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10,000 GM Customers Tell Auto Giant: Stop Funding Climate Deniers
General Motors, a company that has made strides to lower the carbon footprint of driving, is taking heat from 10,000 of its customers for a donation its charitable foundation made to an institute that casts doubt on climate science, according to a report from McClatchy.
The outrage stems from a leaked internal document from the rightwing Heartland Institute that was made public last month. A detailed strategy and funding memorandum, the document showed that GM had given the group $30,000 since 2010.
The campaign to press GM on their funding of a group well known for its campaign to deny global warming was organized by Forecast the Facts, an public advocacy group that has historically aimed to cast light on how meteorologists coverage of severe weather and climate change impacts public perceptions of how those phenomenon are related to man-made global warming.
The group set up a page on their website and has been posting short expressions of outrage by current and former GM customers upset by the revelations. A couple samples include:
"You're currently synonymous with the eco-friendly Chevy Volt, therefore this revelation will send a mixed message that will do maximum damage to your PR at the height of all the press you're getting for your comeback. Knock it off now, or I'm never buying another GM vehicle, even an electric." -Martin, Northville, MI
"My roots with G.M. go way back to my grandfather, Martin Menton, working for Fisher Body in the old day, & his sons followed suit, joining General Motors in their design dept., so what G.M. does is always important to me for personal reasons and as a tax payer, for economic reasons. Let's not give the anti-climate people any encouragement by contributing to their organizations! Be careful with our money & your reputation." -Cinthia, Fountain Hills, AZ
"There's very little to be lost if you believe that man has a part in global warming and it turns out down the road the he deoesn't. But being determined that global warming is a hoax and then finding out when it's too late you're wrong, will only bring disaster to you and our planet. One would think that a company like GM would be looking to the future and would be doing everything it can to ensure that the future even comes; not supporting an organization which tells you to close your eyes and pretend there's no danger that may make the future be tomorrow." -Alayna, Deer Isle, ME
According to McClatchy:
Many companies support the Heartland Institute, but Forecast the Facts focused on GM because it got taxpayers' dollars in the auto bailout, and "people really care about GM and what it stands for in American society and in the American economy," said the group's campaign director, Daniel Souweine. No taxpayer dollars went from the GM Foundation to Heartland, however.
The foundation's $15,000 annual gift in 2010, repeated in 2011, went to the Heartland Institute's general funds, not its climate program, said GM spokeswoman Carolyn Markey. Heartland also takes a free-market approach to other areas, including education, insurance and health care.
Sarah Laskow, at Grist.org, also reported on this story and was subsequently contacted by media personnel from GM. She writes:
GM got in touch to let us know that the company does not support Heartland’s position on climate change and that “the donation through GM Foundation was designated to general funds not specifically toward climate related matters.” Also that “Through the GM Foundation, we associate with and provide donations to a variety of organizations. These also include organizations that strongly support the science behind climate change.” The examples: Ceres: the World Environment Center and Global Green.
So do with that what you will. It’s clear that GM is taking this negative attention seriously enough to put the PR people on the case. I’d note that general funding is often more valuable to nonprofit organizations than funding earmarked for specific projects. It gives organizations the flexibility to do whatever they want, which in Heartland’s case included promoting climate skepticism. If the GM Foundation didn’t support the organization’s position on climate change, they could have earmarked the funding to go to a program they did believe in.
McClatchy points out the long history of Heartland's climate denial and how completely detached it is from the reality presented by the world's leading scientists:
Heartland contends that global warming has stopped, a view that's contradicted by global data and reports from many scientists, including those at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA, for example, has reported that each of the last three decades has been warmer than the decade before.
Heartland, however, sees global warming as part of a "liberal political agenda," according to its website. It argues that warming rose mostly from natural causes and has stopped, and that the benefits of "moderate warming" will probably outweigh the costs. The organization plans to fund a K-12 curriculum saying that climate science is controversial.
Climate science research, however, overwhelmingly reports that continuing warming is driven mainly by human use of fossil fuels. One summary, from the National Academy of Sciences, said: "Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for — and in many cases is already affecting — a broad range of human and natural systems."
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137 Comments so far
Show AllI hope the future generations of your family will enjoy the miserable planet we will leave them. And I hate to tell you that there is more to life than money and your bazaar obsession with"personal freedom" which in the US is nothing more than being wage slaves to the corporations and the ruling class.
Most people in this country have no freedom. They have to get up and go to their miserable low paying job, and if they don't they'll be homeless. The right wants to do away with any social safety nets, and if/when they do many people will just starve because you cant live on $7.25 an hour without government assistance. You'll have the Republican version of the 4 freedoms. The freedom to be homeless, the freedom to be hungry, the freedom to work for nothing, the freedom to fear.
The science behind man made climate change is stunningly simple. CO2 is a green house and we have been pumping into the atmosphere at a rate that is more than the planet can absorb. The oceans did their best, but it just caused them to acidify.
