🚀 go-pugleaf

On 2 Oct 2004 08:58:17 -0700, AJFeeney48@yahoo.com (JohnAndrew) wrote:

>William James, no offense, but your reasoning
>below fails to pass the "laugh test."  
>
>A couple of reasons, at least:  (1) You and other greenhouse denialists
>keep insisting that the scientists and/or public policy people who
>are pointing to global climate change have some vested financial
>interest in doing so -- they're doing it to justify more research
>money for themselves, etc.
>
>Well, maybe so; we're all human and we're all self-interested in
>the end.  But you fail to mention the "elephant in the room," the
>obvious, which is that the global oil industry, the global coal
>and natural gas industries, and the global auto industry all have
>an enormous self-interest in denying that global climate change
>is occurring because they want to sell more fossil fuels.  

They also live on this planet, they also have families, and none want
to live where the temperature doesn't support their ability to live.
To even suggest that large numbers of people would conspire to destroy
the planet because they expect to make a quick buck, is a bit silly,
don't you think?  But even that's irrelevent. Those industries aren't
even involved for the most part.  They aren't stupid, they know every
time they make any claims, the silly ranting starts and unlike those
groups feeding off tax dollars, the corporations have to keepthe
consumers happy.

>Entire governments - Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, etc. - have the same
>self-interested reasons for denying the threat of climate change,
>and some of the leading greenhouse skeptics - not all, but some --
>are funded by these fossil fuel interests.  So if self-interest
>is biasing the science in this controversy, why isn't it biasing
>it on both sides?  

It's not an argument between equals any more than a scientific
argument between evolution and creationism.  One side is practicing
actual science, and the other is making an extraordinary claim without
ANY evidence, much less the required extraordinary evidence.  Unless
and until there is supporting evidence for global warming, it's no
different from any other wild unsupported claim.

>And why aren't the hundreds of billions of dollars
>that governments and corporations have invested in fossil fuels
>an even greater incentive for bias than the hundreds of thousands
>of dollars that the global warming believers are getting for their
>computer models?

Even if you assume someone would be biased toward suicide, what if
they were?  Who cares?  Who's even talking to them about it or
listening to them? I keep hearing about these "big corporate
scientists" disputing the global warming scam, but where are they?
Seems to me the big corporations don't want to get involved because
it's a hot potato. 

>(2) You also write that the secret agenda of the Kyoto Treaty backers
>is to weaken the West and help Third World dictatorships.  

Well...it's hardly a secret. 

>Why?  What on earth would be the motivation for western
>(and especially US) environmental lobbyists and writers to try to 
>do this?

Politics.  If a democrat were president Kyoto wouldn't be an issue to
any but the most extreme suckers in the global warming scam.

>"We're pushing this political
>issue -- which we know will be unpopular in the US Congress and
>among all of the oil states in the South, not to mention unpopular
>with the Saudis, Iranians, Iraqis, Venezuelans, Nigerians, Indonesians,
>Alaskans, and everyone else involved in oil production -- because we 
>want to help the Chinese, whom we don't know."  
>
>This is stupid politics, isn't it?  I mean, it's the
>politics that the Kyoto treaty believers are in a sense forced to
>embrace, because they don't have a lot of alternatives, but it's
>a very hard sell in Washington DC, which is where the Kyoto Treaty
>backers have to prevail.  And why would sensible lobbyists, scientists
>etc. deliberately choose to do something that's as difficult as
>possible - unless they feel they have to, for scientific and policy
>reasons?

Money, politics, and ignorance. It's different from different people
involved.  There are some peddling it with scientific credentials.
They obviously know it's not science, therefore they are frauds, not
scientists, but they live on tax handouts and that's their scam.
Others may or may not know the scam is bogus but it's convenient
political fodder when they want to run around ranting that Bush wants
to destroy the planet because he wont support whatever BS they are
ranting about. Many don't know, are too ignorant of the scientific
method, and or disinterested or unable to read and fall sucker for the
scam. They are easy pawns for the pseudoscience scammers and the
leftist kooks.

>(3) I'm a green extremist, but I've worked somewhat briefly
>with moderate environmental lobbyists - people who want to
>get environmental bills through Congress with as little trouble as
>possible, and who'd like their organizations to be able to claim credit
>for victories afterwards, so as to attract dues-paying members.  
>
>The lobbyists I know personally basically hate the global climate
>issue, or at least they used to, because they know it's so damned
>hard to push in Congress successfully.  
>
>They'd much rather win limited victories to protect
>wolves or grizzly bears or other big furry, cuddly animals that
>sentimental Americans care about.  They love to save pieces of park land
>that both conservatives and liberals cherish: it's good for
>the environmental lobbying bizness.  The more "lefty" of them
>want to protect workers on the job from toxic chemicals - hey, it
>helps win support from what remains of the labor movement.

