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Think-Tanks Take Oil Money and Use it to Fund Climate Deniers
An orchestrated campaign is being waged against climate change science to undermine public acceptance of man-made global warming, environment
experts claimed last night.
Stephen McIntyre, who runs climateaudit.org, part of a network
of climate change sceptics. (Photo: The Independent). The attack against scientists supportive of the idea of man-made climate change has grown in ferocity since the leak of thousands of documents on the subject from the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit last December.
Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe.
Many of these critics have broadcast material from the leaked UEA emails to undermine climate change predictions and to highlight errors in claims that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Professor Phil Jones, who has temporarily stood down as director of UEA's climactic research unit, is reported in today's Sunday Times to have "several times" considered suicide. He also drew parallels between his case and that of Dr David Kelly, found dead in the wake of the row over the alleged "sexing up" of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Professor Jones said he was taking sleeping pills and beta-blockers and had received two death threats in the past week alone.
Climate sceptic bloggers broadcast stories last week casting doubts on scientific data predicting dramatic loss of the Amazon rainforest. All three stories, picked up by mainstream media, questioned the credibility of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the way it does its work. A new attack on climate science, already dubbed "Seagate" by sceptics, relating to claims that more than half the Netherlands is in danger of being submerged under rising sea levels, is likely to be at the centre of the newest skirmish in coming weeks.
The controversies have shaken the IPCC, whose chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was subjected to a series of personal attacks on his reputation and lifestyle last week. A poll this weekend confirmed that public confidence in the climate change consensus has been shaken: one in four Britons - 25 per cent - now say they do not believe in global warming; previously this figure stood at 15 per cent.
Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and former chairman of the IPCC, said yesterday that the backlash is the result of a campaign: "It does appear that there's a concerted effort by a number of sceptics to undermine the credibility of the evidence behind human-induced climate change." He added: "I am sure there are some sceptics who may well be funded by the private sector to try to cast uncertainty."
A complicated web of relationships revolves around a number of right-wing think-tanks around the world that dispute the threats of climate change. ExxonMobil is a key player behind the scenes, having donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past few years to climate change sceptics. The Atlas Foundation, created by the late Sir Anthony Fisher (founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs), received more than $100,000 in 2008 from ExxonMobil, according to the oil company's reports.
Atlas has supported more than 30 other foreign think-tanks that espouse climate change scepticism, and co-sponsored a meeting of the world's leading climate sceptics in New York last March. Called "Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?", it was organised by the Heartland Institute - a group that described the event as "the world's largest-ever gathering of global warming sceptics". The organisation is another right-wing think-tank to have benefited from funding given by ExxonMobil in recent years.
A large British contingent was present at the event, with speakers including Dr Benny Peiser, from Lord Lawson's climate sceptic think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF); the botanist David Bellamy; Julian Morris and Kendra Okonski from the London-based International Policy Network; the weather forecaster Piers Corbyn; Christopher Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher; and Professor David Henderson, a member of GWPF's advisory council. Speakers at the event also included two prominent climate bloggers who associate with Paul Dennis, a 54-year-old climate researcher at the University of East Anglia who has been questioned by police investigating the theft of climate data.
In a posting on the blog of the climate sceptic Andrew Montford on Friday, Mr Dennis insisted: "I did not leak any files, data, emails or any other material. I have no idea how the files were released or who was behind it."
But he confirmed that he had been in email contact with Stephen McIntyre, who runs climateaudit.org - a site that was one of the first to receive an anonymous link to the original leaked data from UEA.
Mr Dennis said he emailed Mr McIntyre to alert him to a "departmental email saying that emails and files were hacked" and that "police had copies of my email correspondence with Steve McIntyre and Jeff Id [a pseudonym for the climate sceptic Patrick Condon]. They said it was because I had sent the emails that they were interviewing me."
The UEA researcher also has connections with another prominent sceptic, Anthony Watts, with whom he has posted and who spoke beside Mr McIntyre. Mr Dennis was not available for comment.
Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: "A lot of the climate sceptic arguments are being made by people with demonstrable right-wing ideology which is based on opposition to any environmental regulation of the market, and they are clearly being given money that allows them to disseminate their views more widely than would be the case if they didn't have oil company funding."
But Dr Richard North, a climate change sceptic and blogger, rejected claims of a conspiracy as "laughable" and denied having any links to vested interests. "Anybody who knows me knows I'm a loner. Nobody tells me what to do or dictates my agenda."
ExxonMobil said in a statement: "We have the same concerns as people everywhere - and that is how to provide the world with the energy it needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions."
55 Comments so far
Show AllWhat is worse...denying climate change or advocating more nuclear power plants as the solution to climate change?
The propagandists have got us coming and going.
No one has said nuclear is THE solution. It is already part of the solution, a number of concerned climatologists (James Hansen for example) believe nuclear can be done right, and forsee a future generation of nuclear power that will use DU as an almost inexhaustible energy source producing almost no "forever" actinide waste.
If the denialists have their way and time proves them wrong, many species will go extinct, the ocean ecosytems will collapse, seal level rise will inundate the homes and agriculture of billions of people, and many regions of the globe will become uninhabitable. (And that is not the worst case scenario.)
What is worse? An undetectable amount of tritium and strontium in the Mississippi watershed, or a whole s##tload of nitrogen, phosphorous... runoff from corn and biofuel production causing algae blooms and massive dead zones? People are exposed to many times more radiation from medical and dental tests and procedures than from nuclear power generation. (Not to mention coal burning puts uranium into the environment.)
Right now wind power is the fastest growing alternative, and there are great possibilities for concentrated solar power. The stimulus package helped keep wind power growing, and we need incentives to manufacture wind and solar equipment in the US. If wind and solar can do the job, then the nuclear question becomes irrelevant.
Hmmmmm,
An area the size of Alabama downwind of Chernobyl is now uninhabitable for 600 years. Why frame the argument as a choice between Death and Death?
Nuclear power has never been safe for us. Plants Will have accidents that will expose millions of people to fallout and radioactive contamination. Residential Solar, on the other hand, can supply the entire US grid during the daytime if we subsidize it like we are subsidizing dangerous nuclear and irresponsible coal. Of course, it's unlikely the Big Oil Mafia will get any of that money which is why we aren't doing that and instead are all faced with a certain extinction event if we let this go on much longer.
http://planetliberty.wikidot.com/nuclear-power-incidents
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Nuclear can't be done "right," so long as it's created as a centralized control of power, so long as it's highly toxic and volatile, and so long as its creates the same type of waste as it has been.
No other form of energy can be done "right" either, so long as it's created as a centralized control of power.
What's the difference between one type of terrorist and another? Only in the method of delivery, the way I see it.
Shocking news for whom? Is it not evident that an industry dependent upon freedom from regulation in order to continue to reap billions in profit would expend a few paltry millions in buying favorable opinions from "scientists" in their employ? Is that not, after all, the American way..or rather the capitalist way?
ExxonMobil, a descendent of Rockefeller's monopoly Standard Oil, is a great example of a corporate culture so utterly beholden to short-term profit that the future of humanity or the planet doesn't even enter into their thinking. According to classic economics "market forces" will eventually force them to behave. I wonder if "market forces" includes the complete destruction of civilization. Their PR/misinformation/lobbying/bribery machine is working too well. The government is the only other force that can keep them in check.
What is missing in the skeptic's arguments is a motive for falsifying data among the scientists whose conclusions support global warming. There is little money to be made in generating scientific papers supporting AGW. Not so for the skeptics, however. Their support is assured through the outlays of money the "think tanks" release to their friends. Furthermore, if a scientist knowingly falsifies data, he is in terrible trouble. The other side--if they do that, not much to worry about since most of them are not scientists at all.
The underlying problem is that most skeptics (not all) do not understand how science is conducted. It is conducted through publication in scientific journals, attending conventions, collaborations with scientists at several universities and more. Papers are criticized on the basis of the way research was conducted, the experimental design, the consistency of a present study with previous work, analysis of data, and the discussion of alternative interpretations. By contrast, skeptics use weather events, non-scientific sources of information, anecdotes, political talking points, and common sense to counter scientific arguments. Such drivel is not worth a scientist's time in replying to--and that silence is taken as a concession to the other side.
The word "think tanks" is definitely used loosely here, and those paying the piper or such"research" will call the tune that's played. This is the crux of the problem. The other side doesn't have the piles of money. They just have the truth. The climate change deniers are counting on an old saying "A lie can get half way around the world before the truth gets its boots on."
AD
'This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.'
And some think that the Supreme Ct decision to allow corps to rule over elections is no big deal. Maniacal insane world of power and greed. We have no choice at this point but to do what we can, hope for the best, and pray for no pain in the end. And who is buying up the fresh water melting and selling it to you? A big corp. Shit.
I was going to point out the same thing. Congressmen are already strangely 'neutral' on the topic of AGW given the preponderance of scientific evidence and the potential consequences to their constituents: imagine their fecklessness once Big Oil targets them directly for removal the moment they let out a 'peep' about AGW's dangers or take even halting steps to address those dangers.
A few hundred thousand pounds to some laissez faire hacks wouldn't cause much stir without the amplification provided by the entire corporate media.
Same as the corporate media promotes any and all supply-side and neo-liberal economic propaganda from these "think tank" dogmatists.
The purpose of such funding is to maintain a thin 'sheen' of scientific respectability among the deniers.
One of the more scientifically reasonable skeptic papers in recent years was one that tried to blame cosmic rays from the Milky Way Galaxy for GW. Of course, it could be. I could also be God's bad breath. What I find amazing is that there are scientists getting paid to do research, and to broadcast results, in which they are so desperate to uncover another reason for warming that they are literally casting themselves into our galactic center for a smoking gun.
Hey, here's an idea: Global Warming is due to the expansion of the universe! I should mention that to Big Oil, I'd have tenure and my own staff of worker-bees in a heartbeat.
These people are not skeptics. Skepticism is a legitimate position to take on inconclusive data. This is not the case, the data has been conclusive for some time. We should refrain from calling them skeptics, as the term implies a legitimacy they don't have. They are deniers for profit. They are risking the lives of living creatures on the entire planet for their own gain. We should refer to them as climate criminals.
Excellent point. Calling them skeptics is to euphemize, for the reasons we always do that--to soften the blow. Skepticism is always good. Denying reality is always bad.
When the pope and his henchmen forced Galileo (under threat of death by torture) to sign that he was renouncing his finding that the earth revolved around the sun, they weren't being 'skeptics'. They were denying reality out of typical self-interest.
Zinn said something about just 'calling things by their real names', like the OCCUPATIONS of Iraq and Afghanistan, and these self-interested climate change DENIERS.
Reminds me of the famous Upton Sinclair quote:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."
i really like your allusion. People who deny anthropogenic climate change are EXACTLY like the churches in denial of the true nature of the solar sytem.
Lately, RT TV (Russian) and occasionally the BBC have taken to interviewing and quoting these denier-types. I don't watch much U.S. network TV, so I don't know what they're doing, but it is apparent that the gigantic effort described in the above article is actually happening.
How, for the sake of the whole world, can we elect a real progressive in 2012 -- one who actually GETS it on issues like this, like international trade, like messing in foreign elections, like increasing our armed presence everywhere in the world, et cetera et cetera et cetera -- and who can and will stand up to the perpetrators within government and the media and corporate America?
The weekly radio address might then start with, "Good morning, my fellow citizens. I'm sorry to report the Exxon Mobil is again funding a study designed to misrepresent the truth about global warming."
