Global Warming: The New Religion

[pbfoot]

Originally Posted by Wildcat

Might be great for you guys up there, but if the average temp. keeps rising it'll be bad for us. Already most of the country is on tight water restrictions, and the Murray River (Biggest river in Oz) is drying up.
From todays news Murray-Darling emergency: irrigation set to end - Yahoo!7 News

It won't be great for us either . Does the Murray river supply water to your vinyards?

[renrich]

No argument that the earth is in a warming phase. Historical records show that the earth has had warming and cooling periods throughout history. If "greenhouse gasses" are causing this latest warming period and man is responsible, what caused the other warming and cooling periods, many when very few men were around?

[plan_D]

No, Kris, it's simple logic ... just think about it. Your government tells you that the world is warming and it's all your fault, scares the hell out of you, then says; "Give us money, and it'll be all alright." It's scare mongering to keep the people in check and money in the governments pockets.

[Matt308]

And that is the most concise statement of fact that I have seen in this thread to date. We can all go home now.

[Civettone]

Originally Posted by FLYBOYJ

Folks, there's no denying the earth is warming - as stated by many, is it happening naturally or is it man made? Is it really going to affect us? In my part of the world there have been many discussions and the only real impact we're going to see is shorter winters. There is a lot of politicking and a lot of people who have their interests at stake with regards to this; any yes there will be money to be made either by taxing those who allegedly produce greenhouse gasses or by those producing products which will be "anti GW." I think the real goal is to get an accurate and non-biased reading of this by the scientific community and so far I don't see that....

FlyboyJ, I completely agree with your analysis but disagree with your conclusion.

I think there are many people on both sides who have interests in getting their agenda through. You got people who benefit from GW and the measures to stop it. And you got people who want to keep things as they are.
I also think we should focus on the scientific aspect and not lose ourselves in emotional or political reasoning.
Yet how can you judge what is an accurate and non-biased reading? Let me tell you. You can't. You see what the majority of scientists say. The latest Assessment Report "Climate Change 2007" by the IPCC is the best report we have up to date, supported by the vast majority of scientists.
If you still refuse to believe this report, then it doesn't matter what happens. You'll never ever agree. Because one can never be fully certain. One never will. So you'll never agree.

what caused the other warming and cooling periods, many when very few men were around?

Natural causes.
I hope this is just a question and you're not trying to make a point.

Your government tells you that the world is warming and it's all your fault, scares the hell out of you, then says; "Give us money, and it'll be all alright." It's scare mongering to keep the people in check and money in the governments pockets.

Your problem is that you're taking the actions of your government to prove a point about global warming.
What you say doesn't go for my government which was slow to react and is still not doing enough.

There is also a misconception amongst people that moving to an ecologically aware society and economy will cost jobs or put you in a competitive disadvantage towards other economies. If you want I'll go deeper into the study done by two men from Harvard and Oxford which shows this.

Kris

[102first_hussars]

I think Global Warming is a major threat, but the last thing Al Gore needs to be doing right now is spreading panic across N.America

First steps are being taken, and im actually waiting to see what Stephen Harpers alternative to the Kyoto Protocol will be, its expected some time next week

[Matt308]

The Politics of Global Warming

By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, February 10, 2007


Timothy Ball is no wishy-washy skeptic of global warming. The Canadian climatologist, who has a Ph.D. in climatology from the University of London and taught at the University of Winnipeg for 28 years, says that the widely propagated “fact” that humans are contributing to global warming is the “greatest deception in the history of science.”
Ball has made no friends among global warming alarmists by saying that global warming is caused by the sun, that global warming will be good for us and that the Kyoto Protocol “is a political solution to a nonexistent problem without scientific justification."

Needless to say, Ball strongly disagrees with the findings of the latest report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which on Feb. 2 concluded that it is “very likely” that global warming is the result of human activity.

