Is Global Warming a Hoax?

[Dover]

Okay, before you start flaming and overreacting, let me tell you that that is exactly my first response to this info too. Afterall, there seems to be plenty of evidence of global climate change.
I suppose the question is what the real cause is of the changes we see. I'm no scientists so am truthfully not in a position to argue intelligently about this. I'm also very aware that there is alot of experimentation going on with weather modification which might also be contributing to what we are seeing (and for which 'global warming' stories would be a good cover). So why lie about what this phenomenon is? Well, the problem for me is that I can see possible reasons to manipulate the public from many sides of this issue; both from the global warming (due to manmade CO2 causes) or from the side of those who say it is just due to fluctuations in Sun activity and it's not necessarily a major shift.....to full out coverup for weather experimentation.

Anyway, I received this email from Robert Moore, and will post it here for your consideration. I'd be interested in hearing from those who feel they have a firm grasp on the principles and science of climate change.
Obviously we ARE experiencing erratic climatic shifts, but what does it signify, and what's causing it?

---------------


Friends,

You are likely find this information very difficult to accept. If so,
I strongly urge you to view this documentary:

'The Great Global Warming Swindle'
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU> (complete version)
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831&q=global+warming+swindle>

The documentary was not produced for the Internet, but is a very
professional piece of investigative journalism, and was presented on
Britain's Channel 4 TV. A number of very credible scientists are
interviewed, and they explain in plain language the nature of their
research and what they have learned. I'll summarize some the points
they made, the points that I found most surprising.

First, about CO-2. It turns out the carbon dioxide (CO-2) due to
human causes is a negligible part of the CO-2 emitted each year, and
in any case CO-2 is a relatively insignificant component of
greenhouse gases. Not only that, but greenhouse gases are not a major
determiner of climate.

In Gore's film, where he shows the historical curves of CO-2 levels
and global temperature, he explains how they track one another. But
his two curves are not lined up with one another, and he fails to
point out that CO-2 levels lag behind climate change by a few
centuries. Global warming causes CO-2 levels to increase, not the
other way around. What does track climate change, in lockstep, is the
level of solar activity. This shouldn't really be surprising, as the
Sun is the engine that drives Earth's biosphere and weather systems.

Next, about global warming. It turns out that we experienced a rapid
cooling in the postwar years, ending at the beginning of the 70s, and
we still haven't recovered from that. It will take a few more years
of warming to reach pre-WW II levels, and those seemed normal enough
at the time. During the medieval period, Europe had a very warm
period, much warmer than we are likely to experience in our
lifetimes, and they did not suffer from it. Rather they celebrated
the fact that wine grapes could be grown even in the north of England.

The Earth's climate continuously fluctuates, on an historical scale,
and it does so in response to solar activity. We can't do anything to
change it, and it fluctuates downward as well as upward. It's not a
'trend' that is heading in one direction. In that sense, global
warming itself is a myth, if it is presented as a 'trend' rather than
a local fluctuation.

The documentary also talks about the problems these scientists, and
others, have experienced in pursuing their work. The Global Warming
Threat has become an orthodoxy, and these scientists find themselves
attacked and vilified almost as if they were Holocaust Deniers. Some
of them were initially consulted by the UN, in the preparation of its
influential 'study' of global warming, a 'study' that claims to be
backed by 'the world's 2,500 leading scientists'. The final draft of
the document was edited 'at the top' and left out all contrary
findings. One of the interviewed scientists had to threaten a lawsuit
before his name was taken off the list of so-called contributors.

The documentary tries to explain why this orthodoxy exists, and whose
interests it serves. In this area the film-makers, and the
scientists, find themselves outside their fields of expertise. We can
talk more about that, depending on what kind of responses I get from
this posting.

rkm


--

--------------------------------------------------------
Escaping the Matrix website http://escapingthematrix.org/
cyberjournal website http://cyberjournal.org

[DesertRat]

1. That documentary is pure propaganda

Climate scientist 'duped to deny global warming'
Ben Goldacre and David Adam
Sunday March 11, 2007
The Observer
A leading US climate scientist is considering legal action after he says he was duped into appearing in a Channel 4 documentary that claimed man-made global warming is a myth. Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was 'grossly distorted' and 'as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two'.
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2031457,00.html

There was only one scientific advisor on the programme, Martin Livermore, whose sole scientific qualification is that he is the Director of a web-based think tank, The Scientific Alliance. The Alliance was set up by in 2001 by Robert Durward, the fiercely anti-green director of the British Aggregates Association, and Foresight Communications, a Westminster public relations and lobbying company, to “counter scare-mongering by the so-called green lobby”.
http://climatedenial.org/2007/03/09/the-great-channel-four-swindle/

[Double T]

2. Global Warming is REAL. The greatest problem are those that are in denial.........

that Global Warming is REAL.

http://www.mng.org.uk/green_house/threat/threat6.htm

[Dover]

7. I personally have no doubt that it is real. What I'm not knowledgable enough to know

is the reasons for it. For instance, what about the Sun theory and the claims that the CO2 occurs as later in the process rather than being the cause? These are just things I know nothing about.

[Imperialism Inc.]

3. For the response please visit

http://realclimate.org

That "documentary" is basically on the level of creationist/IDer type tactics. If you don't buy ID you shouldn't be buying the climate documentary.

Specifically I suggest starting with:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled-carl-wunsch-responds/
to get a taste of documentary's creationist tendencies to grossly misrepresent (through editing) what a person actually said during the interview. After that, there are a couple other articles on that site that respond to the junk documentary.

[PaulaFarrell]

4. Carl Wunsch: I should never have trusted Channel 4

From one of the scientists featured in the show:

"In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous - because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important - diametrically opposite to the point I was making - which is that global warming is both real and threatening.

Channel 4 now says they were making a film in a series of "polemics". There is nothing in the communication we had that suggested they were making a film that was one-sided, anti-educational, and misleading. I took them at face value - a great error."

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2359057.ece

[GliderGuider]

5. A quick search on "swindle" in this group

Will turn up the half-dozen threads in which this topic has been done to death.

The "documentary" was shite. They even falsified one of the graphs they used...:banghead:

[moggie]

6. Puh-lease!

The question, as framed, is ludicrous tinfoil-hattery. A "hoax" is deliberate deception. Do you really think it's credible to suggest that thousands of climatologists, worldwide, are knowingly engaged in a massive fraud? If the AGW hypothesis turns out to be wrong, it'll be honest wrongness, not a hoax.

[CGowen]

8. I think the question is "man made or not"

I don't think global warming is questioned, only the source for it

Doubting global warming is now practically holocaust denial

I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/

[PaulaFarrell]

12. given that for both there is ample evidence

but still people find elaborate ways to convince themselves that it cannot be true, going so far as to label it a swindle or a hoax or an international conspircay, I'd say there are certain parallels

[RufusTFirefly]

15. No it's not. Time to cut down on that Kool-Aid

The notion that the role of human activity in global warming is still an open question is being flogged by many of the same people who denied global warming altogether until they realized that argument was untenable.

The recently released Fourth Assessment of the IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has concluded not only that global warming is undeniable but that "Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."

What does "very likely" mean? It means that "the assessed likelihood, using expert judgment" is more than 90 percent. ("Anthropogenic" means "caused by humans.")

Why are people -- mainly Americans -- still under the impression that human beings' contribution to global warming remains inconclusive? Primarily because many so-called "global warming skeptics" are being heavily subsidized by the petroleum industry and are receiving a disproportionate amount of publicity for their largely discredited viewpoints. (For a fascinating -- albeit somewhat out of date -- chart that lists key skeptics and the contributions they've received from ExxonMobil, see Put a Tiger in Your Think Tank)

It's a rare scientific question that can be completely laid to rest. Scientific inquiry into potential flaws in the IPCC's conclusions should definitely continue. That's how science works. But given that we live in the real world and what we do or don't do today can have serious ramifications for tomorrow, I'd say that with a 90 percent likelihood that we should operate under the hypothesis that we as humans are significant contributors to global warming. To do otherwise would be irresponsible and dangerous. We are fiddling while the Earth burns.

[CGowen]

18. I don't know about IPCC

It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment.


http://newsbusters.org/node/10773


Dr. Frederick Seitz, president emeritus of Rockefeller University and past president of the National Academy of Sciences, has publicly denounced the IPCC report, writing "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report". He opposed it in the Leipzig Declaration of his Science and Environmental Policy Project.

http://www.answers.com/topic/intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change

[jpak]

20. What horse-shit - the IPCC is *not* a "political" "UN" body

It is a commission made up of independent researchers drawn from the world's earth science community - they are not the One World Blue Helmet Brigade.

nice try though...

[CGowen]

21. That's the opinion of Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic. nt

[jpak]

23. Vaclav Klaus is fucking wrong

Your tax dollars fund climate research conducted by US scientists at US institutions that contribute (in a major way) to IPCC products.

Are these scientists a bunch of Greenie UN One World Commies - paid by the Forces of Socialist Evil???

