I understand, that when a journalist believes, that AGW is going to kill us very very soon,he feels, his writings must Fight for the Right Thingy.

However as Master Yoda wrote (in some non peer reviewed utterance): Fear is the path to the Dark Side.

I think you will agree, that it is not OK, if the journalists tell lies. You wrote that. Sadly lots of things said about the sceptics are outward lies. Just as the things in Al Gore’s movie are exaggerated (read: lies).

Is it still journalism (reporting, bringing news) or is it Goebbel’s style propaganda?

Can it be justified to lie in the interest of the Right Thing?

And another one (though reactiong to one’s own comment sounds silly): Let us compare the situation to ideological fights from three centuries ago.

Imagine that in a catholic country you wanted to publish a protestant article. And the editor tells you: “I have sworn to publish only truth. We know in our country, that protestantism is untrue. Pope told that and he is the highes authority on Earth. So I will not publish any protestant article, because it would undermine credibility of our journal. Sorry.”

Think about it.

(By the way, I like hats. It is a pitty, hats are no longer worn)

Sorry Vitezslav, but the discussion is over. We’re on the internet. If someone yells nazi, the discussion is over.

Tom, I think you are completly right. There is no such thing as objective journalism.

@Vitezslav How much climate change is affected by mankind is part of the “Things are not THAT clear”-section of the post. But THAT climate change is at least partly man-made is absolutely clear.

“Sceptics” can be mentioned. There is no use in wiping out existing parts of our society. But as they are neither very credible nor in a position of importance, you should not add more value to their opinion as they deserve.

If you are a journalist and honestly believe that climate change is not man-made, then you maybe should write that. I would most likely not be able to intellectually respect you anymore, but still I think journalists should not write something that they believe to be clearly wrong.

Tom,
you captured my random thoughts, ordered them and put them on black and white.

Journalists should not only take a stand, but they have the moral obligation of doing so.

Imagine journalists reporting the 1994 Rwandan Genocide as “just an opinion”, or that “we need to give 50% of the time to each side” or maybe even “there’s still a lot of debate, I can’t take any position on the issue”?

I don’t think. It’s a moral duty as a person, as well as a professional journalist.

Think about the implications of prefering to keep an equidistance (which very often is mistaken for the concept of objectivity)
Precisely.

Errata:
I don’t think
Corrige:
I don’t think so.

Damn it, there should be a “preview comment” button

About journalist objectivity:

I do not know much about Rwanda (though I seen the movie Hotel Rwanda). I just know, that I want to hear the “story version” from both sides of the conflict. Because it often happens in history, that the poor weak discrimminanted victim actually deserves its bad fate, due to the evils it had done,when it was in power.

It is just like with creationism. I want to hear arguments of both sides. I will decide myself. I have a brain, so does everyone.

If journalism degenerates into showing pictures of children covered in blood, it is not journalism. It is just a cheap emotion-mannipulating show. Because it does not tell you, who did it, why, what preceded etc.

vitezslav, in rwanda a genocide happened. there is no way in hell that anyone deserves anything like that. in fact I reject the concept of anyone “deserving” death.

and your example with creationism is just perfect. maybe you want to hear arguments of “both sides”. you are allowed to ask. but then you simply must conclude that creationism in the end has no scientific arguments and that it’s rather just based on plain belief in something that might maybe exist but is not arguably at all.

you seem to mistake the concept of equidistance with the concept of fairness. it is NOT good journalism to act, as if creationism has as much reason and the same scientific meaning as the theory of evolution. it has NOT.

of course, a journalist should be fair and should thoroughly investigate every topic he reports about. but he then must make conclusions of the facts that he gathered.

a journlist must come to the conclusion that creationism is religion and not science. this is a fact and in the end every faithful person will understand that god’s existence can not be proven by science. therefore the belief in a creator cannot be scientific.

a journalist must come to the conclusion that rwanda is a genocide and he can not come to the idea that the tutsi may as well have “deserved” death. we are not talking about fallen troops here. we’re talking about randomly slaughtered civilists who did nothing but belong to a pseudo-ethnic group.

and considering all the facts we know now, a journalist must most likely come to the conclusion, that climate change is at least partly man-made.

it is not about showing children coverd in blood. it is about telling what really happens - telling the so called truth - and taking its side. thats what a journalist is there for.

Because it often happens in history, that the poor weak discrimminanted victim actually deserves its bad fate, due to the evils it had done,when it was in power.

Oh dear, are you serious? Does anybody *deserve* to die? Let alone an entire population, mostly children, young and old women.

It is just like with creationism. I want to hear arguments of both sides. I will decide myself. I have a brain, so does everyone.

I can’t believe I’m actually reading this. You can’t be serious. I know, you must be trying to tease us with outrageous and indefensible position, just to sit back and have fun watching the responses of the people in shock.

Creationism? Both sides of the story? What side does creationism have? In 150 years they haven’t been able to produce any kind of scientific peer-review literature, where would you look for “their side of the story”? A website made by a repressed teenager with no knowledge whatsoever of biology, let alone the scientific method in general?

Come on, Vitezslav, you must be joking and LYAO in front of your computer.

Trust me, Federico, I am not laughing at all. On the contrary I am horrified how little respect many people have for freedom of speech. This key human right is based on “allowing others to say things, which I consider lies”. I am sure you know the famous Voltaire quotation? If you allow only saying things that YOU consider right - it is called censorhip.
... Look, most humans on this damn planet are creationists. We cannot persuade them by ignoring them - their twisted arguments must be disclosed, compared and crushed by stronger arguments. In free open discussion.

Free open discussion NEEDS CONCLUSIONS. It is absolutely not about cencorship or even prohibiting people from saying something false. It is just about not repeating lies as a journalist just because you have a wrong understanding of objectivity.

Else: When do you stop? When is the point that you can exclude an opinion from your story? Do we have to accept the conspiracy-crap about 9/11 as a legitimate option which we have to keep in mind when writing about the attacks?

A journalist must be fair, not stupid. Fairness is a concept that allows drawing conclusions.

If you repeat pure crap as a legitimate point of view just because someone else propagates it (and may even be stupid enough to think its true), whats the point of being a journalist then at all?

On the contrary I am horrified how little respect many people have for freedom of speech.
Really? Does that include you?

What about my free speech to feel shocked by the complete lack of empathy for the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people? Can I express my free speech, too, or is it just a privileged of those who claim not to have it anymore?

Who ever told that you cannot express what you think? When? Seriously, quote me the exact phrase.

I’m just surprised by the fact that someone claiming to be a journalists could be so out of proportion and can be so intellectually dishonest.

That’s what I feel, and it seems I am not the only one. Should I censor myself and avoid telling you my feelings? I never disrespected you, I merely said that your arguments make me want to cry.

Tom Schaffer says: 
But when it comes to climate change things are perfectly clear. If the vastoverwhelming majority of todays (non-ideological!) scientific community says that climate change is man-made (at least to a certain degree), then this truth lies right in front of you, desperately waiting to be accepted and published.

Tom,
    REALLY?? If you believe that Scientists are anymore non-ideological than anyone else, then I have some really good swamp land I’d like to sell you. Keep in mind that there are more bona fide atmospheric scientists stating the opposiet of AGW than are espousing it. It is fact, that so called emvironmentalists are donating drastically more money to have their agendas published than all of the self interest groups combined. Ask yourself where their evidence is…Computer models? Where is the empirical evidence?  Please!!! Go back to 1974 and look at the reverse nonsence from many of the same boneheads.  If you think Al Gore has no selfagrandising agenda you are truley not a journalist. writing for a living dosent make you one. Your integrity does.

To Federico: Mr.Jorgensen told us “climate change is manmade, do not dispute it.” And all the Copenhagen lectures were greenish. They did not let any sceptic lecturers in. Isn’t that silencing the opposition? How else would you call it? Why didn’t they invite Tim Patterson or Bjorn Lomborg? They invited only the Greenpeace guy…
And then Tim Schaffer comes and and says, that it was “just, honest and correct.”

