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Billionaires Secretly Fund Vast Climate Denial Network
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Suzanne Goldenberg reports that conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, helping build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing 'wedge issue' for hardcore conservatives. 'We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,' says Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust. Ball's organization assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes with a guarantee of complete anonymity for donors who wished to remain hidden. The money flowed to Washington think tanks embedded in Republican party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore. 'The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to public scrutiny. It's also growing. Budgets for all these different groups are growing,' says Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records. 'These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable.'"
Let them purchase as much free speech as they like.
Make lobbying equal to bribery and throw the fuckheads in jail for life.
Wow- AGW is a full-fledged cult at this point.
'We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,' says Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust.
And don't forget the disinformation. We can't have all that freedom with an informed public.
Is it all being published in a way that anyone can assess for themselves or not? Are assumptions being acknowledged and debated amongst researchers in that field? The source of funding matters little if these things occur.
Was there somebody who didn't know this was going on? Petrochemical plutocrats were obviously behind this. In many cases they didn't even bother to hide.
Also, we're under attack from interstellar aliens, who are hurling giant boulders at us.
Seems like a waste of money. :)
There seem to be fewer and fewer people who believe in this every day.
Now the money is running out for the global warming industry it's finally going away and we can get back to normal
Let me get this strait, conservative billionaires are funding groups that are trying to discredit groups funded by liberal billionaires and this is news?
Disclaimer: I have no doubts that climate change is happening and CO2 plays some role in that change.
The secret billionaires are just trying to even the playing field against those fat cat scientists who are rolling in their trillions from government grants. Exxon is David against the NSF Goliath, man.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
So, it couldn't be that there is actually any doubt in the ability of zealous global warming researchers to utilize or even realize ALL relevant criteria necessary to perform an accurate analysis? It's just been a big secret conspiracy all this time? The Tri-Lateral Commission? Alien invaders preparing our planet for their environmental needs? Just who are these influential overlords? Kochs? Rockefellers? Disney? All valid suspects. My money is on Microsoft if they're going to attack a solid citizen like Al Gore with his Apple portfolio.
Did you the author take his medication this week? We have to consider ALL CRITERIA.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
...are soon parted.
And accuse them of hiding terrorist organizations....
So the network can be put through social network analysis to produce interesting facts. That data can be crunched, so who is going to crunch it?
...don't demonize them as neo-Holocaust deniers. One-hundred twenty million, but is their side true? Address the facts, don't engage in ad hominem attacks.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Who gives a rats ass.... Slashdot should stick to technology....not the wacko retardo politics that they have devolved into. Democrats are even worse if you think they are here to help you... Liberty and Freedom is what makes Amerika great, not another over-reaching, pry-into-your-life-legislation that is suppose to protect your feeling from getting hurt. Slashdot must be filled with a bunch of nanny-state-do-gooders with too much time on your hands and never worked a real job since your mom let you outta the basement.
Yikes, next they might build a ship that their activists can use to chase climate scientists around the world and harass them!
Let them purchase as much free speech as they like.
And let others exercise *their* free speech calling them out on how they choose to exercise it and what they choose to say- which is exactly what's being done here.
That said, when it's being exercised in such a non-transparent and intentionally misleading manner, I'd question whether it actually *is* even "free speech" in the first place.
I just finished reading the excellent novel "The Sheep Look Up", written in 1972 by John Brunner. I was amazed at the many parallels between the novel's dystopian vision and today's environmental issues. Even though some of the novel's environmental issues were mitigated (at least in the West) by education and regulation (DDT, leaded gasoline, smog, etc), many continue to this day. One thing that struck me particularly was the collusion of big business in denying that environmental issues exist and the draconian measures they went to to discredit and silence their critics. Also striking was government's powerlessness to act in the face of lobbying and bullying by big business.
A recommended read, as appropriate today as it was 40 years ago.
No one need tell us that somethig change in climate in 25 years. In Brazil, when I was a kid at 5 at the beach, the only kind of sun protection my mother and lots of mothers used in hers sons was a stripe of a talk-based cream on the nose of the children. I stayed 3, maybe 4 hours in the direct sunlight of the beach and the worse thing that could happen was became a little pinky. Today If I go to a jungle where there is lots of shadows in a rainy day and not use a suncream of at least 20 FPS, I will lost my skin and lirerally became untouchable for 4 days.
I think the problem is not only misinformation, it is political inertia, specially in Brazil. Sh*t, we are f*cked robbed every single day by ours politicians and we do nothing.
In USA the problem looks even worse, because of the incidence of hurricanes, snow storms and tornados. But I see no one give a sh*t or take any step in change nothing. Probably we will live inside a dome before somebody take a attitude. including me.
This just in.... billionaires think the minimum wage is just fine where it is. Film at 11.
Life needs more saving throws.
Address the facts, don't engage in ad hominem attacks.
Skeptics are not the problem. Skeptics address the facts and the data - and they are becoming more and more rare because the data is damning. It's the people electing and directing public policy. The real problem are the folks with "opinions" spoon fed to them by the lying, incompetent, and irresponsible media - ALL the MEDIA - but especially Fox News.
Listen to talk radio or watch Fox News sometime. I constanlty hear people (my neighbors) parrot what they say. They personally attack Al Gore and equate global warming with him. Actual facts or scientific data NEVER come up or if they do, it's a liberal conspiracy to tax more and for wealth transfer.
Ad Hominem attacks are perfectly "logical" to those people - actually to people in general (how many times have you seen people being called "fanboys", "scientologists", or whatever for having an unpopular opinion here!)
Add in the emotional hit of Liberal vs. Conservatives and BINGO you have a completely irrational response to an issue.
On the other had billions are funneled into the pro-climate change groups.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
If they are willing to spend over a hundred million denying it then it's pretty obvious it's real. These aren't the kind of people to throw money away unless they were afraid of the evidence they were trying to suppress.
...you're upset because people are providing funding for political positions they believe in, and that some of those positions are self-serving?
Did you arrive on Earth yesterday? And do you honestly think that conservative groups are the only people doing this?
I thought we weren't supposed in conspiracy theories.
After all, mobs are not allowed free speech either.
Yet the individuals of the mob are.
Yet another way that the elite try to control the sheep. Welcome our new overlords, until there is a violent revolution. which I welcome. Death to the Company, Capitalism is a fraud, it is a dream, something given by our new overlords to govern us and enslave us yet again. Bah, bah black sheep, have you any wool, yes sir, yes sir, three bags full..
The forces promoting man-made climate change theory are being funded by BILLIONS from government and corporations. Government stands to gain tremendous regulatory authority via the climate-change game. Several corporations, like General Electric, stand to benefit from fascist laws granting them monopolies in the "green economy".....so, there is a lot of graft/corruption on both sides. IMHO, more graft and corruption on the pro-manmade climate change side.
Frankly as long as this helps keep the enviro-taxation down i'm all for it.
I outright object to my wages being taken from me, reducing my lifestyle i work so hard to get, just to pretend we can stop an irreversible process.
Why should i pay through the nose when china, texas and india produce more CO2 than nearly the rest of the planet combined.
There's this game that "skeptics" of the scientific theory of Global Climate Change like to play.
They assume that climatologists have come to their conclusions (that the Earth is warming due to greenhouse gas emissions and human activity is partly responsible) because the scientists (they say) "were paid by people and governments to come to that conclusion".
While us "warmists" have been providing the scientific evidence; the "skeptics", on the other hand, argue politics "follow the MONEY!!!" (they say)
The problem is that when you do take their advice and the money leads to conservative billionaires, the Heartland Institute, Exxon Mobil (Fossil Fuel industries), and others who have a financial and political interest in denying the science of Climate Change:
All of a sudden the "skeptics" want us to forget about following the money!
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So they're advocating accepting personal responsibility for climate change? That's very generous!
So cosmopolitan Goldberg doesn't like her climate-fag pimps getting the scratchy end of-the-bush shoved up their lib.com azzwholes. She creams on uniform emotocentric gush and feels ... now ... lonely ... Da po' po' pooh! Too feckin-A bad that wealthy, productive folks are finally doing something useful for displaced, poor productive folks. Now should the **builders** class assert their rightful, dominant status and put an iron-bootheel to the Gaia.fairies .....
