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

[bigfish]

deleted

 

[free spirit]

JC's analogy is good. Yes, he fell for the government war propaganda back then, which placed him in opposition to the progressive anti-war movement of the masses, with whom you, Gunther, laptop, etc. sided at the time. This time round, JC also senses the danger and has moved to the side of the masses, whereas you and your disturbingly intolerant gang of reactionary authoritarian mates have moved in the opposite direction, like a fifth column.

I see how it works now, forget all that science bollocks, let's just all rely on what JC2's spidey senses tell him about climate change shall we?

I mean with his track record in seeing through propaganda bollocks from the neocons and big oil he's bound to be right.

fuck it, let's just sack all this science stuff off completely, and just leave all these important decisions upto whether JC2's spidey senses are tingling or not. Not sure JC2 would actually be up for that mind, once he realised the fate of 7 billion people was resting on his gut instinct.*

*thinking about it, that's pretty much the way bush operates, which is precisely why we're in this fucking mess.

But now the assault against the masses has taken a different form - lets call it "Green" warfare. The masses can instinctively sense the danger a fascistic "Green" warfare program poses and are steadfastly refusing to grant any party advocating such a program mass support and indeed strike blows against such parties where they can - "Green" Ken being their latest high profile victim to get his arse kicked out of office.

don't suppose you've got any actual research to back this up have you? no? thought not.

let's see what response ICM got when they actually did a proper survey of the british people to find out what they thought (June 27th-29th 2008, so about as upto date as you're likely to get)

so 52% think tackling environmental issues including global warming is more important than the economy, 63% support the introduction of Green taxes - or 66% if they were delayed until the economic situation improved.

and in case anyone's still under the mistaken impression that this is just a middle class liberal issue - the working classes were the most strongly in favour of environmental action of any class, and second most strongly in favour of green taxes.

over to you bigfish... fancy presenting us with some evidence for a change?

 

[tangentlama]

Oh dear -bigfish is quoting an article that mentions the highly contraversial 'tar sands' in Alberta, Canada.

The tar sands begin near the border of Saskatchewan and extend north and west almost to British Columbia. All in all, they cover some fifty-seven thousand square miles, an area the size of Florida.

They consist of quartzite, clay, water, and a hydrocarbon known as bitumen, which can be converted into a form of petroleum known as synthetic crude.
It’s estimated that there’s enough bitumen in Alberta to yield 1.7 trillion barrels of synthetic crude.

Assuming only ten per cent of this is recoverable, it still represents the second-largest oil reserve in the world, after Saudi Arabia’s. Canada has become America’s No. 1 source of imported oil. By 2010, tar sands yield is expected to double, and by 2015 to triple.

Depending on how you look at things, this is either a heartening prospect or a terrifying one. Since 2002, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and Imperial Oil (which is primarily owned by ExxonMobil) have all received approval to construct major projects in the tar sands.

The company that’s been producing oil from the tar sands the longest is known as Suncor. For every barrel of synthetic crude that Suncor eventually produces, forty-five hundred pounds of tar sands have to be dug up and separated.

A great deal of energy is required. It’s estimated that by 2012 tar-sands operations will consume two billion cubic feet of natural gas a day. There are several reasons that oil companies are rushing to develop the tar sands. If the price of oil remains above $90, then these and other unconventional forms of fuel can be developed at a profit.

With unconventional oil extraction, however, the damage to the environment tends to be higher all around—more land gets disturbed, more pollutants are produced, and then there are the greenhouse gases.

“All unconventional forms of oil are worse for greenhouse-gas emissions than petroleum,” said Alex Farrell, of the University of California at Berkeley.

Farrell and Adam Brandt found that the shift to unconventional oil could add between fifty and four hundred gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere by 2100.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/12/071112fa_fact_kolbert

Learn more: http://www.tarsandstimeout.ca/index.php
http://tothetarsands.ca/

Wishing all the best to the First Nation lawsuit:

“Our lakes, our land and the animals and fish we have relied on for thousands of years to support our way of life and cultural values are being destroyed by out-of-control oilsands developments” said Chief Vern Janvier of CPDFN. “Because our constitutionally-protected rights are at risk in one of the few remaining places in our Traditional Territory where we can exercise them, we’ve asked the Courts to step in before it’s too late.”
http://www.tarsandstimeout.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=67&Itemid=1

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Heh, in a time period where consumption increased by around 40-50% the reserves rose by 36%, helpful.

 

[bigfish]

don't suppose you've got any actual research to back this up have you? no? thought not.

