>> Why the blind spot for one area of scientific endeavour >> and >> *apparent* shilling to the media circus is puzzling. And >> why >> reasonable discussion on a vexed subject is not felt >> permissible is also puzzling. The treatment of this >> subject >> comes exceeding close to the "Where they are burning >> books, >> soon they will be burning men" of another era. Already we >> have the (stupid) label "Global warming denier" and >> people's >> careers are damaged if they don't follow the party line. >> Big >> financial interests are undeniably at work. Saving the >> planet can be a very profitable business if you sing the >> right tune. > A scientist can also damage his career by insisting the > world is flat. Indeed. But there is a vast body of high precision evidence that can be replicated experimentally at will. About 99.9999% of anyone in the range of normal (or maybe make that the upper half of the range of normal)(a rather wide range) will be willing and able to wade through the ecidence and arrive at the same conclusion inconrovertibly and incontroversally. Whereas: > There is a huge scientific body of evidence for global > warming. Indeed there is. It clearly happens daily and annually. And "climate change" (CC) as oppoed to Global Warming (GW) happens all over all the time on all sorts of geographic and temporal scales. No argument about that. AND there is little doubt that there are periods when the system as a whole generally gets hotter AFTER the known cyclical variations are allowed for - over months to years and centuries and more. BUT it is by no means clear by any reasonable meaning of the term "clear" what is causing how much of the change over any period. If you dig behind recent IPCC news you'll find some utterly astounding comments from one of its chief architects who is currently distancing himself from some of the more dangerous past positions. As I referenced recently, a major climate model (or perhaps better 'reporting methodology') had a major error which went unnoticed until the end of last year. A year or so ago it caused the graphs to show an anomalous upturn that was reported as an indication that things were happening as expected. At around the 2007-2008 boundary the same error caused a substantial anomalous downturn and as this was not what was wanted or expected the reasons were investigated and the methodology error was found. This fact has been admitted by the IPCC scientist concerned. And he is now carefully backing away from past positions. He is much more open and honest than many. As I referenced: In the midst of reportedly unprecedented [except historically] upsurges in global temperatures it is interesting that recent NASA Satellite data has shown that Antarctic melting is at the second to lowest value in 20 years, 40% of the 20 year average and more than 4 time slower than in several equivalent seasons in the last 20. One Swallow etc. BUT at least a little intelligent questioning is in order. > It is > studied by a vast array of people from all sorts of > fields, all kinds of > colleges in all kinds of countries and it is generally > agreed upon (except > for a small minority and you ALWAYS have them) to be real > and something > that needs to be stopped or figure out how to deal with > the results. The minority is not "small" as would be expected to be meant by that term. BUT it is not easy to identify the size - "Reputable" peer reviewed journals decline to publish analyses of such matters - even when within the normal publishing guidelines. > I can not belive that there is some huge, global > conspiracy secretely > funding all these people.. and that the only ones who are > speaking the > truth are think tanks and a few people who are funded > by... ahem.. big > energy corporations. And that is a major problem. The 'conspiracies' (not my terminology) don't seem to need to be very secret to be invisible to most who won't look for them. Or at them. I am NOT claiming secrte conspiracies here - just good old visible vested interest, just as you are. Is my persepective "conspiracy theory" and yours rational thinking for some reason? Gargoyle +"carbon trading" (549,000) and +"carbon credits" (703,000), +"emissions trading" (1280000). Look at the Gargoyle ads that pop up in each case. Look through the material you find in web hits and ads. How many are interested in the impact of CO2 etc on climate? How many are interested in it as 'the next big thing' to trade and make money on? Look for lectures on carbon trading and similar. Look at the motivations announced and the reasons that you should attend. Report back. > Lets see, why might they want to spend millions > trying to confuse the subject? Who made tens of billions > in profit this > year that would be threatened if we started to conserve or > find alternate > energy sources? I have slightly more time for 'big oil' than I do for cigarette companies. Slightly. And they so obviously promote vested interestes that it is hardly worth saying. And certainlt not worth hiding behind. If one's best defence is to point to an obvious vested interest and claim that it proves your case then you are on shaky ground. Neither carbon trading nor oil interestes prove or disprove GW - they just help muddy the waters. If you use either one (or both) as your lodestone you will be lead quietly off into a place where you can do no harm, or good. > Cherry-picking your data isn't a good method for getting > to the truth. I agree absolutely. And it happens all over. Human nature and vested interest ensures it. As I pointed out, to an audience of about none, a while ago - when the IPCC repeatedly could not make their data fit their target position for some years they firstly vagueified the wording and then, in a fit of brilliance, moved the goalposts. Making the goalposts come to the data is a far far better way of getting it to say what you want than by cherrypicking. Now the large part of IPCC data fits their assertions whereas previously, *NONE* of it did to a standard of measurement that has been the scientific norm for centuries. > There is a huge, HUGE amount of work that confirms what is > going on. > I can say, "But my room is COOL when I run my air > conditioner so global > warming is a myth. I assume you don't need a response to that ... > I can point to the oil indurstry as being behind the > majority of > publications saying global warming is not happening. A > small amount of > digging will show you where the money comes from. Can you > do the same? Maybe. Maybe not. I am not overly concerned WHERE money comes from as long as the data, methods and results are open to inspection. It helps get going on the right path to know who the sponsors are, but hopefully most interested have enough brains to tell if there is significant bias. Conclusions alone are a good first guide of possible bias. One can work from there. Not that it SHOULD be that way. > Who is funding these thousands of scientists you say are > part of this > conspiracy? What companies are behind it and why? A look at the way that the IPCC came into existence and where it sits in the international 'power structure' gives some clues of how it got the leverage it did. But there doesn't have to be a vast secret funding netwrok involved. Just lots of prestige and power at the core (more important than funds to an important subset) and then lots of funds. The funds don't have to be secret. Just conditional. The machine becomes self perpetuating. What's the odds that the value of "carbon credits" utterly swamps the values of vested oil interests. If the values of each are even vaguely comparable the battle is joined. How does eg Indonesia stand to gain from this? http://www.rainforestcoalition.org/documents/CarboncreditsabigearnerforIndonesia.pdf $39 Billion per annum ? !!!!!!!! How does that, for one country, line up against oil companty vested interests? (The writer notes that that value may be high - it may only be $10 billion pa) Carbon trading is predicted by some (what would I know) to be a $1 Trillion market by about 2020. Is that enough vested interest to allow us to dispense with that aspect and allow us to focus on the technical merits of the question? 1. Anthropogenic induced Global Warming is happening. 2. Anthropogenic induced Global Warming may or may not be a or the major contributor to GW as a whole. 3. We may be doing irrevocable, or revocable or relatively little harm with CO2 emissions - or even doing net good! We can't tell which is what or what is which or ... because we don't know enough. We need to know more. We need to work out how to know more and do it. 4. While we are finding out if what we are doing matters we should take steps to do as well as we can in the interim as otherwise we may pass the point of no return while we are still finding out. 5. Putting money in people's pockets for doing spurious things which may or may not help reduces the net avail;ability of funds to do known useful things or to find out more asap. We should try and minimise stupidity and maximise useful expenditure of funds. Do we really think that differently on this? Russell -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist