This is in the news today via “Climate NEXUS”, which is a Madison Ave. PR firm:
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced that he is launching a legal probe into Exxon’s climate denial. The inquiry will look into both consumer and investor protection laws, covering the oil giant’s activity dating back to the 1970s. Schneiderman’s investigation could open “a sweeping new legal front in the battle over climate change,” says the New York Times, which broke the story. Two separate reports by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times uncovered that Exxon has known about the dangers of climate change since the 1970s but sowed doubt by funding climate change skeptics to preserve its business. Exxon has been compared extensively to the tobacco industry, which was convicted of racketeering in 2000 for deliberately deceiving the public about the dangers of its products.
It seems all this is part of an orchestrated plan:
RICO-TEERING: HOW CLIMATE ACTIVISTS ‘KNEW’ THEY WERE GOING TO PIN THE BLAME ON EXXON
Guest opinion by Shub Niggurath
Picture this.
You are a scientist. You wake up one morning and go:
“Why don’t I write a letter to the US Attorney General asking her to throw fossil fuel companies in jail under the RICO act?
It would be my civic deed for the day”.
Sounds plausible?
No it doesn’t. Climate scientists have a penchant for signing activist letters. But letters pushing legal advice to an Attorney General recommending prosecution of opponents?
So where do these strange ideas come from?
Step forward ‘Climate Accountability Institute’
The Climate Accountability Institute (CAI) is a small front attempting to marry ‘climate concerns’ to environmentalism and tobacco prohibitionist tactics. But ‘small’ is a relative term in the climate activist world.
In 2012 the CAI held a ‘workshop’ in La Jolla California. It was ‘conceived’ by Naomi Oreskes and others, and called ‘Establishing Accountability for Climate Change Damages: Lessons from Tobacco Control.’ Stanton Glantz, a prominent tobacco control activist scientist was present as were a clutch of lawyers, climate scientists, communication professionals, PR agency heads, bloggers and journalists.
They released a report (pdf):
The workshop was an ‘exploratory, open-ended dialogue’ on the use of ‘lessons from tobacco-related education, laws, and litigation to address climate change.’
The headline conclusion was essentially conspiracy theory. Here it is, verbatim (emphasis mine):
A key breakthrough in the public and legal case for tobacco control came when internal documents came to light showing the tobacco industry had knowingly misled the public.Similar documents may well exist in the vaults of the fossil fuel industry and their trade associations and front groups…
Why do these mythical documents needed to be ‘unearthed’?
While we currently lack a compelling public narrative about climate change in the United States, we may be close to coalescing around one. Furthermore, climate change may loom larger today in the public mind than tobacco did when public health advocates began winning policy victories.
The reader should take a moment to grasp the momentous logic: We know legally ‘incriminating documents’ (their choice of words) ‘may’ exist, because tobacco activists had a breakthrough with such documents. They need to be found in order to make climate change a ‘looming threat’ in the public mind.
Try thinking of a more reverse-engineered form of activism.
The first chapter in the report is ‘Lessons from Tobacco Control’. It is mainly one section called ‘The Importance of Documents in Tobacco Litigation’
We learn next to nothing about these supposed ‘documents’ from the report. After all, they haven’t been released or even found.
But ‘the documents’ were very valuable:
says ‘one of the most important lessons to emerge from the history of tobacco litigation’ was the ‘value of bringing internal industry documents to light’.
There was little doubt about their existence:
… many participants suggested that incriminating documents may exist that demonstrate collusion among the major fossil fuel companies …
Since they were so sure they exist, careful plotting was needed on companies whose vaults to raid
He [Glantz] stressed the need to think carefully about which companies and which trade groups might have documents that could be especially useful.
Stanton Glantz was a vocal workshop participant:
Glantz was so excited he proposed using the tobacco archives platform at the University of California San Francisco for climate documents (which were yet to be found)
Because the Legacy Collection’s software and infrastructure is already in place, Glantz suggested it could be a possible home for a parallel collection of documents from the fossil fuel industry pertaining to climate change.
In what mode were the documents to be used?
Most importantly, the release of these documents meant that charges of conspiracy or racketeering could become a crucial component of tobacco litigation
Having firmly established that documents convenient to their strategy existed, the delegates moved on to discussing how to obtain them
.
The answer was once again clear: ‘lawsuits’. It was not just lawsuits, it was ‘Congressional hearings’, ‘sympathetic state attorney generals’ and ‘false advertising claims’.
State attorneys general can also subpoena documents, raising the possibility that a single sympathetic state attorney general might have substantial success in bringing key internal documents to light
Oreskes had a bunch of advertisements with her:
Oreskes noted that she has some of the public relations memos from the group and asked whether a false advertising claim could be brought in such a case.
Even libel suits were deemed useful:
Roberta Walburn noted that libel suits can also serve to obtain documents that might shed light on industry tactics.
Once the documents were in the bag, a story needed to be spun. :
In lawsuits targeting carbon producers, lawyers at the workshop agreed, plaintiffs need
to make evidence of a conspiracy a prominent part of their case.
Now you know where the line on how ‘fossil fuel companies ‘knew’ they were doing wrong but yet did it’ comes from. The cries of ‘it’s a conspiracy!’ are planned and pre-meditated, on lawyers’ advice.
This is where RICO came in:
Richard Ayres, an experienced environmental attorney, suggested that the RICO Act, which had been used effectively against the tobacco industry, could similarly be used to bring a lawsuit against carbon producers.
Richard Ayres is no slouch. A prominent environmental lawyer, he is co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Ayres knew starting lawsuits against productive companies wouldn’t look good. They needed to be spun:
It has to be something positive
How? By dressing it up as injury ‘compensation’
“Even if your ultimate goal might be to shut down a company, you still might be wise to start out by asking for compensation for injured parties.”
The suggestions appeared to grow outlandish at every turn. Richard Heede, one of CAI’s members, had come up with a system for blaming individual companies:
Heede is working to derive the proportion of the planet’s atmospheric carbon load that is traceable to the fossil fuels produced and marketed by each of these companies
Heede’s bizarre formulas, we learn, were received ‘positively’ by ‘most of the workshop’s participants’. One UCS participant felt that ‘it could potentially be useful as part of a coordinated campaign to identify key climate “wrongdoers.” Another felt it was useful in blaming faceless corporate entities instead of countries thereby bypassing provoking patriotic impulses in international negotiations.
Heede’s work was funded by Greenpeace. Of note, Greenpeace counsel Jasper Teulings was present at the meeting.
An inspired Oreskes then appears to have proposed blaming sea level rise on corporations:
Picking up on this notion, Naomi Oreskes suggested that some portion of sea level rise could be attributed to the emissions caused by a single carbon-producing company
The oil company Exxon made its appearance in her example:
She suggested, “You might be able to say, ‘Here’s Exxon’s contribution to what’s happening to Key West or Venice.’”
This was a strategy Glantz liked:
…Stanton Glantz expressed some enthusiasm about such a strategy, based on his experience with tobacco litigation. As he put it, “I would be surprised if the industry chose to attack the calculation that one foot of flooding in Key West could be attributed to ExxonMobil.
The conspiratorial tide did not recede. Former computer scientist John Mashey claimed collusion between ‘climate change deniers’ and fossil fuel companies:
[Mashey] presented a brief overview of some of his research, which traces funding, personnel, and messaging connections between roughly 600 individuals …
The penultimate section in the report is on how delegates planned to win ‘public opinion’. Even with RICO, some felt it was ‘not easy’ (‘RICO is not easy. It is certainly not a sure win’ – Ayres) and others were wary of drawing the attention of “hostile legislators who might seek to undermine them”.
With public opinion, the delegates were clearly divided. PR mavens, lawyers and activists wanted to cry fraud, paint up villains and create outrage:
To mobilize, people often need to be outraged.
Daniel Yankelovich a ‘public opinion researcher’ involved in ‘citizen education’ appears to have balked at the ‘sue, sue, sue’ chanting. Court cases are useful only after the public had been won over, he said.
It is not clear he grasped the activists and lawyers aimed for the same with a spectacular legal victory or headlines generated by court cases and bypass the whole issue of ‘citizen education’ .
The workshop ended and there was ‘agreement’. ‘Documents’ needed to be obtained. Legal action was needed both for ‘wresting potentially useful internal documents’ and ‘maintaining pressure on the industry’.
A consensus had emerged
… an emerging consensus on a strategy that incorporates legal action with a narrative that creates public outrage.
The participants, we learn
…made commitments to try to coordinate future efforts, continue discussing strategies for gaining access to internal documents from the fossil fuel industry and its affiliated climate denial network…
Photo (c) Brenda Ekwurzel, from the report
Postscript:
Why is the report important? Because climate activists have done everything the delegates said they wanted done, in the report.
Everyone from climate skeptics like Roy Spencer, columnists like Holman Jenkins Jr and even aconsensusist like William Connolley has been left scratching their head. However, from RICO to ‘Exxon knew’ — the twin defibrillator paddles in use to reanimate a moribund climate Frankenstein — thepresent actions of climate activists have been none but the pre-meditated ones presented in the report.
These include the latest letter from US Senators to Exxon, the conspiratorial ‘Exxon Knew’ campaign with the portrayal of old Exxon reports by InsideClimateNews as ‘internal documents’, the RICO letter from scientists and much more. Particularly, with the pathetic ‘journalism’ of InsideClimateNews it is almost as if climate activists have willed these ‘documents’ into existence – just as they were advised.
The CAI are free to plot the downfall of their opponents. But it is somewhat of a surprise to see theentirety of their ideas to be picked up and translated into action by the intellectually bankrupt climate activist movement.