Actually, I have the recent local, Mayoral and by-election results to back me up. They speak much louder than "research" consisting of a loaded opinion poll monkeyed up by the increasingly fascistic Guardian. Answers to patently loaded poll questions like: 'Generally speaking would you support or oppose the introduction of green taxes, designed to discourage things that are harmful to the environment?' can be twisted to mean anything a disreputable editor or journalist wants it to mean. Thus apparent "mass support" reflected in a dubiously constructed opinion poll conducted on behalf of a dubious newspaper with an overt Green agenda does not translate into mass support at the ballot box.

I repeat - the masses do not and will not support your elitist backed campaign of fear.

Polls Apart

One of our major gripes with Environmentalism concerns the claims made by its adherents that it is some sort of popular, grass-roots movement. Time and again, polls suggest otherwise. And yet these polls are rarely, if ever, reported in terms of the undemocratic nature of Environmentalism as it is foisted upon reluctant electorates. Rather, they are presented as evidence that the public are unthinking, selfish morons brainwashed by scheming 'deniers'.

Of course, everybody - ourselves included - will jump on a poll that can be used to support their own position. Which is why Green activist and winner of the Royal Society's prestigious prize for popular science (fiction), Mark Lynas, picked up on last week's ICM/Guardian poll.

More: http://www.climate-resistance.org/2008/07/polls-apart.html

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

the only thing I'm trying to stifle is stupidity and bullshit disinformation.

actually stifle is the wrong word - I'm trying to counter stupidity and bullshit disinformation with information that's backed up by the science.
.

I didn't say just you, I meant the whole 'movement'.

And countering what you see as stupidity with argument is just fine. My problem is those who counter dissent with shouts of pedophile-equivalent, or holocaust denier-equivalent.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I'm also amazed at the amount of misunderstanding you present as well as your capacity to misreport, Canuck, but I will perhaps give you the benefit of the doubt again, and say that maybe fear is partially responsible for your reactions and approach to climate change.

Fear of what: you're the one predicting Doomsday, not me.

 

[david dissadent]

Note from editor: because of the high profile nature of the urban75 bulletin boards, we often suffer obsessive conspiracy theorists or (guffaw) 'truth seekers' filling up the boards with fact-free claims, evidence-untroubled epilogues and vast reams of tedious cut'n'paste, invariably regurgitated from some dubious internet site.

We hope this information will be of use if you encounter a conspiraloon while on the boards.

10 characteristics of conspiracy theorists
A useful guide by Donna Ferentes

1. Arrogance. They are always fact-seekers, questioners, people who are trying to discover the truth: sceptics are always "sheep", patsies for Messrs Bush and Blair etc.

2. Relentlessness. They will always go on and on about a conspiracy no matter how little evidence they have to go on or how much of what they have is simply discredited. (Moreover, as per 1. above, even if you listen to them ninety-eight times, the ninety-ninth time, when you say "no thanks", you'll be called a "sheep" again.) Additionally, they have no capacity for precis whatsoever. They go on and on at enormous length.

3. Inability to answer questions. For people who loudly advertise their determination to the principle of questioning everything, they're pretty poor at answering direct questions from sceptics about the claims that they make.

4. Fondness for certain stock phrases. These include Cicero's "cui bono?" (of which it can be said that Cicero understood the importance of having evidence to back it up) and Conan Doyle's "once we have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth". What these phrases have in common is that they are attempts to absolve themselves from any responsibility to produce positive, hard evidence themselves: you simply "eliminate the impossible" (i.e. say the official account can't stand scrutiny) which means that the wild allegation of your choice, based on "cui bono?" (which is always the government) is therefore the truth.

5. Inability to employ or understand Occam's Razor. Aided by the principle in 4. above, conspiracy theorists never notice that the small inconsistencies in the accounts which they reject are dwarfed by the enormous, gaping holes in logic, likelihood and evidence in any alternative account.

6. Inability to tell good evidence from bad. Conspiracy theorists have no place for peer-review, for scientific knowledge, for the respectability of sources. The fact that a claim has been made by anybody, anywhere, is enough for them to reproduce it and demand that the questions it raises be answered, as if intellectual enquiry were a matter of responding to every rumour. While they do this, of course, they will claim to have "open minds" and abuse the sceptics for apparently lacking same.

7. Inability to withdraw. It's a rare day indeed when a conspiracy theorist admits that a claim they have made has turned out to be without foundation, whether it be the overall claim itself or any of the evidence produced to support it. Moreover they have a liking (see 3. above) for the technique of avoiding discussion of their claims by "swamping" - piling on a whole lot more material rather than respond to the objections sceptics make to the previous lot.

