"But Global Warming is a HOAX!!!"

[Pixel42]

But not soon enough. And there are plenty of them where they came from.

True, but I still laugh when I think of Richard Muller and the Berkeley Earth project.

 

[wobs]

To stay within the medical analogy, it's more as if the fossil-fuel industry has put on the gowns of doctors and is telling people not to believe in the unambiguous, well-documented medical diagnosis.
See post 244:



Big Oil is the quack killing people while telling them that science can't be trusted.

ClimateTown did a good film on this. He probably isn't for everyone, but it's worth a watch

 

[dann]

True, but I still laugh when I think of Richard Muller and the Berkeley Earth project.

Why? (I'm not familiar with them.)

 

[Pixel42]

Why? (I'm not familiar with them.)

The short version: a climatologist who had expressed scepticism about the accuracy of the work of Mann et al was funded (mostly by deniers) to prove it wrong. He went back to the raw data, analysed it diligently, and proved it right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth

 

[dann]

ClimateTown did a good film on this. He probably isn't for everyone, but it's worth a watch

Definitely! Great video. And it delivers something that a book or an article can't.
No wonder that that Republicans always suspect everybody else of being crisis actors.

It's one of those YouTube videos that one shouldn't merely listen to as if it were a podcast. (Which I often do.)

 

[dann]

The short version: a climatologist who had expressed scepticism about the accuracy of the work of Mann et al was funded (mostly by deniers) to prove it wrong. He went back to the raw data, analysed it diligently, and proved it right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth

Not the only time something like that has happened. More cases are mentioned in The Parrot and the Igloo.
It has also happened to some creationists doing actual research.
Or all the tobacco studies that just weren't published ...

 

[catsmate]

I give an amount of care about cyclist scofflaws proportional to the potential harm that cycling traffic accidents inflict upon the public, which compared to cars is practically negligible.

It's amusing that car drivers get so bent out of shape about scofflaw cyclists. Driving a 1.5 ton motorized vehicle carries a lot more scrutiny than riding down the street on a 20lb bike and it's totally unreasonable to expect otherwise. It's absolutely appropriate to heavily police car driving and not to give a **** about a cyclist blowing through a stop sign or pedestrians jay walking.

I was speaking from the pedestrian point of view Who are at risk from cretins on bikes who ignore such minor details as traffic lights, I find a steel tipped umbrella an invaluable companion.

 

[catsmate]

D'Oh.

 

[catsmate]

You know all those youtube clips of dickheads running red lights in CARS and crashing?

Those dickheads ride bicycles too.

They're literally the same people.

I know this because I've been on the boards of a couple of cycling organisations, and found via internal surveys that the cyclists who run red lights etc. behave exactly the same way in their cars.

Also it's extremely rare for an adult cyclist to not also be a driver.

(And the ones that are have often lost their drivers licenses for... you guessed it, traffic violations.)

So the answer is better education for all road users, who'd a thunk it?

Indeed. Last week I was almost hit by an idiot in a car who ignored a red light when passing over a short bridge. I stopped, glared at her and ostentatiously took pictures of her vehicle's reg plate, it's position in relation to the stop line and light and her face. These have been passed on to the Gardai.

 

[catsmate]

Here is another idea from an email I was sent.
Someone might interpret this?

James Hansen, one of the early voices on climate, says that measures to mitigate the crisis may now, ironically, be contributing to it. He published a working paper this spring suggesting that a reduction in sulfate aerosol particles—or the air pollution associated with burning coal and the global shipping industry—has contributed to warmer temperatures. That’s because these particles cause water droplets to multiply, which brightens clouds and reflects solar heat away from the planet’s surface. Though the paper has not been peer-reviewed, Hansen predicts that environmentally minded policies to reduce these pollutants will likely cause temperatures to rise by 2 degrees Celsius by 2050.

Not a new idea. White paint is probably better.

 

[catsmate]

You know, if you really wanted to know the answer to such questions - which I don't imagine for a moment you do - you could look them up for yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_climate_cycles

 

[catsmate]

Whew its all a false alarm. The BBC made a typo, and a politician said something dumb, we can continue on with our heads buried in the sand.

It's the best the reality deniers have got.

 

[dann]

Well, seems the best one can say about them is they're both dead.

This one's still alive, albeit not a scientist: Jim Tozzi (Wikipedia):

His partner for many years was Thorne G. Auchter and they ran two main lobbying organisations, Federal Focus and Multinational Business Services.
These two lobbying operations worked for both the chemical and the tobacco industries for many years. Philip Morris renewed their request for a tax-free gift of $200,000 each year.

