global warming
- Thread starter Stu
- Start date
We're dealing with probability here. It is highly likely that increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause the Earth to warm due to the properties of the molecules themselves. In a controlled lab experiment, the relationship between increased carbon dioxide in a closed container and temperature is well established. It is easy to predict the temperature change with a small margin of error. In the real world, it is much more complex, and there are other molecules and global weather patterns to contend with, along with living things and oceans. As a result, any predictions made are done with a large margin of error.
Currently, much of the heat is being absorbed by the ocean and by the ice that is melting at the poles. Then, the atmosphere will warm more quickly. No one knows by how much exactly. Even if we were to stop burning all fossil fuels today, the Earth will slowly continue to warm as the excess carbon dioxide will take an extremely long time to be removed from the atmosphere.
"The climatic impacts of releasing fossil fuel CO2 to the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge," Archer writes. "Longer than time capsules, longer than nuclear waste, far longer than the age of human civilization so far."(David Archer, http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html)
With that said, there are some dirty politics going on behind closed doors as there is A LOT of money being made by politicians that promise to "fix" the problem, but it is unfortunately too late. We will continue to burn fossil fuels to support our enormous global population and appetite for our modern lifestyles. There isn't a viable alternative for fossil fuels as they are the most flexible, energy rich fuel we've have ever discovered.
Currently, much of the heat is being absorbed by the ocean and by the ice that is melting at the poles. Then, the atmosphere will warm more quickly. No one knows by how much exactly. Even if we were to stop burning all fossil fuels today, the Earth will slowly continue to warm as the excess carbon dioxide will take an extremely long time to be removed from the atmosphere.
"The climatic impacts of releasing fossil fuel CO2 to the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge," Archer writes. "Longer than time capsules, longer than nuclear waste, far longer than the age of human civilization so far."(David Archer, http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html)
With that said, there are some dirty politics going on behind closed doors as there is A LOT of money being made by politicians that promise to "fix" the problem, but it is unfortunately too late. We will continue to burn fossil fuels to support our enormous global population and appetite for our modern lifestyles. There isn't a viable alternative for fossil fuels as they are the most flexible, energy rich fuel we've have ever discovered.
There are alternative energy sources... plenty of them, and the people who know about the ufos definitely know it's possible. Geopolitics (power), and money ftw. Devices tested by respected 3rd party scientists repeatedly get, basically, thrown in the waste basket. The system's messed up.
Elforsk is a Swedish energy consortium.
http://www.elforsk.se/Global/Omvärld_system/filer/LuganoReportSubmit.pdf
The empirical evidence for cold fusion is a mountain of data since 1989, but most scientists think they know it's wrong because of the P&F ordeal when most of the people who were trying to replicate them didn't do the experiments correctly. The Navy also has patents on related devices. The response of the scientific community basically set humanity back two decades in one of the areas where it matters most... the hot fusion industry gets their billions and has the deck stacked in the government (and such things definitely don't happen elsewhere) and uses that influence to shut out anything not hot fusion or the traditional renewables... the ships aren't using ITER sized power plants, mang.
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And it really is all of the above.
There's a natural component and a man made component. Because humans can never be the SOLE contributors to warming, separating the two is a false dichotomy. So yes it is literally both man made and natural.
Secondly, the term global warming and the related phenomenon is so misused, misunderstood and misrepresented that sure, by some definition it "isn't happening" and a lot of people would like to take advantage of strawman tactics, which leads to:
Third, some people do want it to be a distracting ploy so they can continue their abuses elsewhere.
There's a natural component and a man made component. Because humans can never be the SOLE contributors to warming, separating the two is a false dichotomy. So yes it is literally both man made and natural.
Secondly, the term global warming and the related phenomenon is so misused, misunderstood and misrepresented that sure, by some definition it "isn't happening" and a lot of people would like to take advantage of strawman tactics, which leads to:
Third, some people do want it to be a distracting ploy so they can continue their abuses elsewhere.
I will say this. Supporting the lie (a lie because wven though it may be real there is no absolute proof of it and stating that there is, is a lie) is highly attractive because it would lead to the faster development of alternative fuel sources. Something that is required for humanity to make that next step closer to avoiding extinction and an all around better life for everyone on the planet. Side benefits include watching the middle east power center shrivel up into nothingness.
Anyway, from my perspective supporting the lie would help make that a reality sooner than later. But I will not support it because of the basis of what science is all about. You can offer a theory but you dont call it a fact until its verified. We could say something is likely given what we know but you cant go on to say that it IS that. The reason this is important should be obvious. Lets say we spend time and money to reverse what people say is causing global warming only to find out that it something completely different? By the time we do find out what it is its to late to do anything about it because our focus was elsewhere.
Man made global warming supporters are not abiding by the established laws of science. This includes Bill Nye and Tyson. Its amazing how quickly these die hard scientists will jump off their own wagon to support something they want to be real with no proof. It hardly makes them any better then those who believe in imaginary friends.