All you concerns about money and your sad brand of "freedom" means nothing if the planet can no longer support the billions of people currently on it, and that includes the future generations of YOUR family. There is a reality coming that is beyond most peoples wildest nightmares. Only fools can think what we have done, and continue to do to this planet will not have dire consequences. Good luck arguing against reality. Reality ALWAYS wins in the end, because reality ALWAYS bats last.
"Reality is a big LIE." - This message sponsored by your GovernMent...
- Don't trust anything you see: trust US, we're the people who know.
;-)
You wrote,, > ("Telling GM to stop funding climate deniers suggests that the case for man made global warming is so flimsy that it cannot withstand scrutiny or discussion.").. end Derby Lad comment.
I do believe you are sorely mistaken Derby, in fact I know that you are.... Last year humans activity was responsible for emitting (*44 billion tons*) of Co2 into the atmosphere from burning coal and petroleum. ... That figure does not include methane or other potent greenhouse gases human activity emitted.
Just a couple of examples and there are many more... That amount of Co2 alone emitted by human activity is more than double the amount emitted by nature anually and nature does not need human activity to insure there is a decent balance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to insure decent climate and weather conditions.
Now if we then take a look at what is occurring in the Arctic region of Earth, the Arctic Ocean's (perennial) sea ice is the lowest level it has been in centuries and it is projected to be ice free by the year 2015... That is due to serious global warming .
Humans emit more Co2 annually than that would be emitted by (*17,000*) active volcanoes the size of mount Kilauea in Hawaii and that amount is carefully measured daily by scientists who report the readings to the CDIAC daily.
The atmospheric Co2 level is near 395 ppm which is 115 ppm above the desired level for excellent weather and climate world wide conditions... That also does not include the atmospheric methane level.
If the Co2 we humans emit annually were not a problem as to global warming, it is killing our oceans and ocean life and doing so very rapidly... Life on Earth is not sustainable with dead oceans and a major reduction of the ocean waters' phytoplankton
So your false assertion of what top level scientists have discovered and are warning us all of, cannot be proven is 100% incorrect.... If there had been 17,000 active volcanoes like Mt. Kilauea emitting Co2 into the atmosphere for the past 200 years and added to what nature has emitted during that time period, we would be where we are toddy with global warming.
That is not the case however. We humans have managed to do in 200 years, what nature took millions of years to do. in Earth's past history.... Okay?
There's a good article about Earth's carbon cycle out at SkepticalScience:
Deniers love to say that natural CO2 sources are larger than human sources. They are half-right, and mostly wrong about this. About 750 gigatons of CO2 is naturally produced every year, but the same amount is naturally absorbed. That's why it's called a carbon cycle: a lot of carbon cycles in and out, in balance before the industrial era.
Human sources, though much smaller, are enough to exceed the capacity of natural systems to absorb. It keeps adding up year after year, to the point where we now have atmospheric CO2 concentrations not seen since the Miocene epoch, millions of years ago.
And the delicate balance of the carbon cycle has been enormously and dangerously tampered with on both sides of the balance:
** the rate of carbon emissions (the source) has increased tremendously due to the burning of fossil fuels during the last 250 years, and
** the rate of CO2 absorption (the sink) has been greatly reduced due to massive deforestation - so there are fewer trees to absorb the CO2, and trees absorb CO2 at a very slow rate.
It takes more than 25 years for a freshly planted tree to absorb (net) one tonne of CO2 - the same amount produced by burning just 110 gallons of gasoline.
Another carbon sink, the ocean, also has been pushed to its limits as to how much CO2 it can absorb, especially as the waters started to warm. Warm water can absorb less CO2, so more CO2 stays in the atmosphere.
And here's the scary part:
right now, oceans are warming at a very slow rate because much of the heat input is going to melt the ice in the Arctic and in the ice shelves. So at some point, the warming of the oceans will accelerate when there is less ice, and all kinds of positive feedback loops will kick in.
The bottom-line when it comes to avoiding catastrophic consequences is to massively reduce the rate of greenhouse gas emissions and to massively increase the rate of CO2 absorption (by planting billions of trees and by putting an end to any further deforestation). And this has to be done urgently, before the feedback loops kick in.
AGW deniers are engaged in a dangerous game.
Derby Lad wrote:
Reasonable skepticism is a good thing. The self-styled skepticism of climate deniers is extremely selective: only scientific truths are rejected, while any harebrained notion of the corporate propaganda machine is automatically embraced, no matter how much it contradicts previously embraced harebrained notions.
Such intellectual servitude is not true skepticism, but willful ignorance. There is no hope of ever getting through to the willfully ignorant.
And the AGW deniers spout their nonsense out of love for "true science"?
Only morons would insist on conducting an experiment while sitting inside the test tube, in the face of serious warnings. If it was only the morons who conduct this experiment while sitting inside their own test tube, it wouldn't matter so much, even though I would hate to see even morons suffer physically. But when they insist on jeopardizing everyone's safety, that's another thing.
How It All Ends or "In the Test Tube".