How the hell can you know, if the sceptics tell lies or nonsense, if you do not ever let them even speak?

@Sid Smith: As far as I know Al Gore is not a scientist. And I really hope we will never see the empirical evidence you demand for what the computer models predict.

I am aware of possible biases in science. And I am not naive. I know scientists aren’t always right and noble. But science itself is not ideological by concept.

And when we are talking about science concerned with our climate, you’re not talking about a bunch of hippies warning us. We are talking about the vast majoritiy of the scientific world that is convinced climate change has a significant man-made aspect.

You either believe this is true or that there is a huge global conspiracy (that wants us to do evil things like reducing energy consumption, recudcing dependence on goods from dangerous, unstable regions, improving air quality so that our children don’t have to suffer from asthma…).

It simply makes my hair fall out when adult, educated people tell me that there is a green ideology conspiring with our world’s scientists against the poor poor oil companies, the energy industry, the carmakers etc. ... You don’t only have to ignore all known facts and suppose all our science is bullshit to believe such things, you also have to make up a whole new world where “there is no scepticism propaganda”.

It’s a shame that you are so hateful against scientists (which you express by using words like “boneheads”) that you rather believe SHELL than the IPCC.

@Viteszlav my name is Tom. And the reason why it is good that they didn’t invite those sceptics is already mentioned in my original post.

They did not let any sceptic lecturers in.

If they represented a substantial part of the scientific community, they would have.

Isn’t that silencing the opposition? How else would you call it? Why didn’t they invite Tim Patterson or Bjorn Lomborg?

I can only speak for Lomborg, fir he’s the one I know about.

In 2001, he attained significant attention by publishing The Skeptical Environmentalist, a controversial book whose main thesis is that many of the most-publicized claims and predictions on environmental issues are wrong.

The DCSD cited The Skeptical Environmentalist for:
  1. Fabrication of data;
  2. Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
  3. Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
  4. Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
  5. Plagiarism;
  6. Deliberate misinterpretation of others’ results.

There you have it.

Give me some time to research on Patterson and we’ll see.

“But when it comes to climate change things are perfectly clear.”

To you who are so certain, so established, please explain to me the physical mechanism linking anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions to rising global average mean temperature in the 20th century.

Ah, consensus.  I love consensus.

If there is a nuclear bomb, you can crawl under your desk and be safe.  Consensus.

Erlich: “Scientists may have made statements like that, although I cannot imagine what their basis would have been, even with the state of science at that time, but scientists are always making absurd statements, individually, in various places. What we are doing here, however, is presenting a consensus of a very large group of scientists…”  He was talking about the nuclear winter.  The same science was used to predict that we would have a year without summer because of the fires in Kuwait.  Which didn’t happen.  Consensus.

The biggest killer of women in past centuries was fever following childbirth.  It took 125 years to break through the bigotry and get it accepted that puerperal fever was contagious.  Consensus.

It took fifty years for “consensus” to admit that South America and Africa fit together.  Consensus.

The earth was the center of the universe, let alone the solar system.  Consensus.

The earth’s population will grow to 20 billion people.  Consensus.

Science doesn’t work by consensus.  Science works by people vetting information, working and re-working information, checking facts, building up theories, testing them and tearing them down when necessary.

John Christie, a climatologist, and one of the authors of the IPCC climate report in 2001, is on record as saying that there are no computer climate models that are accurate in showing the past and the present.  The computer models don’t fit, they are wrong.  But we all have to believe that they can accurately predict the future.

My (simple) question is: based on what?  Why is that not your question?

When someone asks Al Gore if he’s going to fix the errors that were pointed out by the British Supreme Court, he evades the question.  You, as a journalist, don’t find that interesting?

I have found it hard, incredibly hard, to find facts.  Everyone on the internet has a blog, and every blog has an opinion.  I want facts.  Where can I find those?  There used to be reporters, they reported facts.  When reporters turned into journalists, we were presented with opinions instead of facts.  It’s great if you don’t want to think and form an opinion yourself, just say “from now on, I’ll just believe what he writes”.

But what makes your opinion valid?  Can you show me that you are critical, that you take new information and take it in and present a balanced view from there?  What is perfectly clear right now “women dying after childbirth has nothing to do with washing hands”, may not be perfectly clear next week.

I am not convinced that global warming comes from CO2, and as I learn about the Maldives (sea level has been dropping the past 50 years), and the hockey stick graphs being based on cherry-picked samples, and that satellites are showing an absence of global warming since 1979, I actually do start to question the motives of those who are promoting global warming.

Shell is receiving a 865 million dollar commitment from the Canadian government for “carbon capture”.  Do you think they are lobbying against global warming laws?  THEY BENEFIT FROM THEM!

I like the title of this blog.

“THINK ABOUT IT”.

Please do.  The moment you accept “what is perfectly clear” you have shifted from thkining to thinking you’re thinking.  There’s a difference.

—GJ—

dear GJ,

it took the scientific world almost 40 years to get to the consensus, that climate change is indeed manmade. you gave lot of examples of things that were seen wrong by the public and by science for a long time. you can now add man-made climate change to that list and laugh about the dorks of earlier centuries, that thought they had nothing to do with climate change.

You know, Al Gore is just a popular figure who advocates action against climate change. He is not the one who came up with the whole idea. Scientists over the past decades did.

You know, coming to a conclusion when the facts are overwhelming is not the end of thought - it’s a consequence of it.

regards
Tom

PS: As for facts, I suggest the IPCC reports and the reports that are cited there.

Hi Tom. The point is, that “consensus” is no argument. Neither pro nor con. So you warmists, please stop using “consensus” as an argument.

Anyway half of scienitists disagree with the consensus. Includidng lots and lots of climatologists. So no consensus exists anyway. Another reason to stop using this as an argument.

No more “consensus decided, stop discussing it, it is over.”

where do you get your “half of the scientists disagree” numbers? pure invention, like your “the poor oil industry is outspend”-consiracy?

There is no “half of the scientists disagree” evidence. The “scientists” that disagree just get heard louder cause they stand out from a crowd that took decades of collecting evidence to agree on the fact of man-made climate warming.

Mankind produces just a tiny bit of the CO2 emitted worldwide, however its a decisive part of this tiny bit that pushes the emittance over the limit of climate stability (or nature-made climate change).

Of course Al Gore exaggerates here and there in his movie, by citing some of the more pessimistic prognoses, but the danger still is real and can already be measured (e.g. ,ore occurances of catastrophies like hurricanes or tsunamis).

And the idea that shell is profiting from fighting climate change is quite absurd unless they become a big player in producing bio-plastics or electric cars

Hi Tom,

thanks for the response.  I’ll try to be a bit less lengthy in the tooth this time.

The point I was trying to make, and which was probably lost, is that consensus does not mean truth.  It does not imply truth, it does not suggest truth, it only suggests converging opinions.

When someone speaks of “consensus in science”, you have to be very careful, because there are people who already do not agree (that’s what “consensus” means), there is a tonne of examples (some of which I listed) on where consensus was wrong.  Of the “human lives lost” type of wrong.  I have not seen any proof, or even any evidence that *this*time* consensus is correct.

Consensus is not science, consensus is a lack of proof, which means (and you are correct), that we need overwhelming evidence.

I will refer again to the computer climate models.  We’ve had a global cooling period for the past 11 years.  There is NO computer climate model that predicted that.  That is a fact.

And if they are wrong for the past decade, why do we have to accept that they are correct for the next 100 years?  You must have very strong evidence that our understanding of climate is vastly superior over the computer climate models.  Where is that evidence?

I put it to you that that evidence does not exist.  Even worse.  The data that is created by the computer models is used as evidence.  Models that we know are incorrect.

If someone would use this line of reasoning to manage your pension fund, you’d fire them.

I don’t find the facts are overwhelming that humans are causing climate change by CO2 emissions.  I see a lot of symptoms described on what is happening, but no causal connection that can be tested in any way.  Apart from the fact in the past decade there’s been more CO2 in the air, and temperatures have dropped, which proves that we don’t understand what influences climate.

