The Exxon “Blame-Game” is a Distracting Side Show
Much media attention has relentlessly focused on the influence of “Big Oil”—but the numbers don’t add up. Exxon Mobil is still vilified1 for giving around 23 million dollars, spread over roughly ten years, to skeptics of the enhanced greenhouse effect. It amounts to about $2 million a year, compared to the US government input of well over $2 billion a year. The entire total funds supplied from Exxon amounts to less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.
Apparently Exxon was heavily “distorting the debate” with a mere 0.8% of what the US government spent on the climate industry each year at the time. (If so, it’s just another devastating admission of how effective government funding really is.)
As an example for comparison, nearly three times the amount Exxon has put in was awarded to the Big Sky sequestration project2 to store just 0.1% of the annual carbon-dioxide output3 of the United States of America in a hole in the ground. The Australian government matched five years of Exxon funding with just one feel-good advertising campaign4 , “Think Climate. Think Change.” (but don’t think about the details).
Perhaps if Exxon had balanced up its input both for and against climate change, it would have been spared the merciless attacks? It seems not, since it has donated more than four times as much to the Stanford-based Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP).5, 6 Exxon’s grievous crime is apparently just to help give skeptics a voice of any sort. The censorship must remain complete.
The vitriol against Exxon reached fever pitch in 2005-2008. Environmental groups urged a boycott of Exxon for its views on Global Warming7. It was labeled An Enemy of the Planet. 8 James Hansen called for CEOs of fossil energy companies to be “tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”9 In the next breath he mentioned Exxon.
Even The Royal Society, which ought to stand up for scientists and also for impeccable standards of logic, joined the chorus to implore Exxon to censor its speech10. The unprecedented letter from the 350-year-old institution listed multiple appeals to authority, but no empirical evidence to back its claim that a link with carbon and temperature was beyond doubt and discussion. The Royal Society claims that it supports scientists, but while it relies on the fallacious argument from authority how will it ever support whistle-blowers who by definition question “authority?”
The irony is that taxpayers’ money is forcibly removed at the point of a gun†, but Exxon has to earn its money through thousands of voluntary transactions.
While Exxon has been attacked repeatedly for putting this insignificant amount of money forward, few have added up the vested interests that are pro-AGW. Where are the investigative journalists? Money that comes from tax-payers is somehow devoid of corrupting incentives; while any money from Big Oil in a free market for ideas, is automatically a “crime”. The irony is that taxpayers’ money is forcibly removed at the point of a gun†, but Exxon has to earn its money through thousands of voluntary transactions.
Those who attack Exxon over just $2 million a year are inadvertently drawing attention away from the real power play and acting as unpaid PR agents for giant trading houses and large banks, which could sit a little uncomfortably with greenies and environmentalists. After all, on other days, some of these same groups throw rocks at big bankers.
The side show of blaming Big Oil hides the truth: that the real issue is whether there is any evidence, and that the skeptics are a grassroots movement that consists of well respected scientists and a growing group of unpaid volunteers.
References
1. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/exxon-secrets. Wall St Journal “Climate Of Fear”, April 12, 2006. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220.
2. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/exxon-secrets.
3. Big Sky Sequestration Project, http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/press/2008/08059-DOE_Makes_Sequestration_Award.html.
4. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/co2report.html#table_1.
5. The Australian: Rudd advertising campaign on climate change cost $13.9 million, 7 Jan 2009, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24883515-11949,00.html.
6. Exxon = oil, g*dammit!, by Geoff Colvin, Fortune Magazine. April 23 2007. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/30/8405398/index2.htm.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/february25/exxon-022509.html.
7. Environmental Groups Planning to Urge Boycott of Exxon Mobil July 12, 2005. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A04E4DF133DF931A25754C0A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&scp=5&sq=Exxon%20skeptic%20climate&st=cse.
8. Enemy of The Planet, Paul Krugman, April 17, 2006. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407EEDD173FF934A25757C0A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=&&scp=3&sq=Exxon%20skeptic%20climate&st=cse.
9. Are Big Oil and Big Coal Climate Criminals? New York Times, June 23 2008 http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/are-big-oil-and-big-coal-climate-criminals/?scp=10&sq=Exxon%20skeptic%20climate%20royal%20society&st=cse.
10. Letter from Bob Ward of The Royal Society to Exxon, 4 Sept, 2006. http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2006/09/19/LettertoNick.pdf.
