Global Darkening Threat From Environmental Degradation

[waldo]

The amount of money spent by lobby groups like Greenpeace in support of CO2 mitigation far out-strips the money spent by industry opposing it.

citation request

In fact, unlike the oil companies the IPCC often seeks the advice if Greenpeace when it is writing its reports - which goes to show where the IPCC bias lies.

BS, absolute bunk. The IPCC does not, as you state, seek advice from Greenpeace. As you're well aware, Greenpeace has been cited by the IPCC within past WG II reports; those dealing with the so-called "social science" aspects related to climate change. Your purposeful misdirection is intended to give the impression that Greenpeace has influenced the actual underlying physical science assessments, the WG I Physical Basis reports. Just another of your purposeful mis/disinformation ploys!

[Michael Hardner]

citation request

It's on the previous page.

[Michael Hardner]

It adds up.

Indeed. I'd like to see an objective analysis, though.

[bleeding heart]

It's on the previous page.

Do you mean this one?:

http://www.theguardi...tions08.climate).

That's a citation for the Al Gore/$300 mill. point; but Waldo was asking for citation for "The amount of money spent by lobby groups like Greenpeace in support of CO2 mitigation far out-strips the money spent by industry opposing it."

A declarative statement, so it should be easy enough to demonstrate.

[waldo]

It's on the previous page.

no - as also just highlighted by MLW member bleeding heart...

TimG plied a quick googly to come up with a single reference to one person's funding... not even to the direct Greenpeace reference he made. That in no why provides any measure of comparison... the comparison he stated when he said: "The amount of money spent by lobby groups like Greenpeace in support of CO2 mitigation far out-strips the money spent by industry opposing it"

[TimG]

But more to the point, do you have any evidence at all for your claim...and I'm of course only asking for arguable evidence (as that's all we've got on any stance here). The electoral politics don't mean much...when you say "from [Australia to] Germany to Japan...do you mean ONLY Australia, Germany and Japan?

Policies are being rolled back or cancelled around the world - those are the facts. Elections involve many issues but obviously the climate change is of low enough importance that politicians either believe this is what the public wants or that the public does not care much about it. Either is a sign that climate change alarmists are losing the public debate.

I'll take your point on polls, for the sake of argument--but I'd also wonder why--unlike every other major contentious issue you could name, probably without exception--we haven't seen any polls going demonstrably and clearly the other way.

I dispute your claim of 'clearly'. An honest poll that laid out the likely consequence of effective climate policies would not see the levels of support that the poll you quoted earlier did. Your poll use the same tactic as the Quebec referendum questions: obscure the consequences to get the desired answer. Edited November 24, 2013 by TimG

[Michael Hardner]

Hard to find anything objective on Google U.... I expect Waldo will serve up a substantial meal of study on the topic...

All I came up with is this:

Clients in the oil and gas industry unleashed a fury of lobbying expenditures in 2009, spending $175 million -- easily an industry record -- and outpacing the pro-environmental groups by nearly eight-fold, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis.

'http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/08/pro-environment-groups-were-outmatc.html'

No idea about the source, though...

[Michael Hardner]

If this is an exaggeration of four fold, then the enviro lobby is outspent two fold... that's a lot of folds...

[TimG]

Indeed. I'd like to see an objective analysis, though.

I am not aware of any anti CO mitigation marketing campaign that had more than a few million in funding. As far as I can tell they don't exist but I can't prove a negative.

[TimG]

No idea about the source, though...

The trouble is climate advocates like to label any spending by oil/gas/coal as money spent opposing climate change policies. It would take a lot more to figure out how much was actually spent with that objective. We know almost all of Greenpeace's budget goes to lobbying because lobbying is its raison d'etra. Edited November 24, 2013 by TimG

[Michael Hardner]

Hmmmm.... well then... you have addressed the source I quoted - and here we are: we're back to your assertion.

[bleeding heart]

Policies are being rolled back or cancelled around the world - those are the facts. Elections involve many issues but obviously the climate change is of low enough importance that politicians either believe this is what the public wants or that the public does not care much about it. Either is a sign that climate change alarmists are losing the public debate.

I'm not seeing it; but like I said, I might well be proven right or wrong in fairly short order, so I guess we'll see.

I dispute your claim of 'clearly'. An honest poll that laid out the likely consequence of effective climate policies would not see the levels of support that the poll you quoted earlier did. Your poll use the same tactic as the Quebec referendum questions: obscure the consequences to get the desired answer.

OK, but then why aren't there polls--by anybody (to my knowledge, that is)--that are showing, if not opposite results, at least less dramatic ones?

On every issue, from abortion to capital punishment to the popularity of leaders and/or Houses--to I think every single contentious issue of import--we can see varying polls, sometimes with quite varying results. Am I not right about that?

[TimG]

OK, but then why aren't there polls--by anybody (to my knowledge, that is)--that are showing, if not opposite results, at least less dramatic ones?