Really????

Which ones?????

[CGowen]

24. Have you watched the movie in the OP? nt

[jpak]

26. No - I read peer reviewed scientific evidence published in respected journals

like Science, Nature and various AGU publications - all of which are cited in the IPCC reports...

Richard A. Kerr (2001) It's Official: Humans Are Behind Most of Global Warming Science 2001. 26; 291: 566 (commentary and summary of recent research)

J. E. Harries, H. E. Brindley, P. J. Sagoo, R. J. Bantges (2001). Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997. Nature 410: 355 - 357

T. P. Barnett, D. W. Pierce, R. Schnur (2001). Detection of Anthropogenic Climate Change in the World's Oceans. Science Vol. 292: pp 270-274.

S. Levitus, J. I. Antonov, J. Wang, T. L. Delworth, K. W. Dixon, and A. J. Broccoli (2001) Anthropogenic Warming of Earth's Climate System. Science 292: 267-270.

T. M. L. Wigley and S. C. B. Raper (2001) Interpretation of High Projections for Global-Mean Warming. Science Vol. 293: 451-454.

Gille, S. T. (2002) Warming of the Southern Ocean Since the 1950s. Science 295: 1275-1277

D. Rind (2002) The Sun's Role in Climate Variations. Science 296: 673-677

J. Hansen, R. Ruedy, M. Sato, and K. Lo (2002) Global Warming Continues. Science. 295: 275

S. T. Gille (2002) Warming of the Southern Ocean Since the 1950s. Science vol 295:1275-1277.

D. W. J. Thompson and S. Solomon (2002) Interpretation of Recent Southern Hemisphere Climate Change. Science. 296: 895-899.

R. E. Moritz, Cecilia M. Bitz, and Eric J. Steig (2002) Dynamics of Recent Climate Change in the Arctic. Science. 297: 1497-1502.

E. Rignot and R. H. Thomas (2002) Mass Balance of Polar Ice Sheets. Science 297: 1502-1506.

T. R. Karl and K. E. Trenberth 2003 Modern Global Climate Change. Science. 302: 1719 - 1723

D. J. Karoly, K. Braganza, P. A. Stott, J. M. Arblaster, G. A. Meehl, A. J. Broccoli, and K. W. Dixon (2003) Detection of a Human Influence on North American Climate. Science. 302: 1200-1203

P. A. Stott, D. A. Stone and M. R. Allen (2004) Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003 Nature 432: 610-614

B. D. Santer, M. F. Wehner, T. M. L. Wigley, R. Sausen, G. A. Meehl, K. E. Taylor, C. Ammann, J. Arblaster, W. M. Washington, J. S. Boyle, and W. Brüggemann (2003) Contributions of Anthropogenic and Natural Forcing to Recent Tropopause Height Changes. Science. 301: 479-483

J. Hansen, L. Nazarenko, R. Ruedy, M Sato, J. Willis, A. Del Genio, D. Koch, A. Lacis, K. Lo, S. Menon, T. Novakov, J. Perlwitz, G. Russell, G. A. Schmidt N. Tausnev (2005) Earth's Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications. Science. 308: 1431 – 1435

B. J. Soden, D. L. Jackson, V. Ramaswamy, M. D. Schwarzkopf, and X. Huang (2005) The Radiative Signature of Upper Tropospheric Moistening. Science. 310: 841-844

T. P. Barnett, D. W. Pierce, K. M. AchutaRao, P. J. Gleckler, B. D. Santer, J. M. Gregory, and W. M. Washington (2005) Penetration of Human-Induced Warming into the World's Oceans. Science. 309: 284-287

V. Ramaswamy, M. D. Schwarzkopf, W. J. Randel, B. D. Santer, B. J. Soden, and G. L. Stenchikov (2006) Anthropogenic and Natural Influences in the Evolution of Lower Stratospheric Cooling. Science. 311: 1138-1141

...anything else is ignorant RW nonsense...

[CGowen]

29. a shame nt

[NickB79]

32. LOL

Damn peer reviews and fact checking, always getting in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

Is it a shame whatever doctor you go to when you're sick read peer-reviewed medical journals in college, or would you prefer that he/she simply slaughters a chicken at your feet and gives you some herbs to treat your ills? In other words, are you completely anti-science, or just when it suits your agenda?

[CGowen]

34. So you think that scientist aren't people and don't like money? nt

[NickB79]

36. You think the head of NASA is a corporate shill?

The scientists I see that seem to like money the most are the ones paid by the oil and coal industry to deny global warming, not support it.

[jpak]

39. I can guarantee there are few *if any* scientists that pursued their career for "money"

n/t

[sbyte]

79. I'm a scientist, I want to get paid. better than being starving artist.

n/t

[CGowen]

45. Dr Roy Spencer (Weather Satellite Team Leader NASA) states at 59 min

Commentary: Scientists who speak out against man made global warming have a lot to loose


Dr. Roy Spencer:It's generally harder to get research proposals funded,
because of the stands we've taken publicly and you'll find very few of us that are willing take a public stand, because it does cut into the research funding.



Then come the scientist who deny that they are getting money oil,gas etc

[jpak]

47. Spencer and Christy's satellite (MSU) temperature data were in error

and their conclusions refuted by subsequent studies...

Global Warming Trend of Mean Tropospheric Temperature Observed by Satellites

Vinnikov, Konstantin Y.; Grody, Norman C.

Science, Volume 302, Issue 5643, pp. 269-272 (2003).

ABSTRACT

We have analyzed the global tropospheric temperature for 1978 to 2002 with the use of passive microwave sounding data from the NOAA series of polar orbiters and the Earth Observing System Aqua satellite. To accurately retrieve the climatic trend, we combined the satellite data with an analytic model of temperature that contains three different time scales: a linear trend and functions that define the seasonal and diurnal cycles. Our analysis shows a trend of +0.22° to 0.26°C per 10 years, consistent with the global warming trend derived from surface meteorological stations.

give it up...

:evilgrin:

[CGowen]

48. that proves that you get funding ?

[jpak]

49. NSF proposals are funded only after rigorous peer review by multiple specialists in the field

It's a tough business - and entirely apolitical.

The number of proposals to NSF is ever increasing and the pot of money to fund them has not kept pace.

If your grant proposal doesn't get funded, it's not "retaliation" for your views.

It means your proposal wasn't competitive with other proposals submitted for the limited amount of money available.

Crying political victim-hood for lack of funding is fucking pathetic...

[CGowen]

51. What is NASA's position on global warming on Mars ? man made?

Scientists have suspected in recent years that Mars might be undergoing some sort of global warming. New data points to the possibility it is emerging from an ice age.

NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has been surveying the planet for nearly a full Martian year now, and it has spotted seasonal changes like the advance and retreat of polar ice. It's also gathering data of a possible longer trend.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age_031208.html

[jpak]

52. Irrelevant to the problem here on Earth - and unpublished

*yawn*

[CGowen]

53. they are still in the same solar system...........

[seasat]

54. But wait! Massive ice found at Mar's South Pole, Mars is cooling!

(LINK)

The amount of water trapped in frozen layers over Mars' south polar region is equivalent to a liquid layer about 11 metres deep covering the planet.

This new estimate comes from mapping the thickness of the dusty ice by the Mars Express radar instrument that has made more than 300 virtual slices through layered deposits covering the pole. The radar sees through icy layers to the lower boundary, which in places is as deep as 3.7 kilometres below the surface.

Actually no, but it makes as much sense as the talking point from the neoluddites that Mars is under going some sort of warming trend. Mars has year of about 2 Earth years. It was late summer in Mars Southern hemisphere when the data from the NASA report you linked to was aquired. Like here on Earth, it is warmer during the summer (imagine that). Also due to the thin Martian atmosphere, massive dust storms can influence the climate. Plus Mars has different orbital variations than the Earth leading to warming or cooling periods of 10s of thousands of years. (LINK)

If you want to contend that there is some sort of increase in solar irradiance, I can repost my links to both irradiance data, sunspots, CO2 and temperature. Now, if you're contending, like the swindlers did, that there is some sort of affect on Earth due to cosmic rays increasing low clouds, then you are directly contradicting your contention that Mars is undergoing some sort of warming due to increased solar activity. Which is it?

[CGowen]

57. Well it's not that easy

Mars has no oceans to produce clouds, Mars has a very weak magnotosphere so cosmic rays aren't blocked and produce solar wind scavenging.


When the south pole melts the north pole gains but

And for three Mars summers in a row,deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/newsroom/20050920a.html


But what all the planets have in common is that they have the same sun.

from 1997 Study says sun getting hotter
Solar radiation reaching the Earth is 0.036 percent warmer than it was in 1986, when the current solar cycle was beginning, a researcher reports in a study to be published Friday in the journal Science. The finding is based on an analysis of satellites that measure the temperature of sunlight.

http://www.lubbockonline.com/news/092897/study.htm

That's the question, is the sun still getting hotter or are we just seeing the lag effects?

