Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

That would be Camp Wrongyfenongy. Don't drink the well water.

The article was posted by Marc Morano.

From Sourcewatch
So this is completely unbiased, is that what you're saying...

I don't get how people think there is a concerted effort on the part of scientists and the media to suppress anti-global warming information. Even if you're into conspiracy theories, the dispute over global warming gives you 2 options: the environmental movement concocted warming as a scam, or the energy companies have engaged in a campaign to discredit findings that threaten their bottom lines.

Scenario 1: The Environmentalists did it.

Culprits: Hippies, anti-corporationists, and assorted tree-huggers. Al Gore.

Motive: To keep the planet clean and maybe stick it to "the Man" in the process.

Resources: They're mostly hippies, so they probably only have about 1.6 shoes per person, and aren't very good at large scale organization and public relations. Probably have a few wealthy individual donors on their side, and a sympathetic media run by the liberal elite.

Methods: Bold. Wholesale fabrication of one of the biggest and most problematic lies conceivable; that the basis for modern living and industry is destroying the world. I suppose the bigger the lie, the easier to swallow, etc.

Scenario 2: Energy Companies are Stonewalling Research Harmful to Them

Culprits: The biggest, wealthiest, and most influential organizations in the world.

Motive: Cash Rules Everything Around Me. Get the Money. Dolla Dolla Bill Y'all. To whit: billions upon billions upon billions of profits.

Resources: Well developed systems of public relations experts, lobbyists, and company researchers. A sympathetic media increasingly controlled by the parent companies of the threatened businesses. Also, about half the money in the world, give or take about a trillion bucks.

Methods: Practical. Disinformation designed to sow doubt about claims that nobody wants to be true anyway, and maintain the status quo. Pay experts to disagree over minutia to keep the focus off alternatives to their bread and butter.

Now, motive, opportunity, and a crime do not equal guilt. But there's a lot more smoke on one side. To think that global warming (or man's responsibility for it) is a scam asks me to believe that ideology is as capable of driving a conspiracy as greed and self-preservation, and that the most powerful organizations in the world have been rail-roaded by a bunch of fanatics with diabolical schemes to clear the skies, and that they successfully perpetrated the grandest lie in history as opposed to the other side stalling by offering up excuses not to overhaul the entire world order.

Basically, if you think Greenpeace has more pull with the government and media than Exxon, I think you're a huge fucking idiot.

Oh, pfft. Less than a handful? And they're hiding information like they're Opus Dei?

That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard.

Enjoy living life with your head stuck in the sand.

Oop, only 11 posts in and we've got the China excuse. I guess that the one folks are sticking to then?

Didn't Bjorn Lomborg have his — economics — degree revoked? He can entertain Micheal Chrichton, and the rest of the credentials-for-hire with his quackery, or whatever vested-interest suiting nonsense that gets his untalented "research" published.

Try moving to North Korea, where the convience of a dictatorship behooves having an informed opinion on any issue, and the complex obligations of democratic citizenship are merely the burdens of others.

...what?! Ow, my brain!

I've perused The Skeptical Environmnentalist. I'm not sure Lomborg is capable of compiling a credible list of anything. He's a niche feeder. He feeds niches. His niche is a certain segment of the population wishes to believe the environment is unaffected by human activity, or at least that the affects are not substantial — others niches include behavioralism, genetic determinism, creationism, marxism, historicism, and all manner of nonsense stemming from the fields of sociology, economics and psychology.

Lomborg merely compiles ideas that suit the viewpoing of his niche, and thus sell books. The guy doesn't so much argue as pander.

I see that you a crank. Never mind.

Inhofe, the great debunker, the man who believes the Weather Channel is behind the vast global-warming conspiracy (check it) is doing some heavy cherry-picking to support his argument here.

"The number of skeptics may, at first glance, appear smaller, but if you hit yourself over the head a few times, their number magically becomes larger."

Am I missing something here? He randomly grabbed a bunch of scientific papers, and if they didn't explicitly say "Man-made global warming is real!" he counted them against the consensus?

As for the major claim here, that the IPCC is viciously editing down the comments of the people who reviewed the man-made global warming paper, try checking here and here. That took me like five minutes of Googling, by the way.

Nonsense. It's stupid to poo where you live. We all have a vested interest in maintaining the ecological status quo.

I agree. I'm an engineer, not a climatologist. But I can read, and I understand the scientific method, and I have critical thinking skills, and I pay attention to current events. Now whom shall I believe? The anonymously peer reviewed scientific articles written by people who would be risking their professional reputations as well as their careers were they to falsify results, or the office of non-climatologist and shill James Inhofe, who once claimed global warming was a hoax perpetrated by the Weather Network to boost ratings and whose career does not rest on his credibility or integrity?

I agree that I am wise for recognizing I'm no expert in this matter (among other reasons), but I'm not a cosmologist either; does that mean I should give serious thought to the claims of creationists? I'm not even interested in what Inhofe's report says. If it's from Inhofe's office, then it's a distortion of the way things really are.

But since I'm a masochist:

My first thought was "How many of those papers actually dealt with the matter of anthropogenic causes one way or the other?" Lots of papers on climate change address some facet of the analysis or discuss a particular model, or something. Not every paper published on astronomy explicitly says the universe began 14 billion years ago either.

I don't know this is what they're doing, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if this is how the authors of Inhofe's assgasket of a report are presenting their case. Intellectual integrity is not Inhofe's strong suit.

I don't know whether God exists. Neither do you. Therefore, neither of us should have an opinion on the matter. And anyone who does is a poseur.

That's nothing. Snaieke poos where he talks.

This is such a load of $#!&. Fifty years ago doctors were lining up to tell you that smoking was good for you while the tobacco companies buried their research showing just the opposite.

"One of the most serious consequences of our actions is global warming brought about by raising levels of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. The danger is that the temperature increase might become self sustaining if it has not done so already. Drought and deforestation are reducing the amount of carbon dioxide recycled into the atmosphere and the warming of the seas may trigger the release of large quantities of CO2 trapped on the ocean floor. In addition, the melting of the Artic and Antarctic ice sheets will reduce the amount of solar energy reflected back into space and so increase the temperature further. We don’t know where the global warming will stop, but the worst case scenario is that earth would become like its sister planet, Venus, with a temperature of 250 centigrade, and raining sulfuric acid. The human race could not survive in those conditions."

-- Stephen Hawking

"The earth has a natural greenhouse effect. In fact, we’re about 60 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, thanks to those good guys -- water vapor and carbon dioxide and methane, what we call greenhouse gases -- trapping heat. That’s the good part of the story. The problem is that humans are competing with nature in that when we use our tail pipes and our smoke stacks to put our waste into the atmosphere as if it’s some kind of unpriced sewer, we’re adding -- to that amount of greenhouse gases that’s natural -- unnatural stuff. Mostly more carbon dioxide, methane, chemicals that nobody’s ever seen before, chlorofluorocarbons which also effect ozone. And when they build up, they trap extra heat."

-- Stephen H. Schneider, professor and senior fellow at the Center for Environment Science and Policy of the Institute for International Studies, and professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University.

"Seventy countries in the world no longer have any intact or original forests. And here in the United States, ninety five percent of our old growth forests are already gone. Forest loss is also effecting climate change. Because forests are the greatest storehouse of carbon, the greatest terrestrial storehouse of carbon. So logging in Canada alone, puts as much carbon into the atmosphere as all of the cars in California every year."

-- Tzeporah Berman, program director for ForestEthics

"The record shows that greenhouse gases of carbon dioxide in particular did not go above 280 parts per million over the last 650 thousand years. We’re now over 400 parts per million. Coming close to what many scientists are now referring to as a tipping point. A tipping point where we lose control of climate. And once we’ve lost control of climate, then things like Katrina, a Katrina scale of events will become simply the norm."

-- David W. Orr, professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College and professor at the University of Vermont.

"It’s been enough to melt 20 percent of the sea ice in the arctic, its been enough to speed up the spin and duration of hurricanes about 50%. It’s been enough to start the permafrost beneath the tundra across the north melting."

-- Bill McKibben, author, The End of Nature.

"What global warming does, or what the climate change is linked to global warming, what those changes do, is that they add another dimension of uncertainty. It threatens your food security for example, threatens your water security. It threatens your sea level security, it threatens your security against storms, hurricanes and all these things other things in the news that you see."