About Tozzi and Auchter:

... they joined forces in about 1990 to establish Federal Focus and a year or so later they set up Multinational Business Services which Auchter mainly fronted. They also established and ran a pseudo-scientific operation with the name Institute for Regulatory Policy.
(...)
Tozzi and Auchter were quite blatant in their use of their so-called non-profit organisations to provide richly rewarding lobbying services to the tobacco industry and Philip Morris (and probably other chemical companies) were willing to pay.
Federal Focus (Wikipedia)

CRE was formed by former career officials of the White House Office of Management and Budget. The head of the firm is Jim Tozzi.
It has been criticised as a front organisation for industries which seek to undermine the regulatory process, notably by Chris C. Mooney in his book The Republican War on Science.
Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (Wikipedia)

It is astonishing how intertwined Big Tobacco's and Big Oil's interests are when it comes to spreading lies about things that kill people and ruin the planet, and how they manage to stay hidden. Wikipedia doesn't even have a page about Multinational Business Services. (The Parrot and the Igloo, p. 288:"His company was called Multinational Business Services. Because why broadcast the objective to every yokel on the ground?")
It also amazes me how little of this has found its way into Wikipedia's page about Jim Tozzi.
At first glance, he looks like a pretty respectable guy ...

From The Parrot and the Igloo, p. 290 (notice that Dr. Seitz appears again):

He recommended Philip Morris donate to Dr. Seitz's Marshall Institute. But please - for appearances' sake - for all good reasons of safe financial conduct, route it through Jim Tozzi.
This is why deniers can often say they are "not supported by" or "receive fonds from" industry. The money heads out on a little transalpine adventure, like a deserter in Hemingway. Exits the corporations, swaps passports and cools its heels at a mountain lodge like Jim Tozzi's Federal Focus, before hiking down into the denier's bank account. It was by this route, Tozzi told Philip Morris, that denial groups like the Marshall Institute retained their "considerable credibility". (...)
As Vanity Fair's Mark Hertsgaard wrote, Dr. Seitz gave both denials - climate and tobacco - "scientific respectability" and "instance credibility".

 

[lomiller]

Why? (I'm not familiar with them.)

Richard Muller was a physicist, but not a climatologist who had bought into the notion that the instrumental temperature record was being fudged with various adjustments and that the Earth isn't really warming at all. The adjustments in question are there to cover things like weather stations being moved or replaced, their temperature sensors being replaced, changes in the time of day measurements are take, and so on. IOW they clearly ARE required.

Muller and his team set out to create a new record called "BEST" that didn't include any adjustments that he believed were skewing the record and "creating" warming when no real global warming existed. For several years the climate change deniers funding his work were buzzing about how he would "prove global warming isn't real"

After 3 years of work and research into the issues around assembling a global temperature record it came time to publish his final results and they turned out to show exactly the same thing everyone else working on the subject had arrived at. To his credit he published his results and while somewhat redundant BEST is actually a quality product.

Of course the climate deniers that had been funding and supporting him immediately turned on him and began attacking him at every possible turn.

 

[Glunn11]

The main thread on climate change is in the Science forum. It's most recent continuation is here:

For a long time it was the only thread on the subject permitted (for easier policing by the mods) but that rule was eased some time ago. We used to get quite a few outright deniers here, but they either got banned or ran away.

Not sure what you mean about the LDS being right, they're provably wrong about most of their distinguishing beliefs. Not actively denying the obvious facts about climate change isn't much to set against that.

Thanks Pixel! I'll slowly digest what's in that one.

I apologize for my poorly constructed sardonic joke. I meant it to be a jab at them being the "we're in the latter days" Jesus cult (which I grew up in for 15 years before I got the cajones to get out)... and obviously they were and continue to be full of hooey.

It's just that, as a kid, because of the religion, I was constantly afraid that Jesus was going to come back and end life as I knew it. I prayed any time I saw a blood red sun or moon. So it's just a little funny to me that, hey, we actually have a nonzero chance of seeing the secular version of what they've made their central thesis over centuries. And I am morbidly curious how they'll react as things progress. Hopefully from a distance.

Anyway, thanks again.

 

[dann]

Richard Muller was a physicist, but not a climatologist who ...

Thank you.
I searched for Richard Muller's name in The Parrot and the Igloo. He is mentioned towards the end, on p. 465. (I'm only on p. 313).
He was contacted by Anthony Watts (Wikipedia):

Berkeley's Richard Muller is a physicist and MacArthur Award winner: an official genius. He was also a climate skeptic- Muller did not believe climate warming was caused by human.
Dr Muller accepted startup funds from the mischievous, fuel-loving Koch brothers, then undertook a massive reinvestigation of the temperature record. (International news: "Can a Group of Scientists in California End the War on Climate Change?") Dr. S. Fred Singer was located, plugged in, booted back up, to declare Muller's project "what needs to be done." Anthony Watts promised, "I'm prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong."
In 2011, Muller and his team announced results to Congress. Climate warming was caused by humans.
Anthony Watts now called the work "incomplete," "error-riddled," and "non-quality controlled." When a journalist reported this story, Watts sent a wounded letter - asking, essentially, what was up with that? "Was your intent simply to add [to] the injury done to me by Dr. Muller?"
Muller published a long essay next summer in the New York Times: "The Conversion of a Climate Change Skeptic."

The Conversion of a Climate Change Skeptic (NYT, July 28, 2012)

 

[novaphile]

I'm a long time basically-virgin lurker, so I apologize for my inability to link anything. But we're, to my eye, clearly on the threshold of irreversible chaos. South Florida ocean surface temps hit 100°F today. Antarctic Sea Ice extent is in freefall relative even to recent years. GOP and Fox News are already starting to retcon their stance on global warming. I think that is the biggest red flag of them all, edging out even the fact that Florida and Louisiana are hemorrhaging insurers like my great state of Idaho is hemorrhaging obstetricians.

