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A Call To RICO Climate Change Science Deniers
GregLaden writes: The argument could be made that the organized effort to disrupt climate change science and the development of effective policies to address climate change is criminal, costing life and property. The effort is known to be generally funded by various actors and there are people and organizations that certainly make money on this seemingly nefarious activity. A group of prominent scientists have written a letter to President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren asking for this to be investigated under RICO laws, which were originally designed to address organized crime.
In Soviet Russia, decent criminalizes you!
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Because arresting people is what science is about now.
We know from emails that climate alarmists have fabricated data, and excluded scientists with heretical views from publication in scientific journals.
How does any of this behavior differ in any way from any other organized crime ring? Why are they immune from punishment for what amounts to an organized ring of terror, silencing all opposition for monetary or pelican gain?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
RICO is more clearly an issue for the Climategate authors. Socialist nonsense and bulllying are reaching high tide in Amerika. Notice how many guns people are buying. Those aren't their best weapons either.
Instead of suing people, shouldn't the global warming crowd be evacuating the areas of the country that will be underwater in the next 5 - 10 years?
If you chaps don't mind the environmental lobbying groups audited... and the financial paperwork of AL Gore's carbon trading schemes checked out... Pull the trigger.
Double dare you.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
“I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration.”
That quote is/was NOT aimed at AGW advocates or deniers, but something else altogether. But 'disagreement and debate' is part and parcel of free speech.
How far down the rabbit hole of silencing others do you want to go?
Most climate-change models don't actually predict that all humans will be killed.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
... dark forces.
Oh dear! Hogwarts isn't safe!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Ann Coulter, Welcome to Slashdot!
Table-ized A.I.
Edward Maibach, for example, is the Director of Climate Change Communication, and holds a BA in social psychology from University of California at San Diego, an MPH in health promotion from San Diego State University, and a PhD in communication research from Stanford University. He teaches how to talk about climate, but he doesn't study it.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Freedom to lie for money, the American Way!
Table-ized A.I.
When you have to file lawsuits to silence your opposition, that's the clearest possible sign that you are not a scientist, and what you're doing is nothing CLOSE to being a "science".
Most climate-change "models" are incapable of predicting anything. Given all the data up to last week, they cannot predict the weather today. The Old Farmer's Almanac has more accurate predictions.
Challenge yes.
Wield weaponized bureaucracy against, no. Modern-day federal prosecution is indistinguishable in conduct and likely result from a witch hunt.
Unfortunately, law makers often use vague language because they are non-committal nincompoops, and dump the interpretation problem on the courts and jurors.
That turns it into a marketing game where the best spinner wins.
Table-ized A.I.
Climate change deniers are scientists too. The earth is not nor has it ever been outside of its normal range of possible temperatures -- we are still not even close to the "The Great Minoan Warm-up" -- and, the most polluted place on the planet -- Linfen, China has only raised 2 degrees F in 50 years. (You can confirm that with wolfram alpha if you like... You can chew Linfen's air -- that's how nasty it is... Anyway, our whole planet would have to look like Linfen to have this global impact and it just isn't going to happen since we don't actually live on most of the planet -- it's water. Does that mean we shouldn't control emissions? No, we definitely should -- there are health considerations to this, but it doesn't matter what we do... The planet will warm or cool as it pleases like it always has. Mostly, this is coming off to meas an NOAA funding scam -- because no one cares what the do so they have no money without a climate change media scare... And, consensus reality doesn't presume truth -- truth is from data and analysis.... These opinions are not congruent with the data... We're facing normal warming patterns so far -- we've had times in history where the Arctic ice completely melted off before -- this is nothing new. We are also in an El Nino pattern in the USA and historically that has lead to warmer wetter winters and cool summers -- they are projecting that it will last 2-5 years. Early in the 1900s and earlier the Arctic was experiencing and abnormally cold period and we're just going back to normal. In 2007 there was a "great rapid decline" that was probably climate related, but by the next year or so the ice had grown right back to where it was. We're not losing ice so much as the ice there is "new". Most of the melt is old ice -- that could be due to contaminates or just the fact that older ice reflects solar energy differently... either way it is still there... I have links.. But, I don't want to cream every related site with slashdotters... Mostly, I am not concerned that was should do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint -- I am concerned that we shouldn't emit chemicals for health considerations. The heat won't kill us quickly, but a floating airborne cancer soup will. Do _NOT_ trust the US media at all with these issues -- they have been telling lies about other things as well... Try to get data from overseas sources who aren't influenced from the corporate world.... The EPA for example used to have air quality charts for years in the past for most of the world -- they took them off their site. Search: "Iceland 10000 year climate study" "Arctic Ice Cap Growing" (it has since 2012!)
The effort is known to be generally funded by various actors
Curse you Matt Damon!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
is the Director of Climate Change Communication,
I'm seriously questioning why a university feels the need to have a Director of Climate Change Communication.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"Not to start a flame war, but there are tons of scientists on both sides of this argument, " - well that's a great start by saying there are tons of scientists on both sides - there are hardly any on the dissenting side. over 95% of climate change studies are in agreement that climate change is happening. When you find 95% of of climate change studies say there is no climate change, please post a link
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Global warming, and I concede it's a fact so I am not a denier, has become such a big issue with some people that it has reached an almost religious fervor. A lot of the more radical of these people are wanting to start a jihad. The problem is that the more strident and crazy they get the more push back they get from the deniers. Instead of changing minds about global warming they cause people to become entrenched in their denials. They do more harm to their cause than any of the people going on TV to claim that their is no global warming.
