Is Global Warming a Leftist Urban Legend?

[Black Dog]

For example in Canada alone, according to the environment commissioner, the Federal Government has spent roughly $6 Billion on various climate change papers, reports, etc. That's alot of incentive on the "human-cause" side.

Are you telling me every dime, or even a significant percentage of that $6B was on things favourable to the human cause hypothesis. Also, you seem to imply that money goes straight into scientists' pockets. (And would it kill you to provide a link?)

Now let's measure dicks. Where is your $6 Billion (in Canada Alone) that has been spent on the "anti-human-cause-side"???.

Beats me. I haven't the faintest idea how much money Exxon or others have dropped or funnelled through various think tanks and front groups. But I do kno wthis: if I was lookingg o enrich myself, getting onto the feds' teat is not the first place I'd look when there's som many other, riper cherries to pick.

It seems pretty obvious which side is really raking in the cash.

No it's not.

BTW: i noticed you didn't address the rest of my post:

It's the decidedly unscientific approaches taken by people like Lomborg and Milloy that earn my scorn. Hello? Peer review?

[madmax]

Well, now we have it, both the Liberals and the CPC have failed Canadians regarding our Kyoto targets and and our GHG emissions.

And the magic answer comes from whom?

The current government. I think it is obvious to anyone that Canada won't meet its targets. The answer comes from the CPC and whomever supports their solution, whatever that solution may be.

I have wondered why the CPC didn't just KILL KYOTO, since so many people seem opposed to the concept and they had the opportunity to do just that. They could have stepped down at the conference and let others that believe in the treaty continue on.

Obviously the CPC didn't reneg on the treaty, so the magic bullet comes from them.

[Black Dog]

Gore doesn't tell you a lot of things. Like the fact that glaciers have also been growing around the world.

http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Glaciers.htm

Heh

The figures that Bellamy cited must have come from somewhere. I emailed him to ask for his source. After several requests, he replied to me at the end of last week. The data, he said, came from a website called www.iceagenow.com. Iceagenow was constructed by a man called Robert W Felix to promote his self-published book about "the coming ice age". It claims that sea levels are falling, not rising; that the Asian tsunami was caused by the "ice age cycle"; and that "underwater volcanic activity - not human activity - is heating the seas".

Is Felix a climatologist, a volcanologist or an oceanographer? Er, none of the above. His biography describes him as a "former architect". His website is so bonkers that I thought at first it was a spoof. Sadly, he appears to believe what he says. But there, indeed, was all the material that Bellamy cited in his letter, including the figures - or something resembling the figures - he quoted. "Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of the 625 mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring group in Zurich." The source, which Bellamy also cited in his email to me, was given as "the latest issue of 21st Century Science and Technology".

21st Century Science and Technology? It sounds impressive, until you discover that it is published by Lyndon LaRouche. Lyndon LaRouche is the American demagogue who in 1989 received a 15-year sentence for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax-code violations. He has claimed that the British royal family is running an international drugs syndicate, that Henry Kissinger is a communist agent, that the British government is controlled by Jewish bankers, and that modern science is a conspiracy against human potential.

A perfect ilustration of the phenomenon I mentioned above.

[White Doors]

And how is what Mulroney did working out these days?

Quite well thanks!

They no longer have to dump lime every year in lakes in the maritimes to keep the fish alive because of the results of the acid rain treaty. The montreal protocol has pretty much made the ozone layer a non-event. The hole has stabalized and is now repairing itself.

Mulruney has much to be proud of on the environmental front.

[B. Max]

Nothing wrong with scientific questioning and testing global warming hypothesis. It's the decidedly unscientific approaches taken by people like Lomborg and Milloy that earn my scorn. Hello? Peer review?

Do you have that backwards. Millioy's sight is nothing but scientific facts. While the climate alramist have produced nothing. Well there was the hocky stick. Which was later determind to be fraud.

[madmax]

There's a Leftist slant to this debate which is unworthy of true scientific enquiry. I sense some of the global warming proponents have a Khmer Rouge desire to take us back to the stone age - in an effort to save the planet.

Solution:

Reduce GHG=Stone Age

Failure to Reduce GHG= Waterworld

Hmm....

Sounds like the Green Party again. Policies are great, unless your people.

Well, if you are truly worried about "how" to operate in Stone Age conditions, the Taliban created such an environment and they are "Right Wing, Social Conservative extremists". But I don't think they were motivated by the Environment in the sense of GHG, just the Environment given to them by GOD.

Just threw in some Radical talk because you have allied the Environmental movement with the Khmer Rouge.