8. Leaping to conclusions. Conspiracy theorists are very keen indeed to declare the "official" account totally discredited without having remotely enough cause so to do. Of course this enables them to wheel on the Conan Doyle quote as in 4. above. Small inconsistencies in the account of an event, small unanswered questions, small problems in timing of differences in procedure from previous events of the same kind are all more than adequate to declare the "official" account clearly and definitively discredited. It goes without saying that it is not necessary to prove that these inconsistencies are either relevant, or that they even definitely exist.

9. Using previous conspiracies as evidence to support their claims. This argument invokes scandals like the Birmingham Six, the Bologna station bombings, the Zinoviev letter and so on in order to try and demonstrate that their conspiracy theory should be accorded some weight (because it's “happened before”.) They do not pause to reflect that the conspiracies they are touting are almost always far more unlikely and complicated than the real-life conspiracies with which they make comparison, or that the fact that something might potentially happen does not, in and of itself, make it anything other than extremely unlikely.

10. It's always a conspiracy. And it is, isn't it? No sooner has the body been discovered, the bomb gone off, than the same people are producing the same old stuff, demanding that there are questions which need to be answered, at the same unbearable length. Because the most important thing about these people is that they are people entirely lacking in discrimination. They cannot tell a good theory from a bad one, they cannot tell good evidence from bad evidence and they cannot tell a good source from a bad one. And for that reason, they always come up with the same answer when they ask the same question.

A person who always says the same thing, and says it over and over again is, of course, commonly considered to be, if not a monomaniac, then at very least, a bore.

Sound familiar.......

 

[free spirit]

Actually, I have the recent local, Mayoral and by-election results to back me up. They speak much louder than "research" consisting of a loaded opinion poll monkeyed up by the increasingly fascistic Guardian. Answers to patently loaded poll questions like: 'Generally speaking would you support or oppose the introduction of green taxes, designed to discourage things that are harmful to the environment?' can be twisted to mean anything a disreputable editor or journalist wants it to mean. Thus apparent "mass support" reflected in a dubiously constructed opinion poll conducted on behalf of a dubious newspaper with an overt Green agenda does not translate into mass support at the ballot box.

sorry, did I miss the referendum on how much the government should prioritise climate change policies?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

sorry, did I miss the referendum on how much the government should prioritise climate change policies?

A majority favour the death penalty, a majority oppose gay marriage, a majority supported the war, a majority would kill pedophiles.

What exactly was your point again?

 

[tangentlama]

A majority favour the death penalty, a majority oppose gay marriage, a majority supported the war, a majority would kill pedophiles.

What exactly was my point again?

Corrected for clarity

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

ok Johnny, here's a few thoughts on that paper...

1 - I think the basics of their hypothesis are sound - as in increases in CO2 in areas with very low levels of water vapour in the air will have greater impact than in areas with higher levels water vapour.

2 - I'm not sure that it's as clear cut as that study shows as the study only looks at that one factor. There are other relevant factors that would need to be properly investigated and either eliminated or incorporated into the equation that this study doesn't investigate at all. The main one that I can think of being changes in aerosols, and black carbon on snow in those areas over the same timespan.

Black carbon on snow would obviously have a much greater impact in winter than in summer in areas where there was no year round snow cover (which I believe applies to these areas?).

Lighter reflective aerosols would also have much a higher impact at these northern latitudes in winter than in summer as the sun is much lower in the sky, and the light has to pass through much more of the atmosphere before it get's to the ground, meaning more of it will be reflected / scattered by the aerosols.

Both these areas of identified most rapid temp increase are in the countries with the heaviest, most polluting industries / most changes in aerosol generation during that time period, and though they may not be in the middle of where the pollution was generated, it's entirely possible that prevailing winds would have meant these aerosols would have carried to these areas more than others (I'm not saying they definately did or didn't, just that it's possible). Both the US and Russia had major changes in their aerosol emissions over this time period, with the US having massive aerosol emissions during the early period of this study, and massively reducing it's aerosol emissions from the 70's onwards. I don't think Russia particularly cleaned up it's aerosol emissions deliberately, but it did have a near total collapse of it's industry and economy during the late 80's and early 90's which would have had a major impact on it's aerosol emissions towards the end of the study period.

Because these areas have low levels of water vapour they would presumably react a hell of a lot more than other areas to changes in cloud cover linked to aerosols as well.