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980526052143data_trunc_sys.shtml

28 June 1998
Global Warming Detected on Triton
There may not be much industrial pollution on Neptune's largest moon, but things are hotting up nonetheless...

The Earth is not alone in suffering global warming. According to observations made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and several ground-based instruments, temperatures on Neptune's largest moon have increased dramatically since the Voyager space probe swung by in 1989. So much so, in fact, that Triton's surface of frozen nitrogen is turning into gas, making its thin atmosphere denser by the day.

"At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming," confirms astronomer James Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Percentage-wise, it's a very large increase."
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980526052143data_trunc_sys.shtml

Global Warming on Pluto Puzzles Scientists
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 09 October 2002

In what is largely a reversal of an August announcement, astronomers today said Pluto is undergoing global warming in its thin atmosphere even as it moves farther from the Sun on its long, odd-shaped orbit.

Pluto's atmospheric pressure has tripled over the past 14 years, indicating a stark temperature rise, the researchers said. The change is likely a seasonal event, much as seasons on Earth change as the hemispheres alter their inclination to the Sun during the planet's annual orbit.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warming_021009.html

New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change
By Sara Goudarzi
Staff Writer
posted: 04 May 2006
01:00 pm ET

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060504_red_jr.html

[seasat]

61. I notice that you point to a 97 study on sun not a recent study

Most recent studies have concluded that solar irradiance is declining.

The so called cosmic ray hypothesis depends on clouds! The hypothesis is that cosmic rays entering the Earth's atmosphere result in charged particles that act as nuclei for droplet formation. This leads to low troposphere clouds that trap heat. That is theory espoused by the swindle program. The contradiction in your argument is that you're arguing for global warming on planets where clouds don't exist and you're also arguing for the cosmic ray hypothesis. If there is increased solar activity cosmic rays are blocked on earth. It is clear that you really haven't researched the issue but are gleaning a little bit of information from a neoluddite website and coming here thinking you can challenge folks.

Here's some reading material for you on solar activity that I compiled and keep around for posts such as yours. Educate yourself.

Here are a few recent articles from the respected Journals Science and Nature. I'm not sure if these are behind the subscription firewall but they are available at most libraries if anyone wants to read them.

P. Foukal1, C. Fröhlich2, H. Spruit3 and T. M. L. Wigley4. 2006. Variations in solar luminosity and their effect on the Earth's climate. Nature. Vol 443. pp 161-166. (LINK)
Variations in the Sun's total energy output (luminosity) are caused by changing dark (sunspot) and bright structures on the solar disk during the 11-year sunspot cycle. The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years. In this Review, we show that detailed analysis of these small output variations has greatly advanced our understanding of solar luminosity change, and this new understanding indicates that brightening of the Sun is unlikely to have had a significant influence on global warming since the seventeenth century. Additional climate forcing by changes in the Sun's output of ultraviolet light, and of magnetized plasmas, cannot be ruled out. The suggested mechanisms are, however, too complex to evaluate meaningfully at present.


J. Laštovička,1 R. A. Akmaev,2 G. Beig,3 J. Bremer,4 J. T. Emmert. ATMOSPHERE:
Global Change in the Upper Atmosphere. Science. Vol. 314. no. 5803. pp. 1253 - 1254. (LINK)
The trends described above form a consistent pattern of global change in the upper atmosphere at heights above 50 km (see arrows in the figure). The upper atmosphere is generally cooling and contracting, and related changes in chemical composition are affecting the ionosphere. The dominant driver of these trends is increasing greenhouse forcing, although there may be contributions from anthropogenic changes of the ozone layer and long-term increase of geomagnetic activity throughout the 20th century. Thus, the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases influence the atmosphere at nearly all altitudes between ground and space, affecting not only life on the surface but also the spacebased technological systems on which we increasingly rely.

Now if you still believe that the warming trend is the result of increased solar irradiance, here's the data.

Sunspot number is currently declining. (LINK)

The solar constant is decreasing (LINK).

Temperature is increasing (LINK).

2005 was the warmest year on record globally (LINK) and, based on preliminary data, 2006 was the warmest year for the US (LINK). (El Nino is definitely an influence in 2006 warming.)

Greenhouse gases are increasing. (LINK) and expected to continue increasing (LINK).[br />

[CGowen]

64. In the swindle theory

they say higher sun activity blasts away the cosmic rays.


The documentary is saying CO2 increases after the earth heats up not the other way round. (because the oceans release it)


Like I said it's a time lag and you see the effects only after years.
If the sun irradiation has decreased and looking at the SOHO data suggest it, then we should see expect the reverse in future



All I'm saying is, the IPCC doesn't work scientifically and global warming is used for other purposes.

[NickB79]

66. The oceans are absorbing CO2, not releasing it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

"Ocean acidification is the name given to the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth's oceans, caused by their uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Between 1751 and 2004 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14.<1>"

If the oceans were actually RELEASING CO2, their pH would be DECREASING. CO2 combines with water to form carbonic acid. More CO2 entering the oceans = more carbonic acid formed, and a lower ocean pH.

[tex-wyo-dem]

67. If you are referring to cosmic rays theory promoted by Svensmark

then I'm afraid that these two statements, the first in the OP:

"What does track climate change, in lockstep, is the
level of solar activity. This shouldn't really be surprising, as the
Sun is the engine that drives Earth's biosphere and weather systems."

And yours:

"If the sun irradiation has decreased and looking at the SOHO data suggest it, then we should see expect the reverse in future"

are wrong. Simply put, there is no correlation in the data between cosmic rays and recent warming trends. The following is from what I've found to be a very reliable website on climate science:

16 Oct 2006
Taking Cosmic Rays for a spin

...

The working hypothesis of the cosmic ray crowd is that the (weak) correlations between low clouds and cosmic rays are causal (i.e. a cosmic ray increase - due to a solar magnetic field weakening - causes low clouds to increase, cooling the planet). The 'spin' on this new paper is that this has been demonstrated, and is significant, and furthermore, is responsible for the 20th Century rise in global temperatures. But let's look carefully at what is required in this logic:

First, the particles observed in these experiments are orders of magnitude too small to be Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN). In the press release, this is why they talk about the 'building blocks' of CCN, however, aggrandisation of these small particles is in no sense guaranteed (Missing step #1). Secondly, the focus is on low clouds over the ocean. However, over the ocean, there are huge numbers of condensation nuclei related to sea salt particles. Thus to show that the cosmic ray mechanism is important, you need to show that it increases CCN even in the presence of lots of other CCN (Missing step #2). Next, even if more CCN were made, you would need to show that this actually changed cloud cover (or optical thickness etc.) (Missing step #3). And given that change in cloud properties, you would need to show that it had a significant effect on radiative forcing - which despite their hand waving, is not at all well quantified (even the sign!) (Missing step #4). Finally, to show that cosmic rays were actually responsible for some part of the recent warming you would need to show that there was actually a decreasing trend in cosmic rays over recent decades - which is tricky, because there hasn't been (see the figure) (Missing step #5). All of this will require significant work and there are certainly no guarantees that all the steps can be verified (which they have been for the greenhouse gas hypothesis) - especially the last! However, they would seem essential to justifying the claims in the press releases.



Will these results be a spur to future research? Possibly. But the ridiculous spin put on this paper is liable to continue to put off mainstream scientists from pursuing it. It's as though Svensmark and co. want to enhance the field of solar-terrestrial research's bad reputation for agenda-driven science.

Unsurprisingly, this paper was trumpeted throughout contrarian circles last week and was received uncritically (with one honorable exception in the 'climatesceptics' discussion group), even by people who normally spend their time decrying science-by-press-release. (A word to the wise, consistency goes a long way to establishing credibility...).

<more>

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/taking-cosmic-rays-for-a-spin

[seasat]

70. Actually I should apologize, I misread a synopsis of the swindle

They didn't go with the current favored contrarian theory involving cosmic rays. They went with the weaker solar irradiance theory. The synopsis actually said that they were surprised that they didn't use the Svensmark paper. Primarily because, though it has received some very valid criticisms of it(see tex-wyo-dem's post below), it better matches the actual observations.

Regarding the CO2 lag versus temperature, the swindlers are mixing up two different processes and not providing the details. When the Earth comes out of a glacial period, CO2 does increase after the Earth warms. It has a 400 to 800 year lag not the immediate correspondence we're seeing. It is thought that the increase in CO2 is multiplier effect that increases the warming post glacial (LINK). This is vastly different from current observations where CO2 (LINK) and temperature anomaly (LINK) covary. If anything, temperature is lagging CO2 not the other way around.

CO2 concentrations were pretty flat up until the industrial revolution (LINK) and http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/what.html"> Another LINK). We know that the CO2 is anthropogenic because we have very good records of the green house gases produced through fossil fuel. Over the industrial age and especially since the advent of the computer, we can track the fossil fuels and calculate the conversion into greenhouse gases. We compare this to our estimates of the rest of the global carbon cycle and we come up with an increase from anthropogenic sources.