There is a hellacious difference (both moral and legal) between someone who genuinely has drawn a different conclusion from the data and someone who is being paid to confuse and obfuscate that data in the pursuit of profit.
I agree. Charge and prosecute them for fraud. Probably with aggravating circumstances. (Can it be fraud if it's not for gain?)
And repeal RICO. RICO is a vile law that should never have been passed, and should have immediately been thrown out as blatantly unconstitutional. RICO has two purposes:
1) to let the enforcers steal your wealth without proving anything at all first, and
2) to prevent the accused from having any resources to hire a lawyer.
Perhaps there are other parts of the law, but those are the parts most frequently used.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I don't think some people understand how much shit like this hurts their argument.This is the kind of thing that scammers and charlatans do. When someone challenges their view they do whatever they can to silence them, very often including trying to abuse the court system.
So when someone advocates using tactics like that, well it makes some people wonder: What do they have to hide? Why are they acting like scammers?
I mean you don't see this with evolution. You don't see people trying to sue creationists, no they just make fun of them and point out how wrong their arguments are.
This shit needs to stop.
A survey from 5 years ago found that a large majority of Americans (75%) believe in human caused warming of the atmosphere.
And
However
So Americans are in favor of tax incentives but are against tax increases to solve the problem. The debate needs to shift to dealing with solutions and promoting solutions now. The longer we wait the more the unpopular choices will be needed. We need to highlight to the politicians that the public is in favor of tax incentives and by opposing these measures they are in the minority and are less electable.
You know that you're an idiot, don't you? _Climate_ models are not used to predict the _weather_.
Since RICO can (by design!) be used in situations where one party has a huge disparity in access to resources, I fully support the law. In fact, RICO principles should be extended to allow fair trials for everybody.
A majority of Americans also believe in a deity that will hook them up with a winning lottery ticket if they just pray hard enough.
I would say that when it comes to science, the opinions of scientists is a little bit more useful than the opinions of people who talk to pollsters.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's because of large deposit Exxon puts in your bank account every quarter, right shill?
If I'm a shill, then explain why I'm wrong. Prove the point clearly, then mock me with derision at my obvious lies, so no one respects me any more.
Merely accusing people of being a shill is so weak.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There are not "tens of millions" of climate scientists who are for-profit climate change deniers. In fact, there seems to be about four of them who get rotated through Fox News and conservative radio every few weeks.
"Tens of millions" is the number of people who've been duped by them. Being stupid isn't a crime, or none of this would be an issue in the first place.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why would you assume that there is a 1 to 1 correlation of PUBLISHED studies to scientists?
Talk about bad logic...
Not every scientist publishes.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Then why do Climate Believers make claims of hot weather and hurricanes being caused by climate change?
You can't point to one and then justify the other. If it can't predict weather, it can't predict weather.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Maybe AC meant "tons" literally. If there's 2000 climate scientists total, 5% would weigh about 15,000 lbs., which is several tons. There's just a lot more tons of climate scientist on the consensus side.
Go ahead and RICO climate skeptics, so long as we get to RICO climate fans who try to stand in the way of the massive nuclear program it will take to go carbon free.
Remember "Hide the Decline"? That's when bona fide "scientists" came across an inconvenient truth. In a multi-variate graph of several measurements showing the temperature was rising, one recalcitrant measurement trended downward to contradict very accurate contemporary thermometers. Rater than show the data they had, these "scientists" used a hiccup in the data to make it disappear. It went into the pile of lines, but did not come out. If they had left it in there it would have been a red flag they would have to explain, so they "hid the decline." This was one of many revelations in the Climategate e-mails so many people have conveniently forgotten.
So what exactly was this recalcitrant measurement? It came from tree-ring data. Why is this somewhat important? Because tree-ring data was used as a proxy for thermometers to show the temperature thousands of years ago. Those tree-ring data "prove" the temperature is rising. But the modern graph of tree-ring data shows the temperature falling when everything else shows it rising. What's up with that.
Well, it's a lot easier to hide this uncomfortable issue than it is to explain it. That's how "science" "works."
How about applying RICO to that bunch?
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
The Crusades weren't a witch hunt because actual evil people who were trying to destroy humanity were the ones being investigated.
The Salem Witch Trials weren't a witch hunt because actual evil people who were trying to destroy humanity were the ones being investigated.
etc.etc.etc.
The more you spout off in support of global warming, the more you sound exactly like a witch hunt. Church of Global Warming is right......
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
95% may agree that climate change is happening, sure. That's obvious. Climate change has been happening for millions of years, well before humans even came on the scene, forget about discovered fossil fuels.
The number who agree on human causes and extent is nowhere near that high, though.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
..."solution" to climate change. So remember, right wing kids: when you're whining about Al Gore and carbon credits, you're really whining about capitalism.
However, we can not continue to live in a "democracy" where people permitted to engage in a fraudulent conspiracy to kill billions and cause the extinction of the human race, which is really what global warming denial is all about at this point in the "debate". The reality is that if our justice or political system are not soon able to uproot the fraud, then global warming will take care of the problem once and for all, at a cost to the lives of billions of innocents. You make the call. Its your life that is at stake here. Time is rapidly running out for a decision to be made.
One doesn't even have to wait to take your chances. That next super enlarged storm might just drop a tree branch on your head or burn you alive as should you be trapped in a firestorm during a drought, or perhaps just die of starvation as soil temperatures will have exceeded the capacity for food crops to grow, or other similar fate. As you feel the tree limb hitting your skull, or your flesh being seared off by the fire, or feel your body collapse from malnutrition into a final stupor, you can cry out against those fossil fuel executives and lobbyists were more than content to profit at your loss, but not concerned to see you go.
Or you be proactive. The choice is yours. There are lots of different choices, but denying the fraud won't be one of them.
And He will, too!
How hard do you have to pray to get a winning ticket? Well, pray harder every week till you get that winning ticket. Then you'll know how hard you have to pray to do it....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Everyday the Gaia mystics show their true totalitarian nature. The debate has never been about the science, it is about whether the hypothetical impact of any climate evolution on quality of life and economic prosperity would be so great that it would be preferable to the very substantial and immediate loss of prosperity and personal freedom, resulting from the "climate action" policies as they are being relentlessly pushed by the zealots. AFAIK no such argument has ever been proposed. So far it was always about "changing habits", lifestyle enforcement and "but... but... but... think of the children!".
Freedom of speech is all about listening to other peoples' lies and bullshit.
Apparently Russia, China, India, most of South East Asia, the Middle East except for perhaps Israel and almost all of Africa and South American, not to mention interesting variations of it over Europe, don't really have much of an "inalienable rights" concept established or even practiced. Perhaps you didn't know that because you're American.
How I wrote that clearly puts me in line for a public whipping by my aged English teachers :P
Now does it still look like such a noble idea?
And there is the fact that you could not get past the "My religion rejects the authority of science, as is my right under the constitution." type defence.
If you don't think that rising levels of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere isn't limiting choices, then you are a complete idiot.
To the contrary, at the current exponential rate of rise, wet-bulb temperatures will exceed human's ability to tolerate them in as little as 75-100 years. The ability of humans to produce food through contemporary agriculture and fisheries practices will likely disappear in as little as 35 - 50 years. Perhaps this is what motivates the troglodytes to continue in their denial.
The far left is organized but does little to stop the WORST polluter of all, which is china. If we are going after right wingers for not acknowledging facts or fighting against solutions, then the same should occur to the far left.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Better yet, lets transport them all to summer camps in Basra, Iraq so they can get a bit of training as to what global warming is all about.
If you can't produce the evidence you have to shut up the people who want to see it. That's the Democratic SOP. They are no longer capable of even attempting a rational argument, all they want to do it drown them out, shut them off, close them down, do whatever they have to do to "win" - whether they are right or not is something they never think about, or care about.
The evidence FOR warming has been years in the custody of true believers, most of whom have been caught fudging the data, all of whom have other agendas besides saving the planet from heat - these range from destroying capitalism, as the UN has admitted is its real target for GW alarmism, to just plain power and favors, like Obama doling out money to his backers, who then shutter their bogus solar power companies, take the money, and run - and they don't have to run far because Obama never allows them to be followed.
I'm tired of it. I'm tired of all the lying, I'm tired of the endless invective, the endless, aggressive pushing of "solutions" that will eat up trillions of dollars but which will budge the thermometer literally only HUNDRETHS of a degree IF THE GLOBAL WARMERS ARE RIGHT. Never mind the net effect if they aren't.
You want to find the culprit you follow the money, and the money is huge, it is vast, it is not being monitored and it's being spent like they can print it for free on paper. Which is just what they are doing. It's a shell game, played by liars, to rob the suckers - which is you, folks. All you. Oh, me, too. Maybe I should become a bundler for some socialist moron and get myself on the gravy train, too. Then I could join the choir and shout "the global warming is coming!" knowing the money we milk out of the idiot voters will end up in MY accounts.
But then I couldn't sleep at night. And I wonder how Democrats manage to do so, and do so in spite of the fact they apparently also sleep right through the daytime, too...
IF GOD HAD NOT MEANT VOTERS TO BE SHEARED HE WOULD NOT HAVE MADE THEM SHEEP. Calvera said something like that to Chris in the "Magnificent 7" and you know what? He was right. It didn't make him a nicer person.
Most climate change models only predict future temperatures. However, what biologists know about what will happen to organisms when those temperatures are reached is already very well known.
Animals and plants either face 2 choices in evading global warming. Either they relocate to cooler areas, or if those are no longer available, they die and populations and species go extinct. This is an extremely well known and well studied process. This is not a long process that will take thousands of years, rather it could take as little as one bad extended period of drought or too intense a storm.
The only difference is that this time, is that biologists are warning folks that they are talking about all of us as well all those other unfortunate species.
"The temp increase has stopped for over 14 years."
Another global warming denier bearing false witness.
Sadly the temperature increases have not stopped. 2015 will exceed 2014 as the the warmest year in recorded history. To somehow think that as global warming records continue to exceed previous records is of no consequence to human survival is not only irrational, it is plain stupid.
If you think common sense is locking people up who don't agree with your views then I'm hardly the nutty one. The fact is that there are lots of people who disagree with global warming. Trying to say it's a total of four means he's either an idiot or a liar, most likely both. If you start locking up people who don't agree you'll only make things far worse.