† This is not an exaggeration. Try “not paying” taxes.
Climate Money: PARTS 1- 4.
1. Climate Money Massive Funding Exposed.
2. How auditing of the Climate Industry is mostly left to volunteers.
3. How the monopolistic funding ratchet slows scientific progress.
4. Why blaming Exxon is a smoke screen to disguise the real vested interests. (You are on this page).
I guess Exxon is to blame for my views, too. After all, I
accepted moneyworked at an Exxon filling station over 40 years ago.Report this
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That letter from Bob Ward of the RS left me furious. How could such a venerable institution have sunk so low? If I were Nick Thomas of Esso I would have told Bob ward of the RS in no uncertain terms where to stick his opinions. But then again, I’m just a humble physicist, not a Director of Corporate Affairs or a Manager of Policy Communication, so what do I know about the science of climate change?
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Ice may just have, just maybe…. have stopped melting.. (unlikely but possible)
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi_ice_area.png
The agw response to this will be fascinating
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Good post, Joanne! They pass the blame to anyone except themselves.
VG,post 3, why bring up something that the Alarmist use in there propaganda! The Arctic Ice waxes and wanes every year. Some more than others. It’s been proven since man has been going up there! The Arctic doesn’t have the convenience of land under it so it is affected by a lot of different sources! The only issue is what’s causing temperature to rise slowly over the years. It is not CO2! I’m sure it’s, in my opinion, that it has multiple sources. For this is how Climate Change operates. A multitude of inputs, to which Man has just begun to understand!
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Meanwhile…
Court documents show that the carbon fuel industry knew that CO2 caused global warming more than a dozen years ago, yet they’ve lied about it.
“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the
potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse
gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and
cannot be denied,” the [industry] experts wrote in an
internal report compiled for the [global climate] coalition in 1995.
The situation closely parallels the history of the tobacco lobby, which for years wrote in internal documents that
smoking caused cancer, yet created advertising claiming that there was no tobacco cancer link.
- – - – - – - – - –
From the New York Times:
In 1995, the Global Climate Coalition, an industry-financed group
challenging efforts to negotiate a new climate treaty or legislation,
sought advice on the latest climate science from its committee of
advisers on science and technology. The resulting internal document,
“Predicting Future Climate Change: A Primer,” challenged recent
research hinting that human-caused global warming was already
measurable. But it rejected a variety of what it called “contrarian”
arguments against the basic concept that accumulating heat-trapping
emissions would substantially warm the planet. The coalition,
according to other documents, later requested that the section of the
primer endorsing the basics of global warming science be cut.
http://documents.nytimes.com/global-climate-coalition-aiam-climate-change-primer#p=1
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Its curious that a CO2 molecule produced by the purposeful action of man is supposed to have many thousands of times the impact on Global Warming as a naturally produced and totally indistinguishable CO2 molecule.
Its also curious that a dollar spent from a private source who earned that dollar is supposed to have many thousands of times the impact of that self same dollar taken in taxes and spent by a government.
Absurd you say? Determine what the absurdity accomplishes and you will have found its purpose.
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Man Made Global Warming (AGW) is a position that calls a gas called CO2 a pollutant, but actually it is plant food and is naturally released every second in volcanoes along the edges of tectonic plates of the continents as well as in forest fires started by lightning strike.
It is position that started with “Global Warming” but changed the term to “Climate Change” when the trend is for cooling.
It is a position that states the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere as 380 ppm, never as 0.038%.
It is a position that plots the mean global temperature graph with the integer parts chopped off and called anomalies in order to magnify the temperature variation to give the incorrect perception of larger temperature variation (like looking at a profile of a surface through a magnifying glass).
It is a position that believes in global warming because the global temperature increased by 0.8 deg C in hundred years. However, if you start from 130 years ago, from 1878, the increase is only 0.33 deg C.
AGW is just belief without evidence.
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Grima – Man Made Global Warming (AGW) is a position that calls a gas called CO2 a pollutant, but actually it is plant food
So is phosphorus and nitrogen, yet phosphates and nitrates are universally recognised as being pollutants when deposited in unnatural concentrations by man. Which is by the was why the EPA has determined that CO2 is a pollutant that manifests immediate danger to the public health and safety.
Grima – and is naturally released every second in volcanoes along the edges of tectonic plates of the continents as well as in forest fires started by lightning strike.