3 - It's impossible to really get any proper feel for what's going on from this paper, as it only gives you the average anomolies for the entire period, so there's no potential to see what the slopes' like, what the decadel changes are like etc. (which might at least give some basis for identifying if there might be other factors in play).

4 - It only actually runs through to 1995, so doesn't show the last 12 years, when much of the warming has actually taken place, and essentially what you've got is the first 20 odd years being the post ww2 dip in global temperatures as the starting point... that dip is mostly attributed to the effects of aerosols, so it stands to reason the dip at the start would be heaviest in the regions with the heaviest aerosol concentrations - ie Russia and North America, which brings me back to point 2.

5 - Both these areas are towards the northern edge of land mainly landlocked areas of the Ferrel / Mid Latitude cell, so it's also possible that changes in the atmospheric circulation in the region (linked to global warming and / or as a feedback from the localised temperature changes). Changing whether the prevailing wind is coming from the cold arctic, or from the warmer south would obviously have a major effect on the temperature of a region (or more likely simply changing the proportion of arctic / southern winds).


got to go to bed now, basically it's an interesting paper IMO, I had read it before, and quite possibly linked to it from here at some point. I think there's some truth in what they're saying, but there's no where near enough detail to really see what's going on, or any coverage of any other factors.

I'd be interested to see if anyone's followed this up to look into any of the other factors / go into this in any more detail / include the last 12 years data in the analysis.

But you've failed to comment on the findings of the study, namely, that something like 75% of the warming [I don't have the study in front of me] in the northern hemisphere, is accounted for by the two anticyclonic systems over Siberia and Northern Canada. ie two specific areas of low mean yearly temperature.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Corrected for clarity

For a person with nothing to add, you're certainly capable of spitting out enough words.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

http://saveportland.com/Climate/index.html


http://tribalseduction.com/blog/is-earth-hour-the-ultimate-tribal-seduction/

 

[scifisam]

A majority favour the death penalty, a majority oppose gay marriage, a majority supported the war, a majority would kill pedophiles.

What exactly was your point again?

Just FTR, as an observer again, it was bigfish claiming that the majority do not support 'green taxes,' nobody else.

 

[free spirit]

But you've failed to comment on the findings of the study, namely, that something like 75% of the warming [I don't have the study in front of me] in the northern hemisphere, is accounted for by the two anticyclonic systems over Siberia and Northern Canada. ie two specific areas of low mean yearly temperature.

not got time to comment on this properly, and will be offline for the next week...

but briefly, like I pointed out somewhere else recently it's known as anthropogenic climate change, rather than global warming for a reason - ie the effects aren't spread out evenly across the globe.

anyway I can see what you're driving at, but don't have time to think about this further now - sorry, not a cop out, just have to go sleep then do some serious work for a week, will pick this up when I return.

 

[WouldBe]

Sound familiar.......

You could apply most of that to the climaloons as well.

 

[d.a.s.h]

JC's analogy is good. Yes, he fell for the government war propaganda back then, which placed him in opposition to the progressive anti-war movement of the masses, with whom you, Gunther, laptop, etc. sided at the time. But now the assault against the masses has taken a different form - lets call it "Green" warfare. The masses can instinctively sense the danger a fascistic "Green" warfare program poses and are steadfastly refusing to grant any party advocating such a program mass support and indeed strike blows against such parties where they can - "Green" Ken being their latest high profile victim to get his arse kicked out of office. This time round, JC also senses the danger and has moved to the side of the masses, whereas you and your disturbingly intolerant gang of reactionary authoritarian mates have moved in the opposite direction, like a fifth column.

But the most active instigators and cheerleaders of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have tended to be very hostile to the science of global warming. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter . . . Even quite a lot of the sources which you've used tend much more to come from the political right than the political left. The most extreme case being articles you've lifted from Greenie Watch. I'm pretty sure you weren't aware of the provenance of the man running it but he also set up the white supremacist M*jority R*ghts forum.

It is quite possible that there could be a very right-wing, even eugenicist Green or environmental movement. Such a phenomenon might be expected to arise from environmental concerns over human overpopulation. When the issue of quantity of human beings arises, there is a possibility that some will begin to think in terms of their quality as well.

But an environmental movement like that does not exist here and now. It is just a product of imagination. In the present, warlike and reactionary opinion usually gravitates towards contempt for environmental campaigners and issues, who are caricatured as bleating tree-huggers, despicably weak and drippy yet strangely enough powerful at the same time. In extreme formulations, they are cast - to borrow your phrase - as 'fifth columnists', working to undermine national strength.

 

[bigfish]

Just FTR, as an observer again, it was bigfish claiming that the majority do not support 'green taxes,' nobody else.

