Scientists were not always so convinced.
As early as 1979, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences reported with "high confidence" that a 1.5 to 4.5 degree Celsius temperature increase was likely if carbon dioxide levels doubled. It was greeted by a chorus of skepticism.
However, the past two decades have also seen the retreat of once noisy critics. BP, a major energy company, says it is now taking "precautionary action" against climate change by cutting greenhouse emissions and investing in mitigation of greenhouse gases.
Nonetheless, a minority of scientists reject what they call "alarmist" global warming on scientific grounds. They raise three major objections, which most researchers agree remain troublesome.
Natural climate variability is not well understood and may be greater than once thought.
Computer models are oversimplifications that cannot simulate the complexities of the real climate.
Temperature extrapolations of the past are not precise enough to make dire conclusions about "normal" warming.
Richard Lindzen, a respected meteorologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says in light of these uncertainties, pronouncements about climate change are both self-serving and unscientific.
"Scientists make meaningless or ambiguous statements. Advocates and media translate statements into alarmist declarations. Politicians respond to alarm by feeding scientists more money," said Lindzen at a scientific conference this January. He added that the accepted evidence is "entirely consistent with there being virtually no problem at all." This sentiment is in the extreme minority of the scientific community, said Richard Sommerville, meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who drew a parallel with proposing that HIV does not cause AIDS.
"[Lindzen] is taken seriously because he's capable of excellent science," Sommerville said. "[But] most of the scientific community thinks he's mistaken... People are given a fair hearing and then we move on."
So more or less, it is only a extreme few scientists saying that MMGW is "alamists", and not surprisingly, they are heavily funded by energy interests.
It is very clear that the only opposition to MMGW contributing to GW is fraudulent at best.
Case closed until the neotards find another ridiculous way to go against the consensus.
It seems to get more and more desperate and lame every time.
Will you get rid of my quote in your sig already, every time I read a new post from you I think you're replying to THAT well articulated quote in your sig.
Will you get rid of my quote in your sig already, every time I read a new post from you I think you're replying to THAT well articulated quote in your sig.
XFBO leers.."God the thought of you being a father in a few months is one scary thought." at Cutter. ( BTW, love the sig, Cutter...)
Especially when he has to face his young daughter and try to explain how the greed and ignorant stupidity of so many people led to the ecological, environmental and social disaster that she and her generation will have to clear up, or die trying.
They'll piss on the graves (if they haven't sunk into the sea...) of the Deniers who sat fiddling while Rome burned....and you can't really blame them.
Love that sig cutter, that was XFBO in my minds eye, now I have a visual. Thats from the movie Freaks. A most amazing tale of hardship, friendship, adaptability, acceptance, hypocrisy and social changes.
You know these sarcastic, flippant remarks from the asses who support the failed wars, failed policies and failed spirituality, they're becoming so shallow but, oh so revealing. If we watch carefully, we will see them shift stances and 'think tank' their way to a position that paints their previous stances as "patriotic and resolute, steadfast and determined". You wont see them take responsibility for stupidity, assfaced hypocrisy, immaturity or incompetence.
I hope our kids grow up fixing the place without the shackles of the right wing assholes blocking every move they go to make with anti science anti earth and anti common sense rhetoric and venom. The biggest task our kids face before tackling Global Warming is getting rid of fundamentalists and stupid, greedy ass cronies. These Archie Bunkers have flourished and networked in the last few years and they have used the distraction of the modern age to advance a primitive agenda right under our noses.
Phooey
Like the panics of bygone eras, this one has the aspect of yet another re-enactment of the Big Con. The huckster arrives in town, tells all the rubes that disaster impends for them and their families, but says there may be one last chance they can be saved – but it will take a lot of money. And the folks should go about collecting it, right now.
This, it seems to me, is what the global-warming scare and scam are all about – frightening Americans into transferring sovereignty, power and wealth to a global political elite that claims it alone understands the crisis and it alone can save us from impending disaster.
Sounds like like good old fashioned religion to me. Put the money in the plate son.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baasinator
The preacher arrives in town, tells all the townsfolk that eternal damnation impends for them and their families, but says there may be one last chance they can be saved – but it will take a lot of money. And the folks should go about collecting it, right now in the plate.
This, it seems to me, is what the christianity scam is all about – frightening Americans into transferring power and wealth to the church that claims it alone can save us from hell.
This, it seems to me, is what the global-warming scare and scam are all about – frightening Americans into transferring sovereignty, power and wealth to a global political elite that claims it alone understands the crisis and it alone can save us from impending disaster.
And here I thought banning CFC's was a good thing...
Nope, new iron clad propaganda studies have found that GW is just a religion, and on a ironic twist of fate, new studies show that the earth is only 6011 years old and we all spawned out of 2 people that inbred themselves into 6 billion people of many races, not to mention the great floods of Noah reset the worlds population 1556 years after.
Taking from the new right wing science books.
Quote:
On the other hand, this same very conservative rate of population growth (only one fourth what it is at present), if continued for a million years, would have produced a present population infinitely greater than could be packed into every cubic foot of the entire universe! This fact alone argues that the supposed million-year history of man on the earth is completely absurd, whereas the Biblical chronology is perfectly reasonable …
Yes, a planet that makes up about a molecule size portion of all the worlds water in comparison to the universe would have filled every inch of the universe with people if we were around a million years ago...
figuring everyone had 2.5 children, plus, figuring that most American families have a average of 2 cars or more, a million years of "evolution" would have produced more cars then space in the universe to hold them all.