Except In any given year, all of the worlds volcanoes produce less than 1% of the CO2 that man produces. http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2007/07_02_15.html
Grima – It is position that started with “Global Warming” but changed the term to “Climate Change” when the trend is for cooling.
Except in the scientific community, it’s always been referred to as “Climate Change”. It’s a term that has greater precision to reflect the fact that some regions will change differently than others. Oh by the way, when in its 20 years history was the IPCC “Intergovernmental panel on climate change” called the IPGW “Intergovernmental panel on Global Warming”? Hmmm?
Grima – It is a position that states the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere as 380 ppm, never as 0.038%.
Oh I see, in your little dream world, even the unit of measure for CO2 concentration was invented in furtherance of a global scoialist conspiracy. Hilarious!
Grima – It is a position that plots the mean global temperature graph with the integer parts chopped off and called anomalies in order to magnify the temperature variation to give the incorrect perception of larger temperature variation (like looking at a profile of a surface through a magnifying glass).
Oh, and the graph plotters are in on it too.
Grima – It is a position that believes in global warming because the global temperature increased by 0.8 deg C in hundred years. However, if you start from 130 years ago, from 1878, the increase is only 0.33 deg C.
0.74`C increase since Industrialisation to be precise, and within the next 20 years, global temperatures will be higher than at any time for the last several hundred thousand years. And we will have made that change in less than 200 years.
Grima – AGW is just belief without evidence.
No evidence other than the observed warming of the earth, the observed increase in Co2 levels, 200 years of science connecting the two, the observed acidification of the worlds oceans, the observed melting of both polar ice caps, the observed melting of the Greenland ice cap, the observed warming of the earth’s oceans, the observed alteration in the onset of the climatological seasons, the observed retreat of virtually all mountain glaciers world wide, etc. etc. etc. But yep, you are absolutely right. AGW is just a belief when you omit all the evidence.
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How do you know the earth is warmer?
Someone from the government told you so.
What else did they tell you?
What have they ever said to inspire trust, that you have such faith in their word today?
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Daemon:
CO2 is not in “unnatural concentrations” in the atmosphere; therefore it should not be labelled a pollutant.
“and within the next 20 years, global temperatures will be higher than at any time for the last several hundred thousand years”. So you can predict the future? I suggest you see what Piers Corbyn, who uses physics and science and has a much better grasp of predicting the future, has to say about your nonsense prediction. Presumably your nonsense is based on some computer model, not the laws of physics.
Your last paragraph is just more nonsense, not worth refuting. It’s all natural climate change, not CO2.
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Daemon:
CO2 is not in “unnatural concentrations” in the atmosphere; therefore it should not be labelled a pollutant.
“and within the next 20 years, global temperatures will be higher than at any time for the last several hundred thousand years”. So you can predict the future? I suggest you see what Piers Corbyn, who uses physics and science and has a much better grasp of predicting the future, has to say about your nonsense prediction. Presumably your nonsense is based on some computer model, not the laws of physics.
Your last paragraph is just more nonsense, not worth refuting. It’s all natural climate change, not CO2.
Sorry… forgot to say great post – can’t wait to read your next one!
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Daemon…
Plenty of corellation going on there in your last comment. No causation however.
Of the myriad of possibilies responsible for increases in recorded temperatures over the last 200 years, to single out co2 as the culprit even without any evidence of causation is so incomprehensibly ignorant.
The IPCC have been given a mandate to find a link between human produced co2 and dangerous temperature increases.
Is it any wonder that they have come to this conclusion?
It would be far more balanced to start with an open brief and to approach this issue (even though there is no reason to fear global warming) taking every known factor into consideration. The IPCC’s failed predictions are clear evidence that not all factors are known and / or weighted correctly in their computer models.
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Damien is attempting to use argument from authority once again; except he thinks it has more punch if he quotes industry scientists. Funny, I thought that the standard AGW position was that industry scientists are bought off and aren’t reliable. I guess it just depends on whether he agrees with them or not.
If you really want to do that Damien, you shouldn’t cherry-pick your quotes and use them out of context.
This was in answer to the question:
“1) Can human activities affect climate?”
So, they’re not denying the POTENTIAL impact of human emissions (without quantifying what the amount of the potential impact is).
Some smoking gun.
Some of the parts you DIDN’T quote are at least as interesting:
So, the scientists you approvingly (cherry-pick) quote actually conclude that it is NOT JUSTIFIED to claim that a human effect on climate has been detected.