The greenhouse effect is well studied. Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist, first proposed it in 1896. It is not something new, as the swindlers would have you believe. This link will give a very compete background on the evolution of the science behind the theory (LINK).

Fossil fuel carbon has a different isotopic ratio than atmospheric carbon. That is because as plants take up CO2 they take in more C12 than C13 or C14. It's energetically more efficient to use the lower molecular weight carbon. The measurements of atmospheric and oceanic carbon confirm the change in the isotopic ratio as we release fossil fuel carbon. Bubbles trapped in ice cores also confirm the shift in the atmospheric carbon isotopic ratios and give us a base line for their preindustrial values. If solar irradiance was increasing we'd see the opposite effect since increased solar irradiance (cosmic rays) would produce more isotopes of carbon not less.

The link in my post on solar irradiance and climate change points out a paper on how the troposphere is warming while the stratosphere is cooling. If you don't feel like running down to the library to read it, here's another source (LINK). Now if you were pushing more solar energy through the atmosphere then you would expect the stratosphere to warm just along with the troposphere. On a simplistic scale, the increase in greenhouse gases acts like a blanket in front of a fireplace. When you stand between the blanket and the fireplace you feel warmer. When you stand with the blanket between you and the fireplace you feel cooler. Therefore, the cooling stratosphere is consistent with greenhouse gas increases not solar irradiance increases (another LINK).

Increased sunspot activity results in a slight increase in solar radiation. This occurs on an 11 year cycle. These links from my previous post connect to data regarding sunspots and the solar constant. Compare these graphs to the CO2 record and temperature anomaly. If solar output was the major driver, temperature anomaly should have dipped when the sun reached the bottom of the solar cycle. According to swindle, CO2 would have also dropped. We are near the bottom of the solar cycle now and just set another global temperature record.

Solar output has been constantly studied for centuries. Even if there weren't an issue of global warming, we'd still study it because it is our energy source. Every recent peer reviewed study has confirmed that if solar irradiance is increasing, it has not gone up enough to account for the warming trend. A study last year that had the most generous numbers for solar irradiance estimated that it could only account for 30% of the warming trend at most. The other studies have either demonstrated a relatively constant sun or even a decline in solar irradiance. The differences are due to the fact that the change in the solar constant (if there is one) is so small that it is below the accuracy of most instruments.

I've been using a Licor 1800 to do irradiance measurements to calibrate my submersible planar irradiance sensors for over 10 years. I compare the Licor data to a simple model that uses a solar constant from the 1980s. The model and Licor match up perfectly on a clear day near solar zenith. The point is that if the solar output has increased, it's too small to account for the warming. It also does not explain the observed data. The greenhouse gas theory of climate change is the only theory that explains the observations.

BTW, I think I made BINGO after reading your posts. ;)

[CGowen]

71. They say they

used 600.000.000 years of geological studies to align it with the cosmic ray theory. I don't know if that's new but they say it matches pretty good.



So we have to wait 400-800 years to compare it with todays data?



others say

In investigating this question, Siegenthaler et al. say they obtained the best correlation between CO2 and temperature "for a lag of CO2 of 1900 years." Specifically, over the course of glacial terminations V to VII, they indicate that "the highest correlation of CO2 and deuterium, with use of a 20-ky window for each termination, yields a lag of CO2 to deuterium of 800, 1600, and 2800 years, respectively." In addition, they note that "this value is consistent with estimates based on data from the past four glacial cycles," citing in this regard the work of Fischer et al. (1999), Monnin et al. (2001) and Caillon et al. (2003). Clearly, therefore, it is temperature that is the robust leader in this tightly-coupled relationship, while CO2 is but the humble follower, providing only a fraction (which could well be miniscule) - of the total glacial-to-interglacial temperature change.

This observation does little to inspire confidence in climate-alarmist claims that the CO2 produced by the burning of fossil fuels will lead to catastrophic temperature increases, which predicted warmings, in some of their scenarios, rival those experienced in glacial-to-interglacial transitions. Nevertheless, Siegenthaler et al. stubbornly state that the new findings "do not cast doubt ... on the importance of CO2 as a key amplification factor of the large observed temperature variations of glacial cycles."

In vivid contrast to this unsupported contention, it is our opinion that when temperature leads CO2 by thousands of years, during both glacial terminations and inceptions (Genthon et al., 1987; Fischer et al., 1999; Petit et al., 1999; Clark and Mix, 2000; Indermuhle et al., 2000; Monnin et al., 2001; Mudelsee, 2001; Caillon et al., 2003), there is plenty of reason to believe that CO2 plays but a minor role in enhancing temperature changes that are clearly induced by something else, which latter italicized point is an undisputed fact that is clearly born out by the new ice core data.
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N48/EDIT.jsp

while the website you cited, somehow wants to make it look the other way round

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-change.html

One of the most remarkable aspects of the paleoclimate record is the strong correspondence between temperature and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere observed during the glacial cycles of the past several hundred thousand years. When the carbon dioxide concentration goes up, temperature goes up. When the carbon dioxide concentration goes down, temperature goes down.
A small part of the correspondence is due to the relationship between temperature and the solubility of carbon dioxide in the surface ocean, but the majority of the correspondence is consistent with a feedback between carbon dioxide and climate. These changes are expected if the Earth is in radiative balance, and are consistent with the role of greenhouse gases in climate change. While it might seem simple to determine cause and effect between carbon dioxide and climate from which change occurs first, or from some other means, the determination of cause and effect remains exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, other changes are involved in the glacial climate, including altered vegetation, land surface characteristics, and ice-sheet extent.

[seasat]

73. What is your point here?

The CO2 site that you linked to is put out by a couple of fossil fuel funded group (that are all related). They originally proposed that the CO2 was going to fertilize all the plants and wouldn't cause a problem since they would absorb it all (LINK). Now go back and look at the data from the Mauna Loa observatory. Do you see the rate of increase of CO2 dropping (HINT: it's actually increasing)? Their hypothesis has long been disproven but they still try to influence the debate by publishing misleading op-ed pieces on areas where they have no expertise like paleoclimatology.

The NOAA link is referring to geological time scales. A thousand years is instantaneous to a researcher doing some sort of paleo-research. There has been a debate over how long the lag is between CO2 and temperature. Most researchers do not credit CO2 increases/decreases with causing the glacial/interglacial cycle. They credit Milankovitch cycles (LINK).

My point is that there is obviously not a lag now. The actual data I linked to demonstrate both that there is no lag in the current warming and the anthropogenic origins of the CO2. Explain the data with your favorite contrarian hypothesis. I'm not sure which one that is now since you seem to have changed your opinion and are now supporting the cosmology hypothesis.

It is also suspicious when you criticize the IPCC as being a political body but then immediately switch theories when the one you are touting is clearing disproven. It sounds to me like you made up your mind that global warming is something other than anthropogenic and are now trying to find any theory to confirm that belief. It looks like you are doing exactly what you accuse the IPCC of doing.

[seasat]

63. Oh, I forgot to add...actually read the stories you linked to.

Not one of them accredit the climate change on other planets to increased solar irradiance. Is it some kind of grand conspiracy theory that you (who can't discern between the cosmic ray and increased solar irradiance hypothesis) somehow know more than the scientists that published that data?

[NickB79]

55. The Martian warming has already been discussed

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192

"Globally, the mean temperature of the Martian atmosphere is particularly sensitive to the strength and duration of hemispheric dust storms, (see for example here and here). Large scale dust storms change the atmospheric opacity and convection; as always when comparing mean temperatures, the altitude at which the measurement is made matters, but to the extent it is sensible to speak of a mean temperature for Mars, the evidence is for significant cooling from the 1970's, when Viking made measurements, compared to current temperatures. However, this is essentially due to large scale dust storms that were common back then, compared to a lower level of storminess now. The mean temperature on Mars, averaged over the Martian year can change by many degrees from year to year, depending on how active large scale dust storms are.

In 2001, Malin et al published a short article in Science (subscription required) discussing MGS data showing a rapid shrinkage of the South Polar Cap. Recently, the MGS team had a press release discussing more recent data showing the trend had continued. MGS 2001 press release MGS 2005 press release. The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states.

Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is unwarranted. The observed regional changes in south polar ice cover are almost certainly due to a regional climate transition, not a global phenomenon, and are demonstrably unrelated to external forcing. There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth..."

[jpak]

38. hee hee - thanks Nick

:toast:

[NickB79]

25. Yes, because being a president requires a climatology degree

Klaus has a degree in economics, not climate research.

[CGowen]

27. the conclusion of the movie is somehow to prevent the 3 world from industrializing ...nt

[jpak]

28. tinfoil BS

lol

[CGowen]

30. the black guy in africa had a clearly visible tin foil hat on nt

[jpak]

41. well, there you go then...a conspiracy of one

:P

[NickB79]

35. Of course, it's all a conspiracy

That's why my garden is going nuts from the mild winters, all the UN's fault. I should have known.