I’m not laughing about people in the past centuries, and I’m not laughing about this.  I am concerned that we are sacrificing human life to unproven and unwarranted theories that cannot stand the test of review.  All because “the debate is over”.

More facts, cold, hard facts, solid science, repeatable calculations, solid reasoning, and, perhaps, a sprinkling of truth to say “there are things we really don’t understand”.

Ok, this is much longer (again) then I intended.

—GJ—

I think there is one central argument in your comments: “The point I was trying to make, and which was probably lost, is that consensus does not mean truth.”

Of course you are right there and we all know that. But that leads us to the question: What is truth?

We could now discuss a topic that philosophists did already very often, but it doesn’t really matter.  When we act we have to assume that what we know is what is true.

The important part is that we have to act according to our knowledge. And all our knowledge suggests very, very strongly that climate change is indeed man-made.

If in 150 years something comes up, that proves us wrong, then ok. Shit happens. We then still spent a lot of money on extremely useful things like cleaner air and water, preserving our rainforrests, or simply decentralizing our energy supply. OH NO!

But if we don’t act and our current knowledge is right (which is what we have to assume because everything else is just hoping for best luck) then mankind really is screwed.

Given the facts we have, the choice really is very easy.

According to a sociological survey, half of the scientists disagree with IPCC.

See http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/20861/Scientific_Consensus_on_Global_Warming.html

Tom, I cannot agree with your sentence: “all our knowledge suggests very, very strongly that climate change is indeed man-made”

No. All our knowledge suggests very very strongly, that climate change is NOT manmade. Given the facts we have, the choice is very easy - dismantle the stupid IPCC.

Dear CJ,
you are confusing scientific consensus with consensus.

Consensus wrong almost all the time. Scientific consensus is almost always right, and when it’s not it doesn’t take so much before it changes its mind.

Scientists are much more flexible to adapt to the reality of things, because they hold no belief, they look at data and calculate the probabilities of a certain theory being right.

People tend to get attached to certain things, for whatever reason, without any factual backup.

@Vitezslav

I would really like to know how they put together their sample. 20% of their “scientists” disagree with the fact that climate change even happens. Given that, it is an overwhelming consensus that only 30% of the participants don’t think that climate change is man-made. 55% do think that, 15% are not certain. How in hell the authors of the study make their “nearly half of climate scientists disagreeing” out of it, is a puzzle I can’t solve.

SIGNIFICANTLY MORE THAN HALF of the scientsists even in this questionworthy sample DO APPROVE that man-made climate change happens. And not being sure IS NOT DISAPPROVING.

And even in this study, 70% of the participants think the IPCC gives an reliable picture of scientific consensus (that only on your “dismantle the stupid IPCC”-crap). I think your theory is based on solar radiation causing climate change. In this survey only 20% of scientists think, that the scientific world does not take solar radiation into account enough.

besides, the survey was taken almost half a decade before the 4th IPCC report.

every time you try to support your wild theories with any data or link, it only gets weaker. How comes?

Oceans have 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere. Warmer oceans heat the atmosphere. Simple thermodynamics.

The only wild theory here is that of anthropogenic global warming.

http://nov55.com/crunch.html

But given that the ambiguity in the climate modeling results means that the probabilities we assign to the predicted outcomes are tentative, should we not talk about them with much less certainty than we do? It seems to me that many scientists aren’t thinking like scientists when they speak about global warming. Their certainty about essentially uncertain events makes them sound like religious fundamentalists at times, or like the political whores that many of them in fact have become.

Mike,
why don’t you answer here?
http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/think2/post/climate_change_priorities/

What? When the argument gets though you back off?

@Mike Do oceans heat up just for fun? It has nothing to do with mankind fishing the fish away (consequently changing the population of animals and important plants, consequently changing the oxygen-proportion, consequently…), dumping millions of tons of plastics (consequently killing animals and plants, consequently…). the oceans don’t change because icecaps melt? there is no effect of gigantic co2 emissions (or in the past cfcs)? and never mind of deforrestation, it simply doesn’t change anything? etc. etc.? mankind has killed off gigantic seas, leaving behind deserts. we have created a gigantic hole in the ozone layer by blowing unnatural amounts of chemicals in our atmosphere.

but all you have to say is “it doesn’t matter, it has no effect on climate”?

you wash all those things away with “the oceans are warmer”? how poor is that? You can’t just come up with “It’s the oceans, man” and not think about why the oceans do change.

Tom,  let us read my link about the survey again:

http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/20861/Scientific_Consensus_on_Global_Warming.html

In the survey, more than half of the questioned scientists did not believe, IPCC is able to predict climate. Most scientists think their climate predictions are worthless.

Only 55,8% of the scientists believe, that warming is manmade.

45,8% of the scioentists say, that the climate change debat is NOT over.

So it is roughly half by half. There is NO consensus.

How come,Tom, that whenever you tell something, it makes your position weaker and weaker?

I can’t believe you keep posting Heartland Institute articles as if they honestly convey science. Forget about academic standards this doesn’t even qualify as a news service. It’s propaganda. (See [url=“Heartland Institute

“]SourceWatch[/url].)

As to the purported lack of scientific evidence, it is brought to us by the economy class drop out Joseph Bast and a lawyer with curious ties, James Taylor. (See SourceWatch and DeSmog some info on Joseph Bast, ExxonSecrets and SourceWatch.) RealClimate turns up this article on the survey itself.

The Heartland Institute is a propaganda organization that does not even try to bring out a certain bias - they deliberately lie to support a short term political agenda. And by posting this you, Vitezslav Kremlik, create a serious problem for yourself.

Oh please.

What’s there to answer? You appeal to authority and appeal to consensus, appeal to peer-review, you argue semantics on the word “mirror”, all of which prove nothing, much less disprove the numbers I have presented. You go on a tangent about the accumulation of CO2 and say stupid things like “natural balance” when the world has never been in balance. All of which is irrelevant, since:

You are arguing with a physical impossibility.

Your “team of 17,000” is meaningless; association is not indicative of individual views, and I’m sure only a tiny fraction meet your own qualified standards.

The following numbers, are not ambigious; no one disputes these numbers:

Claimed heat due to atmosphere—- 33°C

This is the surface temperature difference between today’s world (15°C) and a world with no GHGs (-18°C). No one disputes this.

Infrared bandwidth available to CO2—- 8%

This is the percentage of the infrared radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface that CO2 is able to absorb. No one disputes this either.

This next number, while disputable, is the number used by NASA (and the IPCC).

Energy leaving the earth’s surface due to infrared radiation—- 41%

From these numbers, we can determine what the maximum possible amount of direct warming from CO2 in the atmosphere would be, if all the radiation were absorbed.

Putting it together:

The atmosphere keeps the surface 33°C warmer, and 41% of this heat is due to infrared radiation from the earth’s surface.

33°C x 41% = 13.53°C

Following this, CO2 only absorbs 8% of the infrared radiation that is heating the atmosphere. If CO2 absorbs all radiation available to it,

13.53°C x 8% = 1.08°C

This is the maximum amount of warming attributable to all the CO2 in the atmosphere (100% absorption). That is to say, in the absence of all CO2, the surface would be at most 1.08°C cooler. This does not take into account overlapping wavelengths from other GHGs, which would effectively cut these numbers in half.

Atmospheric CO2 can only responsible for less than 1.08°C at the surface. Yet the IPCC claims it is 7.2°C, with no traceable evidence.

Mike,

My meteorology textbook is in the basement but your calculation looks a bit naive and I particularly don’t think you can just take percentages from temperature differences like that (use a unit for energy perhaps).

In stead I googled and got Calculating the greenhouse effect. One conclusion from that is: “If you were to naively estimate the total temperature contribution of the CO2 it would be between 3 and 9 ºC”. It also discusses how various GHGs overlap - if we theoretically removed all CO2 some of the other gasses would gain in relative GH effect.

