BF2S Forums The Great Global Warming Swindle

I think its rather funny that environmentalists are totally against CO2 emissions, but are totally against nuclear power plants, and the only power supply they support is the currently impractical solar and wind. Yet a solar dish the size of Texas wouldn't be enough.
Its hard for me to take the liberal side seriously, when they can't even do it to themselves.

That and there is a grain of truth to the documentry. And the scientists did say what they said: "' One third of the Experts' making the pronouncements in the EU meetings are not even qualified'". It might even be bigger.
He said it, and I don't think he can take that back.

And then there's this:
http://dailytech.com/Climate+Change+A+L … le7222.htm
   

*   "We have to take away people's fear of climate change," Hans von Storch, climate researcher,  director of the Institute for Coastal Research.
    * "According to our computer model, neither the number nor intensity of storms is increasing," Jochem Marotzke, director, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.
    * "A warmer climate helps promote species diversity," Munich zoologist Josef Reichholf.

Now don't get me wrong, I think Global Warming is happening, the temp might be getting warmer (by .5 degrees a year) but I don't think its as great as a threat as many liberals make it out to be.

Even if global warming isn't man-made, we are still killing off entire species of rare animals due to our destruction of the environment. Watch the show Planet Earth on the discovery channel. It depresses me to think that most of what I see on it won't be around for much longer.

all i say is acid rain.....

hot issue in the '80s. everybody got scared of trees dying. was not entirely true and that is because we don't hear anything about that anymore

some thing are good for governments... one being pollution. just think of all those taxes raised on gas. people Will not use less gas, because they need to commute. people will not stop cooking and warming their houses. alternatives like bio97 or something is not encouraged because of enormous costs a liter.

it's all about the money.

off course we could all do with a little less of co2. but start at the big ones... America ( no 1 co2 producer )

I've got a book, few years old like, 2000, that describes the no.1 producer of CO2 to be Qatar and the no.1 producer of SO2 to be the Czech Republic. Plus what happens today is not a patch on what was put up during the Industrial Revolution.

Last edited by M.O.A.B (2007-05-12 08:14:08)

Varegg wrote:

Fact is you have paid scientists on both sides that debate for and against global warming, the concensus amongst indipendent state funded scientists like the climate panel appointed by the UN all agrees that global warming is a phenomenon that can and must be countered shall the human race as it is now enjoy the comfort as it is now.

The only dispute to and for that report comes from paid scientists and that reflects their words, any documentary can prove otherwise when angled in the right direction and that goes for both Gore`s documentary and as well as the one Superfly posted in the OP.

So as said, amongst indipendent state funded scientists there is no argue, they all agree !

if you look at the scientists interviewed for this documentary there are lots of doctors from very credible institutions.  do you think a guy gets to be an MIT professor by being on Exxon's payroll?  There are real and credible doctors out there who don't buy the greenhouse gas theory to global warming.

for another example read ATG's post about Claude Allegre:
http://forums.bf2s.com/viewtopic.php?id=66139

you can't ignore the fact that there are very credible scientists on both sides of the debate.  i won't pretend to know enough to tell you who is right and wrong, but to say that all independent scientists agree is flat out wrong.

Honestly. Exxon has pumped ENORMOUS amounts of money into anti-climate change, even setting up a large bounty for any scientist to speak out to disprove it. After hearing about that, I'm skeptical about the skeptics.

If you want to see where Global Warming/Climate Change is striking the hardest, all you have to do is look east.
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/0 … riment.php

EDIT: Found the link to the Exxon list.
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/art … entid=4870

Also, this is of note too.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w … 533755.ece

Last edited by Anfidurl (2007-05-13 23:16:53)

Varegg wrote:

Then how come 2400 scientists hired by the UN to investigate the issue without limitations to their work all agree on one thing while the random scientist that only talks about the issue in an interview is suppose to counter a world wide scientific report - come on - do you really believe that yourself Gemi ?

Show me a document by those "indipendent" scientists that isn`t on a payroll from a private company and what work they have scientifically done on GW.

There is no such thing as an GW swindle other than the one presented by those that possibly can loose money on selling less fossile fuels!

You answer you're own question. Think about it, if you're hired to investigate something you know that if you turn around and say it's OK, nothing to worry about then the UN will say thanks for your time now go and find yourselve another job.

However, if you say "ahh there might be something here" then you will keep your job whilst having more money thrown at you to investigate further.  Car mechanics have been pulling tsunuts like this for years..."it's gonna be a big job this one" when all they do is change a spark plug but then tell you they did a lot more.

IMO, the Exxon scientist are no less credible than the UN ones until you prove to me that their funding is not influenced by their findings.