What’s sauce for the goose…
Climate hysteric says demanding documents can be seen as intimidation
“…Smith issued subpoenas demanding e-mails, correspondence and other records of internal deliberations from NOAA scientists who participated in a study refuting claims that global warming had “paused” or slowed over the last decade…
“…The country’s chief society of meteorologists weighed in this week with a letter to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), warning the prominent congressional skeptic on climate change that his demands for internal communications and documents from NOAA “can be viewed as a form of intimidation” that could thwart federally funded research…
“…the American Meteorological Society told Smith Wednesday that his subpoena of NOAA correspondence sets a dangerous precedent for interference with independent scientific research.
“Singling out specific research studies, and implicitly questioning the integrity of the researchers conducting those studies, can be viewed as a form of intimidation that could deter scientists from freely carrying out research on important national challenges,” wrote Keith L. Seitter, executive director of the Boston-based scientific group.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/11/06/as-scientists-warn-of-chilling-effect-on-research-congressman-doubles-down-on-noaa-to-release-deliberations-on-climate-study/
err?
premeditated collusion to distort defraud and extract monies?
cant someone haul em in?
In the seventies Exxon scientists predicted the effects of global warming would be minimal. Now data shows they were right. That should make a good lawsuit.
Are government activists the only major players who can have opinions, without getting sued?
That is the issue to me, not whether Exxon tried to influence public opinion, or tried to state the best case for going slow on climate issues.
Government activists try to use government policies to make the world a better place, in their view, in their understanding. Conservative government activists are the same, except that their view of how government should make the world a better place is to have less government.
So let’s agree, for the sake of argument, that the climate change activists in the US government are passionate in their conviction that we really need to rid the world of fossil fuels, especially rid the US of fossil fuels, for the good of humanity.
Are they right?
No one will know if they are right, if entities with money cannot put forward differing views. Universities dependent on federal grants won’t say anything. No one else will have much money, except corporations. You need the money to do research, to fund researchers, etc.
So what this lawsuit essentially does is to leave the government in control of discussion of any important topic with major implications for people across the US. They seem to be saying, if we can’t defeat you in the realm of public opinion, we will shut you up with the legal system.
Yes, it is beginning to sound a bit like Russia. Sorry if some people don’t like that comparison. Once you start abridging free speech in the name of one impassionate, oh-so-crucial-for-humanity cause, it will be easier to do so for the next one.
I didn’t know I was part of the fossil fuel industry climate denial network. Even just yesterday I filled my car with gasoline and today I am charging my cell phone with electricity primarily produced from coal.
I have to face facts, I am either a criminal or just lucky not to live in a state where a moron like Eric Schneiderman is Attorney General.
Reblogged this on pattikellar and commented:
@POTUS & @JustinTrudeau are scaring the bejesus out of me. #onpoli #cndpoli
In many ways I would love to see Exxon internal communications. Exxon has been nicely profiting off the climate scare. The move from coal to gas. The suppression of drilling in places like ANWR and offshore has helped reduced supply for years (until the frackers ruined it). We might actually find out Exxon has been actively supporting the AGW promoters. This could also mean Exxon is not in a hurry to fight the AGW myth.
OTOH, a real lawsuit could end up demanding criminal prosecution of the executives. I have a feeling they would want to present this from happening. That could mean Exxon will fight this with all their might. And, all their might would be pretty impressive.
This could be the greatest thing that ever happened for skeptics. Can you imagine what the best lawyers could do with the climategate emails if they really wanted to? Throw in Gleick, the RICO20, awards to the likes of Hansen and Mann being portrayed as pay-offs for their science and you have even more ammunition. They would also have 1000s of skeptics more than willing to help out pro bono (we’ve been doing it for years anyway).
Do environmentalists really want to wake the sleeping bear? Have they really thought this through?
More popcorn, please.
These people have way too much extra time on their hands! They could be of far better service to the world doing something productive like flipping burgers at McDonalds and helping feed the hungry.
These are the sort who spit in the food of those they dislike for any reason.
I would not eat anything that had been within a country mile of their filthy paws.
I dub this conspiracy theory The Protocols of the Elder of Exxon!
“‘Most importantly, the release of these documents meant that charges of conspiracy or racketeering could become a crucial component of tobacco litigation’
Having firmly established that documents convenient to their strategy existed, the delegates moved on to discussing how to obtain them [from Exxon for the purpose of environmental litigation].”
This is an absolutely brilliant piece of investigative journalism.
“… many participants suggested that incriminating documents may exist that demonstrate collusion among the major fossil fuel companies …”
I have been purchasing diesel and gas from all of the major fossil fuel companies in this nation for the last two and a half decades. I was aware that environmentalists did not like exhaust from trucks, and I continued my purchase and use patterns of gas and diesel despite this knowledge.
Please, sue me too. I used approximately 150,000 gals of diesel during the 90’s. Also, virtually everything I purchased was delivered by an 18-wheeler.
Plus I personally profited by doing so. I bought houses and cars, and traveled with a camper trailer to distant locations for vacations.
Although the houses have been powered by hydroelectric dams and not coal, without the treatments of the wood and the various coal tar products, the houses would have dissolved and rotted long ago. I should be sued for complicity.
If Germany or Russia or China were bombing our coal and oil and agricultural sectors — that would be preferable to witnessing these environmental groups and aggressive litigators dismantling it with their spoiled brat hands. But both equally destructive.
Darwin was right, adapt or die, the species will live on in one form or another. Let’s face it even the Greenie braindead live on.
My proposal since some time: being an industry under permanent attack, i would stop my output for a month or so. So the idiots may experience a world without fossil fuels. Ideally beginning with not serving any private jets bound for Paris soon.
Otherwise this industry will be pushed around and broken down, as happening with Germany’s former energy giants already.
One of the people in this scheme, John Mashey, was a bane of my existence when I worked in the mini-supercomputer industry.
Then, he was a system architect at MIPS with a very good grasp of what one needed to do to make a supercomputer out many “Killer microprocessors,” which were about to squish most of the functions of a supercomputer into a single chip. He was also quite willing to tell everyone how good he and his systems were. (They weren’t as great as he said, but certainly better than most.)
When the field contracted, SGI bought MIPs in 1992, and Mashey continued on there. My activity within the supercomputer field faded after my employer failed in 1992 and at my new job I worked mostly on networked file systems until 2007. That year seems to be when Mashey got interested in climate change. In a document about the Wegman report, http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/plagiarism%20conspiracies%20felonies%20v1%200%201.pdf , he notes at the end:
That’s a good list of people to provide one point of view, but I’m surprised he has so completely become one of them that he can’t see their failings and can’t see anything that might be correct in the papers and people he investigates.
Lately he seems to be doing little more than retweeting other warmists, see https://twitter.com/johnmashey
«A key breakthrough in the public and legal case for tobacco control came when internal documents came to light showing the tobacco industry had knowingly misled the public.
Similar documents may well exist in the vaults of the fossil fuel industry and their trade associations and front groups…»
I would say similar documents already exists and are available to the public. Documents showing that United Nations and IPCC by gross negligence about scientific methods is responsible for wasting vast amount of resources on a theory which is not corroborated by objective, empirical scientific results.
United Nations created a body called Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC. IPCC was extremely biased from the very beginning. This should be evident from the: Report of the second session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 28June1989. https://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session02/second-session-report.pdf
“In welcoming the delegates to the UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program) Headquarters … The Executive Director of UNEP, hailed the fruitful alliance between WMO (World Meteorological Organization) and UNEP. The firm commitment of prof. Obasi, the Secretary-General of WMO, coupled with the determination of UNEP leadership, has resulted in a partnership which is helping to unify the scientific and policy-making communities of the world to lay the foundation for effective, realistic and equitable action on climate change.”
…
“The Executive director stated that the impacts of climate change and global warming would have serious consequences for humanity. In Egypt alone, global warming could flood much of the Nile Delta and Drown 70 centuries of civilization in less than one, and could inundate one fifth of the nations arable land.”
…
“It would be desirable for the Panel´s report to be ready by august 1990 for presentation to the Second World Climate Conference and to the United Nations General Assembly. It should be born in mind that both the governing council of UNEP and the executive Council of WMO expected the first report of IPCC to form the basis for international negotiations on a global convention on climate change. The report can also play a valuable guiding role for the large number of conferences, meetings and symposia on climate change being held all over the world. For all of these reasons, the report should be completed in good time.”
…
“The issuance of the report would only be the beginning of a far more arduous task. To tackle the problem of climate warming effectively, radical changes would be necessary in international relations, trade, technology transfer, and bilateral and multilateral strategies. The panel´s continued work would be the only guarantee of the concerted response to the global threat of climate change”
…
“In his opening remarks , Prof. Bolin said that the primary objective of IPCC, in making its first assessment, is to produce a document which could provide guidelines for the formulation of global policy and which would enable the nations of the world to contribute to this task”
…
“IPCC´s first report will contain the 20-page summaries for policy-makers to be produced by the working groups and an overall integrated summary of these placed in perspective. Professor Bolin suggested that the integrated summary be written by a drafting group consisting of the officers of IPCC and the chairmen of the Working Groups. He asked that this plan of his be enforced by the panel.”
…
“The panel invited interested UN organizations, regional or global intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and private institutions that wish to to contribute in the matter, to collaborate with appropriate analyses. …. The panel invited the contribution from these organizations in order that its own work may be improved.”
…
Imagine the pressure to conform with the prejudice of the leaders.