Not a bad comparision, although like the Taliban, their motives weren't for the benefit of the environment, it just happened to be a by product of their radical beliefs.

Back to the West......

[Black Dog]

Do you have that backwards. Millioy's sight is nothing but scientific facts. While the climate alramist have produced nothing. Well there was the hocky stick. Which was later determind to be fraud.

Quick: how many peer-reviewed scientific papers has Steven Milloy published on climate change?

Thought so.

About the hockey stick:

Wegman had been tasked solely to evaluate whether the McIntyre and McKitrick (2005) (MM05) criticism of Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) (MBH) had statistical merit. That is, was their narrow point on the impacts of centering on the first principal component (PC) correct? He was pointedly not asked whether it made any difference to the final MBH reconstruction and so he did not attempt to evaluate that. Since no one has ever disputed MM05's arithmetic (only their inferences), he along with the everyone else found that, yes, centering conventions make a difference to the first PC. This was acknowledged way back when and so should not come as a surprise. From this, Wegman concluded that more statisticians should be consulted in paleo-climate work. Actually, on this point most people would agree - both fields benefit from examining the different kinds of problems that arise in climate data than in standard statistical problems and coming up with novel solutions, and like most good ideas it has already been thought of. For instance, NCAR has run a program on statistical climatology for years and the head of that program (Doug Nychka) was directly consulted for the Wahl and Ammann (2006) paper for instance.

But, and this is where the missing piece comes in, no-one (with sole and impressive exception of Hans von Storch during the Q&A) went on to mention what the effect of the PC centering changes would have had on the final reconstruction - that is, after all the N. American PCs had been put in with the other data and used to make the hemispheric mean temperature estimate. Beacuse, let's face it, it was the final reconstruction that got everyone's attention.Von Storch got it absolutely right - it would make no practical difference at all.

Now there's a lot of stuff in there that's quite inaccessible to the layperson, which explains the appeal of the nay side: all they have to do is stand around yelling "bullshit!" and have no obligation to present any thing themselves. But I am curious about the paucity of peer-reviewed articles definitively refuting the climate change consensus. Why, if the evidence is so clear cut, do the naysayers feel they can bypass the standard means of scientific auditing?

[B. Max]

21st Century Science and Technology? It sounds impressive, until you discover that it is published by Lyndon LaRouche. Lyndon LaRouche is the American demagogue who in 1989 received a 15-year sentence for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax-code violations. He has claimed that the British royal family is running an international drugs syndicate, that Henry Kissinger is a communist agent, that the British government is controlled by Jewish bankers, and that modern science is a conspiracy against human potential.

An excellent example of the smear tactics of the global warming alarmists.

A perfect ilustration of the phenomenon I mentioned above.

Now lets take a look at the real illusion created by leftist front groups.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../17/wglac17.xml

[B. Max]

Do you have that backwards. Millioy's sight is nothing but scientific facts. While the climate alramist have produced nothing. Well there was the hocky stick. Which was later determind to be fraud.

Quick: how many peer-reviewed scientific papers has Steven Milloy published on climate change?

Thought so.

He doesn't have to. He reports on established scientific facts. Not the mysterious so-called scientific evidence of man made global warming that they can't seem to produce.

About the hockey stick:

Now there's a lot of stuff in there that's quite inaccessible to the layperson, which explains the appeal of the nay side: all they have to do is stand around yelling "bullshit!" and have no obligation to present any thing themselves. But I am curious about the paucity of peer-reviewed articles definitively refuting the climate change consensus. Why, if the evidence is so clear cut, do the naysayers feel they can bypass the standard means of scientific auditing?

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=19734

Dr. David Legates, Delaware state climatologist and director of the Center for Climate Research at the University of Delaware, said, "The 'hockey stick' picture of dramatic temperature rise in the past 100 years following 1,700 years of relatively constant temperature has now been proven false."

[Black Dog]

An excellent example of the smear tactics of the global warming alarmists.

So citing the fact that the site you yourself linked to apporvingly was using made-up figures from a neo-fascist magazine is a "smear tactic"?

Oh well, at least there is a source for Bellamy's figures. But where did 21st Century Science and Technology get them from? It doesn't say. But I think we can make an informed guess, for the same data can be found all over the internet. They were first published online by Professor Fred Singer, one of the very few climate change deniers who has a vaguely relevant qualification (he is, or was, an environmental scientist). He posted them on his website, www.sepp.org, and they were then reproduced by the appropriately named junkscience.com, by the Cooler Heads Coalition, the US National Centre for Public Policy Research and countless others. They have even found their way into the Washington Post.