-- Dr. Peter B. deMenocal, Associate Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

These are quotes from the excellent documentary The 11th Hour

I've lost all patience with all these people hanging on every fucking insane excuse trying to discredit global warming. "See, this prominent scientist doesn't support this theory, so it's wrong". I don't care if the 'prominent scientist' cured cancer, if this not his field his opinion carries as much weight as mine.

All these people, either out of hope of monetary gains or unwillingness to consider changing their lifestyles, are actively trying to harm myself and the billions of humans that this problem has already started affecting. Fuck these people. They don't deserve being logically spoken to.

Wouldn't it be amazing if conservatives were actually for conservation?

When NYC floods, think they'll get the message?

The oil companies make more money than the GNP of a lot of countries. They're the most profitable business of all time because their friends in government continue to give them huge tax breaks on the public dime and even fight wars for them. Throw enough money at something and you can do anything and have anything and important people will line up to lick your boots.

Democratic citizens ought to educate themselves on major issues, as they elect governments on the basis of these issues; an informed electorate strengthens democracy, where an uniformed electorate will weaken it.

My scientific qualifications are irrelevant. Appealing to authority is unsound argument. Education merely suggests that an individual able to articulate and understand a subject on which he is educated; extending this to the validity of his arguments is erroneous —* argument validity is determined internally, by the truth of premises and the consistency of logic.

I have a fairly good idea of what is occuring with regards to climate change. So might you, had you the fucking impetus to inform yourself on the salient problems affecting contemporary society. And no, you needn't have an opinion on every issue. Moreover, if you choose to refrain from having an opinions, refrain from having an opinion about whether others should have an opinion — indeed, by the consistency of you own argument, you shouldn't argue, because you obviously aren't an expert in the finer points of argument.

That to me is the most mystifying aspect of the era we're living in.

I can understand shareholders, executive officers, employees and ancillary business officers, etc., letting greed and/or fear preclude decency and responsibility. What is harder to understand is why regular people who have everything to lose and zero to gain regurgitate the White House talking points on this issue. It's like the Clear Channels / Glenn Becks / Fox Newses of the world really have facilitated the perfect propaganda machine and people are simply brainwashed.

And I don't know if these believers will ever comprehend how cravenly they've been used because taking such a huge leap in self-awareness is hard for anyone.

Absolutely. And I believe elections should be publicly funded to get the money out of politics, so that our representatives will not be so easily bought and coopted.

Separately, when the future of a resource becomes clouded not only in terms of sustainability but political insecurity and conflict, a healthy business would start looking for another resource, not throw thousands of lives and billions of public (borrowed) money into a war whose objective is obtaining control of that finite resource, at a GREAT political, ecological and karmic price.

There is no logical argument for the continued reliance on particularly foreign oil. That is why the utterly corrupt Iraqi oil agreement gets ZERO play in the US media, and why there's so much obfuscation wrt global warming as a direct consequence of the burning of fossil fuels. The idea is that we shouldn't think about it, because the more you think about it the less it makes sense.

Oil "security" is making us LESS secure in almost every way. The only thing that is secure at the end of the day are the trillions the oil companies will net from the blood and tax subsidies of Americans.

This was fascinating and hopeful. Thanks for the link, hbb.

It's a good thing. Who wants to live in an echo chamber?

The sad thing is, any reasonable person would think that. But it isn't the case. The situation we're in today is not new, and the fact is that in the 70s this country was on its way toward a sensible energy policy that has been completely dismantled since those halcyon days when the president lived in the "reality based community." This speech Jimmy Carter made in 1977 was his message to the country and the world that the US was going to respond to the crisis by conserving energy, eliminating waste, and researching alternatives to oil: "With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes."

I'm going to excerpt a 2005 article by my idol Thom Hartmann for the rest of the story.

The whole article is here.

When was our expertise in climatology the point of this thread? Of course no one here is an expert (I guess). I only know about global warming what the experts are saying and they overwhelmingly support that the current trend of global warming is at least partially caused by human influence.