Edit: Plus the arrogant a holes downgraded Pluto.
Anyway, from my perspective supporting the lie would help make that a reality sooner than later. But I will not support it because of the basis of what science is all about. You can offer a theory but you dont call it a fact until its verified. We could say something is likely given what we know but you cant go on to say that it IS that. The reason this is important should be obvious. Lets say we spend time and money to reverse what people say is causing global warming only to find out that it something completely different? By the time we do find out what it is its to late to do anything about it because our focus was elsewhere.
Man made global warming supporters are not abiding by the established laws of science. This includes Bill Nye and Tyson. Its amazing how quickly these die hard scientists will jump off their own wagon to support something they want to be real with no proof. It hardly makes them any better then those who believe in imaginary friends.
Edit: Plus the arrogant a holes downgraded Pluto.
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We can say man does cause global warming for something as simple as deforestation. The debate is just how much if an effect does it really have?
I personally think peoples real fear is about realizing just how small and insignificant man not only is in the universe but on this planet as well.
Tin Man
"a respectable amount of screaming"
Yes, this is pretty much my viewpoint as well. There is definitely a human element involved, but to say that we're completely responsible for what's happening is giving us far too much credit. We also don't really know how it'll affect climate in the long term. All we can do is extrapolate on the data available, and I'm very suspicious of those claiming to know exactly what will happen.
The idea of global warming is also misused by those with very little knowledge of it, seeking to gain popularity or use it as a platform to run on.
No, you don't get it. Human activity has an impact on prevailing trends which cannot be calculated by itself.
Whether or not the climate is negatively effected by human activity is entirely dependent upon the prevailing natural trend. For example, if we were hitting a natural ice age like 300 million years ago, the current levels of human greenhouse gas emissions would not result in the same problems which people label as global warming. All it could do is slow down the temperature drop, which we might consider to be a welcome effect rather than a crisis in that scenario.
We can't separate the two because then the premise becomes entirely meaningless and unfounded.
That's the point. We are breaking hottest record days more and more every year at an alarming rate. Since the industrial revolution, we have had warmer and warmer average yearly temperatures.
The people here saying it's man made need to understand there is simply no proof of that. Mankind is very small and while it may have some effect (something that needs to be studied further) the data currently points to a negiatable effect over all.
That's just the way it is and that's what the data points to.
That's just the way it is and that's what the data points to.
That's not the way it works. If April 21st was the hottest April 21st on record that means nothing. Maybe the previous year April 18th was the hottest. You really need to read between the lines and ask questions rather tha accepting statements at face value. Or... I have a bridge to sell you.
There are a lot of liars out there.
Global Warming: Policy Hoax versus Dodgy Science
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n the early 90s I was visiting the White House Science Advisor, Sir Prof. Dr. Robert Watson, who was pontificating on how we had successfully regulated Freon to solve the ozone depletion problem, and now the next goal was to regulate carbon dioxide, which at that time was believed to be the sole cause of global warming.
I was a little amazed at this cart-before-the-horse approach. It really seemed to me that the policy goal was being set in stone, and now the newly-formed United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had the rather shady task of generating the science that would support the policy.
Now, 25 years later, public concern over global warming (aka climate change) is at an all-time low remains at the bottom of the list of environmental concerns.
Why is that?
Maybe because people don’t see its effects in their daily lives.
1) By all objective measures, severe weather hasn’t gotten worse.
2) Warming has been occurring at only half the rate that climate models and the IPCC say it should be.
3) CO2 is necessary for life on Earth. It has taken humanity 100 years of fossil fuel use to increase the atmospheric CO2 content from 3 parts to 4 parts per 10,000. (Please don’t compare our CO2 problem to Venus, which has 230,000 times as much CO2 as our atmosphere).
4) The extra CO2 is now being credited with causing global greening.
5) Despite handwringing over the agricultural impacts of climate change, current yields of corn, soybeans, and wheat are at record highs.
As an example of the disconnect between reality and the climate models which are being relied upon to guide energy policy, here are the yearly growing season average temperatures in the U.S 12-state corn belt (official NOAA data), compared to the average of the climate model projections used by the IPCC
Yes, there has been some recent warming. But so what? What is its cause? Is it unusual compared to previous centuries? Is it necessarily a bad thing?
And, most important from a policy perspective, What can we do about it anyway?
The Policy Hoax of Global Warming
Rush Limbaugh and I have had a good-natured mini-disagreement over his characterization of global warming as a “hoax”. President-elect Trump has also used the “hoax” term.
I would like to offer my perspective on the ways in which global warming is indeed a “hoax”, but also a legitimate subject of scientific study.
While it might sound cynical, global warming has been used politically in order for governments to gain control over the private sector. Bob Watson’s view was just one indication of this. As a former government employee, I can attest to the continuing angst civil servants have over remaining relevant to the taxpayers who pay their salaries, so there is a continuing desire to increase the role of government in our daily lives.