Or perhaps, "Good Morning, my fellow citizens. I'm am delighted to report that Presidents Aristide of Haiti and Zelaya of Honduras have proven that bringing them back to their countries was the right decision. The rich elites in those countries may be angry, but The People have jobs, education, food and shelter, health care, civil rights and human rights."
Isn't "Think" tank a bit of a misnomer for these fools?
mujeriego, "think' is certainly far too strong a term to describe what they do, although one should not underestimate their cunning.
There are some neutral think tanks around and you can generally detect these by noticing that they present information in a quiet manner. They list various opposing arguments and their summary often contains more than one conclusion depending on the variables previously mentioned.
I prefer to call most think-tanks 'Spin-Tanks' or 'Agenda-Tanks'. 'Experts' has to be the most abused word in the English language.
(Tenga cuidado con esas mujeres)
It is well past due for a new term to come into being to apply to these global warming denying, scientist-for-hire types: research whores.
("Think tanks", of course, are thin air and depend on co-conspirator news editors and the gullible to give them influence. Witness how easy it is to get think tank credentials at the 'Tato Institute', www.9898.us/3/tato-f02.htm . .) Bob, a good Fellow.
kw
This is about power and the best way how we can exert power is by
a) destroying the image of Exxon, expose them as what they are
b) stop buying their fuel. There are plenty of other companies. Boycott Exxon.
This enviro movement is just too tame. If unions had been that tame we all would still be working 7 days a week, 16 hours a day for nothing.
"There are plenty of other companies." Such as...?
I'm sorry, but the only real solution is to ride a bike or walk, and buy as much locally produced food and necessities as possible.
I just received an e-mail about buying 'American' fuel from a dear, misguided, uninformed, friend. It is simplistic and unrealistic to think that if we just boycott the big energy multinationals, all of our problems will go away. It made me do some quick research into the matter (i.e. is it even possible to buy 'American' fuel?)
The e-mail claims that simply by boycotting Saudi Arabian derived oil, we can stop the funding of terrorism at its source. It is complete and utter nonsense. The e-mail also averred that we should buy our gas at Wal-Mart (Murphy Oil) and that Citgo is owned by that dictator, Hugo Chavez, who HATES America. This should give anyone with half a brain, pause.
At any rate, this lead me to the Coral Springs (FL)-based advocacy group, Terror-Free Oil Initiative. As I suspected they have been accused of Islamaphobia. The e-mail may very well have originated from this group, as it purports to be a solution to terrorism without any mention of the glaring reality that ALL of these multinationals have Americans and Europeans as CEOs, their boards filled with Goldman-Sachs chairs (Peter Sutherland) and DeBeers pigs (Cynthia Carroll), just to name a few.
What a depressing day. First this e-mail, from a supposedly smart, liberal friend. And now the SB and with it, a further promotion of war and the warrior spirit, the degradation of women (ah, but sex sells!), anti-abortion statements, gluttony, and the all-around MYTH of American Exceptionalism.
I feel like Alex in "A Clockwork Orange." I think I'm going to be sick...
Are there any "experts" who are NOT, "funded by the private sector to try to cast uncertainty."?
I've been boycotting Exxon Mobil for years and buying my gas from CITGO.
The most intractable problem with Global warming will be politicians. The historical record shows they neversolve problems until it is too late, and their driving force is reelection . All the money in Christendom and the oil industry will not alter reality. These are the new age King Canutes commanding the tide not to come in
"ExxonMobil said in a statement: "We have the same concerns as people everywhere - and that is how to provide the world with the energy it needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions." "
- Except "the same concerns" doesn't for "people everywhere" include depending on profits from oil use for existence, making it NOT "the same concerns" at all.
Pretty sly(my) statement there from Exxon=Esso=S.O.=Standard Oil=Rockefeller Trust Co.=JPMorgan=ChaseManhattan bank=David Rockefeller jr. (1941 - ).