There are many absolutely legitimate environmental issues. There are
alsoa lot of totally bogus ones.  Reasonal measures to protect
endangered species is legitimate. Protecting a few miles of barren
arctic ice from a few oil wells is silly BS.  Smog in some areas is
certianly a legimite issue.  Global warming is not.

>But do they have any interest in undermining the US economy for
>the benefit of the Third World?  No, No, No.  Why should they?
>Because ideology aside, this isn't popular with Congress, or with
>dues-paying members of the big conservation groups - many of whom are Republicans.
>
>When you write that the secret agenda of the conservation lobby
>is to weaken the US for the benefit of the Third World, then,
>I have to think that you're deluded, William J.  Or you're deliberately
>promoting outrageous falsehoods, because you care about blocking
>the Kyoto treaty much more than you care about the truth.  Or maybe
>you simply have no idea of how the environmental movement works -
>but in any case, you're wrong.

No, I unserstand it well.  There are a lot of fanatic kooks who's
noise drowns out the signals of legitimate honest environmentalist.
The press doesn't pay attention to someone managing aforrest area,
it's boring from a news prospective.  But let some kook stand under a
falling tree in a logging operation and it makes the headlines. Let a
little group of criminal tresspassing fruitcakes build treehouses in
timber and they get regular coverage on Art Bell.  A couple of
juvinile delenquents can vandalize a mink farm and the kooks
(including the AR fanatics) all applaud.  Never mind the fact that
they released the animals in areas they can't live.  They oppose
hunting, but they wouldn't let their kids play outside in the company
of wolf packs, so the animals they pretend to love not only damage
farms, yards, and cars, they also starve.  But a starving deer doesn't
make the news.  If you really want the "greens" to be taken seriously,
why aren't you kicking out the kooks and demanding the scientific
method be respected and applied to all issues?

>(4) You claim that the global warming believers are focusing almost
>exclusively on CO-2 and ignoring the greenhouse warming effects of
>water vapor and other greenhouse gases.  This isn't true of any
>of the global warming analysts that I've read.  Reports by the
>US National Academy of Sciences in the 1980s, reports by the
>Worldwatch Institute in its "State of the World" books, and
>greenhouse analysts like Dr. Stephen Schneider ("Laboratory 
>Earth," etc.) all have mentioned water vapor, methane, CFCs
>and other greenhouse gases (including nitrous oxide, if I remember
>right) along with CO-2.  

Oh, the scientific literature mentions it, sure.  But you virtually
NEVER even see water even mentioned in the mainstream publications or
websites peddling the global warming scam. The vast majority of the
articals and pages pedling it never even mention water vapor and
blatently lie about it, caling CO2 the major greenhouse gas. 

>Admittedly the policy focus of the environmental groups tends to
>be on controlling CO-2 emissions rather than, say, attempting to
>control the evaporation of water around the world - but come to
>think of it, how would you control the evaporation of water around
>the world, anyway?  

You can't and that's the point.  If hey were honest, they wouldn't
have an issue.

>So William, I don't think you have much credibility here.  Clearly,
>scientific truth is a matter for experiment and observation to
>establish; it can't always be deduced from first principles, and
>your side may eventually turn out to be correct.  But your arguments
>below don't seem worthy of much notice.

Intersting that you denounce my credibility but admit that scientific
truth is a matter for experiment and observation to establish, which
is exactly what I have been talking about.  The global warming scam
depends on two things to make it other than any other absurd
unsupported claim:
1) Evidence that the earth is warming
2) Evidence that humans have anything to do with it.
Unless and until those two are accomplished, global warming is in the
same catagory as scientology, faith healing, little greem men from
space, creationism, etc.  It's not to be taken seriously.

>In the meantime, what about the researchers who are now finding
>that global warming should produce stronger hurricanes over
>the century, if current trends continue?  Do you have any
>specific information about why these guys are biased or wrong?

Global warming likely would produce stronger hurricanes.  So?  But if
the current trend continues, in 100 years, it will be like the last
100 years, nothing different.  However there are some munging data to
make their case.  One (I posted a link here withng the last few weeks)
started adding tropical storms in the equations in the 1950s, yet uses
the data to "prove" there are more storms today than before. How can
you take them seriously? 

I should note that I am not saying global warming is impossible.  The
earth has gone through warming and cooling quite a few times in the
last 4+ billion years and will undoubtably do so again.  The last few
years has seen an unusually high solar output, which isn't caused by
evil US corporations trying to destroy the world for a dollar either.
So such fluctuations occur and are well within earth's normal
temperatures.

William R. James