[CGowen]

40. Did I say global warming isn't happening?

the discussion is about the source

[hatrack]

50. Oh? I thought the discussion was about a cabal of corrupt scientists, whose fiendish plot . . .

. . . has corrupted the global scientific community, siphoned countless millions of dollars through their nefarious tactics and who now stand poised to (BWA-HAHHAHHAHHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!) destroy the developing world.

Is there an emoticon for "steaming mound of bullshit"? Maybe the mods can put something together.

[rman]

65. I think the discussion should be about how to deal with it

That's what i find so suspicious about the swindle docu and about for instance Alex Jones' climate change CT stuff: it's all about how we're supposedly being duped about the cause, but they don't seem to acknowledge the problem that's there regardless of the cause - a huge problem. It really is like rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic is sinking.

[RufusTFirefly]

22. A shame you didn't post the laughable Newsbusters headline

Czech President Calls Man-Made Global Warming a Myth, Questions Al Gore’s Sanity

Or Newsbusters' inspiring tagline for that matter
"Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias"



Cheers!

[NickB79]

31. Dr. Seitz is complaining about peer-review? Pot, meet kettle

"In 1998, Seitz wrote and circulated a letter, asking scientists to sign a petition asking the Government to reject the Kyoto Protocol. Seitz signed the letter and identified himself as a former president of the National Academy of Sciences. He also directed attention to a report by Dr. Arthur Robinson, which concluded that carbon dioxide posed no threat to climate. The report was not peer-reviewed, but was formatted to look like an NAS journal article. The NAS later issued a statement disassociating itself from the petition and the article.
Source: "Science Academy Disputes Attack on Global Warming," New York Times 4/22/98"

snip

"A June 2000 Business Week article referred to physicist Frederick Seitz as "the granddaddy of global-warming skeptics". Seitz was once a director and shareholder of a company that operated coal-fired power plants.

Dr. Seitz is a former President of the National Academy of Sciences, but the Academy disassociated itself from Seitz in 1998 when Seitz headed up a report designed to look like an NAS journal article saying that carbon dioxide poses no threat to climate. The report, which was supposedly signed by 15,000 scientists, advocated the abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol. The NAS went to unusual lengths to publically distance itself from Seitz' article. Seitz signed the 1995 Leipzig Declaration."

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=6

Oh look, he signed the Leipzig Declaration. What does Wikipedia have to say about that?

"The 1995 declaration asserts: "There does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. On the contrary, most scientists now accept the fact that actual observations from earth satellites show no climate warming whatsoever." The latter statement was broadly accurate at the time, but with additional data and correction of errors, all analyses of satellite temperature measurements now show statistically-significant warming.

snip

"The signatures to the 1995 declaration were disputed by David Olinger of the St. Petersburg Times. In an article on July 29, 1996, he revealed that many signers, including Chauncey Starr, Robert Balling, and Patrick Michaels, have received funding from the oil industry, while others had no scientific training or could not be identified.<1>"

The 1995 declarations begins: "As scientists, we are intensely interested in the possibility that human activities may affect the global climate". However, those identified as scientists and climate experts include at least ten weather presenters, including Dick Groeber of Dick's Weather Service in Springfield, Ohio. Groeber, who had not completed a university degree, labelled himself a scientist by virtue of his thirty to forty years of self-study.<1>"

It goes on, but I think I made my point. Seitz is a dishonest hack, plain and simple.

[CGowen]

33. He clearly didn't obey Einsteins formula

If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.

Albert Einstein


http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/albert_einstein.html




They mention the funding problem and mention that one scientist was criticized because he accepted funding from the coal industry

[NickB79]

37. That's it for your rebuttal?

No input whatsoever on the specific issues brought up with Dr. Seitz's work? I didn't think you would.

[CGowen]

43. There is also for example Paul Reiter, Professor, Institut Pasteur

A galling aspect of the debate is that this spurious `science` is endorsed in the public forum by influential panels of ``experts.`` I refer particularly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Every five years, this UN-based organization publishes a `consensus of the world`s top scientists` on all aspects of climate change. Quite apart from the dubious process by which these scientists are selected, such consensus is the stuff of politics, not of science. Science proceeds by observation, hypothesis and experiment. The complexity of this process, and the uncertainties involved, are a major obstacle to meaningful understanding of scientific issues by non-scientists. In reality, a genuine concern for mankind and the environment demands the inquiry, accuracy and scepticism that are intrinsic to authentic science. A public that is unaware of this is vulnerable to abuse.


http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060505/20060505_26.html

[RufusTFirefly]

44. More ExxonMobil funded blather

Frontiers of Freedom, the organization from which this article was taken, is listed as one of the top recipients of ExxonMobil money in the chart Put a Tiger in Your Think Tank

[CGowen]

46. guilt by association fallacy

Does this mean he is not right?


http://www.cfact-europe.org/thisweeksfeature_7.html



# I pursued the question further, asking: (1) Who selects the Working Group/Task Force Bureau Co-Chairs? (2) Who are the Working Group/Task Force Bureau Co-Chairs for Group II, Health Impacts? Where is the Working Group/Task Force Bureau? (3) What are the criteria they use for identifying appropriate experts?


# I received two replies, the simplest of which read: "Thank you for your continued interest in the IPCC. The brief answer to your question below is 'governments'. It is the governments of the world who make up the IPCC, define its remit, and direction. The way in which this is done is defined in the IPCC Principles and Procedures, which have been agreed by governments. Please refer to my emails of 2nd and 3rd September for details on how to access that information".


# In all the rules that were quoted, there was no mention of research experience, bibliography, citation statistics or any other criteria that would define the quality of "the worlds top scientists".

[NickB79]

56. The "Institut Pasteur" should have tipped you off

"Paul Reiter is a professor of medical entomology at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France. He is a member of the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on Vector Biology and Control. He was an employee of the Center for Disease Control (Dengue Branch) for 22 years."

Again, NOT A CLIMATOLOGIST. He studies diseases, specifically diseases transmitted by insects. This is getting old.

[CGowen]

58. Yes and he is talking about IPCC tactics

It's about Malaria/Mosquitos not being specific tropical , he mentions cases in the Soviet Union 1920's( up to the Arctic circle.)

He is an expert on Malaria and laments not being able to publish what he as an expert knows in the global warming fraternity.



It's about the myth that tropical diseases will move north

[bigmonkey]

9. The cause of global warming is irrelevant.

I believe the evidence I've seen, and I think greenhouse gases are causing it. But even if something else is causing it, reducing greenhouse gases will slow the warming trend. So, reducing greenhouse gases either is directly remedying the problem, or offsetting the symptom. We have to do it no matter which, the alternative is losing major cities to inundation, huge refugee problems, worldwide climate disruption, resource wars, nothing good comes of it except to Halliburton-type enterprises that thrive on violent conflict. Additionally, developing other power sources promotes technology that's more eco-friendly in other ways, more democratic, and locally controlled.

Promoting these tracts about the supposed "global warming hoax" has no redeeming side, as I see it. The problem is averting the calamity, and trying to turn the argument to one about irrelevant facts is propagandizing disinformation - swift boat stuff.

[Dover]

10. Good point...n/t

[CGowen]

11. very scientific...nt

[sbyte]

80. Slowing man made co2, increases human suffering.

Think of how useful the gas oil fueled motor is. Do you want energy police saying you can't use them? The third world countries are at the brink of expansion out of desperate poverty.
The movie implies that underdeveloped counties are restricted from developing. This is political and an environmental quandary.

Then there is the use of carbon credits to control it which creates a false economy based on "thick air".

[Nihil]

81. Yes, in certain cases it will. So will not slowing it. And your point is?

> Think of how useful the gas oil fueled motor is.
> Do you want energy police saying you can't use them?

You have a choice: either voluntarily cut down the usage or have it
done for you. There is no "carry on regardless" option.

If you choose to ignore the real world, it will catch up with you
by means of rising price, then rationing, then prohibition (but there
will be plenty of other shortages by then so fuel will be the least
of your problems).

If you get ahead of the game and *plan* your reduction in use, you
will be in a much better position when the ostriches start to wake up.

> The third world countries are at the brink of expansion out of
> desperate poverty.

Nope. They will always be HELD in desperate poverty by the richer,
more powerful nations of this world. The oil-crunch will actually
help them to regain the independence that was stolen (or bought)
from them in the past as it will reduce the power that said rich
nations can project.

> Then there is the use of carbon credits to control it which creates
> a false economy based on "thick air".

Agreed - "carbon credits" are just another shell-game for the gamblers
at the stock markets to enjoy and from which the politicians & top of
the heap executives can profit.

[Kashka-Kat]

13. How do you fake thawed glaciers, open ice free Arctic ocean, collapsed antarctic ice shelves etc.

the arctic ocean will be ice free in 25 years-- thse are things that have not happened in many HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of years. The medieval warming period in Europe is not comparable.