@ Benno. Heartland Institute is defending free market, that is the mechanism, that brought prosperity to this World in the last 2 centuries. I hardy think this is evil.

But the green Club of Rome, who say, that Growth of living standards must be stopped, are EVIL. And IPCC is on the side of the Club of Rome.

So I prefer to believe the good guys.

Well, thank you for finally revealing your religious beliefs, Vitezslav.

Can’t say that I agree, but for the sake of argument let us assume you are right: The Heartland Institute still produces propaganda. In stead of saying: “the free market will save the world” - which is supposedly what they believe - they lie about the perils of the world in hopes people will not interfere with the free market to save it.

Unethical for sure. And akin to what I think should be criminal seen in the light of the risks involved.

Vitezslav, I just want you to know that I support you 100 percent.

My calculation is not naive, it is the theoretical upper limit.

The 33 degrees warming is inclusive of all GHGs. This naturally includes all feedbacks (33 degrees is the end result). Realclimate talks about how water vapour is a feedback. Yet it is a GHG. For the planet to be 33 degrees cooler there must be no GHGs (no water vapour), thus no feedback. Thus this number is all inclusive and no one disputes it.

They don’t talk about how CO2 only absorbs 8% of the radiation available to it. The try to discredit the validity of the calculation in their article by stating that overlapping GHGs were not taking into account, even though this only serves to reduce the effect of CO2 on temperature.

Since the numbers are percentages (dimensionless), a unit of energy is not needed.

The earth is said to be 33 degrees warmer at the surface due to atmosphere. 41% of the heat to keep it this warm comes from radiation emitted from the earth’s surface, according to NASA’s energy budget. 8% of this 41% is absorbed by CO2, since it can only absorb 8% of the wavelengths.

@ Frederico.  I don’t think I’m confusing consensus with scientific consensus.  I even quoted the scientists about how they had a consensus of scientists on “nuclear winter”.  They used this consensual science theory to predict a year without summer because of the Kuwaiti fires.  It didn’t happen, despite the scientific consensus.  The scientific consensus was wrong.  And this is the closest I can come up with of a previous scientific consensus on climate.  All my other examples (except one) were scientific consensus.  And they were all wrong.

So, using this trend, I ask a simple question: why is the current scientific consensus on man made climate change correct *this*time*?

Is that an unreasonable request?

I’m not denying anything, I’m just not willing to just accept on faith that there is one and only one cause for the climate to change without some serious proof that the scientists have nailed it this time.

Where is the proof?  So far, the culmination of proof, the computer climate models, are wrong, so I do not believe them.  If you believe them, I would like to know why.

The easiest way that you can convince me that you are right in believing them is telling me why you believe them, despite evidence that they are incorrect.  Just telling me that I’m wrong doesn’t do much to convince me.

@ others.  I see, again, a whole lot of rhetoric which isn’t helping here.  Cold facts, hard facts, less opinion, please.  The scientific method is relatively simple, you come up with an idea, then you verify that with experiments.  Then you formalize that and with your new theory you make a prediction on what happens and you test that against reality.  Reality always wins.

If you want to play the “consensus in science is right” approach, then you have to think about this:

You have a climatologist, respected enough to author an IPCC report in 2001, who says that the warming is mad made because of urban sprawl (concrete and asphalt) and not by CO2, because that would show up in the troposphere, and it isn’t.  (I’m over simplifying a one hour lecture you can find on youtube by John Christie “what do the numbers show”.  He explains it much better than I can.)

He disputes the man-made CO2 theory and says why (he says reality does not agree with the theories).  So far, I tend to believe him, because there is no scientific effort to dispute his claims.

I will not accept “consensus”, I will not accept “ad hominem attacks”, I will not accept “peer review, or other people’s opinions”.  I will accept a “this is wrong, because of this fact” statement, or “this is wrong, because you made a mistake here” statement.

This has not been done.

This guy is not a kook, he’s not a conspiracy theorist.  He’s awarded for being able to monitor climate.  Does this not give you pause in your push to accept “consensus”?

@Georg.  Shell gets 865 million dollars for research in carbon capture.  Big oil will be able to look after itself, carbon tax or no won’t make a big difference to them.  They don’t pay for it, you do.  Anyway, I actually don’t care about big oil.  I care about science.

@Tom.  I take your point about clean alternative energy, which I like (obviously), but it changes the debate from “the consensus is right” (which I’m not convinced of) to “what’s the worst that can happen” (which is an entirely different discussion).

@ Mike

As I wrote, my textbook is in the cellar, and I won’t bother getting just yet as I somehow have a hard time imagining the climatologists of the world make such a huge math error as you suggest. The way I read it the 8% detail is included in the overall calculation already. You are probably mixing a detail from physical chemistry into a more generalized atmospheric calculation.

@ GJ

The science will not be settled in a blog comment thread. It is ever evolving in peer reviewed journals.

Heartland Institute is defending free market, that is the mechanism, that brought prosperity to this World in the last 2 centuries. I hardy think this is evil.

Ahah, prosperity? You mean the apparent wealth of the “richest 20%” of the people, at the expenses of the remaining 80%, hunger, famine, war, corruption and the destruction of natural resources, soil degradation, killing of most of the biodiversity, disappearances of thousands of species who would otherwise lived…? Well, not the best idea.

Evil is a loaded term anyway, it has a religious connotation. I would say that it was a god idea 200 years ago, so it’s a bit outdated, and it’s time we update it to present knowledge, as far I can see now it mainly cases abhorrent behaviour.

@mike
What’s there to answer? You appeal to authority and appeal to consensus, appeal to peer-review,

Well, you know, I appeal to science, reason evidence, facts, experts… whereas you appeal to your self-appointed expert claims with no scientific references whatsoever. You are right, there is really no discussion.

The following numbers, are not ambigious; no one disputes these numbers:
[...]
Atmospheric CO2 can only responsible for less than 1.08°C at the surface. Yet the IPCC claims it is 7.2°C, with no traceable evidence.

Nobody disputes these numbers? Ahah, don’t make me laugh. You say all I do is provide links and words from the experts… well, that’s what serious journalists do. They don’t make numbers up and give improbable calculations out, with no scientific basis whatsoever with original unpublished research like you do.

Prosperity is what has allowed the world population to reach six billion, Federico. Only 50 years ago in Ireland, TB was a major killer. Not today. People once died of malaria in Italy. Not today. And so on. We are quick to forget how many people now benefit from a better way of life thanks to progress and, yes, prosperity. Yes, huge numbers are hungry and evil stalks places like the Congo. But it was not prosperity that caused Mao to murder an estimated 70 million Chinese. It was ignorance. And when we win the war against ignorance, we’ll have even more prosperity.

So, using this trend, I ask a simple question: why is the current scientific consensus on man made climate change correct *this*time*?
Evidently you did not read my post:
http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/think2/post/climate_change_scepticism_science_and_reason
oh, and please, before answering, do read it and watch the videos. It takes about three hours, I know, but unless you do this conversation is not going to go forward.

Same goes with Mike and Vitezslav, please watch the videos. Maybe you’ll understand a few things.

@Eamonn,
a part fromt he fact that you are misquoting me, I did not arguing against propserity,

On the contrary, I said that the reasoning by which the mechanism of the free market brought prosperity was fallacious.

It isn’t ignorance that brought all these problems, It was the idea that everything needs to have a prize tag, the idea that you need to make a profit out of everything, even (or especially) out of human lives.

And what about the 50 years ago thing? Are Italians more important than Sudaneses, or Indonesians? Why should they die and suffer, so that I can live “in prosperity”? This is preposterous.

@Eamonn You mistake prosperity and development for unregulated markets. It is not simply a result of radical unregulated markets that caused the development of past decades. In fact I am quite sure that it is the result of too much deregulation that puts those achievements into danger. Besides that: The world really could do a lot better as it does.

Markets are a powerful tool for development, but they don’t work as perfect as they should according to theory because they have to work under conditions of non-perfect information in reality.

