32,000 scientists dissent from global-warming “consensus”

[Johnny Canuck3]

Laptop tells us it's all been discredited as 'stupid propaganda exercises'.

What: the signatories don't exist? They aren't scientists? They don't really believe what they say?

The 'stupid propaganda exercise' as you like to call it, was a movie with a former US politician in it as mouthpiece with good hair.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I agree that conservation is good, and in our best interests. But I think some people take it a lot further than that. I think christian values, the christian message, runs more deeply and widely than we acknowledge.

I think people like to hear, are willing to hear, the message that they've been bad, that they are doing wrong, and that they must atone, they must now suffer. They eat that shit up, whatever form it takes.

Maybe it partly arises from personal dissatisfaction with one's own life: we project it outward, and by 'fixing' the world, we will fix our inner selves as well.

 

[Yossarian]

So today we have another geologic occurrence, and some of our best minds want to give up another sacrifice: our economy, and possibly the basics of our civilization. They say it is imperative, and they are loud enough that they are trying to shout down anyone who naysays them.

Just like it always was!

So the scientists who think human activity is largely responsible for climate change - are they stupid, evil, or just not as good at science as you?

 

[gentlegreen]

want to give up another sacrifice: our economy, and possibly the basics of our civilization

Conveniently we've sent the pollution eastwards ...

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

So the scientists who think human activity is largely responsible for climate change - are they stupid, evil, or just not as good at science as you?

I think that there is a disagreement in the scientific community, but you'd never know it. I'm sure there are some problems with some of the 32,000 signatures, but even if you throw half of them out, that leaves 16,000 scientific 'nonbelievers'. I don't think the final chapter has been written yet. But here in BC, a carbon tax is being implemented. We're taking action on a problem when we aren't yet sure what's causing it, or what if anything we can do to correct it.

In those circumstances, I don't see much difference between now, and the days of the Mayan sacrifices.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Conveniently we've sent the pollution eastwards ...

Yep. Pollution exists. It's not good for us.

That's not the same as saying we are changing the world climatic cycle.

Once again, I think it comes down to human nature. We are buying into this, because we cannot fathom that we are not at the center of the universe. That all that happens has to do with us. That all we do is all important.

If you think of it, it showed incredible hubris and egotism for the Mayans to think that they were so important, that something was eating the sun in order to punish them, and that their puny efforts would make a difference.

We are still christians. The world was created for us, and we are still its stewards.

Imagine if another ice age is coming, and we aren't the cause? Preposterous! We're the center of everything! There is no problem we can't create, and no problem we can't fix......

 

[Detroit City]

But here in BC, a carbon tax is being implemented.

is that a tax on all carbon-based life forms?

you canadians love your taxes

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

is that a tax on all carbon-based life forms?

you canadians love your taxes

I think California came up with the idea first. Look for it in a jurisdiction near you soon.

I also have difficulty when the govt. 'solution' to some problem, is not to restrict it etc, but just to tax the hell out of it.

 

[d.a.s.h]

I continue to use the analogy of the 'eclipse of the sun crisis'.

A better analogy to investigate would be the Easter Islanders, who managed to bugger up their island environment.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

In those circumstances, I don't see much difference between now, and the days of the Mayan sacrifices.

Possibly the pollution is obscuring your view?

 

[Dirty Martini]

Well I hope there's never a petition denying gravity, we'd all float off!

"Intelligent falling" you mean? I'm in.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

A better analogy to investigate would be the Easter Islanders, who managed to bugger up their island environment.

But even that is in doubt?

The researchers also dispute the claim that Easter Island's human inhabitants were responsible for their own demise. Instead, they think the culprits may have been Europeans, who brought disease and took islanders away as slaves, and rats, which quickly multiplied after arriving with the first Polynesian settlers.

"The collapse was really a function of European disease being introduced," Lipo said. "The story that's been told about these populations going crazy and creating their own demise may just be simply an artifact of [Christian] missionaries telling stories."

At a scientific meeting last year, Hunt presented evidence that the island's rat population spiked to 20 million from the years 1200 to 1300. Rats had no predators on the island other than humans and they would have made quick work of the island's palm seeds. After the trees were gone, the island's rat population dropped off to a mere one million.

Lipo thinks the story of Easter Island's civilization being responsible for its own demise might better reflect the psychological baggage of our own society than the archeological evidence.

