planet then your integrity is intact.
This guy has given a lecture to greenpeace but is in no way following greenpeace policy. For me, that adds to his integrity.
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blaze2
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5529354 - 04/18/06 12:42 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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afoaf your just being an ass, it isnt our job to control the earth its our job to be stewards. If your steward of a park, then you dont go throwing trash all over the place uprooting plants and knockign over trees. It likely isnt all because of us that the planet is warming, but the massive amounts of CO2 we pump into the atmoshpere do change the equation. IF you deny that then your just lying to yourself.
-------------------- "Religion without science is blind, Science without religion is lame." Albert Einstein "peace is not maintained through force it is acheived through intelligence." Albert Einstein "Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." Thomas Jefferson "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." --Thomas Jefferson
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Seuss
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: blaze2]
#5529888 - 04/18/06 03:11 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
I think it does make a difference. If the oil companies are paying you and you continue to state that oil companies are destroying the planet then your integrity is intact.
Bob Carter is paid by James Cook University while Lindzen is paid by MIT. Just because they get paid money on the side to give lectures outside of academia is no different than Sir David King getting paid by the UK government and getting extra money on the side to give lectures to Greenpeace.
I had a research grant paid by BP when I was in college and the source of the money had nothing at all to do with the results of the study. As a side note, the research was with solar cell manufacturing techniques for use in renewable energy applications... not something you would normally think of a fossil fuel energy company supporting.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Alex213
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Seuss]
#5532265 - 04/19/06 02:32 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Just because they get paid money on the side to give lectures outside of academia
Yeah but the difference is King isn't saying what Greenpeace want him to say. So whether he gives lectures to them isn't relevant.
That's an entirely different situation to someone like Lindzen, who is paid by oil companies and says exactly what oil companies want him to say. Then the fact that he's receiving money from them becomes extremely relevant. The oil companies desperately need useful idiots to try and muddy the issue on climate change.
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Seuss
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Alex213]
#5532434 - 04/19/06 05:13 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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> Yeah but the difference is King isn't saying what Greenpeace want him to say.
You know what greenpeace wants him to say? Wow! (Did you read the transcript of the lecture? He said almost everything Greenpeace could hope for with respect to the causes greenpeace embraces.)
Seems to me that if greenpeace hired him to give a lecture, then he is probably telling them what they want to hear. You don't typically pay somebody to give a lecture that you disagree with. Using your logic, of course. If you are going to claim that people paid by the oil industry are biased then you must admit that people paid for by environmental rights groups are going to be equally biased.
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Alex213
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Re: Global warming: The Three degrees.... [Re: Seuss]
#5532642 - 04/19/06 07:39 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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I meant what he's saying on global warming to the government and press. He isn't a greenpeace mouthpeice in the same way Lindzen is an oil company mouthpeice.
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