I talked to Ball by phone on Feb. 6 from his home on in Victoria, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island, which the good-humored scientist likes to point out was connected to the mainland 8,000 years ago when the sea level was 500 feet lower.


Q: The mainstream media would have us believe that the science of global warming is now settled by the latest IPCC report. Is it true?

A: No. It’s absolutely false. As soon as people start saying something’s settled, it’s usually that they don’t want to talk about it anymore. They don’t want anybody to dig any deeper. It’s very, very far from settled. In fact, that’s the real problem. We haven’t been able to get all of the facts on the table. The IPCC is a purely political setup.
There was a large group of people, the political people, who wanted the report to be more harum-scarum than it actually is. In fact, the report is quite a considerable step down from the previous reports. For example, they have reduced the potential temperature rise and they’ve reduced the sea level increase and a whole bunch of other things. Part of it is because they know so many people will be watching the report this time.

Q: Why should we be leery of the IPCC’s report -- or the summary of the report?

A: Well, because the report is the end product of a political agenda, and it is the political agenda of both the extreme environmentalists who of course think we are destroying the world. But it’s also the political agenda of a group of people ... who believe that industrialization and development and capitalism and the Western way is a terrible system and they want to bring it down. They couldn’t do it by attacking energy because they know that would get the public’s back up very quickly. ... The vehicle they chose was CO2, because that’s the byproduct of industry and fossil-fuel burning, which of course drives the whole thing. They think, “If we can show that that is destroying the planet, then it allows us to control.” Unfortunately, you’ve got a bunch of scientists who have this political agenda as well, and they have effectively controlled the IPCC process.
Q: You always hear the argument that the IPCC has several thousand scientists -- how can you not accept what they say?

A: The answer, first of all, is that consensus is not a scientific fact. The other thing is, you look at the degree to which they have controlled the whole IPCC process. For example, who are the lead authors? Who are the scientists who sit on the summary panel with the politicians to make sure that they get their view in? … You’ve got this incestuous little group that is controlling the whole process both through their publications and the IPCC. I’m not a conspiracy theorist and I hate being even pushed toward that, but I think there is a consensus conspiracy that’s going on.

Q: What is your strongest or best argument that GW is not “very likely” to be caused by SUVs and Al Gore’s private planes?

A: I guess the best argument is that global warming has occurred, but it began in 1680, if you want to take the latest long-term warming, and the climate changes all the time. It began in 1680, in the middle of what’s called “The Little Ice Age” when there was three feet of ice on the Thames River in London. And the demand for furs of course drove the fur trade. The world has warmed up until recently, and that warming trend doesn’t fit with the CO2 record at all; it fits with the sun-spot data. Of course they are ignoring the sun because they want to focus on CO2.

The other thing that you are seeing going on is that they have switched from talking about global warming to talking about climate change. The reason for that is since 1998 the global temperature has gone down -- only marginally, but it has gone down. In the meantime, of course, CO2 has increased in the atmosphere and human production has increased. So you’ve got what Huxley called the great bane of science -- “a lovely hypothesis destroyed by an ugly fact.” So by switching to climate change, it allows them to point at any weather event -- whether it’s warming, cooling, hotter, dryer, wetter, windier, whatever -- and say it is due to humans. Of course, it’s absolutely rubbish.

Q: Is the globe warming and what is the cause?

A: Yeah, the world has been warming since 1680 and the cause is changes in the sun. But in their computer models they hardly talk about the sun at all and in the IPCC summary for policy-makers they don’t talk about the sun at all. And of course, if they put the sun into their formula in their computer models, it swamps out the human portion of CO2, so they can’t possibly do that.

Q: Is the rising CO2 level the cause of global warming or the result of it?

A: That’s a very good question because in the theory the claim is that if CO2 goes up, temperature will go up. The ice core record of the last 420,000 years shows exactly the opposite. It shows that the temperature changes before the CO2. So the fundamental assumption of the theory is wrong. That means the theory is wrong. ... But the theory that human CO2 would lead to runaway global warming became a fact right away, and scientists like myself who dared to question it were immediately accused of being paid by the oil companies or didn’t care about the children or the future or anything else.