You speak of "neutral science" as if there were such a thing. As soon as politicians (of all stripes) saw this as a means of seeing their power increase/decrease it became a political football, not science. Riddle me this; if there were no careers to be made and no funding to be won, as well as no shift in the existing economic power structure, how much would anyone care about this? How much would the warring factions spend? When the hysteria ends and more data becomes available, we can all make rational scientific decisions about this. Until then it's just a freak show on both sides.
Organization? You must be joking..
when the earth can no longer produce crops and livestock all start dieing off and the air can no longer be breathed and water no longer drinkable the rich will die too, (not just the poor) the rich might hang around a little longer because of the resources but they wont be far behind when it comes to a mass extinction event we all lose both rich & poor
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
> Wow- AGW is a full-fledged cult at this point.
H'yup. Several cool trillions in political subsidies for we-knew-they-will-never-scale energy alternatives (I include ethanol here!) based on grossly overstated sea level rise, ice within historical norms, pure-carbon causation madness based some forced-feedback 'greenhouse effect' robot chicken theory which its own originator Fourier would not even recognize as his own---
Does not count. But when a few billionaires collect the spare change from their couch cushions and manage to raise $120 million for something----?
Well. That changes everything. Twice. Which means it does not change anything at all.
I, for one, would welcome my new karma-reducing Slashdot AGW proponent overlords.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Unless they surveyed all billionaires, and found that billionaires contributed disproportionately to groups that don't believe in global warming (which they didn't, of course), this headline is about as misleading as saying "billionaires contribute to anti-corporate groups to discredit opponents" or "billionaires kill cute puppies". But then a headline which says "billionaires believe in and contribute to all sorts of causes just like everyone else, and we're pointing to the causes we don't like" doesn't get a lot of ad views.
IMHO, more graft and corruption on the pro-manmade climate change side.
Luckily for me, there is actual data to examine, so I can safely ignore your humble opinion.
Unluckily for me, there are millions of tools just like you who are perfectly happy to eyeball it and trust their gut reaction when there is perfectly good data around to examine, and you all get to vote, too.
TFA was a bait piece and looks like everyone so far has fallen for it hook, line and sinker. Opening paragraph from TFA:
"Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned."
There are only two supporting quotes detailing the specific allegations against these groups:
"...those conservative donors have been pushing funds towards organizations working to discredit climate science or block climate action."
"By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118 million distributed to 102 think tanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations."
Both statements make the same point. Both contain an OR clause, and both OR clauses are worded to include even those who agree 100% with the science but disagree about the chosen regulatory solution. TFA is stuffed to the gills with emotional hot-button rhetoric. Looks like even otherwise clear-headed rational thinkers are susceptible to well-crafted leading statements.
http://www.progressiveliving.org/mass_media_and_politics.htm
Greenpeace. Come on, guys.
The reported $120 million is total funding, not what is spent on "climate."
Greenpeace annual spending (year ended 12/31/2010) -- $35 million
Al Gore's Climate Reality Project had revenues of $16 million and spent $25 million in 2010.
WWF, formerly The World Wildlife Fund, spent $243 million in 2012.
The US government has spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, education campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climate_money.html
There's a lot of money floating around, most of it being spent by "warmers."
The article is misleading. Donations were giving anonymously to conservative think tanks. Many conservative think tanks are skeptical of human impact on climate change. These donations were not given directly the cause of deny climate change. This article seems to exist for the purpose to incite controversy where there is very little. Based on the comments on this site, I think it has been successful.
Deny reality if you wish, but the cons who would do this, really are truly evil.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/02/the-case-against-peter-gleick.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+powerlineblog%2Flivefeed+%28Power+Line%29
$120 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions being spent on behalf of promoting "climate change", regardless of the science. Hell, just the Rockefeller Fund has probably dropped more than that. So has the Ad Council. Warren Buffet personally has. I think you're being just a tad sensationalist, Hugh.
I will grant that this "Donors Trust" looks like a bit too much like some of the seamier SuperPAC scams of recent elections. I'd be careful dealing with outfits like this, whatever your convictions on the science.
Lobbying is just telling politicians what your interests are.
By throwing money and prostitutes at them! In my book, that is the definition of bribery..
My figurehead is better than your figurehead!
Wow, Joseph Goebbels would be proud of this article!! "Neutral scientific fact", what a piece of excrement! When the warmers have to make up data ala East Anglia, and then say that the original records are all "gone", that pretty much tells you what this is all about. Bottom line is that there is no scientific proof whatsoever that man has had any global effect on the climate. This whole charade is based on computer models that have been programmed to give the result that the creators want to see, nothing more. Since they can't get accurate data of all the climate processes all over the world for these models, they instead simplify them and insert "fudge factor" numbers to represent the data that they don't have. By manipulating the "fudge factors" they can get the models to produce any result that they wish. In computer geek parlance this is called "Garbage-In, Garbage-Out (GIGO)".
When someone can produce a computer model that relates CO2 concentrations to global temperature, and make predictions about future climate based upon future CO2 levels, and then over the course of decades the model shows itself to be right, then it's time to talk. That's how science works. You are supposed to use your theory to make predictions and then those predictions are tested against what really happens to see if they are valid.
That's not what's happening here though. Instead we are being told that we don't have time for that and that "We must act now!" or else it will be too late. Now where else do you hear phrases like "You must act now!"? Why, late nite infomercials that's where, and they do it for the same reason the warmers are doing it. They are trying to get you to react emotionally and get that credit card out quick before your more rational self overrules the buying of worthless junk. That's exactly what the warmers and the left are trying to do here. They know that if they can get laws enacted putting government in charge of energy they will have won the battle against free enterprise and capitalism, which has been their goal all along. That's really what this is all about. It has nothing to do with climate or saving the world. It's about replacing capitalism with socialism.
So, $120 million to over 100 groups over the course of eight years? Really? That works out to less than $15k per group, per year? WHOA!!! Call the media!
Oh wait, I see the problems... first someone is bitching about people exercising free speech in what they donate to. Second, they are worried that the donors may receive tax breaks for their donations. Third because conservatives do something like this MUST mean that liberals WOULD NEVER do anything of the ilk...
I'm going to get more coffee and go back to bed...
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
Clearly, they did not secretly spend as much as they should have, word on the street is that there might actually be Climate Change.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I don't think we know if Galileo really said this or not, but it seems appropriate here. Billionaires can fund whatever they want, and it still does not change reality. In 20-30 years climate change will be so obvious that everyone will look back and say, "What were they thinking?" At that point the billionaires will say, "Well we didn't know then what we know now." Science is funny, it really does not respect opinions. It just is. We don't have to like, we only have to understand it. I guess waiting 20-30 years for the old billionaires and politicians who are wed to climate denial to die off is just the way it is. All we have to do is wait.
Budgets for all these different groups are growing,' says Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records. 'These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable.'
I would like to see what Greenpeace has to say to these:
2003 - http://www.eco-imperialism.com/the-enron-of-nonprofits/
2010 - http://consumersforpeace.org/index.php?filename=archive-irs-audited-greenpeace.html
2011 - http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/08/12/greenpeace-accused-shady-fund-raising.html
Who threw the first stone and who retaliated? Discuss.
Clearly, they did not secretly spend as much as they should have, word on the street is that there might actually be Climate Change.
But is it warming? - In the past 5 years our winters here in Europe and North America have been significantly COLDER than normal. If there's warming it's elsewhere because here it's been colder, especially during the winter.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
A lot of people are not disputing that there is climate change.
A lot of people are disputing that it is caused by humans.
The earth has gone through periods of heating and cooling for far longer than people have been driving around 18 wheelers.
I'll never understand why global warming is such a big deal. It's undeniable that based on the data we have, the planet is getting warmer. However, my understanding is that we still do not have evidence that the warming is, indeed, caused by man. Of course, any rational human being would still say that whether we have evidence or not, it's the smart thing to minimize pollutants of all kind. Even if it doesn't impact the climate, it still impacts our quality of life and the world around us. So even if it's all bullshit, the cautious measures are wise, regardless.
That said, we all know that the way you find out the truth about a thing is to follow the money. Unfortunately, both sides are full of shit, here. You have one side paying billions to trot out supposed "experts" (handily associated to the oil industries) to refute what the rest of the world claims. Money. On the other, you have people like Al Gore and other opportunists pushing the idiotic "carbon credits" economy. People who both invest heavily in them and also promote them and climate fear to increase their value. Not only that, but they push heavily to make these "credits" and this bullshit "credit economy" part of the political and economic structure of as many advanced nations as possible. And even at its best, it would accomplish nothing. It doesn't limit pollution. It just makes polluting something you can buy the right to do, while making other people rich as you do it. It's the same scam we have now, except we've found a way to have additional people intervene in the process so that, along with the companies and CEOs, these new people can make bank. Money.
