Climate Denialism: The Real Conspiracy

reply to post by mc_squared


Great summary, and I see it the same way. If you look at the sources climate change deniers use, it's mostly blogs. Blogs AREN'T good sources!! I'm pretty sure I can find a thread stating that the spaghetti monster created the universe...yet I think we can all conclude that such a statement is based on scientific proof.

I think a big issue is that people form their opinion of climate change based on what their politicians say. So if you're a republican, and your favorite politician says there is no climate change...people buy it. Same goes for democrats. We have to realize that the lobbyists are influencing those politicians so much, they're word is worth nothing at all. And guess who the lobbyists work for...corporations. And who has the most interest in denying climate change and keeping any ecological regulations suppressed? Yes, corporations!!

Stop being puppets of corporations, and stop quoting blogs as sources!

Originally posted by MrXYZ
reply to post by mc_squared

 

We have to realize that the lobbyists are influencing those politicians so much, they're word is worth nothing at all. And guess who the lobbyists work for...corporations. And who has the most interest in denying climate change and keeping any ecological regulations suppressed? Yes, corporations!!

Absolutely.

You're completely speaking my language MrXYZ, believe me. This is exactly what I've been trying to draw attention to ever since all the 'climategate' propaganda broke all over the internet.

But it amazes me how even the supposedly "enlightened" conspiracy-theory crowd manages to completely overlook this obvious conflict of interest and just get themselves swept up in all the propaganda instead.

I would love to spend time actually discussing the real controversial issues of Global Warming. Issues like Cap & Trade and all it's associated problems. For the most part I believe the politics of Global Warming are a scam. But that's because the politics of anything usually end up a scam, and that still doesn't change the fact that the science of Global Warming is very sound and very important.

But too many people have no ability to make this distinction. It's just a lot easier to dismiss everything as a scam - to repeat headlines from blogs or agenda driven news articles rather than to actually investigate them. Then they all pat themselves on the back and congratulate each other for "denying ignorance".

The end result is what you see all over this Fragile Earth forum. Vague, unsupported one line posts about "the Sun being responsible" or "climate change is natural" are starred like crazy by the ATS peanut gallery and thus automatically accepted as gospel truth simply because they are so easily digestable.

I can essentially GUARANTEE you EVERY ONE of these myths can be absolutely, thoroughly DEBUNKED. But it's pointless even trying because virtually no one will pay any attention. And those that do will just attack you with strawmans and more blog headlines.

Stop being puppets of corporations

Yup. But if only it were that simple.

The thing is there are just too many people who are so in love with laughing at and putting others down for "drinking Al Gore's Kool-Aid" that they completely forget it actually comes in all sorts of different flavors. Try making them take a deeper look at what's floating inside their own glass and it just gets ugly.

The rest of the discussion usually devolves into an instant pissing contest where they're only concerned with protecting their own ego rather than getting to the actual truth or denying ignorance.

This issue is so "politicized" on so many levels it's just sad...

reply to post by MrXYZ

Stop being puppets of corporations, and stop quoting blogs as sources!

Sound reasoning in any argument except this one. The reason it cannot apply here is that almost all of the 'sources' come from the same place: the CRU/IPCC.

That is what is wrong with the science surrounding Global Warming. It has been hijacked politically. Scientists depend on grants to make studies, and those grants are now given based not on whether or not the scientist requesting it has a decent theory to test or a sound record, but rather on whether or not the tests will advance the agendas of the politicians controlling the funds. Thus, any scientist who does not give results that coincide with the CRU/IPCC is quickly shut down financially and left grantless and unable to work on the problem.

We have seen a glimpse of the CRU in action through the Climategate leak. There are a lot of potentially incriminating statements in those emails. Is that in context? Maybe, maybe not. It would be wonderful if there was an open investigation to determine what, if anything, those scientists are guilty of. But there is no open investigation occurring, nor will there ever be. Instead, the 'investigation' is being conducted behind closed doors by the very organization that depends on these scientists for its continued political and financial support.

The models that were used to calculate the predictions were never released as open-source documentation, despite them being the only real evidence that the CRU has. And, when sections of the code were released, they contained quick 'fixes' (translation: poor technique and potentially incorrect assumptions) with once again potentially incriminating explanations commented in. Actions were taken like simply removing a section of tree ring data because it didn't produce the desired outcome, labeling it as unreliable, then continuing to include the same data where it agreed with the desired outcome... there is no way anyone can tell me this is proper (and make me believe it, anyway).

And yet, every study I have seen that conforms to Global Warming predictions of doom and gloom are tied back to those same models, those same scientists, those same organizations. What we are seeing is not an aggregate compilation of independent studies, but rather an aggregation of conclusions all formed from one initial study.