Varegg wrote:

superfly_cox wrote:

Varegg wrote:

Fact is you have paid scientists on both sides that debate for and against global warming, the concensus amongst indipendent state funded scientists like the climate panel appointed by the UN all agrees that global warming is a phenomenon that can and must be countered shall the human race as it is now enjoy the comfort as it is now.

The only dispute to and for that report comes from paid scientists and that reflects their words, any documentary can prove otherwise when angled in the right direction and that goes for both Gore`s documentary and as well as the one Superfly posted in the OP.

So as said, amongst indipendent state funded scientists there is no argue, they all agree !

if you look at the scientists interviewed for this documentary there are lots of doctors from very credible institutions.  do you think a guy gets to be an MIT professor by being on Exxon's payroll?  There are real and credible doctors out there who don't buy the greenhouse gas theory to global warming.

for another example read ATG's post about Claude Allegre:
http://forums.bf2s.com/viewtopic.php?id=66139

you can't ignore the fact that there are very credible scientists on both sides of the debate.  i won't pretend to know enough to tell you who is right and wrong, but to say that all independent scientists agree is flat out wrong.

Then how come 2400 scientists hired by the UN to investigate the issue without limitations to their work all agree on one thing while the random scientist that only talks about the issue in an interview is suppose to counter a world wide scientific report - come on - do you really believe that yourself Gemi ?

Show me a document by those "indipendent" scientists that isn`t on a payroll from a private company and what work they have scientifically done on GW.

There is no such thing as an GW swindle other than the one presented by those that possibly can loose money on selling less fossile fuels!

Richard Lindzen was part of the UN Committee you speak of:
Richard Siegmund Lindzen, Ph.D., (born February 8, 1940) is an atmospheric physicist and the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his research in dynamic meteorology, especially planetary waves.

He has been a critic of some anthropogenic global warming theories and the political pressures surrounding climate scientists. He wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in April, 2006, in which he wrote: "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 the kicker:
He frequently speaks out against the IPCC position that significant global warming is caused by humans (see global warming) although he accepts that the warming has occurred, saying global mean temperature is about 0.6 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago.

His position with regard to the IPCC can be summed up with this quotation: "Picking holes in the IPCC is crucial. The notion that if you’re ignorant of something and somebody comes up with a wrong answer, and you have to accept that because you don’t have another wrong answer to offer is like faith healing, it’s like quackery in medicine – if somebody says you should take jelly beans for cancer and you say that’s stupid, and he says, well can you suggest something else and you say, no, does that mean you have to go with jelly beans?"

What I do believe is that its very easy to believe something to be true when you want it to be true.  It seems that there's alot of closed mindedness in the greenhouse gas based global warming.  I'm not trying to convince anybody that CO2 isn't responsible for warming.  It may very well be and I think its better to err on the side of caution-->to assume that it is the reason and take steps to address it.  However, to say that its a scientific certainty is wrong.

Ahh, the good ol' days when junk science was used by those "health conscious" scientists to try to trample our right to smoke...same thing happening today.  Its just the latest anti-libertarian crusade to trample on our freedoms.  What we basically get is "a person's freedom to live in a healthy world" vs. "a person's freedom to make money possibly polluting that world".  My point, if I had time to articulate it but I don't at the moment, would be that this has happened before many times.

Drinking
Smoking
Seatbelt Laws
Speeding Laws
Littering Ordinances

Before the 1960's, tobacco companies poured millions into junk science to prove that smoking was good for you.  Many people actually believed it because they wanted to believe it.  The people saying it was bad were just a bunch of hacks, right?  The tobacco companies would never sell a product that would kill its customers, right?  Just like Exxon or Shell would never do anything bad for the environment or the health of the human race just to make a buck, right?  I digress.

Good Housekeeping, 1940, Emily Post wrote:

Those who smoke outnumber those who do not by a hundred to one... [so nonsmokers] ... must learn to adapt themselves to existing conditions... and when they come into contact with smokers, it is scarcely fair that the few should be allowed to prohibit the many from the pursuit of their comforts and their pleasures.

Seems like I also remember being a kid in the early 80's when your typical ditch between any two small towns in Iowa looked like a garbage dump.  So, they enacted penalties for littering and deposits on bottles...voila, half a generation later we have green grass again along the roadside.  Lots of people bitched, a little paper wasn't hurting the environment, right?  Shut your pie hole and clean up your shit.  Green and Libertarian are not at odds at all actually, it just takes a little change of pace.  Libertarian values is ultimate capitalism and "freedom from the harmful acts of others"...polluting the environment somehow doesn't qualify yet, but it will.

Seatbelt laws the same, people still bitch about those though.  I've seen lots of studies roll out both directions "seatbelts only negligably save lives" and "seatbelts cut fatalities considerably".  Luckily libertarian values were in place on this one and the free market of the accident insurance industry set people straight.