Therefore they need (intelligent) regulation and a certain extend of (democratically controlled) intervention. E.g. there is no price-tag on important things like a healthy planet or public values and there won’t be one until it is very likely too late.

Should we execute our one and only planet for the sake of a radical agenda that is already known to have far-reaching flaws? Not in my name.

Besides that: As Benno says, even if free markets are the answer,t he information provided by this institute is still highly political and false.

They thereby add to the problem of imperfect information leading to wrong decisions on the basis of markets.

“Shell gets 865 million dollars for research in carbon capture.  Big oil will be able to look after itself, carbon tax or no won’t make a big difference to them.  They don’t pay for it, you do.  Anyway, I actually don’t care about big oil.  I care about science.”

Omg. You REALLY believe that 865 mio US$ matter a lot to Shell? Let me tell you something:

Shell made this profit in the past years

2004: 18,2 bn US$
2005: 22,7 bn US$
2006: 25,4 bn US$
2007: 27,8 bn US$
2008: 31,7 bn US$

sources: Austrian & German business magazines/news websites and Wikipedia

Even though their profit shrank heavily in 2009, they still earn a lot of money. You really think your conspirational theory can be based on 85 million US$?

Besides its not like they give 865 to Shell only, Canada invests in a project that Shell is not driving alone but “just” part of it. To cite Reuters:

“A total of $865 million will be invested by the Governments of Canada and
Alberta in the Shell Quest project, a joint venture among Shell Canada
(60 percent), Chevron Canada Limited (20 percent) and Marathon Oil Sands
L.P. (20 percent).”

Wow, Canad gives funds to a “Clean Carbon” project that is hosted by 3 companies. Theyd surely go bankrupt if they hadnt those 865 million.

Show me how CO2 contributes 7.2 degrees to the 33 degrees warming as claimed by the IPCC. Come on, the IPCC said so.

The fraud is so obvious that it’s hidden in plain sight!

Grab your meteorology book, bring it on. Show me the numbers.

You can link me to as many of your GCMs by your self-appointed experts as you want, but they are all fundamentally wrong at every level and do not come anywhere close to reality! Time and time again the frauds are exposed yet you still insist they have an inch of credibility!

You have not produced any evidence for all this time! You even admit that the models have uncertainties, yet proclaim with 90% certainty that human CO2 emissions are driving climate change and NOTHING ELSE. You completely ignore oceans because you cannot measure them let alone understand them, and everything the oceans do completely dominate what happens in the atmosphere!

You don’t need some peer-reviewed expert to come to the conclusion that water is 5 million times the greenhouse gas CO2 is. It absorbs a huge amount of IR radiation available to it, it evapourates, condensates, freezes, absorbs sunlight, reflects sunlight and it is a billion times more abundant.

You don’t produce any logical arguments, no evidence, no mechanism, NOTHING. You try to rationalise physical impossibilities in the veil of models, peer-review and experts as if they are somehow infallible and pretend that after $80 billion poured into “proving” man is causing catastrophic climate change, that you can claim they have any sort of objectivity.

You can’t even hold your ground against some random person posting on a blog, yet you want to force the world to do your bidding. Where is your 90% certainty?

Double the CO2 in a room, does it get any warmer?

“You completely ignore oceans because you cannot measure them let alone understand them, and everything the oceans do completely dominate what happens in the atmosphere!

We, “the mankind”, thorw tons of wastes into the oceans, overfish them, build oil plattforms onto them and what not. Besides the CO2 we already emit into the air, this is just another bad infliuence on nature and climate.

Of course climate changes also without human influence, but it does in another way and usually less rapidly.

“and pretend that after $80 billion poured into “proving” man is causing catastrophic climate change, that you can claim they have any sort of objectivity.”

You’d wonder, but also science needs funding. Cant validate the 80 bn atm.

“Double the CO2 in a room, does it get any warmer? “

Now, hoe naive is THAT?

Firstly, the way how climate-change-by-an-oiverdose-of-co2 works is way more compley. Today we suffer the consequences caused by CO2 emitted decades ago. Maybe you want to read that up on your part? =)

And secondly, you’d probably suffocate if you really took part in your useless “double-the-co2-in-a-room” experiment. You would quite vividly prove that the human body needs a certain amount of oxygen in the air to survive ^^

Your over simplification of the things shows the unscinetific basis of your approach.

The Earth is a complex system, and simply categorise this particular substance with this much warming (to the third decimal place!) is plain ridiculous.

The reality is that things are that easy, and the correlation between rising temperatures and CO2 is a scientific fact acknowledged after painstaking observations.

At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so.

Does this prove that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming? The answer is no.

The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.

The 4200 years of warming make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.

It comes as no surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun that happen every 21,000 years, have long been known to affect the comings and goings of ice ages. Atlantic ocean circulation slowdowns are thought to warm Antarctica, also.

From studying all the available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events at a termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even further CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a “feedback”, much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too near to a loudspeaker.

In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming.

So, in summary, the lag of CO2 behind temperature doesn’t tell us much about global warming. [But it may give us a very interesting clue about why CO2 rises at the ends of ice ages. The 800-year lag is about the amount of time required to flush out the deep ocean through natural ocean currents. So CO2 might be stored in the deep ocean during ice ages, and then get released when the climate warms.]

You can read the full report here.
http://icebubbles.ucsd.edu/Publications/CaillonTermIII.pdf

By the way… even the most prominent climate sceptics admit that Global Warming is real.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=even-skeptics-admin-global-warming-is-real-video

Errata:
are that easy

Corrige:
aren’t that easy

Georg: We are quite capable of surviving an atmosphere of up to 10,000 ppm CO2 without any problems. When I say double CO2 I obviously mean double pre-industrial levels (560 ppm). How exactly do you suffocate from that?

Federico: You make more absurd claims about feedbacks and 800 year lag periods. Every year atmospheric CO2 naturally fluctuates by up to 20ppm. This alone proves that it wouldn’t take 800 years for CO2 to boil out of the oceans. Over 90GT C is exchanged between the oceans and the atmosphere every year.

Again with the feedacks. You say it took 800 years to “flush the oceans”. The atmosphere contains 750GT C while the oceans hold 38,000GT C. If CO2 were causing a feedback loop where CO2 bubbles out, causing the planet to warm, which bubbles more CO2 that produces even more warming, why hasn’t it all bubbled out? If this feedback is real, then it already happened. Thermal runaway continued until there was no more radiation to be absorbed, then stopped. If natural feedback processes stopped at 280ppm without human intervention then adding more will not cause further warming, since all radiation is already being absorbed to extinction.

To use your own analogy, the volume of the feedback when you put a microphone to a loudspeaker is limited by the voltage you apply to the speaker. It doesn’t matter if you put a million more microphones next to the speaker, it won’t get any louder. Simply substitute voltage for radiation, microphones for CO2 and volume for warming.

Natural processes triggered warming and then CO2 abitrarily took over 800 years later? A poor rationalisation with no scientific basis to explain away the obvious observation that temperature leads CO2 in the ice core records. Why you even brought this up is puzzling, since others like you love to claim that the past 800,000 years are irrelevant to today’s trends.

And then a completely out of the window attack on me by implying that I am some sort of global warming denier. What a crock. I’ve been saying all this time: climate changes. Small changes in nature dwarf all human activity and oceans are the primary regulators of climate and atmospheric temperature. Simple thermodynamics dictates this. The earth has warmed, how much so is debatable.

The IPCC makes gross simplifications by taking the entire surface of the earth as a homogenous blackbody radiator.

The IPCC makes gross simplifications by ignoring oceans and downplaying the effects of cloud cover and solar variation.

The IPCC makes gross simplifications by assuming 41% of the heat leaving the earth’s surface is through radiation with no measurements to back this up.

The IPCC makes gross simplifications by assuming nature was/is in perfect balance and that any perturbations must be entirely attributable to man.

nice, we are facing people who believe that free markets regulate themselves but nature is out of balance without and totaly ok with massive human intervention human intervention.