Since the climate models continue to show zero predictive skill, that situation still remains.
Does this now accurately represent your beliefs? If not, then why are you promoting this document as an authority, and how do you reconcile your disagreement with it?
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Bob C @ 12,
You are correct noting that Damien continues to use Argument from Authority and Cherry Picking of data. However, by Cherry Picking of the statements by his favored authorities he is also guilty of Dropping of Context.
It is not unusual to observe the concatenation of logical fallacies in almost any argumentation (argument for the sake of argument and not a search for truth) thread. It would be interesting to start a counting of the logical fallacies committed by a given poster in a single post and to keep track of the fallacies used by said poster. My informal estimate is that Damien could win top honors in both categories by just doing what comes naturally to him.
A formal list of logical fallacies can be found at: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
The list is not exhaustive but its a very good start. Most of what is missing are creative concatenations of entries in the list.
I would like to see explicitly added are Cherry Picking, Dropping of Context, and Argument by Intimidation. They are so common, they need to be separately identified even if they are concatenations of the more basic fallacies.
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Damien, unlike the people before me, I will actually address your argument. I will begin by agreeing with you that Grima’s arguments are tired are annoying. Argument to the Conspiracy, while not a formal falacy, is an annoying yet all-too-common version of ad-hominem that is becoming frustratingly common.
However, you made some questionable assertions of your own. How can you possibly claim that within 20 years that temperature will reach multi-millenial highs? In Greenland, we have recovered Viking graves which have been covered in permafrost for centuries. As you cannot dig a grave through permafrost, the Viking settlement period must have been warmer than today. The dates of the cherry blossom festival in the Imperial Palace of Kyoto also indicate that the medieval warm period was about as warm at today.
The main problem with your argument is, in short, there is no evidence that CO2 is responsible for the global temperature change. The Little Ice Age was called that for a reason. It was cold. A 1F temperature change taking place over a century is hardly unprecedented on a multi-century scale. If the temperature change was mostly natural, then there is no reason to think that temperatures will spiral out of control. However, there was one prediction made by global climate models. The greenhouse gas effect is predicted to cause warming about 10 miles above the surface (this is where the radiation gets absorbed by CO2 and bounced back to Earth) at about 3x the amount that is seen on the surface. This “Hot Spot” is in the middle of the weather balloon range, and should have warmed by 2.5C. It has not. This suggests that the current warming is not caused by greenhouse gases.
With warming out, this leaves ocean acidification as your sole argument. I weep for science. Why? Because anyone with a basic understanding of biological or chemical buffers can understand that this isn’t a valid argument. We are talking about increasing a single variable in a heavily buffered system. The change of pH will be at most a fraction of a point, a change that is dwarfed by the very noticable daily changes in pH. Furthermore, corals and other shellfish evolved on the planet during a period where the CO2 concentration was over 1000 ppm. This indicates that they would not be negatively effected by high CO2 level. Finally, no negative effects have been observed on any sealife in greenhouse testing. Sorry, my friend, but ocean acidification is not a valid argument.
If you are going to start a battle of wits, please be armed next time.
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Ben:
While I appreciate your attempt to engage Damien in a discussion of relevant facts (good luck with that), I have two (minor) points of disagreement:
1) My post (#12) was a direct response to Damien’s post #5, where he was actually claiming an industry conspiracy to cover up a report that supposedly confirmed AGW, when it did no such thing — about as direct a lie as I have seen him make. (In his defense, however, I doubt he actually read the report himself, but was probably simply repeating a smear from some AGW site.) I was not attempting to answer any of Damien’s comments in post #8.
2) I don’t read Grima’s comments as promoting a conspiracy. He is just listing ways that the supposed dangers of AGW are routinely exaggerated. Joanna Nova’s last few articles on AGW funding make it clear that the vast majority of scientists who make their living studying climate change are funded by agencies which overwhelmingly fund the study of “serious problems”. Simple self-interest and basic marketing are all that is necessary to explain the constant drumbeat of exaggeration — no conspiracy is needed. (For sure, when I write a proposal to a government agency, I don’t try to make it sound like I’m studying an insignificant problem!)
The convergence of interests with politicians is unfortunate, but was perhaps bound to happen sooner or later: The Political Class is practically defined by their lust for power — naturally, they will direct funding and other support towards groups that claim to justify their taking more power.