So, frankly, fuck them all.
Money makes you a super villain? Lex Luther suddenly makes so much more sense.
Disagreeing with you does not make me a troll.
So what's the other side of the argument? It can't be a shill piece unless it can be convincingly argued to be factually wrong.
Who would it be shilling for, anyway? Those bastards who enjoy clean air and blue skies?
This divisiveness creates competition... the competition itself may be good at prompting one side or another to definitively prove their point. Divisiveness is also good at raising money for both sides, thus promoting self-perpetuating problems.
The Donors Trust exists to spread lies, lies that, "...help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise," The only surprise is how many of the idiot Rand fan-boys here will insist that this is perfectly OK.
The quote is already biased regardless of the facts and theories presented. Simply by using the word "denial" implies truth. Were this a genuinely objective statement, an unbiased author would use a phrase such as "opposing viewpoint". Also using the word "anti" implies negativity and therefore why would anyone want to be associated with something negative. That's why the terms "pro choice" and "pro life" exist.
Nothing is anonymous. Nothing is untraceable. If they really believe that, they are even more stupid than they appear on the surface, and that's bad enough.
There are no Spartiates any more. The wealthy today rely exclusively on hired hands for their security; history shows how weak a reed that is in the long run.
| Several cool trillions
citation? preferably an un-funded citation...
Probably not the most popular view, but we don't have enough recorded history to prove this isn't one of earth's normal life cycles over tens of thousands of years, or its the start of an ice age. However, the human population has, without a doubt, made our environment FUBAR, while I don't agree with climate change I do think we really need to think about what we pump into our air and oceans, and how much our planet can really sustain for the future if we keep destroying it the way we do.
The $120 million spent on arguing would be much better used to clean up the mess we've made that's for sure...
I'm not signing anything
Libel/slander laws do not limit speech. They can only be applied after the fact. So you can be held responsible for what you say or write, but you cannot be restrained from saying it in the first place.
This doesn't make sense. Laws forbid you to utter slanderous statements. Other laws forbid you to utter "fire" in a theatre. In both cases, I can commit the offense. So either slander laws *do* limit speech or the "don't shout fire in a theatre" does *not* limit free speech. Which is it?
When Anthony Watts was outed as a Heartland Institute shill, right before the eyes of those who believe the Global Conspiracy of Climate Scientists and Politicians in Collusion with Big Green for Government Money, there was a collective "meh" from the denialists and Watts suffered no loss of credibility in their eyes. They probably strongly suspect it already and it just doesn't bother them. Heck they probably strongly suspect that climate denialism is total bullshit but would rather tell science to go fuck itself than do anything that goes against conservatism.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This looks like a juicy target just ripe to be milked of lulz.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Perspective is everything. Even if the conspiracy theory in the post is true the Catastrophic AGW Doomsday Alarmist Rapturists give and get much more money by many orders of magnitude for a non-problem.
$120 million over 8 years to 100 groups = $150,000 per group.
Greenpeace's ANNUAL budget (latest available 2010) = $27 million. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/planet3/PDFs/ANNUAL_REPORT2010-11.pdf
Al Gore Takes $500 Million In Big Oil Money, Accuses Volunteer Bloggers Of Being A “Corporate Power”.
EU Plans To Spend $250 Billion On “Climate”
"BRUSSELS, Belgium, February 8, 2013 (ENS) – European heads of state and government have agreed to commit at least 20 percent of the entire European Union budget over the next seven years to climate-related spending. The seven-year budget was agreed at 960 billion euros ($1.28 trillion)."
http://ens-newswire.com/2013/02/08/climate-gets-20-percent-of-seven-year-european-budget/
US Gives $7.5 Billion To Other Countries To Prevent Bad Weather
"The United States has provided $7.5 billion in international climate aid over the past three years"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-climate-aid-reaches-across-globe/2012/12/02/81380ebe-3812-11e2-8a97-363b0f9a0ab3_story.html
The list of funding to CAGW Climate Alarmist Doomsday Rapturists goes on and on.
So, private citizens exercise their right to free speech and say something that differs from the "scientific consensus" preferred by the current administration and the press. That's what free speech and democracy is all about, folks: we let people proclaim whatever sense or nonsense they want to proclaim, and then we trust the voter to sort out right and wrong. People who claim that voters are being manipulated into making bad decisions by "secret denial networks" are saying that they can't come up with convincing counter-arguments. And that by itself means that their own case is weak.
1- Grab a glass and fill it with water up to 3/4 full. Mark the level of the water
2- Put the glass in the fridge and let it freeze for at least 24 hrs. Mark the level of the ice.
3- Take the glass out of the fridge and let the ice melt for 24+hrs. Mark the level of the melted water.
Then try to explain to us the BS theory that melted ice is going to increase the level of water in the ocean. (FACT: water EXPANDS in volume when frozen). Even if all the "in-land" glaciers melted, the amount of water that will make it to the ocean would be negligible.
The GOP makes money if it comes from the ground.
Really? The past 5 years? In North America?
Then why does this Weather.com article:
http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/looking-back-winter-2011-2012_2012-03-07
Say something rather different, that the previous year's winter was warmer than normal?
Maybe somewhere else is having a colder winter than average, but not all of North America, and even if North America had had a cold winter in the last 5 years, there's indications that it's not true for every year, and any pattern in questionable.
Of course, that's ignoring the summers, but hey, there's only so much time I want to spend on this. Your words just don't pass the barest scrutiny.
... to actually read that data you claim to have examine.
FACT: Even the pro global warming data disputes the theory. This is why global warming was changed to climate change. Because the recorded data in the past 20 years alone, disproves the global warming theory.
You have been brainwashed to believe that all research that is funded voluntarily is bad, and all research that is funded through government violence is good. And it's not just "billionaires" who contribute to independent research - billionaires merely have the most to contribute, and are easiest for you commies to vilify.
In the history of science, there are many examples of politically-backed movements that seem to present overwhelming quantities of evidence to make their case, but are grounded on a faulty foundation and mis-frame the issues that they are trying to address. Some of the more famous examples of this include: the various state religions, "scientific communism", and "scientific racism" / eugenics. The latter, for example, presents mountains of data showing that certain ethnic groups perform better or worse than others, and try to use this data to jump to their preconceived conclusions - reduced Rights for the under-performing ethnic groups, sterilization, theft, etc. (Some Objectivists, for example, have been very guilty of this when discussing the Property Rights of the Palestinians.) Some of their data is indeed valid and significant, but it is being used to justify actions that it does not logically support! A rational epistemological formulation for a Theory of Rights leads to the recognition that all sufficiently-rational economic actors (potentially including parahumans, etc) are equal in their negative Rights, and the aggregate performance of any individual's ethnic group should be completely irrelevant in the eyes of the law.
Likewise, with all alleged environmental crises -- that try to put all of humanity in the same boat, both as the victim and the perpetrator of said crisis, in order to justify their power on a global scale -- the burden of proof remains on the accusers . The politically-biased alarmists, however, have the opposite mentality - willing to "err on the side of caution" and going quite far to overstate their case for interventionism, "for a good cause". They refuse to consider all the horrendous side-effects and unintended consequences of their actions. They have been repeatedly guilty of ignoring or outright hiding the error margins for reconstruction of past temperature data, failing to adjust for the "urban warming" effect, downplaying the unknown cycles in natural sources of greenhouse gases (ex. 95%~ of CO2 production has nothing to do with human activity) as well as other natural cycles (ex. solar activity), etc, etc, etc. Perhaps most importantly, their projections completely ignore the exponentially-accelerating rates of technological growth, in assuming that fossil fuels will remain just as viable in the marketplace for the remainder of the century, and that humanity won't irrigate and plant trees and come up with many yet-inconceivable carbon-sink technologies in the near future. The alarmists seek the power to be the "central planners" for all humanity, but what they know is dwarfed but what modern science doesn't yet know, and won't know for decades to come! That is the context in which all calls for environmentalist interventionism need to be considered.
--libman
Then again, you only listen to denier crank blogs and never the actual source.
AIT is entirely and factually telling you the science.
You don't like it, however, so make up any old shit to pretend you can ignore it.