The sad truth is that those who recognize just what a danger carbon dioxide poses to humanity are left attempting to educate the willfully ignorant and greedy in order to save humanity. As we proceed into an ever warming world, you can be sure that the patience of the rational will soon end and increasingly draconian steps will be necessary to deal with the consequences of the ignorance and greed. The fact that patience is already beginning to grow thin is evidence by this issue being raised now. While many may feel their free speech rights are being violated, many others will just be thankful that humanity might get the chance to live for another day.
Ignorance will get you nowhere fast. Unfortunately, on a rapidly warming planet there soon won't be any place for ignorance at all.
As long as the input parameters are credible (ie fall within the range of the real parameter they propose to represent) the output of these models will be credible, even though they can not be used to predict every foreseen potential event.
Although we now know that with 75-100 years at the present rate of warming (not the accelerated one that we can more likely expect), wet bulb temperatures lethal to humans can be expected to occur commonly. We can't predict the precise number of heat stroke deaths, but we can predict within a known margin of error, what the number of deaths will likely be. ALL indications are they will likely be very high, as even now we are observing summer temperatures that are causing tens of thousands of deaths due to heat stroke and the rate of this cause of death is increasing.
It should be pointed out that these are not the early days of climate science. That increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will warm the planet has been known for over 150 years. The reality is that its not merely a issue of rising temperatures, but rather the ecological consequences of these rising temperatures. These are effects that are being studied now, not at some distant point in the future, when the last denier will be convinced. Biologists can tell you with near certainty what will happen to specific aspects of organismal behavior that will be affected by rising temperature and what the consequences for the organism will be. What we know is that a great many kind of organisms will cease to exist as viable populations very soon, on the order of years and decades in many cases, not thousands of years later.
In particular, marketing and communication jobs seem to be popular these days. Now I understand, universities have to market themselves like any other entity, but they take it to stupid extremes.
That's what's going on here, I'm sure. A mouthpeice for the university to talk about how good they are and what they are doing, etc, etc.
Frankly, if the deniers continue to obstruct efforts to build economies based on alternative energies and aggressively reduce reliance on fossil fuels, then putting deniers in jail will be a lot more humane and cost effective than simply sending billions to their deaths.
We can only hope that deniers wise up before this proves necessary. Hopefully, putting these jails in places like Basra, Iraq that now experiences summer temperatures of 140 F will permit these reeducation efforts to succeed without the necessity for extended incarceration.
In 1931 a book was published in Germany, Hundert Autoren Gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein), a collection of criticisms of Einsteinâ(TM)s theory of relativity.
When asked about the book, Einstein retorted by saying âoeWhy 100 authors? If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!â
Percentages of anything are utterly irrelevant to the evaluation of scientific matters.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
The majority of Americans believe there is an invisible man in the sky that gives them presents when they die as well.
Ergo, I place very little faith in my fellow Americans.
" We are told the ice caps will shrink yet they are expanding. "
Whoever told you that misled you. The total amount of ice at both poles is declining at increasingly rapid rates. There is no scientific dispute on this point. What deniers call expanding sea ice is often just a few inches thick that refreezes in winter months because of from more glacial calving only to thaw when temperatures warm seasonally. This will be obvious in about 5 - 10 years in which the entire Arctic Ocean will be ice free completely during the summer.
I'm pretty against this idea for free speech and inquiry reasons as I think most are.
However, to the extent one could justify it I think this would be the justification.
The fact that energy companies do spend funds to discredit climate change is fairly well established, though the extent of their funding and the degree to which they are responsible to driving the skeptical movement isn't really known.
So consider the scenario where energy companies are aware that climate change is real, they're aware that it will have huge and severe consequences, and they're involved in a large scale deliberate campaign to spread things they know to be lies in order to discredit the science and enable them to continue an activity they know to be harmful unabated.
If that scenario is true, that there's an actual conspiracy to knowingly spread harmful lies, then using legal means to expose it and even press charges because a bit more plausible.
I stole this Sig
It's about fraud. Widespread organised fraud.
Should that really be legal in your opinion?
Or should it be legal if they do it "for the party", since it's fraud for the sake of politics?
The entire reason we've got all this shit is because of some donors setting the agenda and turning science denial into a political point of difference between two parties when both used to consider reality previously.
Do you deny science for The Party comrade? Papers please.
Ah, the "silent majority" thing.
Doesn't work anymore. It never made sense anyway.
How about a RICO investigation into the left, for using AGW (let us assume the claims are true, keep this in mind) as a political argument for a massive takeover of the economy, to slam the brakes on business, arguably killing far more than AGW will due to causing lagging technological advancement.
Any takers? Or is your itchy trigger finger to mod me down, a censorship in microcosm of that which pleases you to think about in this thread?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Cue the usual conga line of outraged denialist morons, posting the same ridiculous and thoroughly debunked lies, and in desperation, resorting to the tried and true reds under the bed bullshit.
That so many supposedly intelligent posters don't accept the experts view, would be funny if it were not so tragically and dangerously stupid.
Is it still a witch hunt if you find an actual witch?
That's a very nice sentiment that sounds real good whenever the US goes charging off to make the world safe for democracy--but that's about all it is.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
is the Director of Climate Change Communication,
I'm seriously questioning why a university feels the need to have a Director of Climate Change Communication.
Hmm. From some comments (and threats) I've seen levelled at those who do climate research, it's probably a good idea. Silly mistakes and such could have very nasty results.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
RICO is a bad law, tailor-made for prosecutorial overreach, and this would be a bad use of it.