Thus making evolution impossible, global warming a religion, and poptart creation a fact.
All hail the Grand Mufti Al, may Solar panels forever shelter his radiant head.
I loved Bassinators remark. I just changed one word, and suddenly it made sense...
This, it seems to me, is what the terrorism scare and scam are all about – frightening Americans into transferring sovereignty, power and wealth to a global political elite that claims it alone understands the crisis and it alone can save us from impending disaster.
BTW, It snowed in Naples this weekend. In October. Global climate change ? Nah ! It's just some wacky religion to take all our SUV's away...
Sounds like like good old fashioned religion to me. Put the money in the plate son.
Except our faith doesnt FORCE you to put money in our faith now does it?
Hey, do the followers of the MMGW faith have a specific house of worship?
I mean it'd be nice, for change, if you diehard believers had some place to go where you can fund your own faith rather than wanting us all to pay for it.
While we're at it.........DAMN that Dick Bush for those Cali fires.
This, it seems to me, is what the terrorism scare and scam are all about – frightening Americans into transferring sovereignty, power and wealth to a global political elite that claims it alone understands the crisis and it alone can save us from impending disaster.
Churches and their massive wealth are tax exempt, so I'm actually picking up the slack due to the fact that (for example) the Catholic Church down the street (which is conservatively valed at $4.57 million) pays no real estate taxes whatsoever.
The Diocese of Orlando owns 65 pieces of real estate in my county, and doesn't pay one cent on any of them.
Oh- as an update I just pulled a quick check on their 12 largest buildings' value- a cool $89 million.
And yes, the followers of MMGW do have a house of worship! It's called science, reason and logic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by XFBO
Except our faith doesnt FORCE you to put money in our faith now does it?
Hey, do the followers of the MMGW faith have a specific house of worship?
The Global-Warming Debate Isn't Over - By John Stossel
First he won the Oscar -- then the Nobel Peace Prize. He's being called a "prophet."
Impressive, considering that one of former Vice President Al Gore's chief contributions has been to call the debate over global warming "over" and to marginalize anyone who disagrees. Although he favors major government intervention to stop global warming, he says, "the climate crisis is not a political issue. It is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity".
Give me a break.
If you must declare a debate over, then maybe it's not. And if you have to gussy up your agenda as "our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level," then it deserves some skeptical examination.
Everyone has heard that Earth's atmosphere is heating up, it's our fault, and it's a crisis. No wonder 86 percent of Americans think global warming is a serious problem and 70 percent want the government to do something now.
But is it a crisis? The globe is warming, but will it be catastrophic? Probably not.
In "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore says that "sea levels worldwide would go up 20 feet."
But the group that shared last week's Nobel Prize, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says in a hundred years, the oceans might rise 7 to 24 inches.
Gore also talks about drowning polar bears. He doesn't mention that the World Conservation Union and the U.S. Geological Survey say that today most populations of polar bears are stable or increasing.
And while man's greenhouse gasses may increase warming, it's not certain that man caused it. The most impressive demonstration in Gore's movie is the big graph of carbon-dioxide levels, which suggests that carbon levels control temperature. But the movie doesn't tell you that the carbon increases came after temperatures rose, hundreds of years later.
There's much more. A British court ruled that U.K. teachers could show Gore's documentary to students only if they also explain nine errors in the movie.
I wanted to ask Gore about that and other things, but he wouldn't talk to me. Why should he? He says "the debate is over."
"It's absurd for people to say that sort of thing," says Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute.
John Christy and Roy Spencer, who won NASA's Medal for Exceptional Achievement for figuring out how to get temperature data from satellites, agree that Earth has warmed. "The thing that we dispute is, is it because of mankind?" Spencer says.
Some scientists say the warming may be caused by changes in the sun, or ocean currents, or changes in cloud cover, or other things we don't understand. If it's all man's fault, why did the Arctic go through a warm period early last century? Why did Greenland's temperatures rise 50 percent faster in the 1920s than they are rising now?
The media rarely ask such questions.
The media also treat the IPCC as impartial scientists, but Reiter and Christy, who were members of the IPCC, say it is not what the public thinks it is. Many of the people involved in writing its report "are not scientists at all," Reiter says. "They were essentially activists." Members of groups like Greenpeace were involved. Skeptics were often ignored.
Christy says, "We were not asked to look at a particular statement and sign our names to it."
Adds Reiter, "I resigned."
But the IPCC still listed him as part of the so-called consensus of scientists. He says he had to threaten to sue to get his name removed from the report, although the IPCC denies that.
Skeptics like Reiter, Christy, Spencer and Tim Ball, who studies the history of climate change and heads the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, are often smeared as "deniers," lumped in with Holocaust deniers and accused of being "on the take" from energy businesses." Gore impugns skeptical scientists by saying "the illusion of a debate has been purchased."
But the scientists I interviewed don't get money from business.
Some get threatened. Ball received an e-mail that said: "You will not live long enough to see global warming!"
Is this what the global-warming debate has come to?
Skeptics were often ignored.
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