In 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was given a legitimate mandate to clean up our air and water. I remember the pollution crises we were experiencing in the 1960s. But as those problems were solved, the EPA found itself in the precarious position of possibly outliving its usefulness.
So, the EPA embarked on a mission of ever-increasing levels of regulation. Any manmade substance that had any evidence of being harmful in large concentrations was a target for regulation. I was at a Carolina Air Pollution Control Association (CAPCA) meeting years ago where an EPA employee stated to the group that “we must never stop making the environment cleaner” (or something to that effect).
There were gasps from the audience.
You see, there is a legitimate role of the EPA to regulate clearly dangerous or harmful levels of manmade pollutants.
But it is not physically possible to make our environment 100% clean.
As we try to make the environment ever cleaner, the cost goes up dramatically. You can make your house 90% cleaner relatively easily, but making it 99% cleaner will take much more effort.
As any economist will tell you, money you spend on one thing is not available for other things, like health care. So, the risk of over-regulating pollution is that you end up killing more people than you save, because if there is one thing we know kills millions of people every year, it is poverty.
Global warming has become a reason for government to institute policies, whether they be a carbon tax or whatever, using a regulatory mechanism which the public would never agree to if they knew (1) how much it will cost them in reduced prosperity, and (2) how little effect it will have on the climate system.
So, the policy prescription does indeed become a hoax, because the public is being misled into believing that their actions are going to somehow make the climate “better”.
Even using the IPCC’s (and thus the EPA’s) numbers, there is nothing we can do energy policy-wise that will have any measurable effect on global temperatures.
In this regard, politicians using global warming as a policy tool to solve a perceived problem is indeed a hoax. The energy needs of humanity are so large that Bjorn Lomborg has estimated that in the coming decades it is unlikely that more than about 20% of those needs can be met with renewable energy sources.
Whether you like it or not, we are stuck with fossil fuels as our primary energy source for decades to come. Deal with it. And to the extent that we eventually need more renewables, let the private sector figure it out. Energy companies are in the business of providing energy, and they really do not care where that energy comes from.
The Dodgy Science of Global Warming
The director of NASA/GISS, Gavin Schmidt, has just laid down the gauntlet with President-elect Trump to not mess with their global warming research.
Folks, it’s time to get out the popcorn.
Gavin is playing the same card that the former GISS director, James Hansen, played years ago when the Bush administration tried to “rein in” Hansen from talking unimpeded to the press and Congress.
At the time, I was the Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA/MSFC, and NASA had strict regulations regarding talking to the press and Congress. I abided by those regulations; Hansen did not. When I grew tired of them restricting my “freedoms” I exercised my freedom — to resign from NASA, and go to work at a university.
Hansen instead decided to play the ‘persecuted scientist’ card. After all, he (and his supporters in the environmental community) were out to Save The Earth ™ , and Gavin is now going down that path as well.
I can somewhat sympathize with Gavin that “climate change” is indeed a legitimate area of study. But he needs to realize that the EPA-like zeal that the funding agencies (NASA, NOAA, DOE, NSF) have used to characterize ALL climate change as human-caused AND as dangerous would eventually cause a backlash among those who pay the bills.
We The People aren’t that stupid.
So now climate research is finding itself at a crossroads. Scientists need to stop mischaracterizing global warming as settled science.
I like to say that global warming research isn’t rocket science — it is actually much more difficult. At best it is dodgy science, because there are so many uncertainties that you can get just about any answer you want out of climate models just by using those uncertianties as a tuning knob.
The only part that is relatively settled is that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has probably contributed to recent warming. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is dangerous.
And it surely does not mean we can do anything about it… even if we wanted to.
ShareTweetPinMail
n the early 90s I was visiting the White House Science Advisor, Sir Prof. Dr. Robert Watson, who was pontificating on how we had successfully regulated Freon to solve the ozone depletion problem, and now the next goal was to regulate carbon dioxide, which at that time was believed to be the sole cause of global warming.
I was a little amazed at this cart-before-the-horse approach. It really seemed to me that the policy goal was being set in stone, and now the newly-formed United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had the rather shady task of generating the science that would support the policy.
Now, 25 years later, public concern over global warming (aka climate change) is at an all-time low remains at the bottom of the list of environmental concerns.
Why is that?
Maybe because people don’t see its effects in their daily lives.
1) By all objective measures, severe weather hasn’t gotten worse.
2) Warming has been occurring at only half the rate that climate models and the IPCC say it should be.
3) CO2 is necessary for life on Earth. It has taken humanity 100 years of fossil fuel use to increase the atmospheric CO2 content from 3 parts to 4 parts per 10,000. (Please don’t compare our CO2 problem to Venus, which has 230,000 times as much CO2 as our atmosphere).
4) The extra CO2 is now being credited with causing global greening.
5) Despite handwringing over the agricultural impacts of climate change, current yields of corn, soybeans, and wheat are at record highs.