@ Emon: thanks for support.
@ Tom: Did you read Communist Manifest? I did. Even Marx admits there, that capitalism over the first 50 years of its history, created more production means, than all the generations before.

You should keep this qualities in capitalism in mind, before you criticise its unpleasant (and unecological) sides. Capitalism is like a bitter medicine. Bitter but saving lives.

What is more valuable to you. Humans or nature?

that capitalism over the first 50 years of its history, created more production means, than all the generations before

Yes. In fact, it was good about 50 years ago, now it’s a completely obsolete system. All systems, including living organisms, are emergent, they evolve.

The way capitalism is conceived it now is to preserve its structure, which inevitably leads to self-destruction, or the death of the organism.

Until we all recognise that the planet is not a property that you can sell and exploit, but it has an intrinsic value that has no monetary comparison, we are doomed.

The reality is that humans cannot live without nature. But nature lives pretty well without us, actually much better.

@Frederico: Marx was saying, what you say in 1948. That capitalism is obsolete. And look what the date is now - 2009.

The previous attempts to replace capitalism with something “more modern” ended terribly. Fascism, communism, welfare state up to ears in debts…

All of the aforementioned are based on the same principle: monetary economics.

The idea to “replace” a form of government with another “ideal” government is destined to fail miserably.

What Marks, you, and all the people supporting this profit-based systems, don’t understand is that systems are emergent, societies can never be perfect, not can they be perfected, so it’s meaningless to propose a perfect system that we have to follow through.

None of the people you mentioned talked about the emergence of systems, nor a resource based economy, one that recognises that all resources become the common heritage of all of the inhabitants, not just a select few.

When we understand this Symbiotic relationship of life, we begin to see that as far as ‘relationships’ are concerned, our relationship to the planet is the most profound and important.

It isn’t easy to understand, but what we can teach is only the method, not what the future will be like according to our wishes.

It’s time to end this dream-like state utopia, and we recognise that all the proposed systems are outdated, unsustainable and incompatible with nature.

Ehm, LOL, obviously a typo. Marx. Geez, 10 hours of work can lot a lot of damage.

@Federico: You wrote: “all resources become the common heritage of all of the inhabitants, not just a select few”. Please explain to me, how this differs from the marxist ideal wannabe communism?

It was tried. It failed.

When everything is a “common heritage”, common ownership, I cannot decide about anything freely, because nothing is “only mine”, it belongs also to the others. It is like in being in the army barracs.

It was tried. It failed.
Really? When?

When everything is a “common heritage”, common ownership, I cannot decide about anything freely, because nothing is “only mine”, it belongs also to the others. It is like in being in the army barracs.
Your idea of common heritage is prehistoric, to say the least.

I suggest you read something about the scientific method, the resource based economy and some do some deep thinking before posting other nonsense. Thank you.

“What is more valuable to you. Humans or nature?”

That’s it. There simply is no line to draw. Saving nature is nothing else but saving humans. Our earth won’t explode when climate changes. But humans will die and suffer. Many people.

Besides. I already said that markets do have there good aspects. It’s obvious. Nevertheless capitalism desperately needs reform. Otherwise it becomes more of a burden than a help. E.g. the interests of big oil are no longer the interests of humanity - if they ever really were. We have to abandon those mighty forces of destruction.

I am neither a marxist nor a radical advocate of free markets. There is no question that both systems will fail if you put them to the extreme. And there is also no question that a lot of useful and valuable ideas lie in those theories.

btw. as a student of political sciences I do know both ideologies well enough.

If you want a proof, that environmentalism is an antihuman movement, read the environmentalist bible, “Limits of Growth” from the Club of Rome. They openly say, that “the enemy is the mankind itself” and they declare, that “economic growth must be stopped.”

To me it seems just like a spin-off of the old catholic and Luddite anti-progress movements.

The recent EU legislation, which forces the people to use the overpriced crap-quality lightbulbs (an immature technology) instead of good quality Edison light bulbs, is a good example, how antihuman it is. Poor light, takes 10 minutes before it starts to shine… Thank you very much, environmentalists, for this “improved quality of life”.

If saving nature is to save ourselves, explain to me the 40,000,000 million child deaths to preventable malaria thanks to the worldwide ban on DDT.

If saving nature is to save ourselves, explain to me how a wind turbine is going to power a hospital.

If saving nature is to save ourselves, how is increasing the costs of living 300% going to result in anything but the death and suffering of billions.

Anthropogenic global warming is synonymous with energy rationing which is synonymous with human depopulation. After all, what better way to reduce your carbon footprint than to put a bullet in your head?

From the people who brought you cap-n-trade, do you seriously think this is all about saving the environment to save ourselves? I’d take my chances with the environment anyday!

Vitzeslav, basing all your prejudices on a single book is a bit childish.

And by the way, the wording “the enemy is mankind itself” might be exaggerated, but considering what mankind has done to nature - especially in the past two centuries, its core is true. The same goes with “Economic growth must be stopped”, which is quite surely meant like “...unless ist does not harm the environment any further.”

Without having read the book myself, I believe that you are purposely not mentioning (or not understanding, in the first line) that saving the environment AND mankind from climate change is not a marxist movement.

Besides, calling energy-saving bulbs an immature technology is simply ridiculous, considering that this technology exsists for 3 decaades now (Philips presented the first compact fluorescent lamp in 1980, the “pre-switch” was patented in 1984).

Besides, not every energy-saving bulb is actually a fluorescent lamp, there are also technologies such as halogen or LED. Even if you buy an expensive fluorescent lamp, it will save you money compared to a Edison bulb.

Myself Im using a 20W lamp in my room, it shines perfectly bright such as a ~90-100W Edison bulb and is on maximum brightness in no time (2-3 seconds) due to a preswitch. It costed around 4.90 €, which is about 1-2 € more than the “crap quality” lamps without preswitch, you hate so much (end even those dont take 10 minutes to get bright today). I believe that is affordable.

So PLEASE stop talking about immature technologies when you obviously didn’t check your facts.

@Georg:
a) I admit I am not an expert in all types of light bulbs. All I know is, that the eco-lightbulbs my parents and my girlfriend have at home work well only after 10-15 minutes. Why not call this an immature technology?

b) Apparently the ideas of “kill the growth” and “the enemy is the mankind” are not just in one book. Because you apparently believe in these ideas too, as you have just confirmed kindly. So you are on the very same side of progress as the catholic church or the Luddites. Though your motives may be different.

c) Mankind does not need to save from climate change. Mankind has adapted succesfully to heaps of climatechanges. Mankind needs to be saved from those, who want to enslave us with countless bans,chains and regulations.

Wow, Tom has a really successful article.  69 comments. Congratualtions.

Georg: “Energy saving lightbulbs” are a misnomer. The fact is that you generally don’t use light bulbs unless it’s dark (ie. after sunset). Electrical lighting accounts for 19% of grid demand, however total grid demand during the day is double the demand at night as shown in this image:

http://www.mpoweruk.com/images/elec_load_demand.gif

When you are building a power plant, it must be built to provide baseload power that can supply peak demand during the day. There is no “off switch” for a power plant, so while demand halves at night the generators keep ticking away at full or near-full capacity.

In other words, replacing all your light bulbs with “energy savers” has no net effect. You might be using less energy but the energy is still being generated regardless; you might as well use it with something that isn’t a toxic timebomb.

So thanks for banning the only good light bulb we ever had. Thanks for forcing that decision upon us all. You forgot to mention that the heat generated by incandescants means people use their heaters less, that fluorescent bulbs consume twice their energy rating due to capacitative resistance, emit harmful UV radiation if they aren’t manufactured properly and contain toxic mercury with no easy way of disposing of them.

All of this for no energy saving whatsoever.

“a) I admit I am not an expert in all types of light bulbs. All I know is, that the eco-lightbulbs my parents and my girlfriend have at home work well only after 10-15 minutes. Why not call this an immature technology?”