Science deals with probabilities. If you were wheezing and out of breath and had chronic coughing spasms and a precancerous lung condition would you go ahead and quit smoking or would you try to establish scientific proof that it was something else causing it BEFORE making the decision?

Im afraid I'm not going to watch the film, not because I don't want to but bc I am at work and don't have internet at home. So, can you tell us "why this orthodoxy exists and whose interests it serves"? I haven't a clue! I seriously doubt if all the solar panel manufacturers have conspired and are funding the climate change studies!

[ORDagnabbit]

14. heres what one of the scientists in the movie says..........

Here are 3 things that will show you what a made up piece of crap the movie is.



http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled-carl-wunsch-responds/

Channel 4 now says they were making a film in a series of "polemics". There is nothing in the communication we had (much of it on the telephone or with the film crew on the day they were in Boston) that suggested they were making a film that was one-sided, anti-educational, and misleading. I took them at face value---clearly a great error. I knew I had no control over the actual content, but it never occurred to me that I was dealing with people who already had a reputation for distortion and exaggeration.



its a good read....


you might be interested to know that the people behind this documentary are ex members of the UK Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), who used to publish the magazine LM, once "Living Marxism", the official newsletter of the RCP. They continue to push the agenda they promoted within the RCP through the Institute of Ideas and the online magazine spiked. If anyone wants to check them out, try a Google search of "Martin Durkin Against Nature" (the title of another anti-environment documentary by this programme´s director from the 1980s), or "martin Durkin and communist". Dig around on the web and see what the Revolutionary Communists behind this stuff are up to, and make you own mind up about their legitimacy.


and another good read

http://www.jri.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=137&Itemid=83


The programme purported to debunk the science of Global Warming describing it as ‘lies’ and an invention of hundreds of scientists around the world who have conspired to mislead governments, and the general public. The most prominent person in the programme was Lord Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer who is not a scientist and who shows little knowledge of the science but who is party to the creation of a conspiracy theory that questions the motives and integrity of the world scientific community, especially as represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The material presented was a mixture of truth, half truth and falsehood put together with the sole purpose of discrediting the science of global warming as presented by the main world community of climate scientists and by the IPCC.

more at the link....

[GreenPartyVoter]

16. Yes, and it was perpetrated by the great

alternative energies lobby! You have NO idea the power that the photovoltaic lobbyists possess!!!

/snark

[Dover]

17. lol! Okay............OKAY! Got it.,,,n/t

[Dogmudgeon]

59. In truth, they are pretty powerful

Photovoltaic technology is largely owned and profited from by the big semiconductor companies. But appropriate enforcement of anti-trust laws can keep them well-behaved. Wingnuts, OTOH, know no such manners.

They're Dangerous Thinkers, don'tcha know.

Global warming "controversies" are now almost entirely the doing of cranks. Even where the data produce new scientific controversies, it's almost always the case that it's within the context of AGW (anthropogenic global warming).

--p!

[jpak]

19. Oh please

Earth scientists have all the geochemical evidence needed to conclude that fossil fuel combustion and other human activities have altered the chemistry of the atmosphere.

The first evidence for this was published in the late '50's...

The *measured* increases in carbon dioxide, methane. nitrous oxide and CFCs since the industrial revolution are due to human activities.

The increase in concentrations of these gases has *measurably* altered the Earth's radiative balance.

They have *measurably* increased the Greenhouse Effect.

There are no lines of evidence to support that the *measured* rise in global temperatures is due to natural phenomena.

It's all us...

period.

[greenman3610]

42. why the "Great Swindle" is a swindle

Powerpoint refuting "swindle" movie

http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/chris

[kestrel91316]

60. I guess it is. You convinced me. Whew, now I can go buy that

Hummer I've always wanted, and we can all burn fossil fuels until they are completely gone. Not sure what we'll use for oxygen at that point, but WTF. It's all about having fun and making tons of money anyway.

[rman]

62. Scientist Featured In Movie "Debunking" Warming Says His Work "Completely Misrepresented"

United Kingdom: Climate change: An inconvenient truth... for C4
This expert in oceanography quoted in last week's debunking of the Gore green theory says he was 'seriously misrepresented'
Source: Copyright 2007, Independent (UK)
Date: March 11, 2007
Byline: Geoffrey Lean
http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=70678


It was the television programme that set out to show that most of the world's climate scientists are misleading us when they say humanity is heating up the Earth by emitting carbon dioxide. And <b>The Great Global Warming Swindle, screened by Channel 4 on Thursday night</b>, convinced many viewers that it is indeed untrue that the gas is to blame for global warming. But now the programme - and the channel - is facing a <b>serious challenge to its own credibility after one of the most distinguished scientists that it featured said his views had been "grossly distorted" by the film</b>, and made it clear that he believed human pollution did warm the climate.

Professor Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said he had been "completely misrepresented" by the programme, and "totally misled" on its content. He added that he is considering making a formal complaint. A Channel 4 spokesman said: "The film was a polemic that drew together the well-documented views of a number of respected scientists to reach the same conclusions. This is a controversial film but we feel that it is important that all sides of the debate are aired. If one of the contributors has concerns about his contribution we will look into that." Any complaint would provoke a crisis at Channel 4, now recovering from the Jade Goody Big Brother storm. It had to make a rare public apology after the Independent Television Commission convicted previous programmes on environmental issues by the same film-maker, Martin Durkin, of similar offences - and is already facing questions on why it accepted another programme from him.

The commission found that the editing of interviews with four contributors to a series called Against Nature had "distorted or misrepresented their known views". Professor Wunsch said: "I am angry because they completely misrepresented me. My views were distorted by the context in which they placed them. I was misled as to what it was going to be about. I was told about six months ago that this was to be a programme about how complicated it is to understand what is going on. If they had told me even the title of the programme, I would have absolutely refused to be on it. I am the one who has been swindled."

When told what the commission had found, he said: "That is what happened to me." He said he believes it is "an almost inescapable conclusion" that "if man adds excess CO2 to the atmosphere, the climate will warm". He went on: "The movie was terrible propaganda. It is characteristic of propaganda that you take an area where there is legitimate dispute and you claim straight out that people who disagree with you are swindlers. That is what the film does in any area where some things are subject to argument."

...

[LSK]

68. what is this based on?

"First, about CO-2. It turns out the carbon dioxide (CO-2) due to
human causes is a negligible part of the CO-2 emitted each year, and
in any case CO-2 is a relatively insignificant component of
greenhouse gases. Not only that, but greenhouse gases are not a major
determiner of climate."

These are conclusions based on what exactly?

[stuntcat]

69. how sweet, people clingin' to Hope

when the simplest fact of it is the dramatic (faster than would occur naturally) climate changes and mass extinction are lining up perfectly with humans' doubling their population in just 40 years.
Oh yeah but it's a coincidence :p some people will never believe God's image can trash His world.. and they're often people who can read! and own those modern computing mechanisms!

[CGowen]

72. Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth

........
.......
Dr Gareth Jones, a climate researcher at the Met Office, said that Dr Solanki's findings were inconclusive because the study had not incorporated other potential climate change factors.

"The Sun's radiance may well have an impact on climate change but it needs to be looked at in conjunction with other factors such as greenhouse gases, sulphate aerosols and volcano activity," he said. The research adds weight to the views of David Bellamy, the conservationist. "Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth," he said. "I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy-makers are not.

"Instead, they have an unshakeable faith in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement: humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide - the principal so-called greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up. They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html

[NickB79]

74. The discredited David Bellamy?

From Wikipedia:

"In 2004, he wrote an article in the Daily Mail in which he described the theory of man-made global warming as "poppycock" <2>. A letter he published in New Scientist (16 April 2005) asserted that a large percentage (555 of 625) of the glaciers being observed by the World Glacier Monitoring Service were advancing, not retreating. However, Bellamy's figures were incorrect: the vast majority of the world's glaciers have been retreating for the last several decades. George Monbiot of the Guardian tracked down Bellamy's original source for this information and found that it was Fred Singer's website. Singer claimed to have obtained these figures from a 1989 article in the journal Science, but to date this article has not been found.<1> Bellamy has since admitted that the figures on glaciers were wrong, and announced in a letter to The Sunday Times on 29 May 2005 <3> that he had "decided to draw back from the debate on global warming" <4>. However he has not withdrawn his assertions about the causes of global warming."

Yawn.....

[seasat]

75. They also left out this part of the newspaper article.

Dr David Viner, the senior research scientist at the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit, said the research showed that the sun did have an effect on global warming.

He added, however, that the study also showed that over the past 20 years the number of sunspots had remained roughly constant, while the Earth's temperature had continued to increase.

This suggested that over the past 20 years, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation had begun to dominate "the natural factors involved in climate change", he said.

It backs the data I put in my previous posts in this thread regarding increases in solar irradiance versus anthropogenic greenhouse gases that they are also ignoring.

Cgowen, actually address the data I posted. Don't continue to spam the group with newspaper links.