If you choose to ignore the vast majority of the scientific community in favor of a bunch of dubiously motivated guns for hire and various crackpots, that's your problem. Stop trying to pass yourself as just a levelheaded ordinary guy trying to cope with a bunch of radicals.

China's pretty major. And we're no angels either. Canada signed, but the conservatives dug in their heels at every turn to keep anything from getting done; the behaviour of Alberta's provincial Conservatives was particularly disgraceful. Now the Conservatives run the federal government, and when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions the Tories do their best to walk lockstep with the Republicans. The conservatives have turned our country's word into nothing more than ink on a page.

I further surprising news, the Governator continues to baffle his fellow conservatives:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21691277/

You feel that no one's even allowed to form a subjective opinion on this fairly vital topic? You can't actually be that stupid, so I'm going to ask you to please stop being disingenuous.

I'm just curious, Barzun, as to what influences contributed to your perspective on this. It seems bizarre to me but you might have a circle of friends or listen to a particular person on a radio or go to church services or whatever. Or did you come up with this response on your own without input from anyone else? This isn't any kind of confrontation, just curiosity.

I'm foggy on it since I was just a little kid at the time, so I can't say for sure if Carter ran on that platform without some googling. I do know that Carter's 1977 speech was in the aftermath of the oil crisis. He was looking at the numbers in terms of peak US oil and the inevitable shift toward Middle Eastern oil. He was also looking at figures involving waste and excess in the US. And Carter was an honest man -- maybe the last one we had in the Oval Office -- and couldn't be bought by the oil companies. He truly believed in peace and democracy. That's the source of the ass-backwardsary of the post-Carter era. Every system of government is corruptible if you have people in office who have a price tag affixed. If we had continued on the path Carter laid down, there would have been no wars in the Middle East, no 9/11, etc.

As an aside, I remember the gas lines and the conservation movement. When I was a kid, my mom was pretty strict about conserving energy, turning off lights, keeping a low thermostat, etc., and she had solar panels on the roof, as did a lot of people in those days. Nobody seems even conscious of that stuff anymore. For some insight on how good things slide away through corporate interference when nobody's watching, you should watch "Who Killed the Electric Car?" I lived through that too in California and was completely unaware of the situation while it was happening, and found myself unconsciously repeating the meme that "electric cars can't go very far and aren't practical," which isn't true now and wasn't true then. That's how subtly this stuff can work. Most of us walk around thinking we can't be manipulated when the truth is that we are and just don't know it. The only way to fight back is to be as aware as you can of every side of what's happening every day.

At least now I know where you're coming from. And I would argue that the Buddhist philosophy would leave nature untouched and use only what's necessary, which is not what the human race is doing. Every species on Earth other than man lives in harmony with nature. We are the only ones who destroy it on such a broad scale. Global warming was not caused by natural phenomena, it was caused by human beings - we artificially prolong our own lives with medicine, prolong our hours of the day with electric light, extend our reach across the world with modes of transportation that run on fossil fuels, enable population growth through the mass production and transportation of food. Add to that human greed, which pushes all of those abilities past the point of necessity to the point of excess and you find a world wildly out of balance because of man. What we have done must be undone or we will take every other species down with us -- we are already. Yeah, the Earth will continue, but not with the current forms of life occupying it. To you that might not be a big deal, but other than my conscience, which is horrified by what's happening to your Manatee, I have kids and I'd rather they don't have to fight their way through a Road Warrior world because we as a people weren't smart enough or strong enough to stand up to the callous greedheads at the top who view us as little more than cattle.

As an aside, if you're interested in Buddhism, I recommend to you Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hahn.

This is only true from a philosophical point of view. What advocates of a response to global warming are trying to do is not to 'save the earth' from our unnatural ways. They are trying to minimize the casualties to our species. I'm not saying that the earth as an ecosystem is in danger of destruction. It will take care of itself in the long run. Climate change is the earth taking care of itself and finding a new balance. Our problem is that this new balance will have catastrophic consequences on human civilization. It is beyond insane not trying to do anything about it.

Bingo. I'm concerned about global climate change not for hippy-dippy mother-gaia reasons. I'm concerned about global climate change because we're gonna fuck our shit up. And so should you.

Yeah, about that Inhofe report....