Because you apparently judge a whole technology by a few bulbs. Tell your parents to invest 2-3 € more into a light bulb and their rooms will be lit in no time =)

b) Apparently the ideas of “kill the growth” and “the enemy is the mankind” are not just in one book. Because you apparently believe in these ideas too, as you have just confirmed kindly. “

Youre more of the religious type, I fear. IF anything interferes with your holy free market, you declare him/her to a witch, that should be burned. At least your annotations to this make it seem so.

I believe the market should be free, but also have to follow certain rules securing a minimum social and ecological standards. There are not only chances, there are also responsibilites the market has p7roofed to fail with when not confronted with some regulations. Usually they dont need heavy enforcement and too strict rules, it can work in a more lax way, as the Japanese “runner-up” concept has shown.

”“Energy saving lightbulbs” are a misnomer. The fact is that you generally don’t use light bulbs unless it’s dark (ie. after sunset). Electrical lighting accounts for 19% of grid demand, however total grid demand during the day is double the demand at night “

Of course producing light is not a major part of electricity consumption. However, its not the smallest too and one where saving energy is as simple as replacing your bulbs with other bulbs that after all produce less costs, less CO2 and less environmental damage in production and have a way longer lifetime.

Im not a total opponent to the step-by-step Edison bulb ban, but I wish itd been delayed by -lets say- 3 years that couldve been used for informational campaigns aswell as for some more developement of alternatives. After all the ban is okay, as the ban on CFC-fridges was,

Calling the Edison lamp “the only good lightbulb” we ever had is nonsense, cause there are already alternatives that consume less energy and produce a similar light.

“In other words, replacing all your light bulbs with “energy savers” has no net effect. You might be using less energy but the energy is still being generated regardless; you might as well use it with something that isn’t a toxic timebomb.”

Thats not entirely true. Afair there are certain types of power plants that can effectively control their ourput by predicted demand. However, the important point is not whether the power plant you get your electricity from is generating it at full throttle 24/7 or not. The important point is if, when and how much new plants have to be built because the existing ones cant satisfy the demand anymore.

I see that neither Vitezslav nor Mike have the decency to enter in the specific of the argument and just drop those religious spot-like phrases.

Your views of the so called “environmentalist” movement is very simplistic and distorted, to say the least. A part form not knowing some very basics facts (e.g. lightbulbs), you completely ignore the physical impossibility of having a linear system (infinite growth) on a circular environment (the resources are limited). The only sensible question is the carrying capacity of the planet Earth, all else is just small talk.

If you want to do something, and suppose you could buy the labour force because you had 100 billion dollars to invest, but you had no resources, you simply won’t be able do it, because it’s physically impossible.

The law of the conservation of energy is very clear and simple, just go by that that rule and you’ll understand a lot of things.

Still, all I heard is pointless criticisms to outdated ideas, with no consideration whatsoever for a resource based economy and the concept of ecological footprint, carrying capacity and anything like that.

What is the specific of the argument, Federico? You keep changing the topic of your arguments randomly from one day to the next. And I’m sorry to say but you are the one who has fallen victim to religious fervor. I pity you, I really do.

Anthropogenic global warming is physically impossible. The IPCC’s own numbers don’t add up.

The ban on DDT by environmentalists has caused over 50,000,000 deaths worldwide from preventable malaria.

“Renewable energy” technologies barely produce the energy it takes to make them, let alone supply our energy demand. They are expensive, unreliable, geographically limited and consume massive amounts of land and resources. They are simply not feasible.

Electric cars consume 17%-40% more energy than standard combustion engines due to efficiency losses in the conversion of chemical energy to electricity and transformation of electricity from different voltages in transport and to the car’s battery and engines. They also consume more energy to produce. If everyone had an electric car, grid capacity would need to be doubled to supply peak demand.

“Energy saving” light bulbs don’t actally save energy because energy demand at night is half the demand during the day; The same amount of energy is being produced regardless of whether you “save it” or not.

Oil and other “fossil fuels” are not going to run out anytime soon. There is enough coal alone to last thousands of years. There is no rush to shove inefficient unreliable expensive technologies down our throats. If you want to invest in “green” energy, invest your own money, not mine. It’s been 150 years since the industrial revolution and half the world is still unindustrialised. You live in some fantasy world where being “green” is as easy as switching a lightbulb, with complete contempt for human life and no grasp on reality. You think that the only thing stopping the “transition” are greedy oil companies.

Such a transition to the “green economy” is already taking place, naturally, and has been for the past 10,000 years. We are always making things more efficient, designing, developing and testing new technologies. You pretend as though you know something we don’t already know. It will take centuries, not decades, for such a transition to fully take place.

Since we have the resources and the climate crisis is manufactured, there is no reason to force people to “change their ways”. Environmentalism is a luxury for the rich. If you want to save the planet, make everyone rich. If you deny people the energy they need to live, they will die, but not before raping their surrounding environments.

This disgusting idea that the planet has a defined “carrying capacity”, is nothing but advocation of worldwide depopulation, and that is what the environmental movement is all about (at least since the 1970’s). It is not about saving the environment to save ourselves. It is about reducing the world’s population by 80%, since that is the only way you are going to realistically achieve 80% reductions in emissions in 40 years.

Almost nothing that’s being proposed by the insane environmental movement actually does anything to save the environment. All that will result is needless human death and suffering. You are probably sadistic enough to be satisfied with that outcome, since you think of humanity as lower than dirt, useless eaters that need to be controlled.

Human ingenuity is the ultimate unlimited resource.

Sadly, Mike seems not to have read everything, so Ill cite my own argument to righten the naive “you cant save energy cause powerplants always run at best performance”

Thats not entirely true. Afair there are certain types of power plants that can effectively control their ourput by predicted demand. However, the important point is not whether the power plant you get your electricity from is generating it at full throttle 24/7 or not. The important point is if, when and how much new plants have to be built because the existing ones cant satisfy the demand anymore.
...
by the way

“Oil and other “fossil fuels” are not going to run out anytime soon. There is enough coal alone to last thousands of years. There is no rush to shove inefficient unreliable expensive technologies down our throats.”

But you DO know that fossil energy sources dont return that fast, and especially oil is also used e.g. in medicine, which is far more important than burning it with cars? And you DO know that “peak oil” has most likely already been reached?

“Such a transition to the “green economy” is already taking place, naturally, and has been for the past 10,000 years. We are always making things more efficient, designing, developing and testing new technologies.”

Nonsense. How comes the great results in many terms of energy saving technologies in Japan were achieved only after the govermnent came up with the “Runner Up” concept? Please, thinking that everything will solve itself or believing the “free market” will always provide the ultimate solution is plain naive.

” All that will result is needless human death and suffering. You are probably sadistic enough to be satisfied with that outcome, since you think of humanity as lower than dirt, useless eaters that need to be controlled.”

Okay, this is so low and idiotic that i doesnt even deserve a real answer.

“The important point is if, when and how much new plants have to be built because the existing ones cant satisfy the demand anymore.”

This has nothing to do with the fact that demand at night is always less than half demand during the day and the fact that you don’t use most lights until after dark. You will never save energy with these things.

Baseload power plants do not vary their outputs and run continuously shutting down only for maintenance, downtime and refurbishment. You are thinking of load following plants and these have nothing to do with demand at night being less than what baseload power plants supply.

I haven’t said a word about free markets. My words have nothing to do with retarded paradigms and ideologies that paint the world black and white.

The average person contributes more to society than they take away. The more we enrich our society the better our quality of lives become and the more we can afford the luxury of environmentalism. Force only ever results in death and sufering. Go ask some homeless person if they give a shit about the environment.

Peak oil? I thought we ran out of that stuff 40 years ago. Or was it 40 years before that? There is no peak oil, only artificial scarcity and speculation which keeps prices high. Oil is so abundant that the price would plummet if it were all made available. Rather than peak oil, peak production may happen, since we literally can’t pump it fast enough out of the ground to meet demand. For oil itself though, we’ll never run out of the stuff, it is constantly being produced beneath the earth’s surface thorugh the high-temperature, high-pressure continuous reaction between calcium carbonate and iron oxide — two of the most abundant compounds making up the earth’s crust. But relax, I’m not expecting you to believe that.