United Nations Environmental Program and World Meteorological Organization created Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC is by no means an independent scientific body. This should also be evident from the Principles Governing the Works by IPCC:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles.pdf
United Nations has demonstrated gross negligence by creating a biased organisation, a political organisation which by its principles must be unable to provide scientifically balanced product. By its principles:
– United Nations enforced a mission on IPCC §1
– United Nations let IPCC operate by the unscientifically principle to strive for consensus §10
– United Nations let IPCC establish an organization structure and approval process which by its nature was bound to diminish dissenting views. §11
United Nations – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change went on in unscientific ways and has even made an internal guideline for expression of uncertainty in their writings. A guideline which is in breach with expression of objective scientific findings and also in breach with international guidelines for quantitative expression of uncertainty:
Their guideline is called: “Guidance Note for Lead Authors of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report on Consistent Treatment of Uncertainties”.
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/supporting-material/uncertainty-guidance-note.pdf
IPCC makes 2 gross mistakes in this guideline:
– 1´st mistake is the failure to use the “Guide to the expression of uncertainty”
The 1´st mistake leaves the quantification of uncertainty by IPCC more or less useless
See: “Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement” how it should have been done:
https://www.oiml.org/en/files/pdf_g/g001-100-e08.pdf
– 2´nd mistake is to express subjective probabilities.
The 2´nd mistake is a huge scientific mistake.
See Karl Popper – The logic of scientific discovery – for a take an subjective probabilities:
http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/popper-logic-scientific-discovery.pdf
Ref – section 8 Scientific objectivity and subjective conviction
(Karl Popper was The mastermind behind the modern scientific method – the hypotetico-deductive method)
United Nations has operated way out of line with its charter and created an unscientific and political body called Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
IPCC need to be abolished – it is not an independent scientific body – IPCC is a biased beast.
The group photo caption is wrong on at minimum Jasper Teulings, as he is a man looking like this: http://in.linkedin.com/in/jasperteulings
So let me see if I’ve got this straight.
1) A group of “activists” held a conference over three years ago.
2) At this conference, they discussed going after big oil in the same ways that were used against big tobacco.
3) They published a thoughtful and intelligent report that outlined how this could be done.
4) All the above was done in the open and with full disclosure.
5) Three years later, someone has discovered that Exxon has sinned and Exxon is finding itself in the same pickle as big tobacco.
Now you’re whining about the fact that this effort has borne fruit, and talking about some sort of “orchestrated” conspiracy and a small “shadow organization” being behind it all?. Guess what, Anthony? UCS, Greenpeace, Climate Central, Scripps, Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard are NOT “shadow organizations”, even though it suits your purposes to try to ignore their involvement. And the real conspiracy is the one you and the deniers are engaged in—attempts to obfuscate the truth about AGW.
I sincerely hope that once they are finished with Exxon, the RICO prosecutions will reach down to the level of the denier blogosphere and sweep you and the rest into the AGW denial conspiracy net. [trimmed. .mod]
Your screen along with your comment name indicates why there’s such a big problem in society…
…unless you’re not being a hypocrite and don’t use fossil fuels.
Yes, unlike you, I don’t take myself too seriously, and that’s why I am able to catch fish like you so easily. (And I go by DOG for short).
The real big problem in society is people like you and Watts who refuse to understand that we have ALL become unknowingly trapped into using fossil fuels to excess over the past 50 or 60 years and that AGW is the result. The hypocrisy is in not accepting that truth and instead bringing up the very lame “stop using fossil fuels and go back and live like a cave man” argument.
…I go by DOG for short.
Hi, short dog. I’ve always said that teaching alarmists good science is harder than teaching a dog trigonometry.
Next, the short dog sez:
The real big problem in society is people like you and Watts who refuse to understand that we have ALL become unknowingly trapped into using fossil fuels to excess over the past 50 or 60 years and that AGW is the result.
1. You are not the arbiter of who is or isn’t a big problem. I happen to think that Anthony Watts is on the right track, and that your train as derailed. So speak for yourself, and not for ‘society’. Thanx. And until you can produce a verifiable, testable measurement quantifying AGW, all you’ve got are your assertions. IOW: your opinion.
2. You may be acting “unknowingly”, but don’t assign skeptics your personal failings. We know what we’re doing: debunking your pseudo-science. And that is what you really don’t like.
3. You say: The hypocrisy is in not accepting that truth and instead bringing up the very lame “stop using fossil fuels and go back and live like a cave man” argument.
Huh?? That’s the choice the green contingent wants to foist on people. How many quotes would you like, from your pals who say exactly that? I’ve got lots of ’em.
And don’t tell us we can live just as well by doing without fossil fuels. That isn’t possible. Not in the real world, anyway. Maybe in your bubble.
Finally, stop with your hypocrisy. If you want to do without fossil fuels, go right ahead. Me, I’m using all I can pay for, because I know for a fact that it’s beneficial for the biosphere, and that there’s no global harm or damage as a result. Therefore, it’s ‘harmless’, see?
Harmless and beneficial, and it makes life immensely better. And you want us to stop using it? But you won’t stop using it yourself??
I guess there are no mirrors in your apartment, or you’d see a hypocrite every day.
Hey Dumbo,
Could you watch the drool, please? Our computer monitors will thank you.
Actually, Bruce, if any piece of inanimate hardware could “thank” anyone (which is not possible), it would be MY keyboard, which, if I did drool, would be the target. MY monitor IS the recipient of an occasional uncontrolled sneeze, but YOUR monitor has nothing to fear from either my sneezes or drools. You DO understand that the internet is a bit more advanced than tin cans connected by pieces of string, don’t you?
“dumboldguy
November 8, 2015 at 8:52 am
You DO understand that the internet is a bit more advanced than tin cans connected by pieces of string, don’t you?”
You haven’t been to Australia then I would suggest.
I sincerely hope someone adds up the of carbon knowingly produced by individuals such as Al Gore and Naomi Oreskes who, more so than the average Joe, continued to burn fossil fuels to travel to their climate hate fests, used plastics, consumed food dependent on fossil fuels for sowing, fertilizing, harvesting and then transported. These climate high priests are among the fattest pigs at the carbon trough.
Speaking of bringing up “lame” arguments, here’s andersmo with the “climate priests and fattest pigs at the carbon trough” argument. andersmo apparently likes to set up irrelevant straw men (and take the obligatory mindless swipe at Al Gore) rather than look at the real culprits, who are virtually every last human on the planet. Maybe andersmo really does understand what the planet’s problem is but just needs to express his anger. Perhaps it made him feel better, but it is no real argument. I’m angry too, but prefer to look at the science. To wit:
There were only about 1 billion of us on the planet in 1800, when coal began to be widely used. It took 130 years for the human population to hit 2 billion around 1930, when the age of oil was beginning to really take off, but only 30 years to add the next billion by 1959. We are now adding another billion humans every 13 or so years, and we are at 7+billion right now. And all of those “new” people want to take advantage of cheap and powerful fossil fuels just as we in the West did for decades and centuries.
For those with a partially open mind, take a look at the graphs of human population, fossil fuel use,
atmospheric CO2 concentration, global temperature rise, sea level rise, ocean acidification, frequency of extreme weather events, and the decline in arctic sea ice, to name just a few things that run parallel with AGW. Some clear trends and even a few exponential hockey sticks are evident, and talking about “climate hate fests” and “climate high priests” is just an attempt to distract us from the truth. But that’s what WUWT is all about, isn’t it?
dumbo says:
… the real culprits, who are virtually every last human on the planet.
“Culprits”?? There’s a solution, you know. You could set the example.
I just love how dumb old guys totally ignore the fact that due primarily to the discovery of ample fossil fuels, humans are living much longer, healthier lives. And except for him and his eco-ilk, no doubt much happier lives. Dumbo doesn’t understamd that people like it when they can watch their grand kids grow up warm and healthy, instead of being decimated by smallpox, freezing, and all the other scourges that modern science and technology have conquered.
There is never any cost/benefit analysis in the eco-fringe. They never have better answers, but they criticize endlessly.
It’s all hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of the anti-fossil fuel complainers is so thick you could cut it with a plastic knife: dumbo won’t demonstrate how to get rid of even one person from the planet — but he wants the human population reduced (or the “culprits” maybe even eliminated). And there’s no doubt that he uses fossil fuels just like anyone else. Is he really that blind to his hypocrisy?
DBS suggests that a “solution” to AGW is my doing away with myself. What a clever rejoinder! (Or it would be if DBS was a third-grader).
Humans are NOT living “much longer, healthier lives due primarily to the discovery of ample fossil fuels”, They are living “much longer, healthier lives” due to improvements in public water supplies, general sanitation, public health, and medicine. “Ample”, energy-rich, and relatively cheap fossil fuels have allowed the exponential human population growth that has fueled AGW.
DBS is perfectly willing to “get his now” and indulge in the delusion that his grandkids will be “happy, warm, and healthy”. If DBS had any moral or ethical grounding at all, he would realize that his denialism pretty much guarantees that his grandkids (and surely his great-grand-kids) will suffer for our mistakes..
As for “cost/benefit analysis”, it is becoming more obvious that delay in dealing with AGW is going to be far more expensive than taking measures now. That comes not from the “eco-fringe”, but from insurance companies, economists, scientists, and governments.
To paraphrase a bit—-“People like DBS never show ANY real understanding of the problem or answers, but they endlessly spout inane OPINIONS and clever bon mots devoid of any factual support or real meaning”. The only hypocrisy here is DBS’s pretending he is engaging in a “discussion” here when he refuses to look at FACTS.
And I myself don’t intend to “demonstrate how to get rid of even one person from the planet” and don’t want “the human population reduced or the ‘culprits’ maybe even eliminated”. The laws of nature will sooner or later take care of that if we don’t get moving on AGW. There is no hypocrisy in my use of fossil fuels either—-I am an American living a “Western” life-style in 2015 just like DBS—-the difference is that I understand what that means and he doesn’t.