[Nederland]

76. Not true

I'm not claiming that global warming and sunspot activity are related but the simple fact is your post is empirically incorrect. It is simply not true that solar activity over the last 20 years has been roughly constant.



Again, I'm not claiming that global warming and sunspot activity are related. I simply think it's very important for us to keep to the facts.

[seasat]

77. Vilner (IMHO) is referring to the sunspot activity over the 11 year

cycle for the past 20 years as compared to past cycles. The variations were not excessive and the peak in the cycle was not as large as would be expected if solar irradiance were driving the warming trend. We can't accurately determine solar irradiance over too long of a period since we've only had accurate radiometers in orbit for the past couple of decades but we can use sunspot activity and other measurements as proxies. I was specifically referring to the data in a previous reply http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=88139&mesg_id=88424">(LINK). 2005 set a record as the warmest year but sunspot activity it was much lower than the peak of the solar cycle in 2001/2002. Other parts of the sunspot record such as the peak in 1960 showed much more variability over the cycles leading up to it, yet there was little change in temperature over that period. In fact the neoluddites quote that flat period in temperature anomaly as evidence against global climate change.

[Dover]

78. Robert Moore received heated responses to that OP email. So here's what he's saying now...>

Here's what R. Moore says after receiving tons of email responses similar to what was posted in this thread. These are two separate emails, one responding to the nonorthodox view and one to the orthodox view:


Friends,

I got 35 responses to the Global Warming posting, which is I think a
new record. Many thanks for your contributions. Many were similar, so
I'll be posting representative examples. The consensus re/the science
was that the documentary was bogus. Some disagreed however, and they
raised other points that may turn out to be more important than the
science, as regards understanding what's going on politically. Those
will be covered in an accompanying posting.

rkm

--------------------------------------------------------
To: Richard Moore <[e-mail]>
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 14:34:17 -0700
Subject: Response to Swindled
From: [e-mail]

Richard, why do you even lend credence to this crap by passing it
around? You should know better. The so-called "documentary" has been
debunked by the scientists interviewed as a piece of sensationalistic
crap over a week ago. <http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=417>

Far from being a professional piece of investigative journalism, it
was a polemic that was one-sided, anti-educational, and misleading.
As Carl Wunsch said in his rebuttal, "it never occurred to me that I
was dealing with people who already had a reputation for distortion
and exaggeration."

There's hardly a factual piece of information in it, and those few
that are, such as "the sun drives weather systems", are taken so far
out of context as to be meaningless.

Are are you doing research on people's gullibility in believing
anything that allows them to cling to the fantasy that they can
continue consuming and polluting without disastrous consequences?

Or did you forget to take your red pill this week? :-)

For the Earth...
_dave_(this entire message is composed of recycled electrons)
Natural Systems Solutions
http://www.attractionretreat.org/NSS
Sustainable lifestyles, organizations, and communities

-----------------

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your comments. Your views are representative of the most
of the feedback I received. No, I wasn't testing people's
gullibility. The documentary SEEMED to make some very challenging
points, and I wanted to find out what other people thought of it. I'm
no expert on climate. I do not try to coddle people on this list by
protecting them from viewpoints. I assume everyone here can think for
themselves. I find the discussion and thinking that has evolved from
the posting to be valuable. And it is useful to track disinformation
campaigns.

cheers,
rkm

--------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 06:03:45 +1200
From: "James Samuel" <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Is global warming a hoax?

Hi Richard,

Like many of the reports that deal with climate change issues, the
tendency to emotive language and a bias towards one or another
viewpoint is also prevalent in this film. There is a criticism, both
subtle and obvious, of people who question the logic of economic
growth, globalisation and capitalism. There is the use of simplistic
analogies, an approach which is criticized when used by those who
believe that human beings have a major impact on climate change.

It seems clear that the world has gone through major climatic cycles
in the past, and to argue for or against the influence of human
beings on this process seems more about an argument for or against
the status quo and further industrialisation of the world.

I sensed an intention in this film to suggest that human beings a
small insignificant peons who don't (or can't) influence change. This
is not a new form of propaganda, and it is one that works well for
those who know they are not powerless but who want to maintain the
status quo. At individual levels it is hard to see what effect we
have, but we are not only individuals, we are part of a whole, a
thing called the human family, which together makes huge changes.
Together we have cut down 40% of the Amazon rain forest, and this is
having profound effects on our weather/climate system. There are lots
of examples and most of you will be able to cite a few more.

After observing an initial reaction in myself, I was willing to open
up to the information. I watched it and have come to the conclusion
that there is some truth in it, and a lot of misinformation. If you
want further reading around this one, here are some links:

http://www.desmogblog.com/a-global-warming-swindle-play-by-play
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article23559

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_headline=debunking-of-global-warming--bad-science-&method=full&objectid=18749397&siteid=50082-name_page.html


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6031514559084805348

James Samuel
<http://www.ydaysfuture.blogspot.com>

-----------------

Hi James,

Thanks for the links. Here some additional ones that people sent in:

<http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2032572,00.html>http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2032572,00.html
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313pure_propaganda_the.php
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/denialmachine/
http://www.globalissues.org/EnvIssues/GlobalWarming/media.asp
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/13/channel-4s-problem-with-science/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/
http://www.jri.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=137&Itemid=83
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=4761
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2007/3/6/8814/25388
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2326210.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2026124,00.html
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1875762,00.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/#more-414
http://green.itweek.co.uk/2007/03/what_firms_shou.html

cheers,
rkm

--------------------------------------------------------
From: Larry Tesler <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Is global warming a hoax?
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 10:32:26 -0700
To: "Richard K. Moore" <[e-mail]>

Richard, it is true that warming causes CO2 to be released into the
atmosphere. One reason is that permafrost melts and organic material
therein decomposes and releases CO2, with a lag as those scientists
reported. But it also works the other way around. More greenhouse
gases (and CO2 is but one of them) cause warming.

These relationships are not simple, and they are imposed on natural
cycles that can be hard to sort out. But the overall effect of
burning fossil fuel and raising livestock (methane) the last two
centuries has been significant warming of the Polar regions with
recent acceleration to record temperatures.

Anyone who thinks that global warming is not a threat to the earth
should write their book while lounging on a yacht in the Arctic
Ocean, in waters that for several millennia have been ice.

Larry

--------------------------------------------------------
From: "Tony Troughton-Smith" <[e-mail]>
To: "'Richard Moore'" <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: Is global warming a hoax?
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:22:43 +0900

Yes, I've seen it, Richard. I believe those warning about the
potential impacts of climate change in fact mostly have very little
to gain from so doing - there is certainly no cashed-up lobby group
which might be interested in promoting a move AWAY from fossil fuels
&/or nuclear energy, whereas the converse is demonstrably true.

I'm surprised you don't see this for what it really is: another dirty
tricks campaign from the very mob who have been honing their
propaganda skills since the early days of the 20th Century or before
(as I seem to remember you touched on in Escaping the Matrix, but
can't now check as my five copies have all been passed on long
since). To imagine the bulk of the scientific community engaged in a
conspiracy to frighten the world for the sake of it (or even to
ensure their research grants are renewed) simply beggars belief -
mine at least.

The pathologically greedy global banksters, on the other hand, along
with their rapture-anticipating buddies, will probably be quite happy
for the place to burn provided they've got all the loot by the time
it happens.

Unfortunately there are a large number of people who will seize the
opportunity this presents to carry on as normal and pay no heed to
further warnings as a consequence of seeing this film. And our kids
generation may suffer more as a result.

Tony

------

Hi Tony,

Yes, the documentary seems to be a 'dirty tricks', but no, I don't
think it will have any significant negative effect. Indeed the media
response prompted by the documentary, as we can see from all the
links above, will probably make for a net positive effect! Just as me
mentioning the documentary on the list will probably result in people
here being even more convinced of the threat of global warming. But
still more important is that 'responding to global warming' has now
gone mainstream, ala Gore. As propaganda, the documentary has passed
its sell-by date. More about this in the next posting.

cheers
rkm




----------------------------------------------------------------


Friends,

There are many questions involved in this global warming debate:

re/science:
1) Is global warming occurring?
2) How significant are greenhouse gases to warming?
3) How significant is CO2 within greenhouse gases?
4) How significant are the human-caused pollutants?
5) Which of these pollutants are the most significant?
6) How disastrous is global warming likely to be?
7) Is scientific reporting being distorted by an orthodoxy?

re/politics:
8) What is the effect of media coverage re/global warming?
9) What kinds of 'responses to the crisis' can we expect from
Western leaders?
10) What are the likely consequences of those responses?
11) Who is likely to benefit from the orthodoxy and the responses?

The only question on which we seem to have universal agreement is
(1): Yes, global warming is occurring.

In my first posting on this subject, re/the Channel 4 documentary, I
presented a non-orthodox view. This particular documentary turned out
to be suspect for many reasons (sorry :-( ), but it has been very
productive in prompting you folks to do some good research, which you
have been sending in (thanks :-)). Believe it or not, I am bandwidth
limited, and your research contributions are very important to our
progress here on the list. I've always considered cyberjournal to be
a collaborative endeavor.