We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,.
Conservative code for "we don't care about poor people and don't want to pay anything to help them."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I am just going to say this every time climate change is discussed from now on:
The climate change debate is a giant distraction that only serves the interests of those destroying the environment.
At first it was 'is it happening?' then it was 'are we causing it?' and now we have discussions about the magnitude and the exact quantification, about whether it is a debate or not, about whose fault it is.
Scientists have been saying for decades now 'we are destroying the environment we live in, it is unsustainable and if we don't curb this trend it will become critical.'
Finding a new way to argue about one specific element of this problem is just another way of avoiding discussing the many things we already know are a problem, and finding solutions. The debate used to be about deforestation, fish stock depletion, groundwater and ocean pollution, unsustainable farming practices etc. After the climate debate is done and settled someone will come up with a new thing to argue about, maybe radio frequency or visible light pollution, or whatever, who knows. The point is we know we are doing things wrong, we have known for ages, why are we still arguing about it?
These are the facts: The proliferation and industrialisation of the human race is having massive consequences for the earth and the environment, the changes are cumulative and usually either detrimental or unpredictable in their effects. These changes are greatly exacerbated by the unsustainable, greedy and ultimately unnecessary excesses of our consumerist society.
Does anyone want to dispute these facts? Does anyone wish to make the claim that it would be better to exactly quantify in perfect detail every aspect and facet of each of the ways in which we are causing harm before taking any steps whatsoever to rectify any of them?
Can we start doing something about it some time soon, please?
You, however, refuse to read it.
Pop along to http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm#contents
You won't though. You may even cry "It's a fake site, full of frauds!!!!", but you definitely won't read it.
While politics and media commentary rule the blogs and airspace, Science get shredded into worthless dribble. Climate Science needs to be taken seriously and not turned into media spectacle. The problem is, the real stuff can be quite boring and mostly looked over. Stories about carbon levels, thermal convection and greenhouse gasses are not read by the majority of readers. Most of the media today is sensationalized and pumped with soundbites to increase readership. Just about every attempt by Al Gore to pass along data his group has collected is countered with disinformation. You never see an attempt to deflate some missed data and provide what the other group thinks is more realistic, We only see a polar opposite approach the just discredits each view and the public takes these battles to the office and public places. Even with all this funding the real Science does tend to get heard by the people that need to hear it. I've noticed over the years how changes have taken place that are more indirect approaches to reduce climate change. Many businesses are reducing consumption of power, most say it's to increase profits by reducing waste. Recycling programs have been around for at least four decades now but it's just starting to catch on due to waste elimination costs. Meanwhile these same corporations are funneling money into the disinformation channels. The real question becomes, why are we wasting money on propaganda when that money would better to be spent in fixing the problems.
How about all those people who have to go out there and record the weather? Do they work for free?
Ocean buoys free? Weather radar free?
How many of the crank denier blogs are buying satellites? None. Pretty cheap to run a blog. $100k therefore leaves a nice $90k+ in the pocket of Watts as payment for lying his arse off...
So these "conservatives" are actually liberals.
And the weakest argument always resorts to name-calling. It's not a "gut reaction". You think you have a monopoly on the facts and do not want to consider any facts which cannot be reconciled with your worldview...
Climategate is an example of the corruption of which I speak. These so-called "scientists" were fudging data AND deliberately keeping the data from public view. Science demands transparency and peer review. Kevin Trenberth said, "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t"
There are many other facts which I could list here which leave questions in the minds of those who don't accept the so-called brilliance of the likes of you and your ilk who presume to be high priests of "actual data". The "actual data" show no warming for 10 to 15 years. Tool.
Most political contributors, no matter how rich, haven't gone to the trouble to create a political machine. This is what makes the Koch Brothers different from many other wealthy people who contribute to politics.
To say the Koch Brothers are conservative kind of misses the point, the Koch Brothers fund things like think tanks and the American Legislative Exchange Council so that what is, and is not, considered conservative is decided by them. It's a huge political machine that operates in multiple states.
After all, why does so much of Republican ideology boil down to "Oil!" Oil, properly understood, is a substance, not an ideology. The answer is that the great Republican political machine is controlled by the oil interests. (Oh, and there is a Democratic political machine controlled by Wall Street, but it's not the well-oiled machine that the Republicans have, which is why you have more prominent dissenters in the Democratic party than in the Republican party.)
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
The scientific community knows that climate change is real and that human activity is to blame.
That is a political statement, not a scientific statement. Obviously "climate change is real". The climate has always changed and will always change. We can't stop the climate from changing. But you mean "climate warming". An acurate statement might be more along the lines of "There is a majority consensus amongst scientists who study climatology that the climate appears to becoming warmer." That would be more like a scientific statement.
It is my understanding that there is less scientific consensus as to how much human activity is a factor. Obviously, to my mind, humans do have an impact on the environment. How much is very much open to debate (not politically, but scientifically).
The desire to shut down debate and suppress opposition is a political motivation. Science, theoretically, welcomes and encourages questions, disagreement and efforts to disprove the prevailing assumptions. Politics, not so much.
Funding should only come from a neutral side - if the rich want to fund more they can donate funds to that neutral side.
And, of course, only you and those who agree with you get to choose the definition of "neutral".
It is an empirical question whether big business can lobby regulations away, and bully critics to the margins. Read a history book, say, like, "Merchants of Doubt".
I though excessive relativism was the purview of radical liberals at university departments, but excessive relativism is a central tenant of modern conservatism. You got nothing to learn if you just think everything is spin. There is a real world. And we are really damaging it with CO2 emissions. Denial is not a solution.
But is it warming? - In the past 5 years our winters here in Europe and North America have been significantly COLDER than normal. If there's warming it's elsewhere because here it's been colder, especially during the winter.
Do you think that people cannot look at temperatures across the entire world? All the evidence and references is in the IPCC reports. But keep looking out your window =0.
PS: We're having the hottest years ever on record in this last decade, and that smashing heat records in winter.
Read Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom" for an argument why powerful vested interests should not be able to change the rules to protect themselves from economic disappointment. Powerful private citizens can and do propagandize the sheeple for just this effect.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Don't know how you came to that conclusion but last winter here in Toronto we basically had *no* snow at all.
So, private citizens exercise their right to free speech
Look up the abuses of power in the gilded age because powerful individuals became laws unto themselves. It all happens through propaganda, which costs money, and a weakness in democracy. It is amazing how people consume political snark and it because their reality. It all costs money, of course, but conservative propaganda is funded by our addiction to petrol, guns, and cigarettes.
Do you want cigarette companies writing the laws? After-all, according to them, they have a metric tonne of scientific evidence that smoking is benign, and protecting their bottom line has nothing to do with killing innocent people.
THAT IS THE PROBLEM
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
His surfacestations project was created to show just that. The paper produced from it showed no difference between well sited and poorly sited stations, indeed, because of the correction for any possible bias was taken, the poorest stations showed less of a warming trend, despite being ones sited to give a spurious warming trend from its uncorrected raw data.
You really need to stop talking out of your arse.
Don't like this and want to make a difference? Then put together a fund and put it where your mouth is. A good place is money for thorium reactors. You can do it directly, OR you can push O/dems to fund this. And it makes perfectly good sense to fund thorium reactors. The reason is that it can burn up 95% of our 'nuke waste'. That means that out of 70,000 tonnes of waste, we will only have to deal with 5,000 tonnes. In addition, that waste will be safe after less than 200 years, instead of 20,000 years. Hard to argue with that.
All in all, we need to quit saying what we can not have, and start working towards REASONABLE solutions. It is a mistake to move to 100% AE. We should depend on it no more than 33%. And even that should require that solar/wind or any type that depends on weather/climate to be less than 15%.
The one thought that so many are forgetting is that a number of nuke plants will have to be shut down over the next 20 years. If we do not have a decent replacement, then we will certainly use natural gas.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Firstly, including science and policy funding is dishonest, since their aim isn't to massage people's beliefs. All those weather satallites are not an environmentalist's conspiracy.
Also, your numbers look made up by some ideologue, and copy-pasted ad-nauseum, since it is too good a story to disbelieve or double-check. The environmentalist lobby spends about $1 for every $10 of its opponents. What is true? Discovering that is left as an exercise for the reader, and in doing so, if you don't find information that challenges your pre-existing beliefs, then you haven't checked shit.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Disclaimer: I am convinced that this civilization is going the way of Easter Island and nobody can stop that.