I really dislike what the heavily funded "denialist" campaign has done to any chances of actually dealing usefully with this problem (not to mention what it has done rational discourse in this country), and if someone feels they can prove damages, more power to them if they sue everyone they can find behind the astro-turf, but please don't use this abominable law in the process.
Is that the ENTIRE argument is over cause, not effect.
Because, fundamentally, the people bemoaning "warming" say "we need to clean up our act" (at its most basic level) and those claiming "there's nothing wrong" say we need to do nothing.
Irrespective of which side is technically correct, isn't "make the world a significantly better place" a worthwhile goal?
The "but it's expensive" argument is 100% pure "but the industry where I made my billions will make less profit" and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING MORE.
So STFU, cleanup everything, and IF that just happens to stave off a global catastrophe then that's BONUS.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
The thing I find most annoying about the global warming issue is that there's entirely too much politics and too little science. For instance, ask people the question "What greenhouse gas has the most influence on Earth's temperature?" and the vast majority will say "Carbon Dioxide."
Only problem with that answer is that it's wrong.
Water vapor accounts for about 95% of the total greenhouse effect on earth. Only about 5% is due to carbon dioxide. And the interesting thing is that most of that 5% is totally natural. Mankind only creates about 5% of that 5% giving about 0.27% of the total greenhouse effect that is contributed by mankind. Yes, just a smidge over one fourth of one percent.
Do I believe that global warming is real? Yes, I do.
Do I believe that global warming is due to mankind? No, I do not.
Some minor little details that the global warming crowd ignore that they really need to address.
1. Viking farms underneath the glaciers in Greenland. Archeologists have found these farms. Interesting thing. The existence of those farms indicate that Earth was warmer in the past than it currently is. Else those farms wouldn't be covered by glaciers. And given when those farms were made, mankind wasn't generating appreciable levels of carbon dioxide. That little detail right there makes their "global warming is due to mankind" argument more than a bit suspect.
2. Scientists have found a definite correlation between carbon dioxide levels and global temperature by analyzing ice core samples, tree growth rings, etc. It is a proven fact that higher global temperatures are associated with higher levels of carbon dioxide. Sounds like something good for the global warming crowd doesn't it? However, there is one slight problem. The correlation is skewed over time. It turns out that carbon dioxide level changes lag global temperature changes by approximately 40 to 50 years. That's right folks, when the temperature changes, the CO2 changes about 4 decades later. If you have a cause and effect relationship between two variables, I would expect the variable that changes first to be considered the cause, and the variable that changes later to be the effect. And the data doesn't look good for the "global warming is caused by mankind" crowd.
Why would CO2 levels change after a temperature change? One theory is that the solubility of CO2 in water decreases with increasing temperature and increases with decreasing temperature. And we have a very large body of water on this planet. The oceans can be acting as a huge CO2 repository and when they get warming, they release some of that CO2 and when they get colder, they absorb some of that CO2. That would definitely explain the lag.
Right now in my opinion, the global warming caused by mankind crowd are using CO2 as a means of demonizing the west. After all, it is a proven fact that burning fossil fuel does generate CO2. So those people can point to the west and say "See? They're harming the environment." They can't demonize plain old water vapor, even though water vapor is the biggest contributor to the green house effect. Are we having a significant effect on Earth's temperature? I wouldn't think so since we're only having about one fourth of one percent of the total effect.
Climatologists are not statisticians and when one points out the flaws in their stats they just claim that they're "not climatologists". Not all scientists who can poke holes in a hypothesis are (or need be) in that field.
That the AC cannot is exactly why the post was AC.
...so I might as well say something. I'm not a scientist, far from it in fact. And I'm not convinced that humans are responsible for everything going on in the world, climatologically. Something is definitely going on, but I'm not convinced that humans are the sole cause. I've read interesting things from both sides of the argument, often very interesting things, but none of them have convinced me one way or the other...I still feel there is a reasonable doubt. All this handwaving from one side, saying it's completely impossible, and all this handwaving from the other side, saying it's a foregone conclusion that I am too stupid to comprehend, has not affected me at all, except to make me more skeptical about both sides. The effects that we have seen are undeniable, but the cause is. Am I a racketeering corrupt organization now?
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
You make good points, but isn't the question here: Is there a organized business lobby here that is working to suppress accurate science for personal gain? Seems likely, but unless just plain old lying is a federal offense, it seem unlikely that this will actually stick. Is there any law that says mass media actually has to tell the truth?
I suspect that Global Warming will get very bad, very fast, when we cross some level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since nature is rarely a linear system. When it does, and we have a few massive crop failures (what happens to US wheat belt at +5 degrees? Nothing good I suspect), people will get serious pretty fast. When this happens, anyone who was a climate denier might find themselves on the wrong side of a starving mob.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Liberals want conservatives to shut up. Conservatives want liberals to keep talking.
Okay, so we have climate deniers investigated under RICO. Then what? If nothing illegal is found then not only do we have largely a status quo we also have made climate change deniers look like martyrs.
Suppose something illegal is found, where does this stop? After we lock up all the climate change deniers then who should we investigate in this witch hunt? Anyone that burns fossil fuels? We lock up all the people at the coal fired electric plant, then all the people at the aluminum plant, auto makers, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers? After all those people are sitting in jail everyone should feel so proud as the lights so out, food spoils, and we stumble around in the dark looking for something to eat.