One of the tragic consequences of global warming is that climate science becomes a political target, because very powerful interests are threatened by the truth. The basic radiative physics involved in the greenhouse effect are fairly easy to understand, and certainly beyond any reasonable dispute. There is simply no way to explain the temperatures of Venus, Earth, and Mars without a greenhouse effect.
Every planet has an energy budget: output has to equal input. The input is sunlight. The output is infrared radiation (IR), or heat. If more energy is coming in than is going out (Earth's current situation), the planet will heat up enough to beam more IR into space until the energy budget is balanced.
Virtually any atmosphere is going to have some greenhouse gases. Those molecules which can vibrate at IR frequencies can both absorb and emit IR energy. The Earth is constantly beaming infrared light, invisible to our eyes, all day and all night. CO2 happens to vibrate at 700 cycles per cm, right at the heart of Earth's IR spectrum. Consequently, some earthlight is caught by atmospheric CO2 molecules, which jiggle for awhile before spitting the energy back out in a random direction. The greenhouse effect results from half of this interrupted IR getting bounced back down to Earth.
The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the less heat escapes to space - so the planet has to heat up more to balance the energy budget. Because Venus has an atmosphere which is 97% CO2, its surface temperature is 460°C (860°F). If Venus had no atmosphere, it would be cooler than the Earth, because its surface is more reflective.
If the Earth had no atmosphere, or an atmosphere with no greenhouse gases, it would be 30°C colder: frozen solid from pole to pole. The greenhouse effect is a good thing, in this sense. I'm from California, I would not enjoy life on a frozen planet. But you can have too much of a good thing.
Behind the physical equations about planetary energy balances and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, there's a very profound and beautiful miracle of Life which Lovelock and Margulis called Gaia. CO2 is both emitted and absorbed by the biosphere in enormous quantities. This means that Life has delicately, gradually tuned Earth's temperature to an optimal state, by adjusting the atmospheric composition to heat or cool the Earth.
It all worked out marvelously until a creature evolved which burned millions of years worth of fossil carbon per century.
This is the first time I've read the science in plain English that the ordinary punter can easily understand.
All that has happened is that the truth escaped the trap.
Surely we didn't really think GM was any different!
"Climate science research, however, overwhelmingly reports that continuing warming is driven mainly by human use of fossil fuels."
This statement is false. Climate science research does not report. Science policy agencies, such as the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the National Academy of Sciences, distort rather than report the research, obfuscate the data and put policy above science in an attempt to advance political and economic agendas.
The reality is that there is no greenhouse effect, (Arrhenius was wrong) rising global temperatures release CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate 30 times that of human CO2 production, global temperatures are a function of solar and cosmic cycles, and the Earth is teetering on the edge of the next glacial advance.
Those whose only hammer is labeled "denialist" are incapable of seeing anything but the nail of human caused global warming. They will feel pretty foolish as the evidence mounts that global warming is a century long distraction.
Hayduke2000 wrote:
Hayduke2000 is getting confused about which confusions he's currently propagating, voicing an obvious contradiction. If there is no greenhouse effect, then the origin of atmospheric CO2 has no relevance. The greenhouse effect doesn't care about where the CO2 came from.
One of the reasons we know that the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is human-caused is the isotopic evidence. Carbon from volcanic sources has a relatively high proportion of the C13 isotope. When plants process carbon, they don't like the C13, preferring the more stable C12 isotope. Consequently, the fossilized remains of plants (fossil fuels) contain little C13. When you burn fossil fuels, the carbon deposited into the atmosphere has a distinct isotopic signature: a lower proportion of C13 to C12 than you find with carbon of natural origin. The falling ratio of C13 to C12 measured in Earth's atmosphere correlates well with fossil fuel emissions.
Hayduke2000 habitually distorts the science with arguments like this one, superficially plausible sounding, but evaluated and rejected by careful scientific investigation many years ago. There is overwhelming cause for skepticism of Hayduke2000's fatuous claim, for anyone who is truly skeptical. But nothing can ever be disproven for the willfully ignorant, so we deal with the same tired lies, over and over again.
It's the same with the misattribution of global warming to solar and cosmic cycles. This connection is immediately disproven by the lack of any temporal correspondence, now or ever, between solar and cosmic cycles and global temperatures. Evidence makes no impression on the fossil-fuel sponsored ignorati. They are desperate to find anything which could explain the warming everyone is now experiencing - anything, that is, except for the outcome of valid scientific work, which implicates fossil fuel use.
I'm forever amazed at the ability of commenters on these threads, two of them in particular, to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that nothing contrary to their myopic views on climate have ver been published.
Anyone who has read the relevant literature knows that the final paragraph is a bald lie.
Here's a clue if you're trying to figure out who the liar is. When you're being truthful about science, you have no reason to be ashamed of your sources of information, as Hayduke2000 is. Surely, any of his points would be more persuasive if he were able to back up what he says with some of the "relevant literature" he alludes to. Why hold back?
Hayduke2000's sources are embarrassing to him. When he provides any links, everyone can see that he's copying from fossil-fuel propaganda sites.