They are constantly quoted as evidence that man-made climate change is not happening. But where did they come from? Singer cites half a source: "A paper published in Science in 1989." Well, the paper might be 16 years old, but at least, and at last, there is one. Surely?

I went through every edition of Science published in 1989, both manually and electronically. Not only did it contain nothing resembling those figures, throughout that year there was no paper published in this journal about glacial advance or retreat.

Dude....

Now lets take a look at the real illusion created by leftist front groups.

Boy you got me there on the front groups.

By the way: i'm still awaiting a reference to Steven Milloy's "scientific" work.

[guyser]

I generally do not post in this type of thread because I consider myself sufficiently ignorant to the truth from both sides.

All I can say is...if David Suzuki says it is getting bad (and he does) then that is all I have to know. Yup , I know that is mildly ignorant position (but honest) , but that man has never steered me wrong.

[B. Max]

An excellent example of the smear tactics of the global warming alarmists.

So citing the fact that the site you yourself linked to apporvingly was using made-up figures from a neo-fascist magazine is a "smear tactic"?

Oh well, at least there is a source for Bellamy's figures. But where did 21st Century Science and Technology get them from? It doesn't say. But I think we can make an informed guess, for the same data can be found all over the internet. They were first published online by Professor Fred Singer, one of the very few climate change deniers who has a vaguely relevant qualification (he is, or was, an environmental scientist). He posted them on his website, www.sepp.org, and they were then reproduced by the appropriately named junkscience.com, by the Cooler Heads Coalition, the US National Centre for Public Policy Research and countless others. They have even found their way into the Washington Post.

They are constantly quoted as evidence that man-made climate change is not happening. But where did they come from? Singer cites half a source: "A paper published in Science in 1989." Well, the paper might be 16 years old, but at least, and at last, there is one. Surely?

I went through every edition of Science published in 1989, both manually and electronically. Not only did it contain nothing resembling those figures, throughout that year there was no paper published in this journal about glacial advance or retreat.

Dude....

Now lets take a look at the real illusion created by leftist front groups.

Boy you got me there on the front groups.

By the way: i'm still awaiting a reference to Steven Milloy's "scientific" work.

George Monbiot is one of the biggest leftist liars going.

I guess you didn't look that well. As usual you missed the forest for the trees.

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Arti...bal_warming.pdf

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

[stignasty]

I generally do not post in this type of thread because I consider myself sufficiently ignorant to the truth from both sides.

All I can say is...if David Suzuki says it is getting bad (and he does) then that is all I have to know. Yup , I know that is mildly ignorant position (but honest) , but that man has never steered me wrong.

Here's a preemptive post for the poopooing that is most certainly about to happen.

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/...ce/Skeptics.asp

The overwhelming majority of scientists that study climate change agree that human activity is responsible for changing the climate. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is one of the largest bodies of international scientists ever assembled to study a scientific issue, comprised of more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries. The IPCC has concluded that most of the warming observed during the past 50 years is attributable to human activities. Its findings have been publicly endorsed by the national academies of science of all G-8 countries, as well as those of China, India and Brazil. The Royal Society of Canada – together with the national academies of fifteen other nations – also issued a joint statement on climate change that stated, in part: "The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognize IPCC as the world's most reliable source of information on climate change."

To gain an understanding of the level of scientific consensus on climate change, a recent study examined every article on climate change published in peer-reviewed scientific journals over a 10-year period. Of the 928 articles on climate change the authors found, not one of them disagreed with the consensus position that climate change is happening or is human-induced.

These findings contrast dramatically with the popular media's reporting on climate change. One recent study analyzed coverage of climate change in four influential American newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and Wall Street Journal) over a 14-year period. It found that more than half of the articles discussing climate change gave equal weight to the scientifically discredited views of the skeptics.

[jbg]

I was listening to an interview with a Danish person http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lomborg6/English in the car. Al Gore refused to debate with him while in Denmark, which is typical of Al Gore, he doesn't like to debate the issue. One of the points he made was that Kyoto would not give us the best bang for our buck...

I got to the interview Al Gore chickened out of (link to thread) first.

[jbg]

Brian Mulroney Spoke up on Canadas behalf and position to fight acid Rain.

Liberal Governments can be just as aloof to the environment. And ofcourse the Federal Provincial split, and what makes the economy roll are all factors in the governments response to the environment.

Mulroney could pick up the phone and discuss such problems with Reagan or Bush Sr. Do you think Chretien or Martin similarly positioned themselves?

[B. Max]

We recognize IPCC as the world's most reliable source of information on climate change."