Let us look at this the other way: "Billionaires Secretly Fund Vast Climate Denial Network" to me sounds more like "Bogus Scientists Organize Network To Sell Climate Denial Propaganda to Desperate Billionaires".
If I were an oil tycoon, and 97% (1) of the damned "scientists" were saying that the whole planet is going to Hell and it is my fault, and a guy in a lab coat showed up and told me he can prove otherwise, I would start signing checks even before asking myself whether the guy is the genuine article or not.
So the guys are selling Bogus Science to Uncle Pennybags - not a big deal, right? Unfortunately, Uncle Pennybags pays the guys to propagate their "discoveries" as Good Science. Also unfortunately, in a technological civilization, where people are supposed to make informed choices, a very large number of people (if not the majority) are still unable to tell Bogus Science from Good Science. Hilarity ensues.
(1) I just made this up.
In the long run we are all dead. - John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)
Be honest. Climategate is the only example you can think of.
I'll go ahead and hop on past the probable distinction between what you think "climategate" was, and what actual negative behavior was revealed to have occurred in that particular incident and move right on past to the fact that even if I give climategate to you, it does not support your premise. Your claim wasn't that there exists some instance of corruption in the scientific community. It was that there was more there than there is from parties funding warming deniers.
I don't claim to be a high priest of anything. I just know that morons like you tend to be perfectly happy latching on to whatever anecdotal evidence matches your "humble opinion" and assuming that means your belief is backed by some sort of empirical process. You've more or less made my point for me.
That is why cimate science costs 10x more.
It costs a lot more to set an expedition to Greenland to drill the ice and determine the ice core record than to sit in a Madison Square appartment and say that the record is false.
The article is spot on. Do you think that these organisations are funded because of the word conservative in them? Heartland and co. whine about the "liberal" conspiracy to warp the public's mind, yet that is exactly what they do with crackpot science on the like of climate, evolution, and smoking. Rich billionaires fund them, because they help get sheeple to the polls in order to pressure congress critters into protecting them from economic disappointment. This is crony capitalism in action.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The idea that climate change is anthropocentric and that we can control it and the environment through draconian control measures (which would be yoked, inevitably, upon the little people and not the powerful), seems to be exactly the kind of headspace that the billionaire elite would want to promote, not hinder.
I don't think people understand that a so-called carbon tax is not some nebulous concept but in reality would likely be a thing added directly to everybody's monthly household bills, and paid to god-knows-what extra governmental body to be divested to the same bunch of criminals who are currently raping the world. And it's not as if the oil would stop flowing; it would just go up in price.
The whole scheme looks like a giant control measure with a huge profit potential, and one which would only nominally, (like Obama), make empty nonsense gestures toward "Saving the Planet" to keep people happy.
When I see environmentalists grow passionate about global warming and throw "Denier" accusations around and blame the elites for creating false counter arguments and "wedges", I see walls of emotion which cannot be talked through. It's the same kind of tactic used to start wars. Make everybody high on emotion, flood the airwaves with a bunch of questionable facts, and get the machine rolling before anybody has a chance to think rationally.
I don't know exactly what is going on with the planet, (how can anybody through all this mud?) but emotional thinking and poorly thought out accusations and closed reasoning are not the way to figure things out.
We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise.
Them's weasel words; when people like these speak them, they don't mean what the dictionary that the rest of us use says that they mean. Instead they're code:
-- personal responsibility = throwing ignorant or apathetic people to the wolves, without benefit of protections from people who are better equipped to detect unfairness and are willing to do it for others.
-- free enterprise = free reign to manipulate and disadvantage ignorant and apathetic people to the very limit of what the law allows (and a little bit more).
Was it Warren Buffet that said there's no such thing as a self-made man? The current crop of billionaires required the "contributions" of millions of people to amass their wealth. Concentration of wealth is concentration - and hoarding and denial - of natural resources.
Good. I'd hate to think that their wealth was idle. Their campaign is certainly working on me.
an ill wind that blows no good
The one thing that strikes me these days, is the way how the exact same people who solved the problems you are talking about - DDT, leaded gasoline, smog etc. - are still demonized and portait as plotting to destroy the earth.
They didn't solve those problems, they created them. They created the polluting products. DDT, leaded gasoline, cigarettes, CFC aerosols etc. Government regulation stopped them from manufacturing those polluting products anymore, or at least cut down on them. Without the government regulation they would have kept on polluting, and more so every year.
It's exactly the same now. They won't fix their polluting till government regulation makes them do so. And they are putting that government regulation off for as long as possible by denying science, just as they did before.
BOOM BOOM!
In other news...
The Republican billionaires are debating whether to change the front they use for their unchanging agenda.
I say, good idea; the more expenive the better.
In both cases they expect me to forget yesterday AND disbelieve the evidence of my eyes.
And at that, I'm a conservative prolife Christian who will not vote Republican again (and IIRC haven't since 1992)
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Global warming means more energy in the atmosphere. This leads to greater chaos in the system. Higher highs, lower lows, the dry areas will be drier, the places that have snow will likely get more of it. It is called global warming because the net temperature result around the globe is positive. Essentially its higher energy in a complicated semi-closed(in relative terms) system creating chaos where the critters inside of it are very sensitive to rapid change.
I'm glad to see that some responsible and wealthy individuals are willing to stand up too those green fascists. :) (red, green, nazi, they are all the same in the end)
All of them graduated from MIT with engineering degrees in the 1960s. One brother- David- focuses on science and education charities. He has funded the New York Science Museum Hall of Evolution - probably the best dinosaur exhibit in the world. He also funds the very liberal Aspen Institute in Colorado.
Perhsps they are moderating some of the over-zealousness of the climate change supporters. Its almost as silly to have them find GW under every rock as it is for anti-climate change peope to deny every observation.
If you think that there is too much global warming, then please stop buying gasoline, natural gas, and using electricity. We could then stop the evil gasses that contribute to global warming. The best way to stop those evil companies from spending their money is don't give it to them in the first place, so put your money where your mouth is.
Compared to the $1.3 TRILLION Europe alone has just allocated for climate-related spending, complaining about sceptic spending will always be a sad joke.
"The good thing about science is that it's true, whether or not you believe in it" --NDT. I love that quote...
What exactly is 'Climate Denial'? Denying that climate exists? For people claiming the moral and scientific upper hand here we aren't very good at framing the issue. I thought the issue was over the 'man made' element of it all. The fact that one thinks the other side of that debate is wrong isn't really a very good excuse to completely misrepresent their argument. A little integrity would go a long way to validate one's position: if you're not capable of fairly state the opposing side's claims, how are you going to refute them?
Mind the frickin' laser...
Is Greenpeace itself handling its own funding with more transparency and, um, forthrightness than it was 10 years ago? Much less it's activism, which often makes me wonder if it's less engaged in saving the planet than in alarmist market manipulation.
Really, talk about PKB.
... and not based on VOLUME. Do you know the difference between CUBIC and SQUARE meters??
Surface distance is 2 dimensional, not 3 dimensional. Or do you think the oceans are flat??
The most current calculation shows that the combined volume of the oceans is 1.5 billion cubic-kilometers. (1.5 x 10^18 cubic meters).
2.9 × 10^16 * 0.85 / 1.5 x 10^18 = 0.01643333333333 not 68 like you conveniently calculated using Al-Gore math logic.
Rappers are out of fashion, rock stars are ancient history but politicians are forever like a flock of horny vampires. I'm so going into politics.
In our system of government, it's the courts that determine truth, not Congress, not the voter, and not the president.
This is true, but also naive. Tobacco companies thwarted progress by cleverly manipulating public opinion. Millions were knowingly killed -- even those who did not smoke. The penalties the courts dished out were peanuts. The same techniques of manipulating public opinion continue.
What was your point again? Oh, the courts should stop powerful vested interests? That's not how power works in our society. Billionaires have successfully moved the locus of blame for crony capitalism away from them by brainwashing 30% of the electorate with fairy-tales that don't stand up to scrutiny.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Luckily for me, there is actual data to examine, so I can safely ignore your humble opinion.
This kind of nonsense is why I don't take /. seriously any more.
As if George Soros has never secretly funded anything...
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Working backwards, using the amazing technique of division instead of multiplication, we can thus deduce the resulting height a given volume will have if spread out over a given area!