What we are seeing is a clear case of the scientific – political feedback loop that Dwight Eisenhower warned might happen if government funding became the primary driver of science. (This was in his farewell speech better known for his similar warning about the “Military – Industrial Complex”.) This is probably the most dangerous positive feedback yet identified in AGW research — it definitely shows signs of instability and potential runaway behavior!
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Ben @ 14,
In the battle of wits, Damien is at best only half armed.
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Conspiracy is when a group of people cooperate in order to commit a crime. It’s becoming popular to pretend it means a bunch of other things (whatever seems handy). It should be obvious that AGW campaigners work cooperatively (any group of intelligent people with a common goal and the ability to communicate will work cooperatively), but no one is accusing the AGW campaigners of committing a crime. We are pointing out failures in their intellectual rigour and sometimes in their fundamental honesty (but I suspect that they don’t see themselves as dishonest because they have convinced themselves, and each other).
Self promotion and self importance are basic human nature, and standard practice in this world of competitive applications for government grant money.
In the realm of business, this sort of thing works quite well — the end consumer makes the final decision. In the realm of science pretending to run as a business, the grant money allocation scheme injects huge amounts of politics. I don’t have an answer to fix that other than demanding that every publication also disclose where their funding comes from — be it government or the oil industry. Ultimately, public disclosure is the best we can do, then the end consumer of the information gets to think about it and make their decision.
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I believe that in some cases, the word “inadvertently” may be a bit too generous. Beyond that small quibble, I think you are right on-target. And this old-time arial gunner might comment that your ‘hits on target’ ratio is spectacular!
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Damien McCormick (Daemon):
You wrote, “Oh, and the graph plotters are in on it too.”
See it for yourself. Do you get the same impression about global warming by looking at the true mean global temperature compared to their anomalies?
True mean global temperature
Mean global temperature anomaly
You also wrote, “0.74`C increase since Industrialisation to be precise, and within the next 20 years, global temperatures will be higher than at any time for the last several hundred thousand years. And we will have made that change in less than 200 years.”
Let us look at the actual anomaly data from the Australian Bureau of Metrology.
Year =>Temperature (deg C)
1878 => -0.01
1908 => -0.55
2008 => 0.34
From this data, the increase in mean global temperature in a century is 0.34 + 0.55 = 0.89 deg C. However, if you consider relative to year 1878, 130 years ago, the increase in mean global temperature is only 0.34 + 0.01 = 0.35 deg C.
As a result, AGW is deception followed by mass delusion.
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Lionell, Hi, that was a very interesting Web Site you referred to. Thanks! Is there any way I can personnally contact you though email? I’ve got something I want to present to you!
Ben, great response!
Does anyone know where Brian’s been? Haven’t seen Him post lately….Hope He’s alright!
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Funding non AGW related climate research is almost non existent. It even seems that Exxon is backing off funding this kind of research simply because of the backlash it generates.
Hopefully, I won’t need to find funding to pursue my work. I just found what I think is an extremely rare, 1.3Kg CM1 meteorite that I observed hitting the Earth during the Perseid meteor shower, while deep in the back country of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Since I can connect this to the Swift-Tuttle comet (no meteorite has ever been confirmed to have come from a known comet), it should be worth at least an extra couple of thousand dollars per gram over the $1000/gm it would be worth otherwise. This would certainly be a unique way to finance contrariwise AGW research.
BTW, if life were to evolve from a rock, this would be the one. There are so many organics present that it boggles the mind. This rock is literally the seed of life. Demonstrating that life indeed originated from comets would make this find even more valuable.
Any geologists or meteorite experts out there?
George
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From the alarmist perspective I guess you need to have companies like Exxon “distorting” the debate. It’s much better than admitting that people are dismissing AGW based on the evidence or should I say the lack thereof. It the last few years the number of skeptics have increased substantially. This has led to alarmists claims become more strident and far fetched. As a result they are increasingly losing credibility and support from the general public.
Unfortunately I don’t think the situation is going to be resolved in the near future. Academic Institutions and individual scientists will fight to keep funding and reputation intact. Governments will not to take on the environmental and financial industry lobbies or give up a revenue source easily.
We had some good news in Australia with the senate rejecting the Emissions Trading bill today. The next few months will be interesting as our prime minister is desperate to go to Copenhagen with an an ETS scheme in place and I think he will pretty much do anything to make it happen.