By contrast, I am proud to reveal where my information comes from. No deep dark secrets here. Here's some discussion of "relevant literature" on the attribution of global warming to solar cycles and cosmic rays:
On the question of any short-term cycle being the cause of global warming, the proposition is absurd on its face. The pattern of global warming, over the past three decades, is linearly increasing by 0.15°C per decade. A linear increase cannot be attributed to a cycle, by definition. Cycles go up and down. Global warming just keeps steadily climbing.
Contrarian scientists have attempted to make the case that solar cycles, or cosmic rays, or both, or anything else, can represent an alternative explanation for the warming the Earth is experiencing. Their ideas have been heard, and rejected. No contrarian scientist has ever presented a model which can reproduce the trajectory of global warming without taking the greenhouse effect into account.
Now let's see some "relevant literature" from the dark side.
James Hansen: Why I Must Speak Out About Climate Change
It is way past time to be responding to the relentless spewing of propaganda talking points by AGW deniers. Some of them may be paid shills and others may be just getting their kicks out of taking an apparently "contrarian" stand on such a vital, life-or-death matter. They apparently have no stake in what happens to humanity in the future. In the near future. They seem convinced that they are "right", and to them, being "right" is obviously more important than being "safe". And they may not even be right. I say "may not even be" because, the answer, one way or the other, will be known for certain only some time in the future, even though there are enough indications right now that the AGW deniers are bloody wrong and are playing a bloody dangerous game.
This is NOT JUST a matter of science. This is about our bloody future, and the future of humanity. Therefore we are forced to choose. And it's important to make the right choice.
I would recommend "What's the Worst That Could Happen?: A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate" -- a great little book by an Oregon science teacher, Greg Craven. I've been telling people about a great video series on YouTube by this same guy that has been around from even before he wrote this book. I would highly recommend these to anyone:
How It All Ends.
Please check out these videos and if possible, watch them in sequence as intended by the author, but watching any segment is good too.
These videos are mostly about how to make a decision in the face of uncertainty or incomplete information. PLEASE get used to making your own decision. And if the precautionary principle is important to you, then join with others who feel the same. Stop for a moment and ponder about the possible motivations of the AGW deniers. It's way past time to be playing this dangerous game.
Greg Craven gives a lively, entertaining talk about dealing with uncertainty. But all the talking points of climate science deniers (dealt with above) are bogus, manufactured uncertainties, not genuine scientific uncertainties.
Denialists have no idea how many basic physical laws, such as the Stefan-Boltzmann law, would need to be overturned in order to exculpate fossil-fuels as the cause of global warming. The style of argument employed by climate science deniers is that of a defense attorney where the prime suspect is fossil fuel use, rather than the dispassionate attention to evidence characteristic of a scientific approach. No matter how bad it looks for his client, a defense attorney will grasp at any straw, however irrational, which might influence the jury. That's his job.
A good example of a genuine uncertainty would be the problem with tornado attribution. In this particular detail, and in similar small-scale phenomena with highly chaotic etiologies, attribution and prediction become extremely difficult. But as there's a big difference between weather and climate, there's a big difference in the confidence of attribution for planetary versus small-scale phenomena. At the global level, it's fair to say that there is no reasonable uncertainty regarding the attribution of warming to greenhouse gas emissions.
No contrarian scientist has ever produced a climate model which can account for the trajectory of modern temperatures without taking greenhouse gases into account. An alternative explanation simply does not exist, at the level of serious scientific investigation.
And that is only part of the story and that is what makes it so dangerous. The "trajectory of modern temperatures" is still pretty mild, due to the enormous thermal mass involved, and the humongous amounts of latent heat absorbed by the Arctic ice, ice shelves and the glaciers, even while melting.
The "trajectory of modern temperatures" can be deceptively mild for the lay person, especially if they are sitting pretty in a rich country, but not for those who understand the various positive feedback loops and the tipping points that lay ahead.
It's like speeding on a bus towards a cliff. The danger will be felt physically only during the fall and the crash, but it can be felt mentally by those who know or suspect what lies ahead, and therefore insist on slowing down. The danger will not be felt mentally by those in the bus who demand proof for the danger, and who have been partying and otherwise getting various thrills by speeding.
I wish I were on the outside, trying to warn the morons who are against slowing down, but I am inside the same damn bus, along with everyone else!
The AGW deniers are playing a dangerous game.
You're right. The defense attorney is not under any obligation to prove his client's innocence beyond any doubt. He just has to drag the proceedings enough to get a "not enough evidence" verdict. He just has to sow doubts in the mind of the jury.
From "The denial industry" by George Monbiot,
>>ExxonMobil is the world's most profitable corporation. Its sales now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits, ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes Aids. So what's its strategy?
The website Exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company's official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change:
that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled "junk science". The findings they welcome are labelled "sound science".
Among the organisations that have been funded by Exxon are such well-known websites and lobby groups as TechCentralStation, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Some of those on the list have names that make them look like grassroots citizens' organisations or academic bodies: the Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, for example. ... <<
Is this comment supposed to be coherent, or are we into the oracular gibberish phase of your fossil-fuel apologetics?