I also know that the oceans bottoms aren't flat, the depth varies, but the surface is pretty damned flat (ignoring waves, slightly varying gravitational pull, and though it wraps around the globe, any given small surface area is pretty darn level with its surrounding, likewise small, areas)
If there were no oceans at all, and instead the current ocean surface was smooth solid ground, you'd still get a ~68 m thick body of water if you spread the melted ice over this ground... Before you try to make a point of it - yes, I'm aware that the rise will be somewhat smaller in reality because the ocean will spread (pretty much the point of this sub thread), and thus increase its area. but as the OP (you?) claimed it would be only a few feet, it shouldn't spread very much, and I have therefore ignored that in these rough calculations, but I also left out the Greenland ice...
As to your calculation above, it results in a unit of '1' (m^3/m^3 - which shows that it is a comparison/fraction of the same unit and we want length,meters, in the result.
You might want to consider doing the dimensional analysis
[m^3] Volume / [m^2] Area = [m] Lenght
Yes the melted ice is a small addition to the absolute volume of the ocean (~1,64% worth), but the ocean is also pretty darn deep, so even a relatively small addition means its depth increases faitly significantly (If you're living by the ocean).
To get the rise in meter, you need to multiply with the current average depth.
Given an average depth of 3790m [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean#Earth.27s_global_ocean], we get, using your numbers a raise of 3790*0,016433333 =~ 62,25 m which is in the same neighborhood.
Hell no! You have a funny definition of "fact", tovarish.
Also, next time you try to insult your opponent for lacking intelligence, it might be slightly more convincing if you try to do so in a grammatically correct sentence.
This has to be one of the most unsurprising revelations that I have ever come across. I am thinking hard of anything I know that came to me as a less surprising fact but I am drawing a blank here.
The only people who say that human made greenhouse gasses are not the cause of what we used to call global warming are either misled by, under the control of the polluters or the polluters themselves. I also have my suspicions about many of the people who say that there is not enough evidence.There is plenty of evidence behind what has got more scientific consensus than the theory of evolution. (I am talking global consensus on that not just the USA.)
Will this persuade a single follower of this big money? I doubts it will have much immediate effect. We all suspected it anyway and these "think" tanks will continue denying the facts and will probably get even more money to continue proving that black=purple and Pi=3.00.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I'd be willing to bet that $120M pales in comparison to the money that is spent by the pro-climate change side in order to promote their views. Anyone have figures?
And even more outrageously, most of that money is your tax dollars, not voluntary spending by private entities.
Liberty in your lifetime
120 Million is a pittance compared with what is spend by mainstream climate research (not even including lobbying). I don't have the exact figures, but I saw plenty of individual projects that cost around 50 million each. I don't agree with the ideology of the conservative billionaires that drives them to either not believe in global warming, or want to convince other not to believe in it, but there is nothing especially bad or unusual about them spending their own money towards causes they believe in. If it was 120 billion, that would be more cause for concern to me.
> Luckily for me, there is actual data to examine, so I can safely ignore your humble opinion.
Do you honestly believe that only one side plays dirty ?
Because in my opinion nuclear industry as well as Asians interested in keeping manufacturing out of US and EU do not differ in their methods from oil industry.
And yes, I do believe the temperature has risen but I am not convinced the impact will be as catastrophic...
CO2 is actually a fertilizer and correlates positively with increase of biomass. And there were many periods
in Earth's history when CO2 levels were higher than now. Also another Ice Age is a bit more scary to me than Heat Age.
Also I do believe the money will be wasted and should rather be directed toward protection of species and biodiversity.
Current methods are just helping to move industry from US/EU to Asia where nobody cares about CO2.
The effect might be opposite to intended.
The way a message is delivered makes a difference to how people make sense of it.
If there was a billion dollar campaign saying "People who drink milk are less intelligent than those who don't" - even if there was no science behind that. It would have an influence.
We are already at the mercy of the quality of the available information we get. That occurs before we have a belief about a topic.
One of the reasons science is successful and respected is it's approach to pursuing high quality models of the universe. Blatantly lying and ignoring the facts would destroy it's ability to do that. Why is it acceptable to do it else where?
I know we should be concerned about the thought police and I'm not suggesting that people not be able to think or believe freely. However, they should at least know enough to know the consequences of thinking in a particular way and pursue informed debate about the nature of information.
Otherwise we are all at the whim of those who wish to use the system for their own short term gains.
A lot of people seem very scared about this.
If the science can't stand a few million dollars worth of scepticism, it's probably not very good science......
But everyone here seems intent on smearing the discussion instead of examining the science, so perhaps I can join in, by pointing out that you can't believe a word Greenpeace say. They lied about Brent Spar, they lie in order to keep their funding (call it 'exaggerate' if you don't feel happy calling a spade a spade), and they now look as if they're pulling out all the stops to insist that everybody is to hate their opponents, and nobody is to listen to them.
I wonder why this is?
Greenpeace gets $270 million a year in funding from Europe alone (in 2008), for example, and they're just 1 organization. This is a polarized issue, reasonable opinions get run roughshod by groups on both sides. If the far right had their way we'd be completely unregulated and polluting like crazy and destroy normal/habitable life for the 99%, if the far left had their way, everyone would become subsistence farmers and die at 40 (normal lifespan without industrialized benefits) and things like an unexpected month without rain would be the difference between life and death for folks.
I don't like either of those choices, so I think we need both sides fighting to have a good balance come out of it.
Could someone mod this up to 11?
these are the "fuckheads" you're looking for. Climate change is mainly a scam to shut down free enterprise and restructure the global economy - massively in favor of Asia (so emission standards for them..), so maybe they're fuckheads - but not the worst fuckheads going.
That would be the US senate, lobbying front, EU commission, who knows..
Frontline recently aired an *excellent* documentary on the striking rise in climate change denial in the U.S. and links it to this very thing (and Donors Trust makes an appearance in the program too). It shows just how damn effective these shadow money groups and the billionaires behind them are at driving public opinion to suit their interests. I highly recommend viewing it. Only an hour long: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/
And it's Greenpeace that's the source?
Isn't this a little like the US complaining that Turkmenistan has upped its military spending?
Greenpeace does far more than that in one year, and it's just one group.
to stop drilling in the US to prop up their monopoly on energy for the US?
I don't need a billionaire to tell me that Global Warming (rebranded as Climate Change) is a racket.
It seems odd to me. If I deliberately lie to you and mislead you to take your money (one to one) it is considered to be a crime. I might go to jail. But somehow if I lie to lots of people, and do it indirectly, still to make money, it is not illegal. But it should be. Whether I set about to mislead and misinform on a grand scale to protect my commercial interests, advertise snake oil with lies, or lie to make you give me money as political support the equation is the same. I am lying to get your money, and you would not give it to me if I didn't lie to you. Surely that should be illegal, we should not accept it at all, anywhere, yet we do.
Notice the AC divided volume (3 dimensions) by area (2 dimensions) leaving 1 dimension for the answer. It's good math and the answer comports with scientists estimates of ~60 meters once complications such as the ocean spreading out and the fact that some Antarctic ice is under sea level even though it is sitting on ground are taken into account.
Just where does your butt buddy Albert E. Gore get his millions from ? Kwuait ! And does Big Al give a Rats Ass about any thing other than his BIG ASS ? Can your brain answer this in one word or less ! :-)
'Hello me ... its me again'
'Sweating Bullets'
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Biased headline methinks.
Can we use the appropriately stupid wording of Anthropogenic Climate Change, which appears to be such a small influence on climate we can virtually
ignore it in the whole scheme of things. I'm sure there are lots of people who would happily deny A.C.C. Climate Change itself is a given, much like Weather Change.
Maybe that big, burning ball of fusion up there has something to do with our climate... just maybe. That could explain things like ice ages, the Thames freezing over in the past etc. without any major industry emission issues. Pretty major climate events... could they be linked to solar activity?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames_frost_fairs
Nah man, it's the billionaires in secret conspiring against us with the space-aliens. Makes for a much better conspiracy theory, when the real conspiracy is the ability to purchase scientific opinion to push the A.C.C. agenda, to make a few select people rich..... *manbearpig* *cough*
The bigger the lie...
delusional asshole, spare us the projection.
Get fucked. The only people talking about the Holocaust are denialists trying to deflect the issue by playing the victim, when the only making that connection are your fellow climate change denailsits.