Writes dumboldguy:
Hm. Gives me to think about my own grandfathers, both of whom came over to these United States from il Mezzogiorno toward the end of the 19th Century – and what actions they might’ve taken in forethought about how I myself might have been kept “happy, warm, and healthy” in the 21st Century.
They couldn’t have done much more than deal with the problems before them, and taken such reasonable actions as were guided by what they could with some reliability know.
So what does DBS – or anybody else – really know that could ensure the health and comfort of his grandchildren through the rest of the 21st Century and into the 22nd?
Contrary to the smug arrogance of dumboldguy, the validity of what is claimed by the hysterical (and duplicitous) AGW alarmists is non-existent, as the application of rigorous scientific method – an error-checking mechanism the “climate consensus” is yet continuing to evade – keeps proving.
So how is DBS to be chided for not taking actions which are more and more demonstrably UNNECESSARY – and which are, indeed, perniciously costly and utterly wasteful – to serve the good of succeeding generations of people who will have to meet, evaluate, and address the changing conditions that dumboldguy and his ilk keep proving that they’ve no friggin’ idea of how to accurately anticipate?
Why do so many commenters on WUWT seem to be so in love with meaningless straw men and non sequiturs? My grandfathers “came over” about the same time as yours and it’s pure nonsense to talk of them as you do. Things were far simpler around 1900, and science and our understanding of AGW have come a long way since (and AGW wasn’t really an issue until 50 years ago). Our grandfathers had NO idea that AGW was going to be a problem, or that many of the other problems the human race faces would occur. We DO know these things now, or at least those of us who don’t deny science know them, and you, I, and DBS can most certainly help insure the future health of the planet and our far-off progeny.
Talking about “smug arrogance”, you demonstrate it in spades when you spout such opinionated BS as “,,,the validity of what is claimed by the hysterical (and duplicitous) AGW alarmists is non-existent, as the application of rigorous scientific method – an error-checking mechanism the “climate consensus” is yet continuing to evade – keeps proving”.
You are guilty of one of the major logic fails there—-the bald assertion—stating something because you WANT it to be true without offering any evidence but your cockeyed BELIEF to back it up. And you just don’t quit, following that with “…actions which are more and more demonstrably UNNECESSARY – and which are, indeed, perniciously costly and utterly wasteful”. Says who?
And the ultimate in “arrogance” is quoting a meaningless Wall Street Journal opinion article written by someone who has NO business talking about climate change. Why can you not quote someone among the 99.99% of climate scientists who are concerned about AGW. Oh, I forgot, you are not interested in truth. but merely in continuing to spread and reinforce ignorant AGW denialist BS.
dumb-old says:
Why do so many commenters on WUWT seem to be so in love with meaningless straw men and non sequiturs?
You presume to judge people after commenting here for the first time today??
I suppose you’ve never read the scientifically illiterate logic fails constantly found throughout alarmist blogs. By contrast, readers here are extremely rational, and oriented toward the hard sciences.
Next, you say:
…AGW wasn’t really an issue until 50 years ago
The only reason it’s an ‘issue’ now is due to the immense piles of government loot shoveled into that hoax. Money and useful idiots keep it going, when something with no verifiable measurements like AGW would have died a deserved death long ago. You mention the Scientific Method, when you have zero understanding of how it works: The ‘GW’ in AGW means ‘global warming’, but there has been NO global warming for many years now. So that scare is debunked.
Finally, now you’re asserting that “99.99%” of scientists are “concerned” with AGW?
FYI: John Cook’s “97%” nonsense has been so thoroughly debunked that even mainstream scientists are avoiding it. So now you’re doubling down with “99.99%”?? You had a credibility problem with 97%. Now you’re off the rails.
Prof Richard Lindzen, M.I.T.’s head of their atmospheric sciences department (and the author of twenty dozen published, peer reviewed papers on the atmosphere), had this to say:
The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations.
Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well.
Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages, and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in 100,000 year cycles for the last 700,000 years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present, despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now.
More recently, we have had the Medieval Warm Period, and the Little Ice Age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced, to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.
For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century.
When Lindzen writes about ‘scientific illiteracy’, he’s talking about you, old & dumb.
Instead of talking down to readers here and presuming to instruct us on logic and grammar, you could learn a lot — if you just opened your mind, instead of parroting the alarmist nonsense you’ve been programmed to repeat. In case you don’t know, the term is ‘useful fool’.
Dumbold says:
Humans are NOT living “much longer, healthier lives due primarily to the discovery of ample fossil fuels”, They are living “much longer, healthier lives” due to improvements in public water supplies, general sanitation, public health, and medicine.
Of course we’re living longer, better lives because of fossil fuels. But you’ve bought into the “carbon” hoax, so you have to demonize what you’re told to. That includes fossil fuels and the mis-named “carbon”.
Next:
…it is becoming more obvious that delay in dealing with AGW is going to be far more expensive than taking measures now.
More ‘obvious’ to you, you mean. It’s not obvious to normal folks, and in particular to the well educated readers here. First off, you don’t even have a measurement of man-made global warming (MMGW). If you can’t measurem something, how do you know it’s there? (I shouldn’t have to say this, but I think AGW exists. The reason it has never been quantified is because it’s so tiny; the minuscule effect is lost in the noise). So you’re worried about something that is too small to matter. Thus, your rejection of any cost/benefit analysis. Your mind is already made up.
Finally, dumb-old says he is:
…living a “Western” life-style in 2015 just like DBS—-the difference is that I understand what that means and he doesn’t.
What it means is you’re a hypocrite and I’m not, because I think fossil fuels are, on balance, greatly beneficial. Just like more CO2 is. But if I really believed otherwise, I would stop, or greatly curtail my use of them. That’s the difference between us.
dunboldguy
Odd statement. So you do concede – even boast! – that the lives of 6 billion humans of the 7 billion living on this planet right now are due to the BENEFITS of fossil fuel use? So you concede that EVERY human now living is living better, healthier, more productive lives in more comfort than in 1810? (After all, you will be very, very hard-pressed to find anybody now living who is worse than in 1810 – living in unheated houses drinking dirty water and dumping her sewage out the back window into the manure-filled streets filled to overflowing with horses bringing in contaminated and rotting food from the nearby farms before it decayed, right?)
Is it your goal to kill 6 billion innocents so the arctic sea ice goes back to some arbitrary “normal” – when you cannot even establish what that “normal arctic sea ice” is? OK, OK. I am exaggerating. You really don’t want to kill 6 billion innocents.
How many do you want killed to obtain your Utopia? How many do you want condemned to hard lives in poverty and cold drinkning contaminated water and washing in their neighbor’s sewage just so you can feel good about your air-conditioning and heating and clean water and refrigerator and computer and TV and microwave and cell phone and streets and roads?
The other so-called “problems” of global warming are …. what? Benefits all, are they not? Loss of Arctic sea ice means …. what? A symptom of global warming? Or a cause of global warming? Just how does arctic sea ice increase global warming of the arctic ocean when the sun is low and below below the horizon from late September to the middle of March? Less arctic sea ice 7 months of the year means more cooling up north, not more heating.
What is “odd” is this agglomeration of straw men and non sequiturs. I’ll try to make some sense of it it, but you need to do a serious review in your “Logic for Dummies” book.
I did not “concede or boast” that the lives of 6 billion of the 7 billion humans living on this planet right now are due to the BENEFITS of fossil fuel use. If you were not such a motivated reasoner, you would understand that I was simply saying that fossil fuels and technology have allowed human population growth to get out of hand, and the concomitant negative impacts of AGW are a result. Also, the “benefits” of fossil fuel use are now largely part of our past, not our future
I wouldn’t want to guess at the proportionate number of humans who are now alive that are living “better, healthier, more productive lives in more comfort than in 1810”? I would think that many in the third world are living much as they did in 1810, no better, and your little soliloquy speaks only to city life in places like London. If you want to really get educated on that, read “Dirty Old London—The Victorian Fight Against Filth” by Lee Jackson.
“Is it your goal to kill 6 billion innocents so the arctic sea ice goes back to some arbitrary “normal” – when you cannot even establish what that “normal arctic sea ice” is?”, you ask? No, you are not exaggerating—-wrong word—-what you’re doing goes beyond that to hyperbole—-at any rate, you ARE showing the need for more time in the Logic for Dummies book.
And not to be outdone, you offer this outrageously over-the-top bit of hyperbole—-“How many do you want killed to obtain your Utopia? How many do you want condemned to hard lives in poverty and cold drinking contaminated water and washing in their neighbor’s sewage just so you can feel good about your air-conditioning and heating and clean water and refrigerator and computer and TV and microwave and cell phone and streets and roads?” WOW! That’s beyond responding to, other than to say that you need to look in a mirror, because “utopia” is something we both share as Americans (and purely by luck of birth) and is something that many are being denied in the third world. And I don’t want anyone “killed”, but I am not so cognitively dissonant and science ignorant that I will deny what will come if it’s BAU with fossil fuels.
“The other so-called “problems” of global warming are …. what? Benefits all, are they not?”, you ask. I listed “atmospheric CO2 concentration, global temperature rise, sea level rise, ocean acidification, frequency of extreme weather events” along with the decline in arctic sea ice, and NONE of them are “benefits”. I suspect that you don’t have much of a background in science, and suggest you spend less time on propaganda sites like WUWT and more on sites where you might learn some science—-Skeptical Science and Climate Denial Crock of the Week are two. Here’s some science for you in answer to your final questions.