"It fits our 20th century view of us as ecological monsters," Lipo said. "There's no doubt that we do terrible things ecologically, but we're passing that on to the past, which may not have actually been the case. To stick our plight onto them is unfair."

http://www.livescience.com/history/060309_easter_island.html

 

[d.a.s.h]

Interesting article. I am curious though as to exactly how the rats got onto Easter Island with the Polynesians.

Yeah, 'by boat' obviously, but it makes me wonder how a rat would manage to hide on a Polynesian-style canoe. With difficulty, I'd have thought. Did Polynesians then not mind have rats scuttling about in their canoes alongside them, or were the rats taken along deliberately, perhaps as an on-board food source?

Whichever way, the article suggests that the introduction of rats to Easter Island wasn't a good thing environmentally. In a similar way but on a much bigger scale, Brits introduced rabbits to Australia, and the rabbits have since become a massive pest there.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

People need to learn the value of a little healthy scepticism...

 

[axon]

Well, you'd probably believe it, seeing as how you've swallowed the 'human caused global warming' line, hook line and sinker.

Yes dear
Why don't they produce a petition signed by climate scientists??? The first few names I looked up on that list were physicians

And last time I checked scientific truths were not decided by petition

 

[Refused as fuck]

I think that there is a disagreement in the scientific community, but you'd never know it.

The only disagreements are over just how much of the warming trend humans are responsible for. Some say fuck of a lot, others a little less than a fuck but still substantial.

And last time I checked scientific truths were not decided by petition

Thank fuck.

 

[laptop]

I am curious though as to exactly how the rats got onto Easter Island with the Polynesians.

Oddly enough:

rats could easily stow away on boats, and were also a source of food for Polynesians prior to European settlement

http://www.newscientist.com/channel...waways-date-human-arrival-in-new-zealand.html

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Thing is, where disagreement in the scientific community is concerned, it's well to be aware of a few basic facts.

1) Among scientists in relevant fields there is very little disagreement about anthropogenic climate change. There only are a small handful of scientists qualified in relevant fields who express any doubts about the basic proposition.

2) Apart from maybe Lindzen, last time I looked a significant majority of those "sceptical climate scientists" were demonstrably on the take from Exxon and similar organisations. (see point 4 for the relevant link)

3) Lindzen, and as far as I'm aware the other qualified sceptics, do not express anything like strong scepticism in their peer-reviewed work as opposed to press statements made on behalf of e.g. the Competitive Enterprise Institute or other industry funded PR outlets.

4) Since the days when the big tobacco companies were trying to deny the increasingly strong case being made that smoking caused serious illnesses, there has been a lucrative potential revenue stream available to any scientist, qualified in any field, who was willing to lend their name and reputation to the cause of muddying the waters around some science that some segment of big business found inconvenient. The recently deceased Seitz was a pioneer in this area and spent most of the last few decades shilling for first Philip Morris and latterly Exxon. As a former president of the US National Association of Scientists he was very efffective, although NAS got quite upset when his former title was used to make it appear that the 'Oregon Petition' was actually something to do with them. There's an excellent summary in the Union of Concerned Scientists report linked here. It's quite interesting to cross-reference the name of any scientist that is put forward as a representative of scientific scepticism with the list of academics (in one of the appendices I think) who have received funding for their PR activities on behalf of Exxon et al. With the US based ones, apart from Lindzen if I recall right, there's close to a 100% hit rate. With the non-US ones there is still a pretty good match.

 

[story]

You'll have to go over this one again.


"Even if it is doing some good, it is stupid to continue doing it...."

Even if we are doing some good for the planet (which of course we are not), we are still using up resources and they will eventually run out, creating pollution which is harming our health etc.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Yes dear
Why don't they produce a petition signed by climate scientists??? The first few names I looked up on that list were physicians

And last time I checked scientific truths were not decided by petition

You looked at the first few names of a 32,000 name petition and drew your conclusions? Good work.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Thing is, where disagreement in the scientific community is concerned, it's well to be aware of a few basic facts.

1) Among scientists in relevant fields there is very little disagreement about anthropogenic climate change. There only are a small handful of scientists qualified in relevant fields who express any doubts about the basic proposition.