As an example of the disconnect between reality and the climate models which are being relied upon to guide energy policy, here are the yearly growing season average temperatures in the U.S 12-state corn belt (official NOAA data), compared to the average of the climate model projections used by the IPCC
Yes, there has been some recent warming. But so what? What is its cause? Is it unusual compared to previous centuries? Is it necessarily a bad thing?
And, most important from a policy perspective, What can we do about it anyway?
The Policy Hoax of Global Warming
Rush Limbaugh and I have had a good-natured mini-disagreement over his characterization of global warming as a “hoax”. President-elect Trump has also used the “hoax” term.
I would like to offer my perspective on the ways in which global warming is indeed a “hoax”, but also a legitimate subject of scientific study.
While it might sound cynical, global warming has been used politically in order for governments to gain control over the private sector. Bob Watson’s view was just one indication of this. As a former government employee, I can attest to the continuing angst civil servants have over remaining relevant to the taxpayers who pay their salaries, so there is a continuing desire to increase the role of government in our daily lives.
In 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was given a legitimate mandate to clean up our air and water. I remember the pollution crises we were experiencing in the 1960s. But as those problems were solved, the EPA found itself in the precarious position of possibly outliving its usefulness.
So, the EPA embarked on a mission of ever-increasing levels of regulation. Any manmade substance that had any evidence of being harmful in large concentrations was a target for regulation. I was at a Carolina Air Pollution Control Association (CAPCA) meeting years ago where an EPA employee stated to the group that “we must never stop making the environment cleaner” (or something to that effect).
There were gasps from the audience.
You see, there is a legitimate role of the EPA to regulate clearly dangerous or harmful levels of manmade pollutants.
But it is not physically possible to make our environment 100% clean.
As we try to make the environment ever cleaner, the cost goes up dramatically. You can make your house 90% cleaner relatively easily, but making it 99% cleaner will take much more effort.
As any economist will tell you, money you spend on one thing is not available for other things, like health care. So, the risk of over-regulating pollution is that you end up killing more people than you save, because if there is one thing we know kills millions of people every year, it is poverty.
Global warming has become a reason for government to institute policies, whether they be a carbon tax or whatever, using a regulatory mechanism which the public would never agree to if they knew (1) how much it will cost them in reduced prosperity, and (2) how little effect it will have on the climate system.
So, the policy prescription does indeed become a hoax, because the public is being misled into believing that their actions are going to somehow make the climate “better”.
Even using the IPCC’s (and thus the EPA’s) numbers, there is nothing we can do energy policy-wise that will have any measurable effect on global temperatures.
In this regard, politicians using global warming as a policy tool to solve a perceived problem is indeed a hoax. The energy needs of humanity are so large that Bjorn Lomborg has estimated that in the coming decades it is unlikely that more than about 20% of those needs can be met with renewable energy sources.
Whether you like it or not, we are stuck with fossil fuels as our primary energy source for decades to come. Deal with it. And to the extent that we eventually need more renewables, let the private sector figure it out. Energy companies are in the business of providing energy, and they really do not care where that energy comes from.
The Dodgy Science of Global Warming
The director of NASA/GISS, Gavin Schmidt, has just laid down the gauntlet with President-elect Trump to not mess with their global warming research.
Folks, it’s time to get out the popcorn.
Gavin is playing the same card that the former GISS director, James Hansen, played years ago when the Bush administration tried to “rein in” Hansen from talking unimpeded to the press and Congress.
At the time, I was the Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA/MSFC, and NASA had strict regulations regarding talking to the press and Congress. I abided by those regulations; Hansen did not. When I grew tired of them restricting my “freedoms” I exercised my freedom — to resign from NASA, and go to work at a university.
Hansen instead decided to play the ‘persecuted scientist’ card. After all, he (and his supporters in the environmental community) were out to Save The Earth ™ , and Gavin is now going down that path as well.
I can somewhat sympathize with Gavin that “climate change” is indeed a legitimate area of study. But he needs to realize that the EPA-like zeal that the funding agencies (NASA, NOAA, DOE, NSF) have used to characterize ALL climate change as human-caused AND as dangerous would eventually cause a backlash among those who pay the bills.
We The People aren’t that stupid.
So now climate research is finding itself at a crossroads. Scientists need to stop mischaracterizing global warming as settled science.
I like to say that global warming research isn’t rocket science — it is actually much more difficult. At best it is dodgy science, because there are so many uncertainties that you can get just about any answer you want out of climate models just by using those uncertianties as a tuning knob.
The only part that is relatively settled is that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has probably contributed to recent warming. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is dangerous.
And it surely does not mean we can do anything about it… even if we wanted to.
Attachments
I like how his blog has no dissenting comments
https://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/...-corrections-bret-stephens-alternative/216246
This is the problem...strange how the former Exxon CEO is now in the WH.