Loss of Arctic sea ice is both a symptom of global warming and a cause of global warming. The loss of Arctic sea ice contributes to local warming because the ocean absorbs more heat when less of it it is ice-covered in summer—-look up “albedo”, and look up “positive feedback loop” as it pertains to the decline of multiyear ice. In winter when the sun is low and below below the horizon, of course ice forms in the arctic (just as it’s cold and snows in DC in winter so that moron Sen. Inhofe can make a snowball).
I don’t know what you’re trying to say with “Less arctic sea ice 7 months of the year means more cooling up north, not more heating”—-maybe you got your “lesses and mores” confused. Try again.
dumb&old says:
I wouldn’t want to guess at the proportionate number of humans who are now alive that are living “better, healthier, more productive lives in more comfort than in 1810”? I would think that many in the third world are living much as they did in 1810, no better, and your little soliloquy speaks only to city life in places like London.
Yep. And the immense progress is due to fossil fuel use, which has saved the whales, rescued cities from the horse manure crisis, and made everyone much healtier, with warm homes in winter and cool summers. That hasn’t made you any happier, but that’s a small price to pay, no?
(R. Cook’s sea ice/utopia/arctic ice quotes weren’t mine. But they’re correct.)
Next, you say:
I listed “atmospheric CO2 concentration, global temperature rise, sea level rise, ocean acidification, frequency of extreme weather events” along with the decline in arctic sea ice, and NONE of them are “benefits”.
OK, by the numbers:
1. The rise in atmospheric CO2 has been entirely beneficial, with no verified downside. Agricultural productivity has risen in lockstep with rising CO2, and the one-third of the people you couldn’t care less about, the world’s poorest subsisting on less than $2 a day, have not seen food costs rise like they would have without the extra CO2.
2. Sea level rise is the same as it’s been for the past couple hundred years. It is certainly not accelerating; if anything, it is de-celerating.
3. Ocean “acidification” is nonsense. That bogus scare has been throughly deconstructed here, time after time. Just do a search using keyword: acidification.
4. The global temperature rise has been ≈0.7ºC, over the past century and a half. FYI, that is nothing. It is as close to flat as anything found in the geologic record. Just prior to our current Holocene, temperatures fluctuated by TENS of degrees — within only a decade or two — and without any human industrial emissions. If you don’t know the facts, naturally you’re going to scare yourself.
5. Extreme weather events have been declining for decades. Where do you get your misinformation? From some thinly-trafficked alarmist blog? Because everything you’ve written is wrong.
6. Arctic ice declined from about 2006 to 2012. For the past decade Arctic ice has been rising. As a typical climate alarmist, all you do is try to find the negative side of any curve, and hide the upside. But during the time Arctic ice was naturally dipping, global ice cover was flat, neither rising nor declining. As an alarmist, you ignore that pesky global ice cover. But the central issue is global warming. Or really, the lack of any global warming for almost twenty years now.
Your greenie ilk has been flat wrong about everything for at least that long. Rational folks see that, and change their minds. But not you, which means the “climate change” scare is your religion. Science has nothing to do with what you believe.
I hope you feel cleansed after that rant. Your arguments are old and tired and wrong in relation to the drivers of climate.
Actually, the term “rant” is far more applicable to your original statement (and all those who replied to me after I commented on what you said). I tried to inject a little science into the thread and open minds, but didn’t get far because of the incredible level of willful ignorance on the part of you and your fellow “ranters”.
The arguments that are really “old and tired and wrong” are the ones that are repeated endlessly on WUWT in spite of having been disproved and debunked countless times by the real climate scientists. (PS Coming on this site and commenting is by no means “cleansing”—-it is really a rather “dirty” place to visit).
Dumboldguy, I wouldn’t worry too much about trying to inject a little science into the discussion. Most of the commentary here on WUWT is from people with strong science understanding AND who are highly capable of detecting BS when they smell it. Myself, I have a degree in chemical engineering that includes advanced thermo and fluid dynamics. Things like mass and energy balances, heat transfer, heat capacities…you know, all those areas of technical learning on which climate science depends.
Another engineer who thinks he’s a “scientist”. Lord love a duck! Did you sign the Oregon Petition along with all those others—doctors, veterinarians, chemists, and oh-so-many engineers—-who have studied SOME science but have no real business commenting on climate change.
Since we’re comparing CV’s, my undergraduate degree is in Physics, my Master’s is in Biology, and I taught both for several years before going into school administration, where I supervised teachers of all sciences for 20+ years. I have more than the equivalent of another master’s in Administration, Curriculum, and Supervision, and have taken many courses in psychology, group dynamics, communication, and organization development. I have highly developed and well-used “crap detectors”—policemen, judges, and school administrators all develop them—-and I’m telling YOU that WUWT is mainly about things OTHER than the science of AGW.
I’m glad that your studies in certain areas of physics (advanced thermo and fluid dynamics, mass and energy balances, heat transfer, heat capacities, etc) have made it possible for you to understand part of the AGW problem, but that is far from a “strong science understanding that makes you highly capable of detecting BS when you smell it”, and that’s particularly so when so much of the AGW problem is intertwined with human psychology, politics, economics, and societal structures.
I’m 75 years old and have been deeply interested in science since I was a child. I have been involved in environmental activism of one sort or another since before Earth Day, and have read extensively in science (with emphasis on AGW) and the other fields I mentioned above, particularly during the 20+ years since I retired. Would you like a suggested reading list?
What is obvious in the short time I’ve been visiting WUWT is that I have seen little evidence of “strong science understanding” but much evidence of behaviors and attitudes that would make a psychologist or social scientist drool. You, for instance, with your comment here about having knowledge in “all those areas of technical learning on which climate science depends” makes you sound like a Dunning-Kruger sufferer—look it up (but don’t worry, you have plenty of company among the WUWT-ers).
dumboldguy
November 9, 2015 at 3:01 pm
Are you aware that, among the 9029 PhDs in scientific disciplines (2365 of whom are physicists) who signed the Oregon Petition, is Freeman Dyson, probably the most famous living physicist, and Princeton’s Will Happer?
http://www.petitionproject.org/qualifications_of_signers.php
Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever isn’t a signer, since he came to “climate change” skepticism only after studying the issue. Although your qualifications pale in comparison to his, you too could benefit from skeptically, ie scientifically, examining the actual lack of science behind this hoax.
I am aware of many things about the Oregon Petition, having spent many hours on the Petition Project website and reading what others have had to say about it (both “warmists” and that word I am not allowed to use on WUWT because it is a “pejorative” LMAO).
Freeman Dyson may be the most famous living physicist, and Will Happer is notorious for other reasons, but neither of them is qualified to speak on climate science. Dyson’s expertise is in the area of quantum physics, and neither he nor Happer have published peer-reviewed papers on climate science.
First understand that it is a lie to say 31,000+ “scientists” have signed the Petition, when just about half the signatories are engineers of one sort or another. Engineers are not scientists, and you can access science and engineering websites that will explain the difference if you want to become educated.. Look up what different types of engineers do—-for example, “environmental engineers” have virtually nothing to do with climate science.
Go to your link and add up the numbers with an open mind. http://www.petitionproject.org/qualifications_of_signers.php
You will find that only 39 are climatologists, 113 are atmospheric scientists and the rest are farther and farther removed from expertise on climate change. Even if we add in the 83 oceanographers and a couple of hundred math-computer science and biochem-earth-agriculture types who may have specialized knowledge that relates to climate change, the number of valid signatures on the Petition is maybe 500 at most . The Petition has been so thoroughly discredited in so many ways for so many years that it’s ludicrous that anyone still brings it up. It is something that the (word I am not allowed to use) keep bringing up because it’s in their talking points playbook, but it’s no longer effective.
MY qualifications DO pale in comparison to Giaever’s in the area where he won his Nobel Prize, electron tunneling in superconductors, but my background in science is broader, and I am probably more qualified to examine AGW evidence than he is.
As for—-“You too could benefit from skeptically, ie scientifically, examining the actual lack of science behind this hoax”, all I can say is that is also from the playbook used in the echo chamber of the (pejorative deleted). I have examined the science behind AGW for years, and it’s simply not a hoax. YOU yourself could benefit from examining the lack of science behind those who say it’s a hoax. If you do, you will find cherry-picking, distortion, and misinformation. The evidence for AGW is everywhere, 99.99% of climate scientists can’t be wrong, and Occam’s Razor rules.
dumboldguy, how little you know about engineering. Or at least engineering as taught in Canadian universities. I studied every one of the physics courses you listed plus quantum mechanics, interfacial phenomena, organic and inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry, thermodynamics (heats of reaction, heat capacity, mass and heat transfer, transport phenomena and diffusional operations. While learning all these concepts, I was working in engineering laboratories applying all this knowledge to build and operate a myriad of machines and processes, including those used in hospitals. But enough. As much as you want to flaunt what a learned man you are, here you’re just another one of the rabble with an opinion, same as me. We do not have to agree, but abusing people with different opinions doesn’t make them change their minds. In fact, it chases them in the opposite direction.
How little I know about engineering? Or at least engineering as taught in Canadian universities?
Yes, the quality of “teaching” about engineering in any country that thinks tar sands are worth exploiting does raise some serious questions, but I neglected to inform you that I began my higher education at an engineering school, so I may know more than you are aware of—-Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ—-I was recruited by the school based on my SAT’s and HS record and guaranteed acceptance. As my freshman year wore on, I discovered why some undergrads called the school Stevens Hoboken Institute of Technology and abbreviated that to “S.H.I.T.”. (You could buy T-shirts off-campus with that printed on them, and if you dared to wear one to class, the humanities-type profs would smile and the tech-type profs would get upset and berate you).