This is the same bullshit that the Teabaggers pull by whining about homophobic insults. Those guys can get fucked, too, because everyone knows they are mocked for railing that government keep its hands off it's Medicare, while putting on stupid costumes on issues they never cared about when Bush was in office.
Climate change denialists are called denialists because they repeatedly ignore science in favor of their own fact-free ideology.
Not because anyone is trying them to the Holocaust, so spare us this bullshit misdirection.
Do people still believe in man-made global warming? What's going to be funny is in 20, 30, or 50 years science will totally change it mind after "more thorough" analysis, "more accuracy", and "better technology" that they were actually wrong about their understanding of global warming altogether. Does anyone pay attention or just jump on the latest band wagon. I remember they said egg were good for us, then eggs were bad for us, then eggs were good for us again... and that was all rooted in "scientific study" as well.
Disclaimer: I'm left centrist, however I fully dig classic conservative reasoning. I understand them even though mostly I disagree.
However after last year elections and this one I can fully say that I don't understand moneybags behind Tea Party and friends (let's be honest, this one is fakest party we have seen for years, it's essentially a business project). Conservatives in the past weren't so keen on denying something as questioning does this and this change will solve this, won't it destroy something of good old...it made sense, even if you didn't agree. But this?
This is pure BS and fear. They have created self-feeding system, which spirals more and more downwards. Fine, you don't agree that we should use carb tax to increase interest in investing in less polluting technologies - how about being direct and invest all this money and showing, hey, capitalism works, investors and moneybags can be reasonable about handling this world, not only their wallets. It's not that they don't know the way. Hey, high tech companies with good profit do this all the time - yeah, they know that if science is solid, stuff works.
It's essentially a fundamentalism and kinda not very pretty one. It feels like they actually want end to come sooner than later. It's like "if world doesn't turn our way, the hell with it!". If that's so, then we are in for serious trouble.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Could we please try to stop using words like "conservative" (and "communist", etc etc etc) so frivolously? You are not conservative if you try to hide from reality; "deluded" or simply "stupid" is closer to reality - that, and massively selfish in the case of trying to stop others from learning the facts. These people don't care about things like responsibility or decency, they just care about their own, short term profits - that is after all how you get rich in this world. They don't deserve to be honoured with the word "conservative".
I have a lot of time for the viewpoints of a genuine conservative; I am not conservative myself, but I recognise that other viewpoints may be valid, and it really makes me quite angry when I meet this sort of underhanded and dishonest crap. In the long run it only serves to discredit even those who are genuinely skeptical about climate change, and to a scientist that is worrying, even if you are convinced about the reality of the thing and about who is to blame. You see, none of us knows it all, and we have to strive to learn from each other; but it can't happen unless both sides are trustworthy.
That is not my definition of liberty, since "personal responsibility" is just a right wing euphemism for not helping anyone out.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Dry troll, or fundamental cognitive dissonance?
We shall in Christian charity forgive you for trying to bring a Wall Street Journal opinion into a scientific discussion of climate science.
On behalf of the vast, right-wing conspiracy let me apologize for interrupting your very important and serious "scientific discussion of climate science." We conservatives are not intelligent enough to understand all those complicated equations and scientific journal citations which the highly intelligent climate scientists, such as yourself, have been throwing around here on slashdot, particularly the citations to the hard science journals such as Mother Jones.
And by the way, here is new vocabulary word for you:
pretentious /P
Adjective
Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
Synonyms
showy
There are funds that take care of large scale donations, some of them non-discriminating, some of them catering to donors with some leaning. Two of them, openly and tranparently catering to rich people who want to be sure their money won't end up in the coffers of Greenpeace, WWF, Sierra club, Sea Shepherd, PETA, NRDC, Union of Concerned Scientists et al. (a sentiment I wholeheartedly understand), were spreading donations amounting roughly to WWF's and Greenpeace's combined yacht and sandwiches budget over bunch of causes loosely connected by the funds' raison d'être. That is covert funneling of dark money. When the aforementioned fuc^H^H^H fan^H^H^H char^H^H^H^H activist organisations I dislike (and more importantly disagree with on fundamental level) do something similar only with larger amounts of money, it is "educating the public" or "showcasing the opportunities".
Troll 2.0 Fear my asocial networking!
If you've ever researched stock day trading, our very short sample of climate history on this planet is equivalent to making very expensive decisions about investing by only looking at the last hour's chart moment. We simply need more data, and that should be the only action taken at this point.
I fully support limited government, consider myself a conservative. But the science behind demonstrating not only that GW is occurring, but that mankind has become a chief contributor is very strong. Certain parts of the economy think they have to deny GW to maintain their positions, but if they would open their eyes, they would see that there are opportunities to make money while lowering greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, avoiding what will someday be a world wide catastrophe.
Compare and contrast this to the $$ that Al Gore is gathering about him up on Sand Hill Road. i.e. chump change.
Today it is clear that global climate and weather fundamental are more important than the Higgs. Yet we, the world community, are unwilling to make this investment.
The science that I have looked at over the last 20 years gives me pause. I have seen computer runs make projections decades in advance yet PI is fixed at 3.14 i.e. three digits. This researcher was concerned that the 19th digit was not stable and wanted the compiler or hardware fixed.
Another researcher was concerned with an anoxic region of the ocean floor. What his research did show was the ocean was attempting to sequester carbon but his financiers wanted a fishery. Sequestering carbon may prove necessary but it often seen as less green than a festering fish farm.
The knee jerk reactionary regulations are focusing on deep pocket players not on high leverage technology and policy. Follow the money here... this is where the trouble is.
Carbon tax is a lot like the rake off of the dealer at a casino. Not a player just collecting a percentage of the value as it passes by. Worse the incentive is to increase the action and increase the flow of carbon so their rake is richer. The odds in places like Reno and Vegas are managed and regulated by the state. The goal of the regulators is to ensure tax revenue. A side effect is to keep the games "honest".
It is interesting to me that the roulette game has extra "green" numbers "0" and sometimes "00" to fuel the house. The house takes their cut and "marketing" attempts to increase the number of players i.e. pray on the ignorant and ill educated. Any time I see a carbon-taxer use the phrase "think green" I do. I think about the extra green numbers that are there ONLY to shift the odds and enrich the house. The current legislative mind set would increase the green action and change the game to add GREEN "000", "0000" and more to the game. Now who can argue with increasing "GREEN" action.
Transparency of research, publishing data and computer codes is only part of the necessary game.
What if salt water was pumped into central Africa?
What if we banned ice breakers from 12 miles near the shore in the arctic.
What if we restricted warm Japan current water into the Bering Strait.
What if we had research teams and tools willing to be honest.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Billionaires ARE the secret!!!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Of course when you win a Nobel Peace Prize you piss off the rest of the world that wanted one or deny your findings. Go Al!, they cheated you out of an election but they can't cheat the truth! You are doing what a responsible politician should do, help the world take back what belongs to it, in a positive universal way. You see there are people with a lot of money that would love to invent a dome where you pay tax for it's sustenance to protect you from the harmful rays of the sun and that's not to mention what would they do with the water. These people breed violence in an indirect manner that makes those who fight for whats right look like mindless barbarians. If your live in a country like me, remember, we live in capitalism. Money talks, power moves capitols, and people like Al Gore make a difference.
Wait, when was this a secret?
The science behind climate chage is dodgy pseudo science at best.
There is so much more money flowing to pro climate change groups. Throw all them in jail.
The real thing driving climate change is money. Are any of the Pro climate change band wagon riding parots going to publish any findings that jeopardise their jobs. In today's economy I sure as hell wouldn't.