Lobbying
Efforts to lobby against environmental regulation have included campaigns to manufacture doubt about the science behind climate change, and to obscure the scientific consensus and data.[150] These efforts have undermined public confidence in climate science, and impacted climate change lobbying.[16][132]
The political advocacy organizations FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, funded by brothers David and Charles Koch of Koch Industries, were important in supporting the Tea Party movement and in encouraging the movement to focus on climate change.[151] Other conservative organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, Marshall Institute, Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute were significant participants in these lobbying attempts, seeking to halt or eliminate environmental regulations.[152]
This approach to downplay the significance of climate change were copied from tobacco lobbyists; in the face of scientific evidence linking tobacco to lung cancer, to prevent or delay the introduction of regulation. Lobbyists attempted to discredit the scientific research by creating doubt and manipulating debate. They worked to discredit the scientists involved, to dispute their findings, and to create and maintain an apparent controversy by promoting claims that contradicted scientific research. ""Doubt is our product," boasted a now infamous 1969 industry memo. Doubt would shield the tobacco industry from litigation and regulation for decades to come."[153] In 2006, George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian about similarities between the methods of groups funded by Exxon, and those of the tobacco giant Philip Morris, including direct attacks on peer-reviewed science, and attempts to create public controversy and doubt.[119]
Former National Academy of Sciences president Frederick Seitz, who, according to an article by Mark Hertsgaard in Vanity Fair, earned about US$585,000 in the 1970s and 1980s as a consultant to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company,[154] went on to chair groups such as the Science and Environmental Policy Project and the George C. Marshall Institute alleged to have made efforts to "downplay" global warming. Seitz stated in the 1980s that "Global warming is far more a matter of politics than of climate." Seitz authored the Oregon Petition, a document published jointly by the Marshall Institute and Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in opposition to the Kyoto protocol. The petition and accompanying "Research Review of Global Warming Evidence" claimed:
The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. … We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life than that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution.[119]
George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian that this petition, which he criticizes as misleading and tied to industry funding, "has been cited by almost every journalist who claims that climate change is a myth." Efforts by climate change denial groups played a significant role in the eventual rejection of the Kyoto protocol in the US.[155]
Monbiot has written about another group founded by the tobacco lobby, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), that now campaigns against measures to combat global warming. In again trying to manufacture the appearance of a grass-roots movement against "unfounded fear" and "over-regulation," Monbiot states that TASSC "has done more damage to the campaign to halt [climate change] than any other body."[119]
Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle analysed the funding of 91 organizations opposed to restrictions on carbon emissions, which he termed the "climate change counter-movement." Between 2003 and 2013, the donor-advised funds Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, combined, were the largest funders, accounting for about one quarter of the total funds, and the American Enterprise Institute was the largest recipient, 16% of the total funds. The study also found that the amount of money donated to these organizations by means of foundations whose funding sources cannot be traced had risen.[156][157][158][159][160]
Private sector
See also: Business action on climate change and ExxonMobil climate change controversy
Several large corporations within the fossil fuel industry provide significant funding for attempts to mislead the public about the trustworthiness of climate science.[161]ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundations have been identified as especially influential funders of climate change contrarianism.[162]
After the IPCC released its February 2007 report, the American Enterprise Institute offered British, American and other scientists $10,000, plus travel expenses to publish articles critical of the assessment. The institute had received more than $US 1.6 million from Exxon, and its vice-chairman of trustees was former head of Exxon Lee Raymond. Raymond sent letters that alleged the IPCC report was not "supported by the analytical work." More than 20 AEI employees worked as consultants to the George W. Bush administration.[163] Despite her initial conviction that climate change denial would abate with time, Senator Barbara Boxer said that when she learned of the AEI's offer, she "realized there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."[164]
The Royal Society conducted a survey that found ExxonMobil had given US$ 2.9 million to American groups that "misinformed the public about climate change," 39 of which "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".[165][166] In 2006, the Royal Society issued a demand that ExxonMobil withdraw funding for climate change denial. The letter drew criticism, notably from Timothy Ball who argued the society attempted to "politicize the private funding of science and to censor scientific debate."[167]
ExxonMobil denied that it has been trying to mislead the public about global warming. A spokesman, Gantt Walton, said that ExxonMobil's funding of research does not mean that it acts to influence the research, and that ExxonMobil supports taking action to curb the output of greenhouse gasses.[168] Research conducted at an Exxon archival collection at the University of Texas and interviews with former employees by journalists indicate the scientific opinion within the company and their public posture towards climate change was contradictory.[169]
Between 1989 and 2002 the Global Climate Coalition, a group of mainly United States businesses, used aggressive lobbying and public relations tactics to oppose action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight the Kyoto Protocol. The coalition was financed by large corporations and trade groups from the oil, coal and auto industries. The New York Times reported that "even as the coalition worked to sway opinion [towards skepticism], its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted."[170] In 2000, Ford Motor Company was the first company to leave the coalition as a result of pressure from environmentalists,[171] followed by Daimler-Chrysler, Texaco, the Southern Company and General Motors subsequently left to GCC.[172] The organization closed in 2002.