Here is a poll that shows skepticism is growing:

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/09/poll-appears-to-show-growth-in-climate-skepticism-but-what-kind-is-it/

Note that it focused on attitudes towards science and not policy.

Edited November 24, 2013 by TimG

[TimG]

On every issue, from abortion to capital punishment to the popularity of leaders and/or Houses--to I think every single contentious issue of import--we can see varying polls, sometimes with quite varying results. Am I not right about that?

Most of the other contentious issues don't touch on policy choices that affect people's economic well being. i.e. it is easy to be pro/anti gun/abortion if you are not affected by the laws. Climate change policy is a unique issue where everyone could be affected by the laws which is why politicians try hard to hide that impact and people tend to be agreeable when they believe it is 'no skin off their back'.

Here is proof of the effect of self-interest on polls:

http://environment.yale.edu/climate-communication/article/americans-support-strong-climate-energy-policies

When cap and trade is explained, 58 percent support the policy, but this support drops to approximately 40 percent if household energy costs increase by $15 a month, or 50 cents a day. Sixty-six percent support cap and trade, however, if every household were to receive a yearly bonus of $180 to offset higher energy costs. In addition, 59 percent of Americans said they would likely spend the bonus on home energy efficiency improvements. Support increases to 71 percent if the bonus is doubled and spent entirely on energy efficiency improvements.

Edited November 24, 2013 by TimG

[bleeding heart]

Here is a poll that shows skepticism is growing:

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/09/poll-appears-to-show-growth-in-climate-skepticism-but-what-kind-is-it/

Note that it focused on attitudes towards science and not policy.

You're right that this poll suggests that climate skepticism is growing in Britain.

But it's still a minority view, which was one of our original questions.

Like I said...time will tell. I'm very rarely married to the notion of being right on a speculative issue.

[waldo]

You're right that this poll suggests that climate skepticism is growing in Britain.

it's just purposeful "gleaning" of polls to suit one's predilection. That same organization commissioned a poll 4 months earlier, with results significantly different - how does a representative poll shift so in such a short period of time - 4 months?... shifting from, "89% of respondents said they believe climate change is happening; while only 6% said they did not believe the climate is changing"... to, "72% of respondents said they believe climate change is happening; while only 19% said they did not believe the climate is changing".

results of the prior poll, 4 months earlier:

[eyeball]

Sorry - do something does not mean 'pay attention' - it means do something - i.e. change policies. IOW - scientists are demanding policy changes when they have no expertise to allow them to determine if policy changes are the best course of action.

Tim it's obvious you're a dyed in the wool alarmist. You're saying that years, decades in fact of scientific consensus in the range of 95% should be disregarded because it's all a big global conspiracy - a "mafia" to use your own alarming term.

It's ludicrous.

[jbg]

Again, the world's been darkening for the last five or six months. Yesterday was just unbearably dark, even though the weather was clear.I hope a U.N. Commission can turn it around soon.

[Michael Hardner]

I don't know who the audience is for this weak joke.  Anyway, we don't have as many people around denying climate change these days.  We are arguing economics but we should have done that 20 years ago.

Edited December 22, 2017 by Michael Hardner

[?Impact]

On 12/22/2017 at 6:19 AM, jbg said:

Again, the world's been darkening for the last five or six months. Yesterday was just unbearably dark, even though the weather was clear.I hope a U.N. Commission can turn it around soon.

This is indeed a serious situation, I was just speaking with some Australian friends and they said that this disturbing phenomenon reached their shores this past week.

[taxme]

On 12/23/2012 at 4:03 AM, jbg said:

A little-noticed but highly dangerous problem has been developing for at least five months or so, probably longer. Both cities and rural areas from Washington DC to Kittery, Maine, from New York City to the Golden Gate, and even in Canada from St. John Newfoundland to Prince Rupert British Columbia have reported shortening hours of daylight. Already, daylight has been wiped out in places as remote from each other as Spitzbergen to Alert, Nunavut to Barrow Alaska.

Just as an example, in New York City we have dropped from over 15 hours of daylight to just over 9 hours in recent months. An effort was made back in early November to stop the trend. This has worked for the mornings, temporarily but been counterproductive at night.

At the very least,Barack Obama and either the Queen or PM Harper should commission a joint study, perhaps an international Royal Commission, to investigate to see if the problem can be solved. Or perhaps get the U.N. involved.

I personally suspect that humans have been wrecking the earth with impunity and now we're paying.

Funny guy. I think that you do have a fine sense of humor.  

But just in case you are serious about this you do realize that the loss of daylight happens every year somewhere on earth due to the change of the seasons? Shocking to know this, eh?   

 

[taxme]

On 12/22/2017 at 3:19 AM, jbg said:

Again, the world's been darkening for the last five or six months. Yesterday was just unbearably dark, even though the weather was clear.I hope a U.N. Commission can turn it around soon.

Hoping that the UN will do something about it will no doubt only make the problem worse. In the end the UN may have a hand in making it dark forever. Hey, you never know.