I left the school because I wanted to participate in science in a way that was fun, not the drudgery and “dweebiness” I found among the future engineers. One had a hard time finding anyone who wanted to talk about cars, girls, sports, auto racing, or fishing—-it was all about the calculus homework or what was going to be on the chemistry quiz, I did greatly enjoy my descriptive geometry class and the “make the engineers human” class on the Greeks taught by a flamingly gay (for 1958-59 anyway) professor. It was perhaps the best class I ever took in college (and it was universally detested by the future engineers, who thought reading Edith Hamilton and Lysistrata got in the way of the calculus homework and studying for the chem quiz). They told us at the opening convocation to “look at the guy next to you—one of you will be gone by next year”. They were right, and people actually began leaving within the first month, including a guy across the dorm hall that I talked girls-sports-cars-fishing with—-from upstate NY, and he transferred to Syracuse and then studied science just as I did. His parting words were “If I stay here, I’m going to go crazy and maybe kill someone”.. The Lacrosse coaches cried when he and I left, because we were both slotted to play—-since we were both 210 pound 6’1″ former football players (and linebackers), the coaches spotted us early on—-the game is a lot of fun, and my biggest regret about leaving Stevens was not playing.
My crap detectors are still vibrating about your “I studied every one of the physics courses you listed plus…” statement. What school did you attend? Even MIT doesn’t seem to offer as broad a science education in their chemical engineering program as you say you got—-look it up. Or are you saying that a three week unit on sound or optics in a general physics survey course is the equivalent of the full semester courses we science majors took?
I am not “flaunting what a learned man I am”, and neither you nor I are “just another one of the rabble with an opinion”, as those here who appear to be science ignorant are. You DO have some science training, if not in areas that make you an expert on AGW and its impacts. My point in “flaunting” was simply that I DO have a broad science background that DOES make me better qualified to detect AGW BS than you.
I agree that we do not have to agree, and I am NOT “abusing people with different opinions”, merely pointing out that their opinions are just that, opinions (everyone has them), and are NOT based on scientific fact but on emotions and beliefs. If you want to base your understanding of AGW on opinions and beliefs (and that’s what a lot of WUWT-ers apparently do), feel free—-just don’t expect those of us who rely on rational analysis of facts to ever agree with you.
I’m glad that you understand psychology enough to say “….doesn’t make them change their minds. In fact, it chases them in the opposite direction”. That’s called the “backfire effect” by psychologists, and it IS a serious problem with AGW, politics, and government, I recommend The Republican Brain, by Chris Mooney, as a good read on understanding the psychology that oozes off nearly every page of WUWT—-Mooney discusses the backfire effect.
.
DOG,
Let me suggest this since you say you’ll be hanging around for awhile.
In general WUWT welcomes those with differing points of view. So at some appropriate point , why don’t you single out an area you feel that skeptics are wrong on and explain why you think we are wrong and you are right. You might be surprised at the extent of agreement you find.
Few here “D” that there is a climate or that we have an impact on it. Most here do “D” that we have a significant impact on it that will result in catastrophe if we don’t curb emissions. Most here would likely “D” that climate models should be the basis of any policy until they do a better job of projecting/predicting than they do now.
These are just two areas you could have chosen to engage on and received a far less hostile reception.
Your experience here on WUWT may be unfortunate but is not undeserved. For all of your focus on your perceived “lack of science” discussed here you came in apparently intent on telling us how stupid we all must be, rather than providing any science to intelligently debate/discuss. Then you seem surprised when others fire back in kind.
So try being a bit more cordial and provide some tidbit of science to discuss and see if what happens. Unless your only reason for being here is to ruffle feathers…
__________________________ Ty Hallsted Objective Systems Lead Analyst 410-984-8155
DOG,
Let me suggest this since you say you’ll be hanging around for awhile.
In general WUWT welcomes those with differing points of view. So at some appropriate point , why don’t you single out an area you feel that skeptics are wrong on and explain why you think we are wrong and you are right. You might be surprised at the extent of agreement you find.
Few here “D” that there is a climate or that we have an impact on it. Most here do “D” that we have a significant impact on it that will result in catastrophe if we don’t curb emissions. Most here would likely “D” that climate models should be the basis of any policy until they do a better job of projecting/predicting than they do now.
These are just two areas you could have chosen to engage on and received a far less hostile reception.
Your experience here on WUWT is not undeserved. For all of your focus on your perceived “lack of science” discussed here you came in apparently intent on telling us how stupid we all must be, rather than providing any science to intelligently debate/discuss. Then you seem surprised when others fire back in kind.
So try being a bit more cordial and provide some tidbit of science to discuss and see what happens. Unless your only reason for being here is to flaunt your perceived superiority and ruffle feathers…
Dumbguy,
Please state why you imagine that Freeman Dyson and Will Happer are not qualified to comment on “climate science”?
Yet you suppose that you are?
What a hoot!
dumboldguy – degree in physics, eh? That’s pretty narrow. Engineers have to be fluent in all the physical sciences.
Now you’ve set off my crap detectors.
Physics is “narrow”, you say? Physics is pretty broad, actually, and as an undergraduate I had to take courses in sound, light, heat, mechanics, dynamics, electricity & magnetism, and atomic and nuclear physics, among others.
“Engineers have to be fluent in ALL the physical sciences”, you say? I call BS on you. Engineers are at best “applied scientists”, and are “fluent” only in narrow areas relevant to their engineering specialty.
You are either testing my crap detectors or you are really not an engineer. Which is it?
The weirdest part about the tobacco industry trials were that we have almost no science on tobacco itself. Several entire nations of heavy smokers show no signs of the issues associated with tobacco use. Before you insist we do have said studies go look, the studies are not on tobacco they are on cigarettes. Which includes a wide range of chemicals not just tobacco sometimes no tobacco at all but rather a type of tobacco paper soaked in various chemicals. Dig deep enough into this and we have every reason to think tobacco itself is much less dangerous then the current consensus. Theoretically the tobacco industry might have been held accountable for making their product much more of a health hazard, instead they continue to make a very dangerous product and never had to explain themselves on this point whatsoever.
From the Nation Cancer Institute in a reply to my email asking for the name of somebody famous that had died from SHS;
“Thank you for your follow-up e-mail to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) regarding deaths attributable to secondhand smoke exposure. In your e-mail, you asked for the name of one famous individual who died from secondhand smoke. Please note the NCI does not collect mortality data, and cannot provide the names of any patients, including public figures and celebrities.”
Of course you can’t…
It is hard to know where to begin in the face of such mindless ignorance and cognitive dissonance. DBS knows what he WANTS to believe, and won’t be swayed. It apears that he spends most of his time here on WUWT and on other denier sites sucking up denialist propaganda. He quotes liberally from the “Handbook of Discredited BS for AGW Deniers” and seems to believe that his PHD will somehow carry the day—-that’s not a degree but Piled Higher and Deeper.
Fossil fuels have saved the whales? And rescued cities from the “horse manure crisis”? And made everyone “much healthier”? The whales are NOT “saved” by any means, the HM “crisis” never killed as many at the 1.7 million Chinese that die each year from air pollution due to fossil fuels, and the worldwide health costs from air pollution are too big a price to pay.
DBS shows his paucity of science knowledge with his “by the numbers” PHD exercise. He quotes from the denier’s BS manual on many of these points, and needs to do some real study. I will comment only briefly on each.
1. EVERYTHING he says here is WRONG. ALL four statements.
2. WRONG. Sea level rise is NOT the same as it’s been for the past couple hundred years, nor is it decelerating. Latest research findings say that it is accelerating.
3. WRONG. Ocean “acidification” is a serious and worsening concern. It has been “thoroughly deconstructed here, time after time” because WUWT is a bogus site that is only interested in AGW denial, not scientific truth.
4. WRONG. GLOBAL temperatures ARE rising, period. And citing that graph of “no change in middle troposphere” won’t change that. And the global temperatures fluctuated by TENS of degrees — within only a decade or two?. Really? Where did you get that “fact”?
5. WRONG. Extreme weather events have NOT been declining for decades, and some new records have been set this year for tropical cyclones. I get my information from NOAA, NASA, and other credible sources, not some heavily trafficked propaganda blog like WUWT
6. And last but not least, WRONG-WRONG-WRONG on all counts. Arctic sea ice has been in steady decline from 1979. Perhaps you are confused about the difference between extent and volume—it wouldn’t surprise me, but the long-term trend for both is decline. “For the past decade Arctic ice has been rising” is totally ignorant, in that the record lows have occurred in the past decade. As a typical climate change denialist, all you do is make stuff up and try to say it’s true. Like saying “global ice cover was flat, neither rising nor declining”. It’s actually declining everywhere, the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the Mountain Glaciers. We again get into questions of “extent”, or surface spread, but th only valid measure of ice is volume, and that’s in decline.
You finish this load of WRONG horsepucky with a bald assertion that the “greenie ilk has been flat wrong about everything”, and lecture us about “rational folks”? You haven’t even a nodding acquaintance with “rational”—deluded is what you are, and if anyone has a religion (cliché) here, it’s you and the deniers, because “Science has nothing to do with what you believe”..
(Reply: you are new here, so we would like to point out that labeling those who simply have a different scientific point of view than yours as “deniers”, “denialists”, and similar pejoratives, is not allowed on this site. Future posts containing those insults will be deleted. -mod)
How many times do you have to post the same message? You can post it 100 times and it will still not be true. Why do deniers think that endlessly repeating the same discredited horsepucky and unfounded opinions will somehow magically make them true? I’m busy with real life—need to watch Madam Secretary and The Good Wife—maybe I’ll respond to this latest delusional stuff after that.