In early 2015, several media reports emerged saying that Willie Soon, a popular scientist among climate change deniers, had failed to disclose conflicts of interest in at least 11 scientific papers published since 2008.[173] They reported that he received a total of $1.25m from ExxonMobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute and a foundation run by the Koch brothers.[174] Charles R. Alcock, director of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where Soon was based, said that allowing funders of Dr. Soon's work to prohibit disclosure of funding sources was a mistake, which will not be permitted in future grant agreements.[175]
Public sector
In 1994, according to a leaked memo, the Republican strategist Frank Luntz advised members of the Republican Party, with regard to climate change, that "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue" and "challenge the science" by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view."[164] In 2006, Luntz stated that he still believes "back [in] '97, '98, the science was uncertain", but he now agrees with the scientific consensus.[176]
In 2005, the New York Times reported that Philip Cooney, former fossil fuel lobbyist and "climate team leader" at the American Petroleum Institute and President George W. Bush's chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, had "repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents."[177] Sharon Begley reported in Newsweek that Cooney "edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as 'lack of understanding' and 'considerable uncertainty.'" Cooney reportedly removed an entire section on climate in one report, whereupon another lobbyist sent him a fax saying "You are doing a great job."[164] Cooney announced his resignation two days after the story of his tampering with scientific reports broke,[178] but a few days later it was announced that Cooney would take up a position with ExxonMobil.[179]
In 2015, environmentalist Bill McKibben accused President Obama of "Catastrophic Climate-Change Denial", for his approval of oil-drilling permits in offshore Alaska. According to McKibben, the President has also "opened huge swaths of the Powder River basin to new coal mining." McKibben calls this "climate denial of the status quo sort", where the President denies "the meaning of the science, which is that we must keep carbon in the ground." [180]
Schools
According to documents leaked in February 2012, The Heartland Institute is developing a curriculum for use in schools which frames climate change as a scientific controversy.[181][182][183]
Effect
Manufactured uncertainty over climate change, the fundamental strategy of climate change denial, has been very effective, particularly in the US. It has contributed to low levels of public concern and to government inaction worldwide.[17][184] An Angus Reid poll released in 2010 indicates that global warming skepticism in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom has been rising.[185][186] There may be multiple causes of this trend, including a focus on economic rather than environmental issues, and a negative perception of the United Nations and its role in discussing climate change.[187] Another cause may be weariness from overexposure to the topic: secondary polls suggest that the public may have been discouraged by extremism when discussing the topic,[185] while other polls show 54% of U.S. voters believe that "the news media make global warming appear worse than it really is."[188] A poll in 2009 regarding the issue of whether "some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming" showed that 59% of Americans believed it "at least somewhat likely", with 35% believing it was "very likely".[187]
According to Tim Wirth, "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry. […] Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."[65] This approach has been propagated by the US media, presenting a false balance between climate science and climate skeptics.[189] Newsweek reports that the majority of Europe and Japan accept the consensus on scientific climate change, but only one third of Americans considered human activity to play a major role in climate change in 2006; 64% believed that scientists disagreed about it "a lot."[190] A 2007 Newsweek poll found these numbers were declining, although majorities of Americans still believed that scientists were uncertain about climate change and its causes.[191] Rush Holt wrote a piece for Science, which appeared in Newsweek:
… for more than two decades scientists have been issuing warnings that the release of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide (CO2), is probably altering Earth's climate in ways that will be expensive and even deadly. The American public yawned and bought bigger cars. Statements by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others underscored the warnings and called for new government policies to deal with climate change. Politicians, presented with noisy statistics, shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing.[192]
Deliberate attempts by the Western Fuels Association "to confuse the public" have succeeded in their objectives. This has been "exacerbated by media treatment of the climate issue". According to a Pew poll in 2012, 57% of the US public are unaware of, or outright reject, the scientific consensus on climate change.[193] Some organizations promoting climate change denial have asserted that scientists are increasingly rejecting climate change, but this notion is contradicted by research showing that 97% of published papers endorse the scientific consensus, and that percentage is increasing with time.[193]
In 2016, Aaron McCright argued that anti-environmentalism—and climate change denial specifically—has expanded to a point in the US where it has now become "a central tenet of the current conservative and Republican identity."[194]
On the other hand, global oil companies have begun to acknowledge the existence of climate change and its risks.[195]
Lobbying
Efforts to lobby against environmental regulation have included campaigns to manufacture doubt about the science behind climate change, and to obscure the scientific consensus and data.[150] These efforts have undermined public confidence in climate science, and impacted climate change lobbying.[16][132]
The political advocacy organizations FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, funded by brothers David and Charles Koch of Koch Industries, were important in supporting the Tea Party movement and in encouraging the movement to focus on climate change.[151] Other conservative organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, Marshall Institute, Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute were significant participants in these lobbying attempts, seeking to halt or eliminate environmental regulations.[152]