We don't solve this problem by (quite literally really) biting the hand that feeds us. We solve this problem by developing something better. The stone age didn't end because people ran out of rocks. It ended because people developed bronze. The age of fossil fuels will not end when we run out of oil. I say this because as oil becomes harder to get then we seem to find more creative ways to get more of it. The age of oil will end when we find something better. I believe we already have something better in nuclear power.
So, liberals, keep talking. You are all sounding like idiots.
If you want to see an environmental disaster then go ahead and tax oil until it's too expensive to burn. Then you will see people searching out for anything they can grab and ignite for heat, light, and cooking. After all the trees are cut down, all the books in the libraries burned, then we'll all be cooking rats over burning tires. Solar power won't save us and neither will windmills. Windmills need aluminum, and that means burning carbon, look it up. Solar power needs storage to keep things running at night. Batteries need lead, nickel, iron, lithium, and, would you look at that, ALUMINUM. While you're mining for all those heavy metals for your batteries you may as well separate out the uranium and thorium for nuclear power, you're going to need it sooner or later.
These tree huggers are going to get us all killed.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
In the form of Micheal Mann (of the discredited hockey stick) vs Mark Levin. Mann sued Levin (actually both the National Review and Competitive Enterprise Institute that Levin put forth his opinions via) for defamatory statements and fraud due to Levin calling Mann a fraud. Of course Mann put forward in his initial press release about the suit that he was awarded the Nobel peace prize along with Gore...a blatant lie. Levin countersued for $10m and now it's going through the courts. Since Levin is counter suing, all of Mann's work is subject to criticism.
Confirmed! Yes, you're an idiot. A five second googling would have gave you the answer to your question. Apparently, you're too stupid for that.
Let me put it in an analogy that might just be understandable to you. If you go to Las Vegas and play dice all night then you'll lose all of your money - that's a climate model. I don't need to forecast each dice throw (weather model) to know it.
Now where are my beer and chips - this is going to get entertaining.
I want nuclear power so that the USA doesn't have to burn Iran's oil, because burning Iran's oil means giving money to a known host of terrorism and increasing global warming. Iran doesn't want to burn Iran's oil, because they can make more money by selling it than burning it for electricity. What does Iran do so that it can get it's nuclear power plants? Well, they threatened to drop nuclear bombs on Israel.
So, I want to build a nuclear power plant. How do I go about doing that? Apparently if I threaten to drop nuclear bombs on Israel then the US federal government will let me get radioactive material and will give me piles of money to build my reactors.
The question that remains is this, if I am successful in building my nuclear reactors after I get all this stuff from the US government do I have to follow through on my threat and actually bomb Israel? I mean I don't want to actually bomb Israel but I do want to reduce my carbon footprint with a nuclear power reactor. Maybe I can build a dud bomb to drop. Then when there isn't an earth shattering "kaboom" I can just go to the US government for more radioactive material, more money, and build more reactors.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
If you count on rationality to save humanity then we are doomed.
...you resort to name calling and litigation. This should "settle" the question of the foundation of misguided climate change alarmists: dogma, not science.
Some of us have been calling for the RICO prosecution of deniers for over a decade now.
People who like to pretend that they're arm chair theories about how climate works are somehow a match for the decades of research by scientists may be shocked at this notion, but RICO is the appropriate law to bring to bear.
The deliberate, bad faith denial of human caused climate change will be the worst crime in terms of numbers of deaths, political upheaval, cost and irreversibility of damages ever perpetrated by any group of criminals ever, including the internet's own favorite, The Third Reich.
Denier are terrorists. In the case of the Koch brothers, I believe they are systematically promoting and funding denialism as a way of creating a disaster so large, centralized governments won't be able to deal with it and will therefore collapse.
They KNOW it's true, their own studies which they commissioned to investigate human caused climate change TOLD them it was true. But these are people who tried in the 80s to run for President on a platform of abolishing the FBI, the CIA and all the rest of government. They are sworn enemies of the United States government, our government, my government, and they seek to destroy it *through any means necessary, including genocide via climate change*.
That's terrorism and they're terrorists as are the rest of the denial machinery.
What they think is we're going to stand around with our collective dick in our hands while they inch us closer to a disaster so big, it destroys the United States. What the reality is is the government has a duty to protect its citizens against all enemies foreign AND domestic and that's all the "go" justification they need. We don't need to vote on whether they're terrorists, we need to decide that they are and act. That's how this works.
The architects of climate denial need to be dealt with by any means necessary to stop them, no matter what. The question is not IF it should be done, the question is how can it best be done with the least disruption to the fabric of civil society.
Towards that goal absolutely everything is on the table without exception; techniques and exploits usually reserved for foreign nationals are completely within bounds given the nature of the threat and the proven intractibility of the enemy terrorists, who reside within this country and worse, are citizens and worse are well known, well funded, well organized and worse have assumed the camoflage of civil liberties organizations.
Get this, deniers. The United States government is not going to sit idly by while you destroy human civilization as we know it because you think you've found some Constitutional loophole - "you're citizens and you have the right to your free speech rights!" - big enough to drive the explosive laden truck called "climate change" through.
No, they're going to treat you like they treat all terrorists who seek to destroy our way of life. In this case it may mean "no fingerprints" but that's a purely technical matter.