[REPLY: Please stop calling people here ‘deniers’, or anything similar. Thanks. ~mod.]
How many time are you going to repeat the mindless phrase “fossil fuels”?
Does violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics not bother you at all?
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/17/10976.long
Does it bother you that marine organisms consume more hydrocarbons each year than we do?
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/06mexico/background/plan/media/iceworms_600.jpg
Iceworms (Hesiocaeca methanicola) infest a solid piece of orange methane ice at 540m depth in the Gulf of Mexico. – NOAA
During my phone conversation with the Australian Greens (Adam Bandt’s staff), I was told that the reason the Greens don’t care is because, quote:
“You can’t tax a marine organism”
I had to call them because they wouldn’t respond to any of my emails.
When I asked, “Will you put that answer in writing” the call was abruptly terminated by the unaccountable, undemocratic, greedy, taxpayer-funded control-freaks.
What is your reason for not caring about marine organisms burning more precious “fossil fuels” each year that we currently do?
Rather “fractured” comment. Or maybe it the fractured thinking that leads to a fractured comment?
Since marine organisms do NOT “burn more precious fossil fuels each year that we currently do”, there is nothing to care about. Unless there are marine organisms eating a lot of coal, sucking up a lot of natural gas, or eating lots of crude oil that we don’t know about—-care to tell us about some so we can “care” about them? And technically, your iceworm example is not a good one—-don’t they feed on bacteria that utilize the methane? That means they’re consumers of the critters that “eat” the methane, and not methane eaters—-get your food chains in order.
I now have a couple of comments “awaiting moderation”. Apparently if one doesn’t toe the company line on WUWT, one can be “moderated” into silence. Pretty good—I’ve only been a subscriber for a few hours and I’m being “eliminated”? The Gestapo and the KGB didn’t work that fast.
(Reply: your continued use of pejorative labels directed at readers who only have a different scientific point of view than yours has resulted in your comments being held in moderation for approval. -mod)
Observes dumboldguy:
Well, there’s a “stopped clock” moment for dumboldguy. In that, “Our grandfathers” proved a helluva lot smarter than these religious whackjobs pushing the CO2-demonizing “man-made climate change” fraud.
The point that this arrogant putz is evading is that of the perennial knowledge problem. Those of statist inclinations (doubtless including dumboldguy, for only government-as-god idiots presume that the police power in civil society has some greater fund of knowledge and superior wisdom in all regards to undertake the foreclosure of individual human rights in pursuit of what they conjure to be “the greater good”) scrabble and squeal about how only THEY have the key to all that is of vital importance in the affairs of man, and the rest of us should just shut up and acquiesce.
The “Liberal” with political power is not only just as tyrannical as any other species of authoritarian, but far more arrogant in his willful ignorance and stupidity. ‘Cause his FEELINGS
Just as my grandfathers did not have the knowledge to anticipate the problems my generation would face in a future decades beyond their own experience, we (and I disgustedly include this dumboldguy schmuck in that “we”) don’t have the knowledge to match what our grandchildren are almost certain to acquire in the decades to come.
And yet this arrogant boob – dumboldguy – presumes to berate sensible men and women for failing to undertake the catastrophically costly and almost certainly WORTHLESS actions this ignorant putz presumes (on the basis of no argument supported by methodologically scientific validation) to be urgently necessary.
Hm. He doesn’t like Mr. Gordon’s lucidly reasoned article in The Wall Street Journal, and therefore dismisses it argumentum ad hominem, condemning Mr. Gordon as “…someone who has NO business talking about climate change,” when Mr. Gordon – as yet another human being whose rights to life, liberty, and property are under attack by dumboldguy and the other climate catastrophe quacks pushing the AGW fraud – has at least as much “skin in the game” as dumboldguy has.
And is there any indication that dumboldguy – the blathering nincompoop – any academic qualifications to be “talking about climate change”?
Not the shadow of a hint of a ghost of an intimation. And therefore to hell with him.
In our grandfathers’ and great-grandfathers’ time we had Callendar and Arrhenius, both of whom imagined AGW and thought it would be a good thing, not a problem.
Callendar lived long enough to admit that the frigid 1960s showed his hypothesis of AGW from 1938 to be false. Being a genuine scientist, he recognized when his guess had been falsified by Mother Nature.
They were however right that more CO2 is indeed a good thing, but for its fertilizing effect on plants, not from any measurable warmth.
Gloateus Maximus discusses Arrhenius and Callendar – the latter having “… lived long enough to admit that the frigid 1960s showed his hypothesis of AGW from 1938 to be false. Being a genuine scientist, he recognized when his guess had been falsified by Mother Nature.”
This is the essence of scientific method. To quote from Robert A. Heinlein’s first published story, “Life-Line” (1939):
Callendar’s comportment was that of a scrupulously honest scientist. Nothing in that regard can be said for dumboldguy, the arrogant idiot who “outed” himself in an earlier post trying to play pecker games against andersm0 (who claims “… a degree in chemical engineering that includes advanced thermo and fluid dynamics. Things like mass and energy balances, heat transfer, heat capacities…you know, all those areas of technical learning on which climate science depends.”) by posting something of his own CV:
In other words, dumboldguy is a 75+-year-old government education system bureaucrat (“educrat”) who had been one of the parasites professionally responsible for the abysmal quality of STEM instruction in the taxpayer-funded politically leftist indoctrination systems masquerading as “schools” in our republic, of which has been observed: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” (A Nation At Risk – April 1983)
Setting aside the plain fact that there is no validly supported factual basis for anything he holds with regard to the abject fraud that is the whole of the anthropogenic CO2 “global warming” premise, what are we supposed to think of dumboldguy the man? Is it argumentum ad hominem to observe – independent of the issues of substance he’s failing to address and the arrant idiocy of what he keeps fantastically asserting – that as a career educrat long past his sell-by date on any scientific study, training, or experience he’s ever had (vide his noise about how he’s been “…deeply interested in science since I was a child. I have been involved in environmental activism of one sort or another since before Earth Day,” [i.e., he’s a self-admitted Watermelon ‘viro; and ain’t that unsurprising?] and have read extensively in science (with emphasis on AGW) and the other fields I mentioned above, particularly during the 20+ years since I retired” meaning that he’s one-sidedly sucked up enough alarmist propaganda to have begun composting where he sits) – this guy is himself bereft of any qualifications to speak authoritatively on any aspect of scientific investigation in any discipline whatsoever?
Oh, this is all just too rich. Scientific method – as everyone familiar with Mr. Monckton’s explanations repeatedly appearing on WUWT knows – is, above all else, an error-checking mechanism.
For getting us the closest idea of what occurs in the phenomenal universe, how it happens and why, the rigorous application of scientific method is the single most robust approach, and nothing – most emphatically not this “Liberal” fascist retired government thug’s FEELINGS – has yet been implemented to supplant it.
Which is why the conscientiously skeptical application of scientific method to the assertions of the “climate catastrophe” charlatans has been like hydrofluouric acid applied to any other sort of pond scum.
Here we go again. Goateus misinterprets and misinforms us about what Arrhenius and Callendar said to us, but that’s irrelevant anyway since they died in 1927 and 1964. It would be interesting to hear their views if they were alive in 2015 and had seen what happened over the past 90 and 50 years regarding their theories. It is wishful thinking and even delusional to say that they would consider CO2 in 2015 to be “a good thing”. Methinks the Big Goat has been reading too much Idso.
Not to be outdone, Tucci mutters something in agreement and quotes from Heinlein. Heinlein and Asimov were my heroes back when I was a kid, and Heinlein must be spinning in his grave over how Gushi is misusing his thoughts. There is no doubt in my mind that Heinlein would not approve of Dushi or WUWT (and that is proven by his admonition to “… shun wishful thinking, avoid divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, and care not what the neighbors think…”, all of which seem to be more important to some WUWT-er’s than “fact”. He is also deluded enough to mention Monckton, another science-ignorant charlatan who has no business commenting on AGW.
I thought I read on another WUWT thread that we tried to not overly politicize the discussion here, but I guess Fushi didn’t get that memo. Just as he didn’t get the memo about using “pejoratives”. The rest of his comment is nothing but politics and “pejoratives”, and HE has the balls to say that I “fail to address issues of substance” when all he does is spout this kind of stuff?
dumboldguy, the arrogant idiot
government education system bureaucrat
one of the parasites professionally responsible for the abysmal quality of STEM
the taxpayer-funded politically leftist indoctrination systems masquerading as “schools”
“Liberal” fascist retired government thug (that’s the best one—-LMAO)
the “climate catastrophe” charlatans
trying to play pecker games against andersm0:
the abject fraud that is the whole of the anthropogenic CO2 “global warming” premise
watermelon ‘viro
I said somewhere else on WUWT that psychologists and social scientists would have a field day trying to explain what goes on here. Tucci is actually a psychologist’s wet dream—-if there are any mental health professionals out there reading his rants, I’m sure they are saying “WOW” to themselves. I certainly do.
In closing, let me point out a few of Mushi’s logic fails. He talks of my being beyond my “sell date” on scientific study, training or experience. Does he not understand that since I have been retired I now have the time to study even MORE? Is he that stupid? I read fast, and go through two or three books a week, about 1/3 of them fiction to take the edge off the “heavy” stuff. Do you read, Lucci? Do you know what a BOOK is? Do you want a recommended reading list? Or do you get all your “science” in bits and pieces from the talking point echo chambers of the right wing (D-word pejorative deleted) blogosphere? You certainly haven’t shown any science knowledge here—what’s your CV?—where did you go to school?—what did you study? The only talent I’ve seen you display here is one for slinging demented BS (and I am now measuring you for a demented rooster suit too).