Two can play that game:
I charge that Global Warming is an invention (disinfo script) by the elite to shortcircuit more rational thinking on the subject: access to the Northwest passage and other resources was greatly desired so once the means to melt the artic had been discovered and secretly developed, those means were employed.
This is not really any different than the creation of Al Qaeda (by joint secret service efforts involving MI6, CIA, ISI, etc.) to distract from the planned 'restructuring' and preparatory genocides/destructuring engulfing again the Middle East, Central Asia and northern Africa.
Does this disinfo script go all the way back to Joseph Fourier's discovery of the greenhouse effect in 1824?
Does it strike you as plausible that greenhouse warming via CO2 might be the most effective means of thawing the Arctic to facilitate resource extraction? After all, the same companies which would profit from Arctic petroleum reserves are the ones responsible for all the atmospheric CO2.
Why would climate scientists need to be party to this nefarious plot? Couldn't the profiteers do just fine without scientific collusion? Hmmm.
No obviously. But, the fact there are reasons why one disinfo script would be selected over another would certainly depend to a degree of 'plausibility'.
"Does it strike you as plausible that greenhouse warming via CO2 might be the most effective means of thawing the Arctic to facilitate resource extraction?"
No obviously. There are much better technologies that can be used, providing a faster ROI and more potential to selectively 'heat' or thaw.
"Why would climate scientists need to be party to this nefarious plot? Couldn't the profiteers do just fine without scientific collusion? "
No obviously to the second part. And, as far as I can remember, 'scientists' are by and large whores. They take the jobs that are available and buy into any justifications needed to help them sleep... though genuine ethical concern has never been much noticeable in the many, many scientists I have known (academic, corporate and military).
Still, I do not want you to assume that I am 'anti-science'. I am not. But, I have even witnessed 'informal' political investigations of PH.D. candidates. I am though anti ignorance and the horrific crimes its intentional perpetration protects.
estranged.being..., please understand that there's not enough in your post to indicate where you stand on the issue of AGW. For example, this exchange is somewhat confusing:
>>" Aleph Null" "Does it strike you as plausible that greenhouse warming via CO2 might be the most effective means of thawing the Arctic to facilitate resource extraction?"
estranged.being...: No obviously. There are much better technologies that can be used, providing a faster ROI and more potential to selectively 'heat' or thaw. <<
estranged.being..., I think you're ABSOLUTELY WRONG on this about the ROI. There is already an infrastructure in place to reap profits out of selling fossil fuels. And it is pretty much a monopoly on petroleum products. At best, an oligopoly.
I don't know what "much better technologies" you have in mind. But I can't think of anything "better" than continuing the status quo, from "their" POV, and it doesn't take much of a "conspiracy" other than spending a few millions of fiat currency to fund a few think tanks and astroturf entities to keep the populace stupefied and bewildered. And the conspirators don't need to exercise their gray matter as much either, because the techniques are already well honed by the denial industry from its earlier "service" to Big Tobacco.
And most of all, there are the "freelance" propagandists bitten by the association meme mind virus who'll serve the fossil fuel industry for free, because it also satisfies their own little egos by being "contrarian" (never mind they're only spewing secondhand talking points!).
Of course there is a profitable and highly centralized oil and energy industry.
But, this has nothing whatsoever to do with my claim that some of these same interests may be using classified military technologies to heat the arctic and deflect suspicion that this might be happening by creating the Global Warming controversy.
Controversy by the way is one of the best ways to cover ones operations. Look at the national elections. Dem vs Rep. Any astute observer knows that it is pure distraction.
Here's another one: Syrians vs Assad. But, those aren't the sides in the battle at all. In fact, it's not really a battle, more like a killing spree funded by the same foreign entities who pretend to be sitting on the side wondering if they should 'get involved'. But, as long as we are shown two sides of a 'conflict', we feel that we are seeing all sides. Yet, we may not be seeing any actual sides and that is the whole point... to keep us disinformed and incapable of reasoning.
But, the facts are the facts. Most scientists are concerned about funding or getting named to a project that has funding or hired by a company that can afford its own in house research. That is a HUGE factor in determining how most scientists spend their time and frame their perspective. And that is just one of the levels of elite control. The other is what (and who) gets published and where.
Anyway, no hatefulness here. You are reading into my words. Whores populate the rungs of society everywhere including in the world of science.
You really want to argue the point?
Mike Malloy used to always interject "no offense to sex workers" whenever he called someone a whore. Be that as it may, I totally disagree with you about scientists. Not everyone in society is a sell-out (though it can seem that way at times). To start with a couple of professions I've mixed with, nurses and teachers, by and large, are the salt of the Earth. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but people generally go into those professions in the first place because they give a damn. That's my personal impression.
Artists (and musicians) can be tough to get along with, because it can take an outsized ego to maintain the self-confidence necessary. But most of the professional artists I've met have other priorities more important than money, a devotion to their work which is basically incorruptible.