Laughable to say the least. I guess when you eliminate those that disagree, you will have a consensus. So now rather the science, which they haven't produced, they substitute consensus for science. It's not surprising to see Suzuki involved in leftist corruption up to his neck.

Dr. Freidrich Seitz, President emeritus of Rockefeller University, and former President of the National Academy of Sciences, said:

"I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report. Nearly all the changes worked to remove hints of the skepticism with which many scientists regard global warming claims."

A hundred distinguished scientists, meeting in Leipzig, Germany, released a joint statement on July 10, 1996 which said:

"There is still no scientific consensus on the subject of climate change. On the contrary, most scientists now accept the fact that actual observations from earth satellites show no climate warming whatsoever."

From that point forward, any scientist who dared to offer research results that did not affirm the conclusions of the IPCC, has been denied invitations to participate in the IPCC studies, denied funding, and/or denigrated publicly by politically motivated scientists and/or the media. Any scientist who dares express skepticism is at once denounced as a pawn for the oil and coal industry.

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/guest/2007/hl_02051.shtml

[newbie]

I dunno B Max: 400 scientists and 113 countries disagree with you . Even Harper now supports Kyoto. But believe what you will.

[B. Max]

I dunno B Max: 400 scientists and 113 countries disagree with you . Even Harper now supports Kyoto. But believe what you will.

Must be on the right side. It started out as a majority of scientists, then it was 2500, now it's only 400.

[B. Max]

I dunno B Max: 400 scientists and 113 countries disagree with you . Even Harper now supports Kyoto. But believe what you will.

[newbie]

I dunno B Max: 400 scientists and 113 countries disagree with you . Even Harper now supports Kyoto. But believe what you will.

Must be on the right side. It started out as a majority of scientists, then it was 2500, now it's only 400.

I'm referring to the meeting in Paris. Not every scientist who believes in global warming was in attendance.

[Black Dog]

George Monbiot is one of the biggest leftist liars going.

Proof?

I guess you didn't look that well. As usual you missed the forest for the trees.

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Arti...bal_warming.pdf

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

Look hard for what? I asked for a link to anything Milloy has done that has undergone peer-review. Not a link to his EXXON-funded web site and Larouche's rag.

[Saturn]

Right-wingers here can whine and complain all they want about Kyoto and about the Global Warming "hoax". You can also whine about "intelligent design" not being taught in schools. And you can complain about immigrants and working women and everything else that's wrong with the world today. Unfortunately for you, reality is reality and no amount of whining and complaining can change things to your liking. So grow up and stop embarrassing yourselves. I thought the left-wingers were supposed to be whiners. Geez, you don't know whiners till you've heard the right!

[August1991]

Right-wingers here can whine and complain all they want about Kyoto and about the Global Warming "hoax".

There you go again. You link evolution with global warming as if to question one is to question the other. That's not scientific at all.

The IPCC report itself used terms such as "very likely" and moved probability from "60-90%" to "above 90%" (in the short span of about five years since its last report). Nobody would use such terms when discussing evolution as opposed to intelligent design.

The process of evolution has been extensively studied and while many questions remain, the broad principles are understood. That is not the case with global warming. It is not clear now how the earth establishes a balance of chemicals in the atmosphere and how this leads to global warming. For example, water vapour is an important GHG but water vapour is dependent on atmospheric temperature.

By raising these points, I am not saying that global warming is a hoax. But it is simply wrong to pretend that anyone understands well these processes.

[margrace]

Brian Mulroney Spoke up on Canadas behalf and position to fight acid Rain.

Liberal Governments can be just as aloof to the environment. And ofcourse the Federal Provincial split, and what makes the economy roll are all factors in the governments response to the environment.

Mulroney could pick up the phone and discuss such problems with Reagan or Bush Sr. Do you think Chretien or Martin similarly positioned themselves?

Oh yes Mulroney and Regan where great friends, I will never forget watching in horror the dog and pony show in Quebec when Mulroney and Regan and wives got up on the stage and sang When Irish Eyes are Smiling. You could just see the sell out of Canada. How disgusting that was. Still makes me sick to my stomach.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

I think the thing to remember is that politicians are by and large media junkies. Wherever the spotlights are is where you can find the little fellas. When a majority of the press gets behind something the public gets all juiced up and then the politicians climb to the top of the pile to pontificate about the facts of the matter. So what it boils down to is how the media gets played and by whom.

For my own beliefs on the weather, I look outside. Has the weather changed since I was a child, short answer is yes. I will trust my own memory and use it to gauge what others say. I think we are in the midst of some trend that is bringing more extreme weather to my home. Winters are getting warmer, summers are getting hotter. Not exactly scientific, yet completely realistic.