It feels surreal, really. I haven't gotten to the grief stage yet, and of course I'll be happy if something swoops in and saved the day, but I am mentally preparing myself for the worst as best I can.

I can't believe all the members of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints© who are currently alive are actually right this time. Should SHTF I probably should get away from the big cult nearby... or no? Hm.

It's probably extremely earnest and totally off-brand for this board, but I am concerned about the lack of engagement on this topic, unless there's another thread? Like, I want to say that I'm being a doomer or whatever but I just do not understand how you can objectively look at what we're seeing this summer and thinking that we're not going to suffer soon. And it feels palpably urgent in the midst of all the OTHER sh*shows we have going on concurrently.

Anyway, hope everyone is doing all right here and continue to do so for a long time yet. Thanks for letting me share a completely unsourced reply in my quest to finally hit 15 posts.

OK. Good news and bad news.

Good news, a lot of things are predicted for 2050 and beyond, so while doom is coming, hopefully you won't just wake up under water in the middle of a wildfire.

Bad news, some of the effects are already influencing large food producing areas and are causing mass migrations.

Other good news, some people, no doubt including other members of this forum, have made significant efforts to reduce their impact on climate change throughout their lives.

There is always time for more people to do that.

(I'm one of those people, in case that's not obvious).

Approximately 30 years of riding bicycles, walking or using public transport to get to work.
Solar panels, electric car, insulated my home, installed double glazing, growing food locally...

(I'd go on, but the list is ridiculously long and I get pretty embarrassed about it.)



My local council gave me an award for 'living sustainably' which was kinda cute.

I'll give you the same advice that I give others, find something that you can do personally and over time add other things eventually it's all just how you live.

And if you find anyone that says things like "environmentalists want everyone to live in caves and die at 35" cheerfully ignore them.

 

[dann]

Sorry, but I have been riding bikes since I was five or six and never stopped. I never owned a car, and I don't even have a driver's license for one, but I do have a motorcycle and ride it in season. The doubte-glazing windows were installed when I inherited my flat.

But I can't claim that I ever did any of those things for the sake of the environment. As I have mentioned in the posts about bicycling, I do it because it has been made practical and convenient to get around in this way.

I don't think it's expedient to attempt to live environmentally responsibly on an individual basis in a society based on the use of fossil fuels where the oil industry and manufacturers of gas guzzlers continue to promote oil consumption (also by lying about it and buying 'scientists' and politicians to lie about it) and where there are ******** like this one:

Sorting one's garbage and only taking cold showers for a year is cancelled out a thousand times every minute his private jet is in the air.

There is no individual, responsible solution to global warming. At best (and worst), it only contributes to making people feel good about themselves and their imagined contribution. The collective solution is to put a stop to the villains mentioned above.
When that goal has been achieved, it begins to make sense to live environmentally responsibly.

 

[dann]

The chapter Weather Turns the Mild into Weather Gods, p. 330-340 in The Parrot and the Igloo, is almost like reading the chapter in 1984 describing the protagonist's job as an editor at Minitrue (Wikipedia).

The main villain (in real life, not in the novel) is this guy, who edited climate reports for the (second) Bush administration:
Philip Cooney (Wikipedia)
Also at Sourcewatch - The Center for Media and Democracy.

The Guardian wrote about him June 9, 2005:

The newly released documents, printed in New York Times, show handwritten notes by Mr Cooney deleting paragraphs and editing others drafted by government scientists.
He inserted "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties" in a section assessing the solidity of the evidence for climate change.
Mr Cooney also introduced the word "extremely" to the sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."

The book has other examples of changes to science reports made by Cooney:

Incoming would be, "Reduce the causes or effects of human-induced climate change." and outgoing would be much the sam - but with human-induced deleted. In a sense, problem solved. People no longer changed their climate.
Some stuff he just cut. "Energy production contributes to warming" - gone. "Use of fossil fuels" gone. He was, loyally, the former leader of oil's Climate Team. Other stuff he'd slip in. "The uncertainties remain so great as to preclude meaningfully informed decision making." Left alone, this mild man grew the bravery of a conquistador.
Sometimes his changes were so bald-faced as to be fun. "Delete 'disaster reduction,'" he'd write, "replace with 'opportunities.' ... Delete 'famine,' replace with 'impacts.' ... Delete 'human actions.' ... Delete 'knowledge.'" (p. 326)

The stuff these ******** got away with - and are still getting away with.

 

[wobs]

Sorting one's garbage and only taking cold showers for a year is cancelled out a thousand times every minute his private jet is in the air.

There is no individual, responsible solution to global warming. At best (and worst), it only contributes to making people feel good about themselves and their imagined contribution. The collective solution is to put a stop to the villains mentioned above.
When that goal has been achieved, it begins to make sense to live environmentally responsibly.

I very much agree. We have to decarbonise the system in which we live. Be it energy supply, urban design, or supply chain issues etc.