There have been dissenters, but in every case they were financially crippled, unable to obtain funding, and subjected to scrutiny that would immediately out anyone who is active on the other side of the debate.Their degree was not in climatology (where other degrees are also valid in the field; the study of climate as such is a relatively recent discipline), their papers were not peer-reviewed (translated as published in the proper journals; those journals are incidentally usually edited by those they are contradicting), or they somehow made a bad prediction in the past (while ignoring the fact that most of the present researchers supporting AGW also supported the Coming Ice Age theory in the 70s).

Peer review, as I mentioned, is frequently touted as being either a reason to believe those who advance AGW theory or to discredit those who oppose it. But there seems to be some misunderstanding of what peer review actually is. Peer review is not the same as publication. Publication only makes peer review easier by placing the scientists work under the noses of more peers. Peer review means that other scientists have independently recreated the results and thus verified that the original work was correct. This is not done through journals, but through independent, unbiased testing... something that appears to be sorely lacking when AGW theory is considered.

In short, the entire theory is a house of cards from a strictly scientific point of view.but it is the only theory allowed to exist. About all there is left is the blogs. Don't be surprised, then, when the blogs are resorted to in the face of such political maneuvering.

TheRedneck

Since folks tend to believe in or not belive in Global Warming, it must be some kind of religion. Maybe it ranks right up with Evolution...

Nat Geo says that Mars is warming news.nationalgeographic.com... That seems to indicate its not a "local" problem...

The biggest greenhouse gas is water...

I'm all for ecological responsibility, but at night the rain forest stops making oxygen and swithes to respiring (making CO2) like us...
www.britannica.com...
Does that mean it cancels its own usefulness?...

Only American vegatarians would think cow farts are dangerous...
India vegans would be horrified at the thought of thinning the herd.

Was the Little Ice Age caused by the decreased solar activity and volcanoes belching out all those awful green house gasses...

What made the Medieval Warm Period warm. Were they eating tooooo many beans back then???

Did global warming cause all that great winter weather like Snowmageddon??...

Just askin'

as the media is on the human GW bandwagon, then you just cant say that denial is the real conspiracy, since, as we all know, all the conspiracies have the support from the media, and this conspiracy, you dont, so it wouldnt fit the pattern, so ... it doesnt make any sense

denial is not a conspiracy, denial is just people with a less damaged brain than average making sense of everything, since we dont have any real evidence of the global warming

I am waiting for the scientific community to decide, but, its been a few years and they couldnt, so, I dont expect they will ...

Originally posted by Faiol
since we dont have any real evidence of the global warming

ORLY?

reply to post by MrXYZ

That is twice you have used that graph. Do you have a source for it?

TheRedneck

reply to post by smyleegrl


If you really want to know the truth, ask yourself

1. Is anyone going to get rich out of carbon trading?
2. Will you be worse off if cap and trade shemes come into play?
3. will you lose freedoms from new regulations to stop CO2 output?

if you answered yes to any of these you know it is about money and control rather than saving the planet.

If it was really about saving the planet, they would just punish the major polluters, yet they don't beccause that is another source of money.


The planet may or may not be warming due to man, but these new rules are not about saving a thing, they are about you losing freedoms.

Part of the problem I have with the whole debate (personally I think that human activity has little, if any effect on climate, at least not in the way it is portrayed as happening) is that it vastly overshadows far more pressing environmental problems.

One issue is extinction of plant and animal species. If you take a look at some very famous examples of recent extinctions, like the Tasmanian wolf, the passenger pigeon and the dodo bird, these were not killed off by some nebulous "boogey man" that may or may not have some effect. No, they were basically hunted right off the face of the earth by humans - direct cause and effect. The oceans are running out of fish - forget the potential phantom causes - there is just so much over-fishing by humans. This is such a case of truly not seeing the forest for the trees.

Then there are things like literally dumping (intentionally or not) pollutants into the groundwater, lakes, rivers and the ocean. A house down the street from me used to have a lawn service come out and put some kind of poison on their grass. They put up signs that said "keep animals and children off" for a few days. So you have someone putting something on their lawn (and running off into the Chesapeake bay eventually, as I live in the bay watershed area) that must be toxic enough that children and animals should avoid it!?!? Worse yet, we have wells for drinking water here so whatever it was they put on their lawn probably ended up in my well!!!


I wish the whole "climate change" thing would take a big backseat to imminent and 100% proven (meaning the cause and effect is crystal clear, not just "likely" to be) environmental problems. Let's save the tigers, the pandas (and other less famous animals and plants that are in danger of extinction - BTW, there are actually far more polar bears alive in the wild then there are all subspecies of tiger), put a stop to overfishing, prevent the discharge of pollution whenever possible and try to clean up polluted places.

IMO the intense worry about climate change is like a doctor in an emergency room worrying about a patient's paper cut when that patient is bleeding out from multiple gunshot wounds. Plenty of plants, animals and ecosystems are in danger on this earth, and not from someone driving their SUV and using electricity that comes from the coal power plant in town.

reply to post by TheRedneck


I found that graph on www.skepticalscience.com..., and I'm first to admit that the site has a bias, but the content they post is not their own, in this case its a graph formed from three data sets.