We shouldn’t be saving the environment to save ourselves. We should be saving ourselves to save the environment.

@Federico: You said: “the physical impossibility of having a linear system (infinite growth) on a circular environment (the resources are limited)”. So you are a Malthusian. Enemy of growth. Just like the Club of Rome.

No. The resources are not limited, Federico. Universe is an infinite source of “resources and energy”. Even on our small planet se have just barely scrateched its surface… The room for progress is infinite.

The only thing we need is FREEDOM. This is the only resource, that is endangered.

Freedom to do business, freedom of speech, freedom of science. Freedom to invent new solutions. To invent “how” to get to to resources and “how” to use them.

Example: Oil was underground for millions of years. But only in the industrial revolution we invented, how to use it. Until then, it was useless.

Shame on Malthusians.

Omfg. Of course there might be a bit more oil discovered in the future, cause we gain the ability to dig even deeper down the earth and destroy a bit more of it this way. Wont make it cheaper though as digging deeper simply costs more.

Still: Oil is not an endless resource and cannot really be considered to be renewable as its produced far slower than it is wasted. Yet we should save it for really important uses, such as in the medecine technology. Looking at mobility or PVC production, we got alternatives there that will be fully capable of replacing the use of oil in the future.

@Vitzeslav

Reading your comment, I get the feeling that tyou have no problem with plundering earth’s resources (and then to continue the plundering in space, if possible). Yet you don’t get that if the “only thing wie need is FREEDOM”, you are supporting its decrease at the same time.

While climate change will already cause severe problems in regions that already have severe problems (middle Africa for example), the wasting and depletion of natural resources will worsen this by far. After all, even though we live in modern houses and technology-thriving cities, we are still dependent on nature.

Georg: We can also turn coal into oil if needed, it’s not very difficult or expensive to do. We are never going to run out of oil.

Geothermal energy is the only technology that has me remotely convinced of its potential to produce continuous, reliable and sustainable energy (with minimal land usage) to the extent that we retire other means of energy production. However, the technological and economical barriers to overcome in order to do this globally, are almost unfathomable. It is still decades if not centuries away.

Until then, the best that can be hoped for is a mixture of all the technologies we have today, including oil, gas, coal and nuclear. There is no silver bullet, there is no need to rush and trample on people’s lives in the process.

Climate change is a real problem, and the only solution is to adapt. To think that we can stop, control, or reverse climate change, is the epitome of arrogance and stupidity.

@Georg: I really do not have problems with “plundering” (read:using) natural resources. Universe or Earth is useless, unless there is someone to use its resources.

Earth’s resources may be finite. But out there is endless space to explore and use. There is a room for endless Growth.

But I forgot that friends of the Club of Rome want to STOP Growth.

Vitzeslav, it does not seem that you cant understand me, it seems like you DONT WANT to understand me.

The way we “use” earth’s resources nowadays IS plundering. We need to find a way to use them in a manner that allows them to regenerate and stay steady. Otherwise we’ll cast doom upon ourselves.

On the one hand you say that technologies like energy saving bulbs need far more developement, on the other hand you think we’ll just easily pop out to space and harvest some more (which would definitely NOT be cheap and the proper resources must be found beforehand).

This forum is full of rather stale opinions, it’s a pity that Mike is not allowed to blog. His comments is the only thing that seem to speak the truth here.

If only all the people here would read the links he post especially the truly marvoulus Gary Novak (a true John Gault in the flesh)

I hope you don’t mind that I repost the link here Mike
http://nov55.com/
(a true treasure trowe)

He not only tackles questions on climate change but he takes on large questions like Intelligent design, the death of the Dinousaurs, big bang theory and even Einsteins relativity theory (at last someone who dare question this evidently faulty theory).

If only people had the gut’s and read the thruth we would not have to have to our waste time with evident lies.

It seems pointless to keep trying to argue with someone who:
- applies false syllogisms
- does not know the law of the conservation of energy
- commits ad hominem attacks

without a basic knowledge of physics and logic it’s impossible to understand even the simplest arguments. Please go study some physics and logic before posting the next comment. It isn’t a threat, it’s really a polite request.

When you understand that:
- resources have an upper bound, that we need to harvest them as efficiently as possible
- we need to respect the Earth and stop polluting the planet if we want to keep living in it
- there is no such thing as the so called “environmentalist movement” to which all people who do not comply to your conspiracy hypothesis are part of
- ad hominem meaningless attacks do not help the discussion.

then maybe we can start talking some sense.

I’ve been tracking this bizarre figure Mike across this forum with aggressive bantering on a broad range of issues (he always seem to have an answer and some obscure mushroomy link to state his claim) , he especially likes mushroom scientist Gary Novak:
http://moonflake.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/midweek-cuckoogary-novak/
Lovely reading if you have the gut’s for it…
Not sure what kind of crackpot this Mike is but he sure have a lot of spare time…

glad to be here. thanks for such an interesting discussion

I would only argue that where the area is grey, we should present an unbiased viewpoint.

If the science shows that “God does not exist” and you report it as truth without taking into consideration the evidence that god DOES exist, you have alienated a huge percentage of your audience - thereby closing their minds to the possibility that you are correct.

Can you translate that into climate change? You will never win the support of people who do not believe in climate change by writing articles that tell the non-believer that they are wrong. They will not read it.

The job of a journalist is interpreted in many different ways, but the way I see it, the job of a comment-writer is to give your opinion while the job of a journalist is to report facts in a balanced manner.

In fact that was lesson #1 on my journalism degree course.

If the science shows that “God does not exist” and you report it as truth without taking into consideration the evidence that god DOES exist, you have alienated a huge percentage of your audience - thereby closing their minds to the possibility that you are correct.
Helena,
I’m not following. The existence of a god is a tautology, meaning that it can’t be proven, nor dis-proven. It’s a self-appointed truth for those who believe it, without the need for evidence.

How can you make such a comparison, when they two completely different areas? One can be proven, measured and studied (the climate), the other… well, the other we can’t say anything about it.

The provability of climate change or god is not my point. Ignore provability, because proving things hasnt worked for everyone yet has it. (also I have absolutely no intention of getting into that subject with you again!)

The point I was making is the journalistic one - its what people BELIEVE that decides whether they will read and absorb your article or not.

It’s a self appointed truth for most people who believe or dont believe in climate change. Only experts can cite their sources and authority, the rest of us make up our minds based on who tells us first.

Only experts can cite their sources and authority, the rest of us make up our minds based on who tells us first.
I disagree. I’m not a geologist, but I didn’t make up my mind based on “who told me first”.

I looked up at the evidence, read multiple reports, listened to various experts who held both positions, then made up my mind.

In any circumstances I want to keep my critical attitude.

Although I’m not a journalist I’ve been wrestling with the same issue. I’ve been working on an article about US Senator Jim Inhofe’s 2006 hearing on “Media Bias and Global Warming.”.  The witnesses for the hearing were four scientists, two of them skeptics, and a journalist who essentially works for an oil company.

Interestingly enough, all four scientists testified that global warming was occurring, but the skeptics claimed it was not man-made.  Both skeptics said global warming had stopped in 1998, though I do not understand how any scientist could interpret the data that way. The journalist’s testimony was clearly biased. 

I cannot seem to write about the testimony of the skeptics without pointing out the errors in their reasoning.  However, I find few errors in the other two scientists reasoning. Am I guilty of bias?  Senator Inhofe would certainly think so.

Senator Inhofe concluded from the hearings that the media was biased, and therefore “Global warming is a hoax.”  You can read about the hearing at http://epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=266407
and my article will appear on http://www.jcmooreonline.com  if I ever get it finished

Federico - were you brought up by devout Christian parents? Just wondering.

We can look positive and say we have to pass peak oil and we must develop new energies!

Federico - were you brought up by devout Christian parents? Just wondering.

What makes you think that?