My perception of many scientists is that they have complex value systems. They'll find work where they can, like the rest of us (if that's what you call whoring). But it is extremely rare to find instances of scientists faking their data. Contrarian scientists like Judith Curry and Richard Lindzen might indulge in marginally iffy statements, but nothing like the whole-cloth fabrication you see from denialist hacks like (non-scientists) Anthony Watts and Marc Morano. When a scientist is caught putting false data into the scientific record, it is a terrible, career-ending disgrace - with reverberations for associates, reviewers, and journal editors who either collaborated or got snookered.
There is an extremely compelling ethic of truthfulness in scientific culture, which starts when a young person first takes an interest in "the pleasure of finding things out," and is continually reinforced by structural conventions, such as peer-review and the need for reproducible results.
In the case of one relative, she abandoned her field all together because her work was constantly being claimed by others, stolen that is by her higher ups at Stanford.
Yeah, you are on the right track... a highly ethical bunch of 'professionals'!
Nothing I said implies that there isn't status seeking and appropriation of other people's work, as your personal story indicates. I specifically said that scientists simply don't fake their data. Some (a minority) might present a deceptively selective sampling of valid data, but I know of very few instances, any time in scientific history, when scientists have just made stuff up.
It's not that it never happens. Every once in a while a case is discovered where some scientist has been fabricating data. I've only seen this happen in the soft sciences like psychology, where the studies are fuzzy enough to fudge convincingly. It would just be crazy for a physicist or geologist to fake it like that, because they'd inevitably be caught out in short order.
But that's only in reality, where autonomous groups of scientists operate independently all over the world. In your tinfoil-hat conspiracy universe, the cheating scientists wouldn't be caught because all scientists are colluding in the same cheating scheme. Your doctrine is self-reinforcing.
I am sorry, I just completely disagree with you. I think you are living in some pipe dream, not the real world.
I didn't say that practicing science requires a credential. One of the pioneers in the discovery of the greenhouse effect, G.S. Callendar, had no formal training in atmospheric chemistry or radiative physics (so far as I know).
I'm just saying that science is a living fabric, like art. Art museums seem like tombs to me. Real art is what real artists are doing right now. It's the same with science.
On divvying up the arctic: http://www.ndu.edu/press/arctic-new-cold-war.html
I’ll lay down $50,000 and give100 to 1 odds that by the year 2030 or sooner, the planet Earth will be so damn hot because of the releasing Arctic’s methane gas that no one will be living on it.
Now if a massive world wide effort to stop burning coal and planting billions of trees is initiated real soon, all bets are off…. Then we may have a chance. Otherwise; we are all out of here........ That is how it is.
Wanna bet?
Sure I will if you like, sittin here with nothing much better to do anyway, I don‘t mind arguing with someone who has already made up their mind on an issue.. I have done that myself.... I personally agree with the 99% of the scientists who say AGW is causing global warming this time in Earht's history... You don't, but we don't have to debate that aspect of the issue for starters..
For starters let’s forget the scientists for a little while and just honestly debate what is happening... And you also wrote,,, > (“But, the facts are the facts”)… Indeed they are, so let us debate the “facts“….. Okay?
If however your mind set is that the planet is not in a global warming phase then there is nothing to debate. Physics is not really science, it is mathematics, you know, 2+2 = 4 and so on.
The math is, that when there is a low amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere the planet cools down and when there is a high amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere it warms up.. The more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere the warmer it gets and visa versa.
Some greenhouse gases can be termed,,, for simplicity sake,,, as being "thin", or "weak", such as water vapor and they don‘t trap the rising heat coming off of the planet.
Some greenhouse gases like Co2 and methane are "thicker", or "stronger" and they trap more heat rising from the planet... That’s how it works in layman’s terms, without getting into the technical scientific terminology,,, that is easy to understand the math.
Now we can see that the glaciers all around the world have been melting away pretty fast during the past 100 years and many have completely disappeared... The Arctic Ocean perennial sea ice, (thick ice), is about gone now and the Ocean will be ice free by 2015 at the current rate of melt per year.
Those things are due to global warming ,, not because the planet is cooling off. And it really does not matter at this point what is causing the greenhouse gases to be “thicker “ than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years, the (fact) is they are thicker and the planet is warming up, warming far too much for our good.
It is also very important to consider that in just the past ten years the things that global warming are causing, like rapidly melting glaciers, reduction of the Arctic sea ice, the massive burgs calving off of the ice shelves in Antarctica, have been happening ten times faster than anyone had ever dreamed could happen.
Now let us we get to the really most deadly serious issue... Because of global warming, which I do believe you will agree is occurring, the methane gas in the Arctic ocean sea bed is beginning to release into the atmosphere.
There are trillions of tons of methane frozen in the Arctic Ocean sub sea permafrost and as that permafrost melt because the water temp rises above freezing, the methane gas escapes from the melted ice.