PS. For fun, read how "John D. Rockefeller jr.'s great-granddaughter" Camilla Rockefeller (b. 1984) "reflects on family legacy" in "Growing up in Acadia" at:
http://www.friendsofacadia.org/journal/fall2006/fall2006.pdf
See how she sweetly ruminates on how "It can be a welcome change at times to ride by myself, with no one but my thankfully mute horse to listen", in Acadia National Park ("Whether walking, bicycling, driving or riding ..., all must pay the entrance fee"), where her "parents built a summer house" "to be able to walk out of the front door in summer to cross the street into a national park" established by her great-grandfather, maintained by her "father and grandfather" (Messrs. David Rockefeller jr. & sr. - "messers" indeed...). - Yes, don't we all just love to take the horse out for a ride on a whim.
It shows how the Exxon(Mobile) owners just looove nature. Where they own it, that is.
They don't believe in changing the climate.
I'm shocked, shocked to find out "think tanks" are taking oil money to finance climate change deniers!
Your winnings, sir...
Think tanks are themselves climate change deniers.
Nice Casablanca reference.
"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow"
Now, how do I get on that airplane with Ingrid Bergman?
First off, climate change is a naturally occurring phenomena that at this point is the ending of the current age and this period is called the melt or the interglacial period and since there is NOT a single witness to this period of an ice age, then there is NO way to determine what the climate is like going into another glacial or ice build up will be like, other than it is UNPREDICTABLE and EXTREMELY VARIABLE in temperature, hot or cold, moisture, wet or dry, and activity, VIOLENT or CALM and there is nothing besides learning how to live in it that humans can do.
This global warming part of affecting the climate will not make a difference as the next 100,000 year,+/- 20k, ice age cycle begins to take hold of the planet but it should not stop efforts to stop the pollution of the planet by our modern human society and this is what all those think tanks are trying to protect for their corporate sponsors, their 'right' to pollute and do as they wish to the environment and the natural resources.
Because those think tanks, mostly created during nixon's terms, are still active in trying to subvert everything that people are doing to maintain a fair, civil and just world that is extremely crowded and extremely controlled for those who benefit from such manipulations.
At first I was going to disagree with you, but I finished reading your post and I find my self 100% agreeing with you. The reason I was going to disagree with you is that so many people who think that what we do won't matter cite the fact that the world ALSO acts in ways that are not anthropogenic (solar output, variable orbit, natural climate cycles), that the things that humans do not matter, basically that these things would be happening regardless of our inputs.
I believe this is absolutely not true. It is absolutely obvious that anthropogenic influences on the climate exist. As a matter of fact, were it not for anthropogenic climate effects (CO2, methane, and water vapor production mostly ) we would now be in more of an ice age. Unfortunately, this CO2 offset has already been more than enough to ward of said ice age and we are well on our way to further CLIMATE CHAOS which will mean colder winters in some places, hotter in others and pretty much drier/hotter summers in a band proceeding farther north. This is not to discredit any natural climate trends, but only add to them.
I don't hesitate to say that CO2 emissions are a problem but one has to also consider deforestation being the removal of the sinks that store CO2 and H20 the biggest green house gas and this is why I say that not stopping corporations or any business from dumping pollutants unfettered and cutting down sinks(storage points) only exacerbates the whole problem.
And I am not trying to kid anybody about the effect of 7,000,000,000 people on this planet and with that many footprints combined with the total inequality of it all, then certainly humans make a difference, an extinction level event(ELE)difference and it is just that human life is held to be so much more sacred than the home we live on, so that mentioning this is considered blasphemy and heresy.
Humanity should replace it's addiction to Oil.
The only solution is to develop renewable alternatives.
By the way, I just bought the domain name www.environmentalscoreboard.com. the first thing I am going to be working on is "score" nuclear energy vs. solar energy. I know there are some trolls here that like nuclear, screw you, but I want to be fair, so can you please send me info on sites that ACCURATELY depict the energy output of CURRENTLY FEASIBLE nuke plants and give UNBIASED information on current and future nuclear technology. I already have some sources, but I would like to hear from you so I can know which of my current sources to take with a grain of salt. By the way, citations of industry funded research will be absolutely SUSPECT, I want non-biased information. In particular Bill_y4 I think can provide these. By the way, did I mention: Screw Industry Funded Info Sources?