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“The ongoing political waffle over setting targets for differing percentages of emission reductions at various points decades in the future is about as useful as debating over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.”
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/08/walter-starck
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Government can fund the clowns, but they can’t affect the sun, and it’s on extended vacation. The USA has seen over 3000 record low temperatures for July.
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I see that Damien is still providing support for the natural climate change side of the issue. He continues to bring up the obvious errors that the true believers think are correct so we can see and respond.
I want to take this opportunity to thank Damien for his support and input. Without him and people like him we would not have these interesting discussions.
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Hey, way to go down there Australia! Joanne, your Blog, I feel has definitely had a impact! I was it would here in the U.S.A.! The big issue right now is the Health Care Package Obama is trying to shove down Our throats! A lot of Town Hall meetings are getting vocal over this. Officials are getting an ear full…Again, great job!
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I wanted to say: I wish it would fail here in the U.S.A.! Sorry about that!
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George @ 21:
Holy Mackeral, George! You mean you were just camping out and saw it hit the ground? I thought you needed tracking cameras etc to have any chance of finding fresh meteorites. You must have found it before dawn, given when you posted (times on this post are apparently Australian). It must have been quite a sight!
(And I didn’t go out to watch the Perseids because I was tired!)
♫ … don’t know much about geo-logy … ♪ I am only an optical engineer — I should be building those camera arrays!
You probably already know this, but here is a partial list of organizations that buy meteorites:
New England Meteoritical Society (Mendon, MA)
Bethany Sciences (New Haven Connecticut
Smithsonian Institute (Washington, D.C.)
Center for Meteorite Study (Arizona State Univ., Tempe, Arizona
Robert Haag (Tucson, AZ)
Mare Meteorites (Oakland, CA)
MMR Inc. (San Jose, CA)
Walter Zeitschel (Hanau, Germany)
Swiss Meteorite Lab (Glarus, Switzerland).
I read that the Allan Hills meteorite from Antarctica (the one from Mars with possible fossils in it) sold for as much as $5000/gm.
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BobC,
I saw it fall in the 2007 Perseid shower. I only found it the other day. Normally, these things decompose real fast, but this has been buried in snow for 18 of the last 24 months and in the other 6 months, there’s been nothing more than a few thunderstorms. I have over 8 witnesses to the fireball and 6 to the find, 2 of whom (other than me) saw both. Both concurred that the find was along the path of the fireball. Whether it’s a CM1 or the less valuable CM2, connecting it to a specific comet puts in the same league as the Allan Hills meteorite. It also seems to be harboring life, but at the moment I can’t tell if it’s ET or terrestrial contamination. If it’s ET, you’ll probably see me on the news sometime in the future, but that’s a long shot at the moment.
Here’s a pic.
http://www.palisad.com/pics/meteorite.jpg
George
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I guess we will see how long it takes for those Viking graves sitting in permafrost to become diggable again with simple hand tools. Just for the record, I’d like to put down my parallel prediction that warming in the next century will be close to warming last century… around 0.8 degrees.
Care to quantify your prediction with actual values or some measurable observation?
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An interesting article:
has been atmospheric cooling the last 8 years, and no new high global annual temperatures in the last 11 years. None of the computer models replicate this fact. Anthropogenic (or man caused) global warming is not proved.
The global warming adherents base their argument of proof on more than 20 different computer models called general circulation models (also known as global climate models or GCMs). Each computer model is composed of dozens of mathematical equations representing known scientific laws, theories, and hypotheses. Each equation has one or more constants. The constants associated with known laws are very well defined. The constants associated with known theories are generally accepted but probably some of them may be off by a factor of 2 or more, maybe even an order of magnitude. The equations representing hypotheses, well, sometimes the hypotheses are just plain wrong. Then each of these equations has to be weighted against each other for use in the computer models, so that adds an additional variable (basically an educated guess) for each law, theory, and hypothesis. This is where the models are tweaked to mimic past climate measurements.
The SCIENTIFIC METHOD is: (1) Following years of academic study of the known physical laws and accepted theories, and after reviewing some data, come up with a hypothesis to explain the data. (2) Develop a plan to obtain and analyze new data. (3) Collect and analyze the data, this may even require new technology not previously available. (4) Determine if the hypothesis is correct, needs refinement, or is wrong. Either way, new data is available for other researchers. (5) Submit results, including data, for peer review and publication.