Now here again no scientists are required to understand that is a fact... You and I and any other intelligent person knows that anything trapped in ice will be released when the ice melts.
Now we go to the math again.. For the first 20 years it is in the atmosphere, Methane gas, CH4, is 105 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than Co2 is. So if a billion tons of methane enters the atmosphere it is equivalent to 105 billion tons of Co2. That is very, very bad.
But just a feeble billion tons of methane escaping from the melting Arctic’s permafrost is nothing at all compared to the trillions of tons which will finally release as the permafrost melts.
The argument is, (how fast will the permafrost melt?) No one knows, but based upon what has been witnessed with their own eyes by a few hundred people last year, who were in the Arctic on ships measuring methane plumes spewing methane gas into the air, it won’t be very long before a few billion tons escapes.
A few billion tons of methane gas, two or three, added to the greenhouse gas mix will cause the temperature of Earth to suddenly soar several degrees and then a trillion and then trillions of tons of methane gas will escape into the atmosphere and that is when you and I and everyone else will die.
That soon to arrive killing disaster is something you can bet on and win the bet. Butttt, you won‘t be able to spend the money.
How soon will that happen? No one knows with absolute certainty,,,, but I personally believe anytime between next summer and 2030, but more likely 2020 give or take a couple of years.
How that for a depressing event? It Sux! __ Now we could have a chance if swift and strong action is taken to prevent any more permafrost from melting.,,, otherwise, we humans are all history.
Your turn estranged.... Debate the clearly obvious facts.
You could always look up the Australian wizard climate scientist Duck-tour ~Peter K. Anderson~, a.k.a. ~Hartlod~ .... He'll be happy to help you out. He has his own website, no one else will allow him access.
Don't worry about the fact that ~Hartlod~ is insane, you two should get along just fine.
So, I think you completely missed my point. I am not arguing for instance that the world trade towers did not fall (i.e. there is no climate change). I am arguing that they did not fall for the reasons stated (i.e. the rate of melt of the Arctic is due to something more than green house gases) in the official investigation.
Most of my closest friends at the time of 9/11 were 'scientists'. I distinctly remember asking them about apparent free fall speed into the path of most resistance and their unreasoned replies; the NSA's quickly and widely distributed pancake theory. I really do know how scared scientists are to break ranks. They also have mansion mortgages to pay and careers to worry about.
BTW, I did not come here to debate. If you don't want to consider what I offer then I think that is your loss. But, calling me insane is just juvenile. Better to open you mind to the possibility that there is something more (and more defining) to the story.
Now here's the proof for where "estranged.being..." gets his "facts" on global warming: from conspiracy peddlers offering "package deals" to suckers willing to swallow the whole deal, without questions.
It is futile to try telling them about something called an "association meme" where one meme piggybacks or is packaged together with another that is more easily accepted.
It's probably also futile to point to the existence of a well-funded denial industry with well-honed techniques from the days of its "service" to Big Tobacco. "estranged.being", you want to talk about whoring? Here it is for you! What a totally preposterous and ridiculous position you take!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are lots and lots of people on this site alone who do not accept the official narrative on 9/11. But thankfully not all of them are AGW deniers, as they seem to have sufficient independence of mind to suspect a conspiracy where warranted and to listen to warnings from credible sources where it's important. But unfortunately there seem to be some who do not have this capacity to differentiate and they end up swallowing the whole deal offered by conspiracy peddlers who may be simply trying to expand their market.
NOT accepting and actively denying AGW is about as convenient and lazy as it can get for someone living in a rich country like the US, Canada, UK, etc., while actually allowing the claimant to feel "intelligent", "contrarian" and all. And most of the denialist propagandists and the "market" for such propaganda also is in these rich countries.
AGW denialism has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with what someone chooses to believe and defend. And where profits are involved, what someone chooses to propagate through front groups, pseudo "experts" and the all-too-willing freelancers looking for their kicks. In fact, it is highly likely that the first time that most of the AGW deniers did any kind of "serious" reading on the subject must have been from a denialist propaganda or from a blog spreading this propaganda.
Climate science: which theory is more likely?
Check out the nice graphic.
I am not in any way a fan of the oil cartel or those who defend its right to exist. Instead, I am trying to indicate that there are some reasons to EXPAND inquiry into their activities and those who defend them.
Also, I think I stated that the 'debate' may be intentionally off target. I am not a Dem or a Rep in this. I think the 'debate' is concocted to hide yet another elite concerted ecological rape.
Wrong again. I more or less accepted Global Warming theory for two decades. Then one evening, I was told about all the resources that were being exposed and how important this was to Canada, other nations and international corporations.
I thought back on some work I had been involved in and realized that intentional melting of the arctic was quite feasible. I also knew how the disinfo set-up works... the long term seeding of false understanding so that at an appropriate time(s), this can be harvested.
In any case, just as with 9/11, it has really been about first hand experience, observation and personal insight.
Sorry if you don't like my offering. But, I am almost certain history will ultimately validate my claims.