Not only do RICO laws apply, but they extend to all the "civic organizations" and individuals without exception. The government has a right and a duty to neutralize and defund all terrorists. In this case I propose in addition to RICO "financial decimation" whereby all assets owned by these terrorists including those transferred at any point in time, past, present or future to any co-conspirator, associate, cohort, group, organization, family member or individual be confiscated along with those normally accessible by RICO. Seizing funds and assets this broadly them sends a clear signal: there is no way to benefit from attacking the United States and by doing so, everything you've ever done is voided without exception. That's the signal we need to send. Your business associates, your buddies, your familiy- none of them can safely accept your money. Terrorist money is not fungible- it is forever tainted. The cost to offset climate change is astronomical and the individuals, organizations
There were multiple inquiries. The outcomes are published.
known to be generally funded by various actors and there are people and organizations that certainly make money [from this research]
What research isn't?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
citation please.... for your blatant lies.
If ice is melting at an exponential rate, how can WWII planes crashed on Greenland be buried under 260 feet deep of ice?
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08...
"We also have the right to pay a price if we knowing[ly] say false and reckless things that hurt others." WTF! You just made that up.
At the very least it's called satire and it's not illegal and it's OK to make a profit from such speech. In fact, the more outrageous and the more often you say it the better.
Je suis Charlie?
Courts are good at establishing official truth. They are not so good at discovering actual truth.
If legislation gives the courts permission to rule on political matters, that may just be the final nail in the coffin of the Constitution. (I'm assuming here it's not completely, irretrievably dead already.)
Ain't no coming back from that.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
So in other words, throw the 1st Amendment, along with science that they disagree with, under the bus. I would caution that this sort of enthusiasm for a cause hurts it much more than it helps.
Its up to you if you want to counter the 95% with some facts
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
i've yet to see a climate scientist deny that climate change is something new, its all about the rate of change, our contribution to it and its consequences. All you can do is deny we have had an impact on it. It doesn;t even matter if we have an impact on it or not as its happening regardless
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
There is a much bigger problem the earth is facing right now and it is being pretty much ignored by the powers that be and the mainstream media - Fukushima radiation is poisoning the worlds oceans. 300-450 tonnes a DAY is still pouring into the Pacific from the nuclear facility.
Which is quite impressive given that there was only 4300 tons there in the first place. Let's exploit the hell out of this!
Or are you deceptively ignoring the actual radioactivity of the mass in question and counting water as radioactive material?
and it took a schoolgirl from Alberta Canada to point it out to the world
Quite the argument from authority there. If a schoolgirl from Alberta says it's true - it must be!
This is a known major threat to every person on the planet that gets no airtime, the facts are clear and anyone with a Geiger counter can prove it.
Do so. And then STFU when you realize what an idiot you are.
Once they're murdering a couple of billion people with free speech, it's debatable whether it's worth keeping speech free.
But that's not happening, hence we don't need to discard a fundamental right of our societies. There is no evidence for your position as other repliers have noted and the predicted consequences of global warming fall well short of that.
And note here that you are advocating for the gradual enslavement of your society, yet we don't need to silence your voice in order to protect basic rights - it'd be counterproductive and unnecessary. Instead, we merely ignore you.
The reason so-called climate deniers can't be ignored is because they're doing the homework that advocates of climate change mitigation can't be bothered to explain. For example, asking is the theory for real? Asking whether even if it is for real, is the advocated sacrifice worth the cost? Why do we need to act now? Etc.
>>"If the science was as good as Mann and his bunch of lynch-mob fans have claimed, it would be indisputable"
Translation: if Mann can not convince unreasonable people, then this means he is factually in error.
Of course not. But in way too many places speaking your mind publicly (if what you say is not liked in some way) can end up with you getting some fairly unpleasant consequences. Good luck with your inalienable rights etc if you choose the wrong time, place and people to express something not liked. Say, Moscow, 1930's, and you tried to tell people that Stalin was essentially a loser, his policies were all wrong, and that he was being duped by Germany.
That 95% figure that gets thrown around is from an *extremely* small sample size. Worth some googling to see the entire truth behind that.
NASA say 97%. And cite multiple sources.
http://climate.nasa.gov/scient...
The number who agree on human causes and extent is nowhere near that high, though.
OK then, try the number of Scientific Organizations That Hold the Position That Climate Change Has Been Caused by Human Action. Try to find one that doesn't.
http://opr.ca.gov/s_listoforga...
Reminds me of a French Jewish comedian, Michel Boujenah, who had a scene about a devout Jew who repeatedly prayed to God for having him win the lottery.
"Oh Lord, make me win the lottery, make me win the lottery, make me win the lottery, make me win the lottery, make me win the lottery, make me win the lottery, make me win the lottery, make me win the lottery, make me win the lottery!"
In the end God can't bear it anymore, and tells him "Look, I'm okay with making you win the lottery, but play it, at least!"
I know it's off-topic, but I'm fond of that joke.
There's nothing like $HOME
We would welcome any objective investigation.
What about the right's tedious, inaccurate talking points? Or how their philosophy is so limited, if it can't solve a problem they simply deny it exists.
Climate Achange critics build a convincing case that climate scientists are manipulating environmental data in an organized manner to secure more federal grant money? Should they also be prosecuted under the RICO statute?
Ken
You can't fix radiation PERIOD.
There's three ways I know of fixing radiation. First, moving and storing it away from places or things where it causes problems. Second, half the problem goes away with each increment of half life in time. Third, some of this material, particular the used fuel rods which are one of the most dangerous radioactive parts, is valuable as nuclear fuel for breeder reactors.