The output of the computer models run out nearly 90 years forward is considered to be data, but it is not a measurement of a physical phenomenon. Also, there is no way to analyze this so called data to determine if any or which of the hypotheses in the models are correct, need refinement, or are wrong. Also, this method cannot indicate if other new hypotheses need to be generated and incorporated into the models. IT JUST IS NOT THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD.
The worst flaw in the AGW argument is the treatment of GCM computer generated outputs as data. They then use it in follow on hypotheses. For example, if temperature rises by X degrees in 50 years, then Y will be effected in such-and-such a way resulting in Z. Then the next person comes along and says, well, if Z happens, the effect on W will be a catastrophe. “I need (and deserve) more money to study the effects on W.” Hypotheses, stacked on hypotheses, stacked on more hypotheses, all based on computer outputs that are not data, using a process that does not lend to proof using the SCIENTIFIC METHOD. Look at their results, IF, MIGHT, and COULD are used throughout their news making results. And when one of the underlying hypotheses is proven incorrect, well, the public only remembers the doomsday results 2 or three iterations down the hypotheses train. The hypotheses downstream are not automatically thrown out and can even be used for more follow on hypotheses.
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/data-gap-on-atlantic-storms-and-warming/
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[...] LINK AKPC_IDS += “2866,”;Popularity: unranked [?] (No Ratings Yet) Loading … [...]
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Girma, if it comes from the New York Times, it is a Alarmist haven for articles supporting AGW! Maybe you already know that!
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[...] JoNova, August 12, [...]
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Denny,
Let’s not confuse issues. I’ve had very good health care here in France recently. Glad I wasn’t in the States, I’d probably be blind by now.
Oh, and by the way, I don’t believe that CO2 is a pollutant nor is it heating up the planet.
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George @ 29:
I should have guessed it wasn’t just luck!
Let us know how it turns out (if we don’t read about it!)
Bob
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John from France, glad to hear you got good care there. You must have had some very bad or no insurance here in the States! I didn’t think I was confusing anything. My latest statment was about Girma’s statement! You might want to clairify!
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Denny,
I’ve never been ill in the States, but have met US citizens who have been ruined by some serious illness in the family. I obviously wasn’t referring to your latest statement, but to one you made a few posts back re Obama and health care. I just don’t see what this has to do with the issue raised in Jo’s article except to bring out the ridiculous polarity of this debate that is doing neither side any good.
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Respectfully, the following quote appears to be quantifiably incorrect:
“Apparently Exxon was heavily ‘distorting the debate’ with a mere 0.8% of what the US government spent on the climate industry each year at the time.”
I calculate 0.1%.
Click here for some basic science on climate change.
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Now tell me. If you wish to exclude any support from oil companies on one side of the debate, then you must exclude all the salaries of thousands of Government employees, millions of pounds given to alarmist organisations and millions of pounds used to back advertising against CO2 and the salaries of all the correspondents and Journalsits who earn a living from it. Then you might have some sort of balance. Would that not be fair ?
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What bugs me is that the AGW lie is so ingrained into the public consciousness that it gets repeated over and over again in irrelevant contexts. For example, I just saw a shredded wheat commercial that used ‘global warming’ as an example of everyday stress that a good breakfast helps you handle.
We also have a lot of idiots out there getting press about insanity like shielding the Earth with mirrors, adding atomized sulfur to the atmosphere and other nonsense to mitigate global warming. Is this the kind of research all of this tax money is buying? The fact that these idiotic concepts even get past the ‘what are you smoking dude?’ stage is insane.
There’s only one way to mitigate global warming … I guarantee with 100% certainty that all you need to do is be patient and wait.
George
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Sounds reasonable to me. The stress is real even if the problem is not. Indeed, I suggest that the majority of everyday stress is imaginary problems, beat up by media hype, for the very real purpose of keeping populations frightened and compliant.
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co2isnotevil – You can’t blame the ad-men for latching onto a current topic even if it is wrong. “People will sell their grandmother if the price is right” The sinister thing is the willingness of those in responsible positions to try talk up a position they know is false viz. John Beddington Labour’s scientific officer here in the UK. He was grovelling for excuses in a recent Hardtalk.
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Jo,
Officially 4% of the world’s oil reserves are owned by private oil companies. The rest are owned by governments. This fact was publicly made at an OPEC meeting in Switzerland a couple of years back – I think it might be linked on http://www.gasresources.net, Jack Kenney’s Abiotic oil web resource.