Q: Have you ever accepted money from an oil company?

A: No. No. I wish I did get some. I wouldn’t have to drive a ’92 car and live in a leaky apartment bloc.


Q: If someone asked you where he should go to get a good antidote on the mainstream media’s spin on global warming, where should he go?

A: There are three Web sites I have some respect for. One is the one I helped set up by a group of very frustrated professional scientists who are retired. That’s called Friendsofscience.org. It has deliberately tried to focus on the science only. The second site that I think provides the science side of it very, very well is CO2Science.org, and that’s run by Sherwood Idso, who is the world expert on the relationship between plant growth and CO2. The third, which is a little more irreverent and maybe still slightly on the technical side for the general public, is JunkScience.com.

Q: If you had to calm the fears of a small grandchild or a student about the threat of global warming, what would you tell him?

A: First of all, I probably wouldn’t tell him anything. As I tell audiences, the minute somebody starts saying “Oh, the children are going to die and the grandchildren are going to have no future,” they have now played the emotional and fear card. Just like in the U.S., it’s almost like the race card. It’s not to say that it isn’t valid in some cases. But the minute you play that card, you are now taking the issues and the debates out of the rational and logical and reasonable and sensible and calm into the emotional and hysterical. To give you an example, I was talking to a group in Saskatoon and a woman came up after and she said, “I agree with you totally. We were having a party for my 7-year-old. I went into the kitchen and there was a bang in the living room. I went back and a balloon had exploded. The kids were crying and I said, ‘Why are you crying?’ And they said, ‘There’s going to be another hole in the ozone.’”


So I wouldn’t raise these kinds of fear with the children. What I would do with my children and grandchildren is what I’m trying to do with the public and say, “Look, here’s the other side of the story. Make sure you get all of the information before you start running off and screaming ‘wolf, wolf, wolf.’”

[renrich]

Thanks again Matt308. I cannot imagine how the GW kooks can rebut Ball's statements with any credibility.

[renrich]

Kris, If you admit that other times when earth temperatures fluctuated were caused by natural forces why are you not willing to admit that any climate change today is the result of increased sun activity which seems to be well documented. Are you of that left persuasion that wants to believe that all of life can be and should be controlled by those of you with the superior intellect? Yes, you are perceptive. I am trying to make a point.

[Matt308]

Civvy will make the same point...again. "But the IFCC blah blah blah..." "Ball is lone person of dubious credibility..." "He's Canadian and not even a French Canadian..." etc

[CharlesBronson]

Well, I dont know about the northern hemisphere, but in here the winter has became definately shorter than in the past years.

[pbfoot]

Yes the climate is changing dramatically in the northern hemisphere the arctic climate in particular as the winter is substanially shorter . But the United States is immune to the problem because the President will tell it to stop or he'll shoot it

[mkloby]

Man - I've been using the mini-Ice age example for the longest time of natural global warming. The earth had been experiencing several hundred years of depressed temperatures, from which the earth has been rising out of. This ball guy is stealing my thunder. Good post, Matt.

[Matt308]

Look gents, the climate is changing where I live too. The question is whether man is the primary cause or whether it is another phenomenon.

[mkloby]

Originally Posted by Matt308

Look gents, the climate is changing where I live too. The question is whether man is the primary cause or whether it is another phenomenon.

That's the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of this discussion that gets lost in the sauce through the issue becoming politicized. People don't seem to realize the adverse costs if we spend billions to attempt to resolve a problem that we cannot simply change. We're talking cutting social programs (GOD NO!!!), military budgets, education, infrastructure expenditures, etc. There's no free lunch. Of course, if there is actual defensible proof that man is the major contributor to GW, then something should be done...