As for reading only “alarmist propaganda”, I have also read books by many of the people that you worship (have you?) In fact, I became so incensed over what I read in books by Singer, Spencer, and Lomborg among others that I asked the librarian why they carried books that were scientifically incorrect. We had a heated debate in which she defended “free speech” and I defended science. I ended up telling her that these books belonged on the “politics and opinion” shelves and not in the science section. I later checked out a half dozen of the worst offenders and kept renewing them for 6 months. I was able to do so because NO ONE else wanted these books and put in a request for them.
Regarding my “activism”, yes, I have been and continue to be involved, from being the faculty sponsor for the campus chapter of the Students For Environmental Action on Earth Day One to being a signatory of an anti-nuclear power letter (from UCS, I believe) that appeared as a full page ad in the Washington Post back in the 70’s—it was signed by many Nobel Prize winners—I made it on there probably because they needed to fill the page—I was listed as “educator” and was a bit embarrassed to see my name in such company. I still belong to and contribute $$$ to many “green” organizations, sign many petitions, make many public comments to government agencies, call and write my Congressman and Senators, and many of my local government folks know who I am. What do you do by way of “activism”, Nushi, besides spout BS on WUWT?
PS If anyone is “…bereft of any qualifications to speak authoritatively on any aspect of scientific investigation in any discipline whatsoever” here, it’s not me. In my short time here, I HAVE identified some candidates that fit that description, and you’re on the top of the list..
By his own admission dumbo is a political extremist. And I know why he is so upset: he has no solid evidence to support the “dangerous AGW” (DAGW) scare. And like any other ‘fellow traveler’, he is all for censorship. When the librarian refused to pull the books he didn’t like, he did his own censoring.
It’s been a long time sine we’ve had anyone as despicable as dumbo preaching here. He would be much more at home in Venezuela or Cuba. They don’t allow free speech either.
I said that WUWT was fertile ground for anyone wanting to observe some folks who display other-than-normal psychology. Here’s DBS to prove my point.
“By his own admission dumbo is a political extremist” is a classic demonstration of “confirmation bias”—look it up. Nowhere did I “self admit” to being an “political extremist”. That’s what DBS WANTS to believe.
“I know why he is so upset” is simply projection. I am not “upset” at all. Actually I’m having a weird kind of fun here.
“he has no solid evidence to support the “dangerous AGW” (DAGW) scare. Stage one of Kubler-Ross. DBS himself doesn’t want to face the CAGW truth and is in a state of (D-word).
“And like any other ‘fellow traveler’…” more confirmation bias.
And it’s too bad GBS doesn’t really understand the concept of “censorship” and how it relates to free speech. No one is allowed to shout “FIRE” in a dark and crowded movie theater when there’s no fire just because he has a “right ” to do so and in his “opinion” it would be a fun thing to do—anyone who does that is breaking the law and their subsequent arrest does not constitute “censorship”.
Considering the seriousness of the AGW threat, charlatans like Fred, Roy, and Bjorn should not be allowed to spout bad science in the science section of the library. Those books were available to anyone who wanted to put a request on them, and I would have returned them quickly if that had happened. I DID print up a little “bad science warning” insert and tucked it in each of the books when I returned them. I asked Tutti-Frucci if he read and I’ll ask GBS the same. Here are some of the books I “censored”—have you read any of them?:
Cool It by Lomborg
Unstoppable Global Warming by Singer
Climate Confusion and Global Warming Blunder by Spencer
(The preface to the paperback edition of Blunder alone is worth the read—several jaw-dropping pages of self-serving whining by Roy about how everyone picks on him)
And “It’s been a long time since we’ve had anyone as despicable as dumbo preaching here. He would be much more at home in Venezuela or Cuba. They don’t allow free speech either”. Despicable? Venezuela or CUBA? LOL. And did you know that my mother wears combat boots?
The truth hurts, doesn’t it, dumbo?
If the library wanted to censor its books, they are the ones to decide. Not you. Because what are you, besides a failed old anarchist?
It’s a waste of time to attempt to have an intelligent conversation with DBS. His psychological handicaps are too extreme, as he proves once again with the mindless cliche “The truth hurts, doesn’t it?”, and the moronic “failed old anarchist”. And that’s on top of his previous mention of “political extremist”, “fellow traveler”, and “Venezuela-Cuba”.
I am concerned that if GBS keeps pulling stuff like that out of his anal orifice and posting it here, he is going to hurt himself. Preparation H will only go so far, DBS, and you are overdoing it. You can have the last words now—-if you ever want to talk with me about anything of substance, I’ll be waiting..
Dumbo, every label applied to you is based upon what you yourself admitted here, no more and no less. I have nothing else to go on.
And your response (Preparation H, anal orifice) is just a bunch of insulting words that mean nothing to me. Pejoratives run off my back here; they have no more effect than a rainstorm to a duck). But that’s all you’ve got. You don’t deny those labels because they’re based on what you have already admitted.
As a climate activist, I would prefer to discuss whatever ‘science’ you might believe. Because I don’t think you can make a case here. If you could, you would have.
But feel free to try. I’m always willing to discuss facts and evidence.
As I said, I gave you the last word here. It’s a shame you wasted it. Bye.
From the ever-more-contemptible dumboldguy – who recapitulates from my earlier post a litany of his character traits and qualifications:
…in a sort of parody gnothi seauton exercise – we get a welter of spew that (like we should be surprised?) skids all over its vomitous viscosity without even skipping past a few points remotely pertinent to either the particular issue at hand or the noise about putatively adverse increases in global atmospheric temperatures as the result of the anthropogenic increase in a trace gas, carbon dioxide.
Proving that he is way the hell beyond his “sell date” on scientific study, training or experience, dumboldguy also demonstrates that if he’d ever had any instruction in formal logic or lucid reasoning, such capacities as that education had been meant to foster long ago died of disuse. F’rinstance, the frabjous idiot blathers that:
…failing to comprehend that it’s not what (or how much) one claims to have eyetracked but what one takes from the reading accomplished. It’s not what you read, dumboldguy, but what you can cite (always attributing quotations to permit your reader to follow for the sake of context and completeness).
dumboldguy, have you ever written for publication in a referee’d (“peer-reviewed”) periodical? Had you defended a thesis in pursuit of your claimed Master’s degree in Biology? Or otherwise brought a monograph or research report – or heck, a review paper – through editorial challenge?
Echo answereth not, and were we to get some claim of such work back from this ijjit, it really wouldn’t tell us anything. The habits of thought needed to meet such standards in reasoned dispute are without evidence in anything this flaming putz has posted on this Web site.
Egad, have you ever engaged in competitive debate? In my high school National Forensic League days, I would’ve drooled over the prospect of getting a mental train wreck like you on the opposing side.
That brief quotation from Heinlein’s “Life-Line” (1939) regarding the difference between the scientific and the scholastic – not to mention his later Get the facts! admonition – went over your echoing skull like escaping steam, for all your burble about how Heinlein had been one of “…my heroes back when I was a kid.” Not surprising that you learned nothing from reading him, thereby proving that it’s not what one reads, but what one takes away from it.
(By the bye, Heinlein’s grave is the Pacific Ocean. He was cremated, and the remains were scattered at sea. Same for Ginny when she passed away in 2003.)
He admits:
Well, well. Have we any doubt that dumboldguy has long since earned himself a special place in the pantheon of leftard ‘viro whackjobbery?
Just as an interesting aside, I was first alerted to the whole preposterous “man-made global warming” bogosity in 1981, while I was corresponding with retired engineering professor Petr Beckmann, author of The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear (1977), an analysis which makes the case for nuclear fission as the safest and most reliable category of large-scale electrical power generation systems required to sustain an industrial civilization. Dr. Beckmann sent me some clippings about AGW that he’d photocopied, and he asked me what I thought of the notion.
On the basis of nothing more than what any other country G.P. might know of chemistry and physics, I wrote back: “I think these guys have overestimated the potential greenhouse gas effect of CO2 on the Earth’s atmosphere by at least three orders of magnitude.” I then dismissed it as yet another blunder being hyped by the ex-Journalism majors over whose drunken bodies I’d had to step on Sunday mornings, getting out of the dormitory to tend my projects in the science building.
Beckmann’s Health Hazards is yet another book dumboldguy shows no indication of having read. But would it do this head-wedged schmuck any good if he had?
Even more damning, we get from this arrogant ignoramus his prideful squeal:
Ah, the voice of the Caliph Omar in that apocryphal account of how the Library of Alexandria came to its final immolation (“If these agree with the One Book, they are unnecessary. If they are contrary to the One Book, they are harmful. In either case therefore, let them be burned.”)
The religious impulse in the fanatic Watermelon. How “Liberal.” Indeed, how fascist.
dumboldguy
November 10, 2015 at 9:05 am
How exactly do you imagine that I misinformed anyone about Arrhenius and Callendar? And how does there being dead make them irrelevant?
Please state how you suppose I misinformed. Did both scientists not regard putative AGW as beneficial? Did Callendar not consider his hypothesis falsified by the extreme winters of the early 1960s?
I didn’t even bother to mention how Arrhenius got the GHE wrong.
GM,
Yes, I’d thought of some of those replies, too. Arrhenius recanted his earlier estimates of the sensitivity number. Now even the IPCC’s low end guestimate is pretty close to Arrhenius’ final calculation.
But dumb-old isn’t interested in discussing science. He’s a political activist, that’s all.