So Big Oil is the state, not bad, bad, beeg oyl.
Keep the good work up !
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Friends:
Damien McCormick (Daemon) has been getting some flack here, and I write in his defence.
His postings here provide clear and undiluted AGW-assertions that are commonly shared and accepted by AGW-believers. Hence, his postings provide the focus for debate that otherwise would not happen here.
AGW-supporting web sites are almost entirely composed of AGW-believers congratulating each other on their belief and smearing those who do not share that belief. A few who do not accept their belief do post to those web sites in attempt to cause the AGW-believers to question their assumptions (for example, Girma who posts here does it), but they are very few.
This web site could become a mirror of the AGW-believer web sites in the absence of Daemon. So, we should be grateful to him, and I am.
However, AGW-beliefs are irrational and, therefore, Daemon’s assertions are irrational. This induces ridicule in responses to him here. I regret this because it could drive him away (I often post to AGW-believer web sites then withdraw in disgust at the resulting barrage of lies and insults in response).
So, I argue that responses to Daemon should be in the form of questions that request he justify his assertions: the responses should not be expressions of disbelief, disgust and/or ridicule. Otherwise he could be driven away and his valuable contribution to debate would be lost.
As example, I pose the following question to Daemon.
AGW-proponents say that mean global temperature should not be allowed to rise 2 deg.C because such a rise may induce a runaway global warming. But mean global temperature rises and falls by nearly 4 deg.C each year
(see http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/index.php )
and mean global temperature has been much higher than 2 deg.C above its present value for many millennia in the past
(e.g. see http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html ).
So, on what basis is it asserted that a rise of mean global temperature by rise 2 deg.C poses any danger to the stability of the global climate system?
Richard
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Richard,
Yes, you have identified the only microscopic value the Damien offers to the world: an irrational position to compare and contrast with a rational position. However, that value is truly microscopic and exceedingly transitory. Any value has long since been consumed. It is long past time to “drive him away”.
To say that a continued irrational questioning and pointing out of irrelevant pseudo facts is necessary to stimulate scientists and critical thinkers is an insult to the scientists and critical thinkers. They are their own harshest critics and demand the highest level of coherence with reality of themselves.
I will agree that an irrational position must be addressed. However, it need not be addressed each and every time it is expressed. ONCE is enough. Beyond that, since it is arbitrary (ie not even false), it can properly be treated as noise, identified as such, and dismissed without giving it a further thought. It has no cognitive content for analysis. Continuing the attempt to analyze it is a waste of time that could be put to more valuable uses.
Its even more a waste of time to expect continued analysis to convert the irrational to rational. Knowledge must be acquired as a first person activity with one’s mind fully engaged in the process. The irrational is acquired by accepting the irrational positions of others without further question or mental engagement. The irrational position is held to be “correct” because others say so. Hence the emphases on consensus and the so called peer reviewed papers without reference to the full context of relevant evidence and experience. Combine that with the incessant bleat that one is “better off” (ie safer) trusting those significant others than one’s own mind and you have an intellectual mirror reflecting still other intellectual mirrors in an infinite recursion. A sum of zeros is zero no matter how many zeros are summed.
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[...] You may also want to check out: How do I get a Small Business Loan or Government Grant if I have a …Big Government » Blog Archive » AMA Endorses Largest Denier of …135+ Awesome Fresh Article Links for Designers and Developers …SelectCDRates.com – The Leading Industry… – http://www.selectcdrates.com/Climate Money – Big Government outspends Big Oil « JoNova [...]
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[...] Climate Money- Big Government Outspends Big Oil By wormthatturned Jo Nova – Climate Money- Big Government Outspends Big Oil [...]
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[...] Climate Money – Big Government outspends Big Oil [...]
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Hello! Just had to chime in. I really loved your post. Keep up the phenomonal work.
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My new blog entry at
http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.com/
> Die Sonne bringt es an den Tag <
sums up what I can think of in connection
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Quesitons.
How old is the Earth?
How was the oil and NG that Exxon makes their money from created?
How did Exxon know where to look for it?
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[...] As Jo Nova has pointed out, government funding for climate alarmist research is approximately 1000 times oil company and other private funding. On that basis, there should be 1,000 times more questioning about possible alarmist bias for financial gain or job security than for sceptical science. [...]
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