This approach to downplay the significance of climate change were copied from tobacco lobbyists; in the face of scientific evidence linking tobacco to lung cancer, to prevent or delay the introduction of regulation. Lobbyists attempted to discredit the scientific research by creating doubt and manipulating debate. They worked to discredit the scientists involved, to dispute their findings, and to create and maintain an apparent controversy by promoting claims that contradicted scientific research. ""Doubt is our product," boasted a now infamous 1969 industry memo. Doubt would shield the tobacco industry from litigation and regulation for decades to come."[153] In 2006, George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian about similarities between the methods of groups funded by Exxon, and those of the tobacco giant Philip Morris, including direct attacks on peer-reviewed science, and attempts to create public controversy and doubt.[119]
Former National Academy of Sciences president Frederick Seitz, who, according to an article by Mark Hertsgaard in Vanity Fair, earned about US$585,000 in the 1970s and 1980s as a consultant to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company,[154] went on to chair groups such as the Science and Environmental Policy Project and the George C. Marshall Institute alleged to have made efforts to "downplay" global warming. Seitz stated in the 1980s that "Global warming is far more a matter of politics than of climate." Seitz authored the Oregon Petition, a document published jointly by the Marshall Institute and Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in opposition to the Kyoto protocol. The petition and accompanying "Research Review of Global Warming Evidence" claimed:
The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. … We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life than that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution.[119]
George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian that this petition, which he criticizes as misleading and tied to industry funding, "has been cited by almost every journalist who claims that climate change is a myth." Efforts by climate change denial groups played a significant role in the eventual rejection of the Kyoto protocol in the US.[155]
Monbiot has written about another group founded by the tobacco lobby, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), that now campaigns against measures to combat global warming. In again trying to manufacture the appearance of a grass-roots movement against "unfounded fear" and "over-regulation," Monbiot states that TASSC "has done more damage to the campaign to halt [climate change] than any other body."[119]
Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle analysed the funding of 91 organizations opposed to restrictions on carbon emissions, which he termed the "climate change counter-movement." Between 2003 and 2013, the donor-advised funds Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, combined, were the largest funders, accounting for about one quarter of the total funds, and the American Enterprise Institute was the largest recipient, 16% of the total funds. The study also found that the amount of money donated to these organizations by means of foundations whose funding sources cannot be traced had risen.[156][157][158][159][160]
Private sector
See also: Business action on climate change and ExxonMobil climate change controversy
Several large corporations within the fossil fuel industry provide significant funding for attempts to mislead the public about the trustworthiness of climate science.[161]ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundations have been identified as especially influential funders of climate change contrarianism.[162]
After the IPCC released its February 2007 report, the American Enterprise Institute offered British, American and other scientists $10,000, plus travel expenses to publish articles critical of the assessment. The institute had received more than $US 1.6 million from Exxon, and its vice-chairman of trustees was former head of Exxon Lee Raymond. Raymond sent letters that alleged the IPCC report was not "supported by the analytical work." More than 20 AEI employees worked as consultants to the George W. Bush administration.[163] Despite her initial conviction that climate change denial would abate with time, Senator Barbara Boxer said that when she learned of the AEI's offer, she "realized there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."[164]
The Royal Society conducted a survey that found ExxonMobil had given US$ 2.9 million to American groups that "misinformed the public about climate change," 39 of which "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".[165][166] In 2006, the Royal Society issued a demand that ExxonMobil withdraw funding for climate change denial. The letter drew criticism, notably from Timothy Ball who argued the society attempted to "politicize the private funding of science and to censor scientific debate."[167]
ExxonMobil denied that it has been trying to mislead the public about global warming. A spokesman, Gantt Walton, said that ExxonMobil's funding of research does not mean that it acts to influence the research, and that ExxonMobil supports taking action to curb the output of greenhouse gasses.[168] Research conducted at an Exxon archival collection at the University of Texas and interviews with former employees by journalists indicate the scientific opinion within the company and their public posture towards climate change was contradictory.[169]
Between 1989 and 2002 the Global Climate Coalition, a group of mainly United States businesses, used aggressive lobbying and public relations tactics to oppose action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight the Kyoto Protocol. The coalition was financed by large corporations and trade groups from the oil, coal and auto industries. The New York Times reported that "even as the coalition worked to sway opinion [towards skepticism], its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted."[170] In 2000, Ford Motor Company was the first company to leave the coalition as a result of pressure from environmentalists,[171] followed by Daimler-Chrysler, Texaco, the Southern Company and General Motors subsequently left to GCC.[172] The organization closed in 2002.