2) Apart from maybe Lindzen, last time I looked a significant majority of those "sceptical climate scientists" were demonstrably on the take from Exxon and similar organisations. (see point 4 for the relevant link)

3) Lindzen, and as far as I'm aware the other qualified sceptics, do not express anything like strong scepticism in their peer-reviewed work as opposed to press statements made on behalf of e.g. the Competitive Enterprise Institute or other industry funded PR outlets.

4) Since the days when the big tobacco companies were trying to deny the increasingly strong case being made that smoking caused serious illnesses, there has been a lucrative potential revenue stream available to any scientist, qualified in any field, who was willing to lend their name and reputation to the cause of muddying the waters around some science that some segment of big business found inconvenient. The recently deceased Seitz was a pioneer in this area and spent most of the last few decades shilling for first Philip Morris and latterly Exxon. As a former president of the US National Association of Scientists he was very efffective, although NAS got quite upset when his former title was used to make it appear that the 'Oregon Petition' was actually something to do with them. There's an excellent summary in the Union of Concerned Scientists report linked here. It's quite interesting to cross-reference the name of any scientist that is put forward as a representative of scientific scepticism with the list of academics (in one of the appendices I think) who have received funding for their PR activities on behalf of Exxon et al. With the US based ones, apart from Lindzen if I recall right, there's close to a 100% hit rate. With the non-US ones there is still a pretty good match.

You couch your bullshit in such reasonable terms, that a gullible person might even fall for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...tream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Did you try cross referencing that list with the list of scientists who took money from Exxon in the link I provided?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Did you try cross referencing that list with the list of scientists who took money from Exxon in the link I provided?

Did you?

I guess in your world, anyone who disagrees with what you believe, must be dishonest, by definition.

 

[rich!]

31,072 American scientists have signed this petition,
including 9,021 with PhDs

At this point they look like fckin' idiots.

Really.

A scientist who can't pick up a PhD is as much to be trusted as the Barefoot Doctor.

"Rub the earth's kidneys clockwise twenty times with a quartz pebble while your wife fellates me and I smoke these fine Exxon cigars, and your worries about the problems of the planet disappears".

Actually, that overstates their scientific argument.


I now return you to the Bernie/Laptop Idiot Shredding Show.

 

[rich!]

Actually, it gets worse. Is that really the wannabe mass murderer Edward Teller whose signature they have on the front page?

A colleague of mine met Teller and demonstrated his robots. Teller replied

Yes, but how is this more efficient?

Than what?

Than, say, the use of nerve gas on infants?

Still, if "climate" was his field, rather than "nuclear weapons", he might be seen as an authority....

 

[rich!]

Did you try cross referencing that list with the list of scientists who took money from Exxon in the link I provided?

I picked three names from the scrolling list.

One is definitely a doctor of medicine in the US.

One - Dino F. Oranges - only appears on that list - Google has no other existence.

One appears to be a *mis-spelling* of an Otolaryngeologist.

I can't imagine any US doctor, whose business relies on their advertising, mis-spelling their name. Which makes me believe some trade body dumped the names of all their members into the list...

 

[rich!]

also, their web page burns CPU cycles like they are going out of fashion!

 

[scifisam]

Even if it were a real petition, it's still only, by their own admission, 9,000 scientists with PhDs. I would definitely not count any 'scientist' without a PhD these days as eminent in their field. The PhD would also have to be from a real uni, not an online course where you pay for it without studying, a la Gillian McKeith.

 

[jcsd]

I think that there is a disagreement in the scientific community, but you'd never know it. I'm sure there are some problems with some of the 32,000 signatures, but even if you throw half of them out, that leaves 16,000 scientific 'nonbelievers'. I don't think the final chapter has been written yet. But here in BC, a carbon tax is being implemented. We're taking action on a problem when we aren't yet sure what's causing it, or what if anything we can do to correct it.

In those circumstances, I don't see much difference between now, and the days of the Mayan sacrifices.

Johnny, only 9,000 have PhDs. As I said earlier those who who are truly considered experts in their field will have qualifcations beyond PhDs.

And given that the defitnion of scientist in this context is broad enough that it covers engineers, I would be suprised if more than a dozen people if that who signed the petition had the right level of qualifications in the relevant area to be considered experts.

Either way the vast, vast majority of signatouries cannot claim much more expertise on climate change than the general public which is why this is such a dishonest excersise.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Even if it were a real petition, it's still only, by their own admission, 9,000 scientists with PhDs..

Only 9000 phds disputing the theory? A mere trifle.