By the way, If you can provide unbiased sources, I would appreciate that. Full Disclosure: If you can convince me that nuclear is good with your sources, you might actually beat solar on www.environmentalscoreboard.com. (But I really doubt it). (And I predict I will get no answers from the nukeholes out there.)
The other main purpose for the site is to score from Pres. to local officials on their environmental fitness, stated env. policies, and env. voting records. I am hoping that it can be used as a tool for voting decisions. I have thought of a number of ways to present and quantify the information, but I have less knowledge on how I might allow others to input info as well. I mean really I am just me, I am not going to be able to score every legislative actor in this country. If anybody has not only ideas, but if possible working methods for implementing those ideas (i.e. database structure, internet implementation tricks, webpage design), my e-mail is eg29@humboldt.edu.
This article is so cynical - I don't imagine I will be buying the Independent again for quite some time!
Even the most casual familiarity with the various 'climategate' issues will reveal certain facts - mostly revealed by so called climate deniers.
Steve McIntyre revealed the fact that the famous hockey stick was the result of a statistical error - he could produce the same graph from pure noise.
Those leaked emails DID reveal that the scientists at the CRU were trying to suppress other people's work by corrupting the peer review system.
The claim that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 WAS made by the IPCC, and the head of that body called the scientist who exposed this fact a practitioner of Voodoo science!
Andrew Watts (another so called denialist) discovered a Y2K bug in the way temperature data was being processed. This was accepted grudgingly, and after the correction had been made, 1998 was no longer the hottest year since records began - that honour fell to 1934 - before the period of rapid rise of CO2.
It doesn't matter who funds these people, they are finding specific faults in the 'science' that stand up regardless.
Arguments about who funds each side are particularly silly now that we have carbon credit billionaires, and big business is investing in 'green' technology (such as growing bio-fuel on rain forest land) as hard as it can!
The climate issue is not like other issues discussed on Common Dreams - such as the arms trade - where it is clear which is the right side to be on. The climate scare stands or falls on the science, and unfortunately it is becoming increasingly clear that this science has been badly done by people who thought they knew the answer before they started, and bent the facts to fit. This is a real tragedy because there are so many other green issues, that are not about trading credits and using food crops to make fuel.
you are an idiot. one thing you cannot deny, and nobody can is that the polar caps are melting. I have been in Alaska the past five summers (as a fisherman) and I can tell you from both first hand sightings and from the observations of long term locals, that the glaciers and icecaps off earth's coldest places are melting and at a rate in the last ten years far faster than in the previous decade. you are cherry-picking for negative view points when the overwhelming amount of evidence points towards globalwarming. Did i say yet that you are an idiot (and probably a well-financed troll). Nuffsaid. troll fur sure.
Part of what went on at the CRU was a statistical trick - exposed by Steve McIntyre - that minimised the variation of temperature over historical time. There has in fact been considerable temperature variation over time, as any historian can tell you. There was a time when vines grew in the north of England, and another period when the Thames (London) froze sufficiently for people to hold fairs on the ice.
Without that minimisation, the current fluctuations look far more normal. There is a lot of information out there on the internet, am I an idiot for reading it? Am I an idiot for being amazed that the IPCC published the Himalayan Glacier melt claim based on no science whatsoever, and reluctantly withdrew it after the Copenhagen conference where it was used? Perhaps I am an idiot for knowing enough maths to see the point of Steve McIntyre's expose of the hockey stick graph.
Nobody is served by sloppy science. Even the Guardian is starting to question the actions of the scientists at the heart of this affair.
BTW, I am not financed at all, I am simply angry that the green movement has been hijacked by a scare story and lost its former emphasis on real issues. Hell, we may end up in Britain with more nuclear power stations because they don't emit CO2 - how green is that?