In early 2015, several media reports emerged saying that Willie Soon, a popular scientist among climate change deniers, had failed to disclose conflicts of interest in at least 11 scientific papers published since 2008.[173] They reported that he received a total of $1.25m from ExxonMobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute and a foundation run by the Koch brothers.[174] Charles R. Alcock, director of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where Soon was based, said that allowing funders of Dr. Soon's work to prohibit disclosure of funding sources was a mistake, which will not be permitted in future grant agreements.[175]
Public sector
In 1994, according to a leaked memo, the Republican strategist Frank Luntz advised members of the Republican Party, with regard to climate change, that "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue" and "challenge the science" by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view."[164] In 2006, Luntz stated that he still believes "back [in] '97, '98, the science was uncertain", but he now agrees with the scientific consensus.[176]
In 2005, the New York Times reported that Philip Cooney, former fossil fuel lobbyist and "climate team leader" at the American Petroleum Institute and President George W. Bush's chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, had "repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents."[177] Sharon Begley reported in Newsweek that Cooney "edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as 'lack of understanding' and 'considerable uncertainty.'" Cooney reportedly removed an entire section on climate in one report, whereupon another lobbyist sent him a fax saying "You are doing a great job."[164] Cooney announced his resignation two days after the story of his tampering with scientific reports broke,[178] but a few days later it was announced that Cooney would take up a position with ExxonMobil.[179]
In 2015, environmentalist Bill McKibben accused President Obama of "Catastrophic Climate-Change Denial", for his approval of oil-drilling permits in offshore Alaska. According to McKibben, the President has also "opened huge swaths of the Powder River basin to new coal mining." McKibben calls this "climate denial of the status quo sort", where the President denies "the meaning of the science, which is that we must keep carbon in the ground." [180]
Schools
According to documents leaked in February 2012, The Heartland Institute is developing a curriculum for use in schools which frames climate change as a scientific controversy.[181][182][183]
Effect
Manufactured uncertainty over climate change, the fundamental strategy of climate change denial, has been very effective, particularly in the US. It has contributed to low levels of public concern and to government inaction worldwide.[17][184] An Angus Reid poll released in 2010 indicates that global warming skepticism in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom has been rising.[185][186] There may be multiple causes of this trend, including a focus on economic rather than environmental issues, and a negative perception of the United Nations and its role in discussing climate change.[187] Another cause may be weariness from overexposure to the topic: secondary polls suggest that the public may have been discouraged by extremism when discussing the topic,[185] while other polls show 54% of U.S. voters believe that "the news media make global warming appear worse than it really is."[188] A poll in 2009 regarding the issue of whether "some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming" showed that 59% of Americans believed it "at least somewhat likely", with 35% believing it was "very likely".[187]
According to Tim Wirth, "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry. […] Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."[65] This approach has been propagated by the US media, presenting a false balance between climate science and climate skeptics.[189] Newsweek reports that the majority of Europe and Japan accept the consensus on scientific climate change, but only one third of Americans considered human activity to play a major role in climate change in 2006; 64% believed that scientists disagreed about it "a lot."[190] A 2007 Newsweek poll found these numbers were declining, although majorities of Americans still believed that scientists were uncertain about climate change and its causes.[191] Rush Holt wrote a piece for Science, which appeared in Newsweek:
… for more than two decades scientists have been issuing warnings that the release of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide (CO2), is probably altering Earth's climate in ways that will be expensive and even deadly. The American public yawned and bought bigger cars. Statements by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others underscored the warnings and called for new government policies to deal with climate change. Politicians, presented with noisy statistics, shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing.[192]
Deliberate attempts by the Western Fuels Association "to confuse the public" have succeeded in their objectives. This has been "exacerbated by media treatment of the climate issue". According to a Pew poll in 2012, 57% of the US public are unaware of, or outright reject, the scientific consensus on climate change.[193] Some organizations promoting climate change denial have asserted that scientists are increasingly rejecting climate change, but this notion is contradicted by research showing that 97% of published papers endorse the scientific consensus, and that percentage is increasing with time.[193]
In 2016, Aaron McCright argued that anti-environmentalism—and climate change denial specifically—has expanded to a point in the US where it has now become "a central tenet of the current conservative and Republican identity."[194]
On the other hand, global oil companies have begun to acknowledge the existence of climate change and its risks.[195]
- Dec 29, 2009
- 5,536
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- 3,498
- MBTI
- INFJ
Leaving aside global warming, just look at human beings impact on planet earth generally. When President Kennedy was elected in 1960 the human population was 3 billion. For most of humanities existence, it was less than 1 billion. Today it's over 7.3 billion and rising.
Our impact on the eco system we live in, has never been so large and profound.
Glancing around the world, it would be difficult and time consuming, to list all the very many species we've endangered or driven to extinction with our activities. Not just on land either, as we massively factory farm the ocean and dump huge amounts of waste and pollutants into the sea.
In short we've been quite irresponsible, in our stewardship of the planet we live on. This is sadly also the case now with co2 emissions. I think it's unlikely we will change in time to prevent reaching a 2 degree rise in global temperatures, but I hope I'm wrong.
If we do, then I think we will have very many problems to try to resolve, but the first one should be, to effectively deal with the people, who deliberately ignored clear scientific advice, in pursuit of financial gain.