In the second posting, I gave air time to research and opinions that
support the orthodox view, that man-caused CO2 is the main culprit,
or at least the most critical amplifier of other culprits.

In this, our third posting, I'll be giving air time to opinions and
research that dissent from the orthodox view. I'll also be including
material about the pressure on scientists to conform to the orthodox
view, and about censorship of dissenting research.

In the next, a fourth posting, I'll be dealing with the political
questions (8-11). In my view these may be the most important
questions for us to be looking at. This is where actions will or will
not be taken, for good or for ill.

My own view is that it is wrong-headed to totally dismiss a report
just because some part of it is wrong, or because the author's
motives are suspect. On that basis, for example, we would need to
dismiss all mainstream sources. History is full of cases where ideas
which are now universally accepted were originally universally
rejected. And the originators of those new ideas were not always
saints, nor were they always right about everything.

rkm

____________________

To begin, here some articles I've posted to newslog, along with
excerpts from each:

21 Mar 2007 The Nature Institute: Water, Energy, and Global Warming
http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?id=2340&lists=newslog
The picture becomes more interesting when a comparison is
made between urban and rural ground-based weather stations.
Urban stations show a significantly greater temperature
increase. In fact, many rural stations show no change at
all. This has led scientists to speculate about the
existence of a so-called "heat island effect", which might
affect our global temperature measurements. In the late
1990s, NASA completed a study of this effect in Atlanta,
Georgia. The study showed temperatures inside Atlanta up to
8 degrees F higher than the surrounding countryside.
... the thermal effect of the water vapor is more than ten
times that of the carbon dioxide. This difference would be
even greater for fuels that produce a higher percentage of
water vapor, such as methane .
Additionally, the thermal resistance or insulating
properties of water vapor and carbon dioxide are essentially
identical in value. So the insulating (greenhouse) effects
that are of concern for carbon dioxide are even more
troubling when we consider water vapor emissions.

21 Mar 2007 infowars.com: Global Warming On The Ropes
http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?id=2341&lists=newslog
How can you continue to claim that global warming on Earth
is primarily caused by mankind when other planets (Mars,
Jupiter and Pluto) with no confirmed life forms and
certainly no man-made industrial greenhouse gas emissions
also show signs of global warming? Wouldn't it make more
sense that the sun is responsible for warming since it is
the common denominator?

21 Mar 2007 Global Research: Global Warming: A Convenient Lie
http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?id=2348&lists=newslog
An astronomical observatory in Russia declared that, "the
Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on
Earth is being caused by changes in the sun". They further
point out that both Mars and Earth have, throughout their
histories, experienced periodic ice ages as climate changes
in a continuous fashion. NASA has also been observing
massive storms on Saturn, which indicate a climate change
occurring on that planet as well. NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope has also been recording massive climate changes on
Neptune's largest moon, Triton. Triton, whose surface was
once made up of frozen nitrogen, is now turning into gas.

21 Mar 2007 Edward J. Wegman: critique of climatology research
http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?id=2351&lists=newslog
The controversy of the MBH98/99 methods lies in that the
proxies are incorrectly centered on the mean of the period
1902-1995, rather than on the whole time period.
...The MBH98/99 work has been sufficiently politicized that
this community can hardly reassess their public positions
without losing credibility. Overall, our committee believes
that the MBH99 assessment that the decade of the 1990s was
the likely the hottest decade of the millennium and that
1998 was likely the hottest year of the millennium cannot be
supported by their analysis.

--------------------------------------------------------
From: "William Engdahl" <[e-mail]>
To: <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: Is global warming a hoax?
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:23:55 +0100

Richard How refreshing to find some sanity amid this orchestrated
Global Armageddon Climate crap.

If you don't yet know it I recommend reading an independent
scientific critique of the IPCC methodology and report. Do a Google
on "Ad Hoc Committee Report on the 'Hockey Stick' Global Climate
Reconstruction" by Edward J. Wegman et al. They rip it to shreds.
Nigel Calder who is in the ITV 4 report you sent wrote a book, The ??
Son where he offers the same explanation Russian science does namely
that the minor weather changes are due not to cows and cars but to
solar flares erupting which happens with varying periodicity
releasing huge energy to the planet earth causing such as El Nino etc.

----------

Hi William,

I found Wegman's report and posted it to newslog (last one above).
It is tough reading, but seems to be very solid. When he talks about
"incorrectly centered on the mean", he's showing that one must be
very careful with statistics. Who is it that said, "There are lies,
damn lies, and statistics"? Wegman shows how many of the
peer-reviewed papers on climate change are highly incestuous, where
the same clique reviews each other's work, and then they are trapped
into defending their previous papers, despite discovered distortions.

cheers,
rkm

--------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 08:21:01 -0700
From: marc bombois <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Is global warming a hoax?
To: [e-mail]

I watched that video and I've also seen Gore's. I was suspicious of
Gore before seeing his film because he's an elite. The film confirmed
my suspicions with its manipulative tugging at our emotions and
simplistic "logic". Most interesting were the reactions of the three
people I watched it with who were sucked in and who I constantly
challenged to question what they were watching. They need hope, as we
all do, and this is probably why Gore's offering is so successful.

The BBC video is manipulative too, but it offers hard facts and
debunks Gore. There's no doubt in my mind that "climate change" is
the elite's latest fear mongering manipulation to control our
behaviour and make more money.

I used to work with geologists and whenever climate change was
mentioned they to a man would simply shrug their shoulders and say
"so what?". We will adapt.

--------------------------------------------------------
From: "M.A. \"Omas\" Schaefer" <[e-mail]>
To: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Is global warming a hoax?
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:53:33 -0400

Harvard came out with a study several years ago stating that we were
coming out of a mini-ice age, so of course the temperatures would be
rising. They also observed the influence of the sun, which had gone
into a hyperactive period and was warming the other planets in our
solar system as well. That report was completely buried by the
mainstream press!

It is my understanding that the "consensus" of orthodox scientists
from the Church of Global Warming has ignored the sun's influence all
along, because of course, the sun represents an "Inconvenient Truth".

The UN knew it wouldn't be easy to implement a world tax, so what
better way to support that fraternity of tyrants than to establish
global fear of a boogey man. Then, of course, they would come in with
their carbon tax in order to protect us from the boogey man they
invented.

--------------------------------------------------------
From: "Philip Snow" <[e-mail]>
To: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: global warming -- the science
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:43:21 -0000

Dear RKM,

Couldn't help larfing at your correspondent's comment:
'To imagine the bulk of the scientific community engaged in
a conspiracy to frighten the world for the sake of it (or
even to ensure their research grants are renewed) simply
beggars belief - mine at least.'

When, as I have commented many times, 'Evolutionism' is clearly
involved in all of the above - just substitute 'brainwash' for
'frighten'!

Anyone who can believe that the incredible wonder of life is simply
the 'Accidental side-effect of Random Big Bang in Nothingness,
Chance Chemical soup & trillions of Blind Genetic Mistakes' - is
obviously barking!!

Please do air this, Richard...

Philip Snow, author/artist: "The Design & Origin of Birds", DayOne
Books, 2006. "Light & Flight - Hebridean Wildlife & Landscape
Sketchbook", Brown & Whittaker, Mull, 12/06.

PHILIP SNOW BA
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/philipsnowba
http://hebrideansketchbook.org.uk

--------------------------------------------------------
From: "david moore" <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]
Bcc:
Subject: global warming -- the science -- the book
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 07:49:50 -1000

richard,

Michael Crichton's recent book, "STATE of FEAR", deals exactly with
this topic. it is well-researched and well-referenced. in fact, the
book is more than half a science reader, and only partly a novel.
his well-backed conclusion agrees with the BBC documentary.

and apropos of the current discussion, the book not only deals with
the data and research about global warming, it also deals with its
"political correctness", and the problems faced by anyone trying to
discuss the topic.

i'd highly recommend Crichton's book to anyone who cares about this topic.

dave

--------------------------------------------------------
From: "Mitchell Hall" <[e-mail]>
To: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Global warming intrigue
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:50:05 -0700

Hi Richard,

I first heard about The great global warming swindle from MediaLens.
You included a link to them in your recent response post.

So I looked up Martin Durkin (the documentary's director) in
Wikipedia and learned he's been involved in other factually
questionable and/or misleading documentaries. Greenpeace et al have
taken issue with his claims.

He seems to be an anti-environmentalist, a pro-GM foods advocate, an
avowed libertarian, etc.

The neutrality of the Wikipedia article is disputed (naturally), but
the ties he appears to have certainly leave me skeptical of his
motives. None of this information is conclusive, of course, but it
does seem rather telling.

Speaking of skepticism, the reason I've stayed a subscriber to your
list for so long is your rare combination of open-mindedness and
skepticism.

That you give consideration to both sides of an extremely important
issue (such as this one) is highly laudable.

Thanks,
m