Actually, it isn't just me claiming that the majority don't support 'green taxes,' it's the whole fucking electorate, minus a handful of crackpot zealots. Ask Ken Livingshite, he'll tell you - Greenshirtism is about as popular as genital herpes.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Actually, it isn't just me claiming that the majority don't support 'green taxes,' it's the whole fucking electorate, minus a handful of crackpot zealots. Ask Ken Livingshite, he'll tell you - Greenshirtism is about as popular as genital herpes.

Um, Livingstone won an election after introducing the congestion tax.

 

[Aldebaran]

I was talking about denialists, not religious people.
Religious or not, I think if you press many a denialist hard on why they think AGW isn't real, eventually you'll get an answer that basically amounts to 'god wouldn't allow it'.

I really don't see where you get this.
Following your reasoning it would be argued "God wouldn't tolerate humans to kill each other, let alone engage in full scale war" etc.. etc.. in the infinite.

salaam.

 

[scifisam]

Actually, it isn't just me claiming that the majority don't support 'green taxes,' it's the whole fucking electorate, minus a handful of crackpot zealots. Ask Ken Livingshite, he'll tell you - Greenshirtism is about as popular as genital herpes.

I meant you were the only one on this thread.

But you're wrong about the popularity of green issues. I really have no clue what proportion of the electorate care about environmental issues, but it certainly isn't true that the whole electorate hate them.

 

[david dissadent]

I meant you were the only one on this thread.

But you're wrong about the popularity of green issues. I really have no clue what proportion of the electorate care about environmental issues, but it certainly isn't true that the whole electorate hate them.

Post 812.

...

Bigfish is deliberately ignoring it and making up his views on the spot in the face of published evidence to the contrary. It is just trolling, ignoring evidence and reposting opinions that have been shown to be based on a false premise without counter evidence. I dont understand why he is not handed temp bans as a punishment for it. It is a very effective way of derailing threads, that and spamming threads with cut and pastes he does not understand and often refuses to answer questions on.

 

[bigfish]

I meant you were the only one on this thread.

But the thread is being trolled into the ground by a an organized gang of discussion killing eco-thugs whose mission is to silence all dissent on here. On this thread I'm in the minority, but outside in the real world I'm part of a vast and growing majority.

But you're wrong about the popularity of green issues. I really have no clue what proportion of the electorate care about environmental issues, but it certainly isn't true that the whole electorate hate them.

Please explain to the forum why it is then - if environmental issues are as popular as you claim they are - that Bernie Gunther's putrefying Green Party doesn't have a single MP sitting in Parliament?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Please explain to the forum why it is then - if environmental issues are as popular as you claim they are - that Bernie Gunther's putrefying Green Party doesn't have a single MP sitting in Parliament?

I rather think the onus is on you to explain how Ken Livingstone managed to win an election after introducing road charging.

 

[Crispy]

Because parties are not elected on single issues, and the FPTP election system actively denies small parties from making gains.

 

[bigfish]

Post 812.Bigfish is deliberately ignoring it and making up his views on the spot in the face of published evidence to the contrary.

The "published evidence", as you call it, actually contradicts to the vote tallies recorded in the recent local, Mayoral and by-elections. That's because the numbers that you and your accomplice free spirit cite are made up and unreal, whereas the election results are genuine and real. Naturally you both opt to believe the unreal numbers because they sit well with the unreal science that you rely on to promote your fascistic agenda.

 

[d.a.s.h]

On this thread I'm in the minority, but outside in the real world I'm part of a vast and growing majority.

Ignorant people do tend to have bigger families, true enough.

 

[Crispy]

survey question != election vote. they can't be compared.

 

[david dissadent]

The "published evidence", as you call it, actually contradicts to the vote tallies recorded in the recent local, Mayoral and by-elections. That's because the numbers that you and your accomplice free spirit cite are made up and unreal, whereas the election results are genuine and real. Naturally you both opt to believe the unreal numbers because they sit well with the unreal science that you rely on to promote your fascistic agenda.

Oh look the troll is back. Notice the technique it is using, it claims that recent by elections are actualy votes on specific enviromental policy, too stupid to understand how a party parlimentary system works and too stupid to have noticed the huge public 'greening' of the conservatives. No effort to engage in debate, just throwing delibertately erronous points out in order to derail the thread. It is also claiming that opinion polls on a specific question have no validity in determining public opinion.

And it claims the people who support plate tectonics are anti scientific. People who support the conventional science of stellar life cycle are anti scientific.


Crude but effective trolling.