So with this latest environmental trend you can either:

1) Embrace it, go Green, make solutions and not problems, or simply just do your part.
2) Resist!  Make sure the finger isn't pointed at you, bury your head in the sand and watch everyone else come around and get rich off alternatives instead of you.  Defend those oil company profits that YOU WILL NEVER SEE, except in those multi-million dollar PR videos...download and watch them, get their money's worth.
3) Let it blow by, let others take the lead, go about your life, pray the air quality and temperature will hold steady in your lifetime.

Comparing global warming debate to what happened with smoking is like comparing apples and oranges.

Consider that scientists today still don't know what causes natural global warming/cooling!  If we don't know why it happens naturally then how can we be so sure that its happening artificially?

Out of curiosity, any of you ever studied science?  Ever heard of the scientific method?  I was trained in science and taught to respect the scientific method.  What drives me crazy is that the media presents a questionable scientific theory as being 100% scientifically valid.

Science requires experimental controls - something not found in a collection of statistics about an open system.  In real science, everything that can possibly be done to eliminate confounding causes are eliminated.  The earth's atmosphere is an open system - no one knows with any certainty the amount of materials emitted by the earth or even additions from outer space.  An open system is one where we can not control for confounding variables. In the global warming saga, the data collected is fed into a computer model along with many estimates and indirectly theorized numbers.

A relevant scientific theory is put in place and then controlled experiments are run against it in closed systems - the theory doesn't changed every time someone comes out with a new test. This is what real science is about.

With global warming you have a computer model of the largest physical system on earth, that has several uncontrolled inputs with huge error bands that can interact in non linear ways. The model is simplified in many ways because of the limits of computer power. You have emotional humans that decide on just what compromises to make - and these choices can greatly skew the results. Just the shear number of terms makes the output dubious at best - reminiscent of the drake equation)

What I do know about greenhouse gas global warming theory is that it is flawed.  The computer models do not  consistently corroborate the theory nor do they make accurate predictions.  And ultimately, they are a poor substitute for real controlled experiments.  What you're left with is CO2 figures and you cannot base your entire science based on a corollary relationship between CO2 and Global Temperature.  That is not science!  Well, in any case not anymore scientific than this:



Its incredible how people who have no scientific training can tell me that I'm a complete idiot for not accepting CO2 based global warming as being solid science.  It may be right but they haven't proven shit so far.  Ultimately the burden of proof is on the scientists who do this research.  Having 2400 scientists say that they think CO2 causes global warming does not make it science, the same way as (to borrow from gorillatictacs) 20679 physicians saying Lucky Strikes are less irritating doesn't make it so.  Nothing I've seen to date proves that global warming is caused by CO2.

I'm prepared to accept that its a credible theory which would indicate that measures need to be taken in case it turns out to be true.  That's reasonable and logical.  But if you tell me that I must believe it because it is 100% true then I'll tell you to go find out what real science is.

If you are so familiar with scientific methods Superfly i find it very funny you made a thread calling scientific work a swindle based on the material in the OP.

@=OBS= EstebanRey: Your analogy about paid scientists just doesn`t hold water, you cant possibly compare scientists working for a spesific company up against scientists that are hired by the UN or any other non profit community - that`s way to simple a comparrison.

=OBS= EstebanRey wrote:

Varegg wrote:

@=OBS= EstebanRey: Your analogy about paid scientists just doesn`t hold water, you cant possibly compare scientists working for a spesific company up against scientists that are hired by the UN or any other non profit community - that`s way to simple a comparrison.

I'm not comparing them, I am highlighting something that worries me about the validity of the UN's scientist.  You are obviously very pro-climate change theory which is cool but I am agnostic about it.  I'm not disagreeing with you because I'm unsure myself and don't have the knowledge to investigate personally.  As I implied earlier, I think it is worth questioning if you are going to imply that doubters are doing it for selfish reasons (like being paid by Exxon), can I not at least ask the same thing to the pro-global warming brigade?

The error you make is when you say I'm comparing a profit organisation with a non-profit one.  Although I've stated I'm not comparing anything, I think it's worth noting that the nature of the organisation writing the cheques is irrelevant as I am questioning the scientists' morals/greed.

That`s correct to a point.

I find it strange however that the UN picked 2400 scientists that where all in it for the money and got them to agree on one result when the result wasn`t agreed upon in the first place, that`s the difference between who orders and pays for the research.

Last edited by Varegg (2007-05-14 09:08:26)

Varegg wrote:

Oops ....

C4 accused of falsifying data in documentary on climate change
Published: 08 May 2007

By Steve Connor, Science Editor The makers of a Channel 4 documentary which claimed that global warming is a swindle have been accused of fabricating data by one of the scientists who participated in the film. The Great Global Warming Swindl...

It's 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' Swindle

Seriously, if both parties of the debate were to stand trial in a perjury case, it would be rather easy to find a motive for the energy industry case. What would be the motive for IPCC?