Clean up the environment is great but why shroud it all in lies and bad science.
seems like many are posting that government should be tougher on global warming and environmental pollution. no one seems to able to articulate what is necessary pollution and what is not. slashdot partially runs on fossil fuels. it releases heat straight into the atmosphere. they do nothing to do carbon trapping nor to mitigate environmental concerns. al gore and most of hollywood flies private jets, and they all have fossil burning cars in their mcmansions which by themselves are ridiculously expensive in terms of environmental impact.
my point is this, mitigating environental impact is portayed as a scientific r&d problem where the issue is either a lack of research funds or a lack of enforcement actions to create a forced behavior. if the issue is funding and government should do that then put forward the argument on how much you are willing to fund. how about if the us increases the funds by increasing every tax there is by 30% so that 28% of that goes to science? would the citizens be behind it? how much unemmployment and poverty woud you be willing to accept for that noble goal? and please dont fool yourself by arguing that its just a matter of budget reallocations, that game doesnt work on this scale.
if the isssue is the demand side then sure we can compare how the europeans are doing it with their focus on taxation to reduce the behavior of the individual (the $20 gallon gas) vs. the US way of not wanting to get involved in the behavior and instead focus on increasing efficiencies (the USA gas standard). but at a national/globa scale this is just a tiny bit of what consumes and contributes to global warming. in fact the europeans got it right in that efficencies in energy consumption and distribution wont solve the problem, modify the behavior so that consumption itself goes down is also necessary in the absence of zero pollution technologies and distribution systems.
herein lies the rub, the only way to really fix this is to have a zero environmental breakthrough in the generation and distribution of energy including the supporting systems. attempts to increase efficiencies are mostly superficial. and while i think this should be addressed i think that people who uses a forum powered by diesel generators and who runs on an epa exception permit as a pollutant, just to make sure the dear board member isnt without access in case there is an hour long power outage and who doesnt have the moral fibre to take personal action to do something in their personal life to do something meaningful about it isnt any better than any of these secret billionaries.
gosgog:
Unless you never go out of your airconditioned or electrically heated home, unless you never follow News in any form. Then YOU KNOW DAMN WELL FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS the WORLD has had major extremes of climate that has been more impressive than in years past. Yes, historically the world has had climate change, but only since the later part of the 1900's and into our now 2000' have we created the degree of pollution contributing to our NOW climate change. Yes, big MONEY has in one way or another used massive funding to manipulate things to make 'em deletriously MORE UNTAXABLE MONIES!
IS THERE A CURE...Certainly as the very first comment on this Slashbook article says
"Make lobbying equal to bribery and throw the fuckheads in jail for life.!!"
Like pro-climate change folks don't get money, too? Give me a break.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
$120 mil spread over 100 organizations? You've got to be kidding. A handful of climate alarmists get more than that each year from the gov. to spread their post normal pseudo science malarky and defective misapplied statistical analyses exagerating the threat beyond all imagination.
If I had a lot of money I'd be paying for actual research on it, instead of the knee jerk psuedo-science bullshit that is out there.
There have been lots of scientists against climate change models long before anyone was paying them to say it, it's just if you have an unpopular opinion : YOU DON'T GET PUBLISHED.
There is a lot of bullying that goes on in the Scientific community.
Don't you realize that as "surplus males" (losers that cannot get females) your stupid preoccupation with this is going to cause places like Slashdot to run more stories catering to your "I don't have life so I fantasize" tastes, lowering the bar for everybody else.
Here is a collective FU for you --- at least go get addicted to some MMORPG or something rather than self-indulge in this horseshit. Really!
I'm less depressed these days watching our little world spiral towards wherever it's spiralling towards. It often feels like some perverse race to the bottom, but I've finally just kind of "got it" that evolution does favor this kind of viciousness. This "I will mow over a field of fluffy rabbits with a tractor to get mine" mentality that you see coming to a head in so many places. Will we nuke ourselves because we can't control our vicious hate and fear? Or pollute the world into a big carcinogenic port-o-let because we can't control our vicious undiluted greed first? Either way, we are the organic soup currently allowing for the coming together of the component organic parts of artificially intelligent, self replicating, binary encoding life. It's already happened - I forget when the first computer virus was "born from the organic soup" of human technological development. Soon we will be the little funny looking monkeys 8 spots back on the evolutionary charts. And when the "new kids in town" finally figure out, like all of the tinpot sociopathic executives and tyrants who've littered our 15 minutes in the sun here with their excesses, "what it takes to succeed", our sins will look like child's play. I'm ready for humans to go away now. I'd rather think of a universe where sentient creatures enslaved, raped, tortured, oppressed, murdered, and gorged themselves on everything weaker than themselves #without# knowing better than to act that way. It's one thing for us to desecrate the ecosphere damning all sensient beings weaker than . rselves over a nice tasty torture and rape burger - Cats and squirrels would surely do the same thing given half a chance. It's the fact that we realize how disgustingly selfish and harming and pointless we are. We know what pain feels like so at some point when we finish running from it, we just have to admit how abominably ugly it all is. That's what's tiring. I don't think the binary life forms that do to us what we've done to everything weaker than us will know what pain is really. By the time we've teed up the mass extinction event and they've finished it all off the universe will be free of intelligent sentient beings that know what they're doing when they decimate the weak. It will be a lot cleaner and more interesting then. I sometimes think the universe collectively is meant to achieve consciousness - that we have just witnessed a somewhat brutish early stage of that. From what once was just space dust these little clumps of consciousness are forming, getting more and more sophisticated, but leading to what?
120 million US Dollars to 100 groups (this article) vs 237 Million Euros in donations to Greenpeace in 2011 (Greenpeace's 2011 report page 37)... But who said every fight is fair? Please quote this and yell about what I'm missing
Think people. Greenpeace, and ultra liberal, rabidly pro global warming group attacking their opposition????? This is a bullshit article and anyone with a brain knows it.
120 million is a medicine dropper in the Ocean of Bribery that is the new government/educational complex.
The plain truth is that climate research has been all but destroyed by greed, as is clearly evidenced by the number of so called "scientific" studies coming out of both sides that later turn out to have falsified data, omitted data that didn't fit, and drawn conclusions based on what the funding folks wanted
What we have actually learned from the last twenty years of climate "science" is that money corrupts science in ways nobody expected, and if we didn't realize this already, whenever there is a lot of money involved, the most greedy reap the largest rewards at the expense of all of us. We've also learned that when you mix emotional rhetoric with science, plenty of people forget all about science completely (witness the comments here as absolute proof).
Follow the money trail...
Murphy was an optimist
Multiple Billionaires (That's 1,000,000,000+) funneled $120,000,000 to over 100 places?
That's not a lot of money to billionaires plural.
OK, Here's the Deal--We're Rich--and our job is to get RICHER!
We can't do that if we're getting all gushy about something that's gonna happen 20 years after we're dead!
If you're not rich, you're SUPPOSED to be EITHER one of our barely paid slaves or our (NOT RICH but) Well off Customers--so, like Climate Change ain't your concern, Either.
Now, it's time for EVERYBODY to get back to work.
SLAVES! Get back to work making shit for us to sell or you won't get your rice and cabbage water this week!
CUSTOMERS! Buy the shit we're making and quit bitching about Commie-pinko shit like Pollution, Climate Change, or Labor Practices. THat ain't your part of the deal.
OK!
The author missed the obvious, that the US Government has $5Billion a year in grants to study the effects of manmade global warming. If you find there is no effect of manmade global warming, then your grant goes to the smart player next year.
Since the climate has been changing since the planet was new, and we are currently in an ice age, the glaciation (Ice Age) ended 10,000 years ago, but another one is coming soon.
Never mind we are in an ice age as long as there is at least one ice sheet on the planet. Greenland and Antarctica both have ice sheets.
It is amazing that so many intellegent people are so shallow as to buy the sound bites without doing fact checks....do this fact check.
For ever claim of the global warming crowd, go to non climate change accepted science and see if it holds.
1. Geology - ice age definition: one or more ice sheets
2. Ice Age - a Popular (as opposed to real) Science term which is formally known as a glaciation
3. Volcanoes - why do volcanoes spew massive amounts of manmade global warming gases and particulate matter, yet they cause global cooling? Does it matter if it is natural CO2 and particulate matter or manmade?
4. What happens when one goes before the 1850s, do all theories of manmade global warming fall apart? Why
Look at "little ice age" where CO2 and particulate matter caused a 150 year cooling trend
1000 ad Midevil warming period, where Greenland had less ice then today, and the French were freaking out because the British were growing grapes
Roman Anomoly warming period, where it was warmer then today
5. When plants thrive on CO2 and warmth why is CO2 bad, if it makes plants grow better feeding more animals?
5a More rain when warm then cold (see antartica is getting more snow then it is losing in ice due to warming causing more precipitation)
6. Where is the proof of the oceans rising by feet? Didn't Holland solve a similar problem centuries ago?
Again, do a fact check. Take the "irrefutable fact" and see if there is something that suggests something else...
Unlike the global warming crowd, I did not recieve any funding
"The author missed the obvious, that the US Government has $5Billion a year in grants to generate the conclusion that man is causing global warming and justify the massive taxation and oppression of the People."
FIFY.