I think i might also take this welcome opportunity to call someone such as yourself an ass, ass well.
Climate Extreming is real. So are the scams like 'cap and trade' to exploit for profit the real anthropogenic changes in global climate.
Don't make the error of confusing the two, thinking if one is true the other can't be: that if 'cap and trade' is largely a scam, so must climate extreming be.
There's a deliberate confusing of the debate happening, contested trifles looked at through magnifying glasses to obscure the overall view. Bathwather deliberately contaminated to justify throwing out babies. The noise of quarreling conceiling the baby's cries for help.
Many people around do, in practice, prefer dying over toilsome changes of thought and attitude.
If you're truly interested in the topic, read up on the sound science behind rather than succumbing to quick articles.
cap & trade is nothing but another scheme to create derivatives to the enrichment of Wall Street. Same old game. Same old rat race.
I hope you understood what Smarter was saying: cap-and trade is not the *only* means to combat climate change. So you hate cap-and-trade? Fine. Let's go with carbon tax. We still need the "cap" - a limit on emissions. And no, it's NOT the same old game: this is a new game where the deniers are active participants, in propping up the old game - where the capitalists can maintain the status quo. It's a new game because the deniers believe they are fighting "the system", but in effect, they help perpetuate the system. That's easy to prove: Are those that deny man-made climate change is happening, willing to make major changes to reduce emissions from fossil fuel use? No if's, but's, maybe's. Their choice will prove which side they are on - it doesn't matter which side they *think* they are on.
"The climate scare stands or falls on the science, and unfortunately it is becoming increasingly clear that this science has been badly done by people who thought they knew the answer before they started, and bent the facts to fit. This is a real tragedy because there are so many other green issues, that are not about trading credits and using food crops to make fuel."
You maybe the first CD poster I've ever agreed with. I'm a hunter,fisher and avid outdoorsman in general. I believe in real conservationism not silly buy new things that only consume more resourses not save mantra.
So, hey, Exxon, what to hell is taking so long. You say you want to reduce emissions, but you've had since at least 1988. Yeah, when Jim Hansen went to congress and made his point about climate change. You had the chance then, to take a serious look at this and start to make changes early, to get ahead of the problem. But instead you and other CO2 polluters decided to pretend the problem didn't exist. So instead of making a gradual change over to wind, solar, etc, which would be easier on the economy, here we are. Our economy is sinking fast and really, a lot of it has to do with you oil companies-and coal. Now, we need to make changes immediately or else. We have no wiggle room.
Oh, but all you deniers, you know... you know that's not true... no no, there is no such thing as climate change...
All these scientist are putting their reps on the line for... what?
It seems to mean that GREEDY BASTARD OIL COMPANIES have more to gain by denying climate change then scientists have in making a case for it.
That's what gets me, that people don't look at who's gaining or loosing what. It's amazing to mean. What for crying out loud would be the reason that scientist would be making this up? But there is a perfectly good case for oil and coal companies to deny....geeeez!!! It as plain as the nose on your face.
"That's what gets me, that people don't look at who's gaining or loosing what. It's amazing to mean. What for crying out loud would be the reason that scientist would be making this up?" hahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhaha hahahahahahahhahahahahahhaha wait oh yeah ahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahhahaha, Oil companies will deny it for the money scientist will claim it's true so they can go down in history being the one who saved the earth. And if you think scientist don't follow the money too, then you should wake up. Criticize both sides they all lie to us for their own money/selfish profits.
Peace
The greedy bastard oil compnies would not have a leg to stand upon if not for our craving the lifestyle and things that go with their Midas touch.
I wonder if the deniers are like agnostics. Just in case "global warming is true" they have a plan to survive the oncoming climate disasters. It would be interesting to find out where they are buying land in the delusion that they and their heirs will ride this out? I wonder if Heaven will be safe?
Nuclear power is a very safe way to generate electricity. That's why there isn't a single insurance company anywhere on the planet that will insure a nuclear power plant, no matter how much you are willing to pay them.