Temperature from NASA GISS

Total Solar Irradiance : 1880-1978 -Solanki

Total Solar Irradiance : 1978-2007 -PMOD

Originally posted by Skyfloating
Just a pre-emptive strike on all the propaganda that will yet be posted here (not directed towards you OP!):

Most of us doubters do not doubt that the Climate is Changing or that humans should act more enviromentally responsible.

Our real problem is that they downplay the role of the Sun in Global Warming.

Yes, And not just the sun. There are other ways human activity affects the climate besides carbon emissions.

All these factors and more add up to current climate change.

Unfortunately the media/political debate has been dominated by carbon emissions on the one side and attempts to discredit all data/research on the other. No wonder folk get confused!

As an aside, if the temp data is flawed as some contend, then we have to discount solar influence because apparently there's no warming at all! (Watts and D'Aleo recently published a 'paper' which included an intimation that it was warmer during the little ice age! (it was a non sequitur argument and easily disproven, but nonetheless, it shows their agenda).

Also worth noting that it's not just about temp, but other things like shifts in the jet stream and ITCZ and changes in rainfall patterns. As well as the likes of brown clouds which affect visibility and air quality.

Originally posted by munkey66

If you really want to know the truth, ask yourself

1. Is anyone going to get rich out of carbon trading?
2. Will you be worse off if cap and trade shemes come into play?
3. will you lose freedoms from new regulations to stop CO2 output?

if you answered yes to any of these you know it is about money and control rather than saving the planet.

Well people make money regardless. And if they introduced personal carbon trading then I would make money out of it. So I answer yes, no, no

This would've been a good debate if the source wasn't Monbiot. The guy is a jumped up twerp full of his own self-importance. He is like a preacher, because anything that he says is immediately taken as gospel by his followers - it's sickening.

The fact that he's right doesn't make the conspiracy regarding the IPCC and CRU any less true, it just means that there's obvious, but hidden agendas on both sides of the argument. The conspiracies on either side shows that the argument is no longer about the science, it's about politics.

I say sod the man-made climate change idiots, and sod the corporations trying to silence. They're ALL bad for us, and need to be removed.

Parallex.

reply to post by countercounterculture

Thank you; I am researching it now.

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reply to post by Essan

And if they introduced personal carbon trading then I would make money out of it.

I am curious: how can you be so sure you will personally benefit from individual carbon credits? As far as I know, there has been little if any information on how such would be calculated, and I fail to see how even making money on individual credits would offset the increases all but guaranteed in energy costs.

TheRedneck

Originally posted by TheRedneck
I am curious: how can you be so sure you will personally benefit from individual carbon credits?

Because I don't have a car, barely ever have the central heating on, recycle everything I can ......

Nowt to do with GW, just personal lifestyle choice

reply to post by Essan

Far be it from me to denigrate a lifestyle choice, especially one based on efficiency. There are plenty of times when I wished I did not have to have a car myself; my location makes it impossible to get by without personal transportation. Kudos to you for doing your part.

The point I want to make to you, however, is that you are still far from immune to the effects of a carbon tax. If you do not have a car, then I would presume you live in a metropolitan area where you can walk or cycle to get the things you need. That means that everything that you have has to be transported into that metropolitan area, and that requires fuel. If those fuel costs go up, the cost of transporting the goods goes up to compensate. If shipping costs go up, the cost of the goods themselves increases to compensate. You may not get a bill from any government body saying you owe a carbon payment, but you will see the cost of everything you buy or use increase.

Food as well is highly dependent on the use of fuel to run the farm equipment. While farmers do not always have the ability to set their own prices, they do decide what, if anything, they will grow. The laws of supply and demand will become skewed so that if the prices for fuel become too high to make a profit, the lack of farmers growing that crop will raise the prices to the point where they can make a profit, and that will increase the cost of food before it ever gets to the transportation stage, Expect an above average price increase for food beyond everything else.

You will also see an increase in the cost of the electricity you use. Even if your local power is supplied by more ecologically-friendly methods, the fact that electrical rates globally will rise will mean that everyone will bear some brunt of the increase, simply due to the laws of supply and demand.

At one point I actually had some hopes that I would see an actual profit from a carbon tax, since there was discussion in the US Congress about allowing carbon credits to be issued based on unimproved forested land one cared for (I care for 90 acres of family-owned virgin forest). Never did I expect the carbon taxation to cause me to be better off overall than before, but I did have the hope that my normal activities would help to offset some of the financial pressure. That has degraded into such a political mess now, however, that even if such a credit were to be available, it would be too expensive to comply with government regulations on such to make it worthwhile.

Make no mistake: everyone will suffer from a carbon tax, save those who are actively engaged in trading them.

TheRedneck