As for the elitist charge... I think all suffering is more likely to be alleviated by embracing ALL the facts, whatever they are, rather than some think tank manufactured deception script.
This is at the heart of your faulty logic. I do not deny that some people would indeed like to see the Arctic ice melt, opening up the Northwest Passage and allowing access to the resources. And I am also aware that this kind of insane thinking is NOT limited to criminals in the USA alone.
But since you claim to know "how the disinfo set-up works", does it in any way negate the amount of energy needed to actually melt all that ice?
Do you even know how much latent heat needs to be supplied to melt one kg of ice at 0°C (32°F)? We are not talking of the additional energy needed to bring the Arctic ice from below zero to 0°C, that is, the "sensible heat" part for the ice. And we are not talking of the additional "sensible heat" for heating the water to above 0°C so as to prevent ice from forming again. Because, the biggest component in all this is the latent heat for melting the ice. How much bigger? It takes 80 times as much heat energy to melt ice at 0°C to water at 0°C, at atmospheric pressure, as it takes to heat the same amount of water by just 1°C. In other words, using the same heat energy to melt 1 kg of ice at 0°C, the same mass of liquid water can be heated from, say, 5°C all the way up to 85°C!
BTW, this is also exactly why it is dangerous to be complacent about the slow warming of the ocean -- because much of the additional heat due to AGW is going to melt the ice. "Phase change", that is, from solid to liquid, takes place without any rise in temperature, while absorbing massive amounts of energy. 80 calories for melting just 1 gram (not 1 kg) of ice! Once there is less solid ice, the rate of temperature rise of the liquid water will pick up dramatically, unless some serious action is taken immediately. And we're still not talking of all the methane that would be released from the thawing of the permafrost!
Back to the melting of the Arctic ice:
I have not come across anything to indicate that any technology can substantially lower the amount of heat input to melt ice. Of course, there are those chemicals that can change the freezing point of a liquid, but we can forget about them here because of the quantities involved. Of course, sea water, being salty, freezes at temperatures below 0°C, at around -2°C. But this will still not change the amount of energy needed to melt this ice by much.
So, assuming there are these powerful interests that would like to see the Arctic ice melt, why would they deliberately change the focus and the debate on to global warming?
Like I said before, there is already an infrastructure to reap profits out of selling fossil fuels, and it is the burning of the fossil fuels that is causing the Arctic ice to melt. Unless you can show there is something else that can melt all this ice. In fact, if you want to be taken seriously, you have to indicate what else is there that can melt all this ice.
So, these people get to make record profits while achieving their next objective. Why would they jeopardize their plans by deliberately creating a debate over AGW? All they have to do is to sit tight. And if some uppity scientists want to publish something, alarmed at all the ice melting, couldn't they just put a cork over it, being so powerful and all? And given, according to you, that the scientists are "whores", and so, getting them to say something or even to shut up shouldn't be too difficult? Again, according to you?
Heck, according to your logic, with the powerful interests being so powerful and all, and the scientists being "whores", it should have been easier to get the scientists to say that global warming is actually a good thing and that melting of the Arctic ice is actually good for humanity. Given the ease with which certain myths can be propagated and made "mainstream" (like meat and dairy are good for your health, for example), getting the message out that says "global warming is good" should have been quite possible, and feasible, as per your logic.
As it turns out, the only "scientists" who say global warming could be a good thing or that it is not happening or that it has nothing to do with burning fossil fuels are also those receiving funds from the fossil fuel industry, and NOT the majority of the scientists. So who are the whores here?
You sound more and more like someone who started writing a suspense novel based on some interesting "situation" or a "scene", but without an overall plot, or with a plot that is not logical.
For those who more readily understand pictures, NASA's FIRST project (Far-Infrared Spectroscopy of the Troposphere) has essentially produced a snapshot of the greenhouse effect.
The context to keep in mind about this graph is that the laws of blackbody radiation say an object at Earth's temperature emits infrared energy in a smooth spectrum. You can see the biggest bite out of Earth's spectrum right at the peak, wavenumber 700, where CO2 eats the energy. In other places, O3, CH4, and H2O erode the spectrum of Earth's outgoing energy.
The area under the curve is the total of Earth's outgoing energy. The chunks bitten out of this spectrum heat the Earth by keeping energy from escaping to space. This is what the greenhouse effect looks like.
"I do have a security clearance but not a 'top security' clearance. Those guys are scary. It's said they are so narrow minded they can look through a key hole with both eyes." one of my friends after spending a day consulting at NASA.
Perhaps not. But if I can't trust information from scientific agencies (where independent agencies have ample opportunities to keep them honest), then where am I going to find more reliable information? Unless you're intent on living in perpetual ignorance, you have to trust some sources of information.
In this case, there are several other projects which have used satellites or balloons to assess the Earth's outgoing infrared energy. Are you seriously implying that NASA would fake something this basic?
Again, your anecdote misses the point. The logical leap from an opinion about narrow mindedness to your insinuation that scientists are fabricating data is impossible for some of us to follow, if we're not wearing tinfoil hats.