There still is no safe disposal of spent fuel; it sits outside the facility exposed to whatever. Nuclear power's long term cost is staggering and no one ever talks about "it."
Unless we don't do that and do something safer instead.
Wrong. The 95% is the approximate number of climate scientists who say that the climate is changing very rapidly, and it's almost certainly because of the fossil fuels we're burning.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That the vast majority of scientists in a field agree on something isn't proof that it's true (I can come up with lots of counterexamples), but it's the way to bet. We're talking about near-unanimity among the smartest people who study something extensively.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
A RICO investigation would look for evidence of fraud. If somebody believes that AGW means that we need a massive immediate takeover and reduction of the economy, then that's a legitimate (if stupid) belief, and not fraudulent. Similarly, if somebody really believes that AGW is a hoax, that's another legitimate stupid belief, and not fraudulent. Either belief, if prevalent and acted on, would likely cause disasters, but that's not important for RICO.
The basis for a RICO investigation would be that some organizations worked together to disseminate information they knew to be false in order to profit from it. The right-wing idiots on this appear to me to be part of astroturfing, which can be illegal, while the left-wing idiots are more independent.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Courts are good at establishing official truth. They are not so good at discovering actual truth.
If legislation gives the courts permission to rule on political matters, that may just be the final nail in the coffin of the Constitution. (I'm assuming here it's not completely, irretrievably dead already.)
Ain't no coming back from that.
The U.S constitution survived McCarthy and his Communist witch hunts, I doubt climate change deniers witch hunts would be enough to kill it.
97% of peer reviewed studies conclude global warming is man made. http://iopscience.iop.org/arti...
So where do your figures come from? Or are you just making them up?
Are we supposed to read their minds? What measure would you suggest?
Do know a single person who wants to "slam the brakes on business"? A global conspiracy among client scientists to slow down the economy - how does anybody take that seriously? The same people who say the government is hopelessly inefficient and incompetent claim the same government has coordinated a global effort to deceive the public, recruiting the entire population of publishing climate scientists for 20+ years. To what end? "to slam the brakes on business". (Brain explodes)
Or maybe it's this simple. Those that stand to lose money (coal, oil, and gas) launch a campaign to cast doubt on the science that would hurt their core business.
This has happened before with cigarettes. History is a great teacher.
And before you throw labels at me, I value liberty above "safety". I voted for Ron Paul and Gary Johnson in the previous two elections. Ultimately I look for the truth, and it is as clear as clear gets for AGW.
...but I wasn't a climate change denier, so I kept silent
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
People who think the Constitution is doing OK probably should invest half an hour or 45 minutes reading the thing, and comparing it to how government actually operates.
Of the Bill of Rights, only the Third Amendment has survived intact.
Article I, Section 1 is violated every time the Congress creates an Executive Branch agency with the power to write laws, or empowers one to write a new category of laws.
And so on.
The procedural parts hold up the best. We still have elections to populate the White House and the Congress, on schedule. (Some candidates for those offices are "more equal than others", but that's just a quibble, right?)
Presidential appointees still get confirmed by the Senate before they take office. (Well, except for those interim, temporary, acting heads of agencies.)
Treaties are still ratified by the Senate, too. But negotiated agreements with other countries that aren't treaties go into effect by another route. (They aren't treaties, see?)
The definition of interstate commerce has been absurdly expanded to include acts that aren't commerce and that don't occur between states. (That a man raising corn to feed his family and his livestock was considered to be engaged in "interstate commerce" by doing so requires a level of dishonesty of Ponzian proportions.)
So, if the Constitution isn't dead, it sure is coughing up blood. Coughing up a lot of it.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Doesn't hold water. Ever heard of "render unto Caeser" and all that other stuff about religion not being everything? Then there's all the ancient Greek stuff - they were not so stupid as to dump everything in with religion, it takes modern idiots to make that mistake. So why are you pretending to be an idiot? Surely you know enough about religion or enough about science to not make the mistake for real?
It's not a political problem that will go away if a different "tribe" takes charge.
The problem here is PART of one "tribe" decided to use it to define a point of difference and attract donor money. Denial is the toxic waste of using money from Enron, Saudis etc to get into the White House - not just big oil but the fucking insane and amoral extreme of big oil.
By framing it as a political issue you are looking at it from a rather stupid angle, but a lot of money and a lot of effort was consumed to get the Party faithful to ignore reality and look at it in such artificial terms.
I suggest use your own reasoning skills instead of looking at it in such terms - you are going to be more use all around, even to the "tribe" that currently thinks ignoring reality is a nice little vote winning game, if you are prepared to look at issues of physical reality in physical terms instead of fantasy. Not even Nixon would have fallen for this shit. Thatcher, as conservative as Reagan, took the side of reality over the stupid denial game. She showed that you can be conservative without stupid tilting at windmills. I suggest you take that example and be something other than a person posting suggestions that we should just vote our way out of the problem and it will vanish by magic, such suggestions inspire only anger, pity, hilarity and despair that the education system has failed to provide a sufficient bullshit detector.
To head off the most stupid type of response, that of shooting the messenger - I'm no Democrat and don't give a shit about Al Gore - but as I wrote above thinking of this as a political issue is stupid.
Neither are the people poking holes, but they can do things like put together Sudoko puzzles.
I'm astonished that a denier pulled the "they are not experts" card. Isn't the game played that everyone can pretend that they know more than a climate expert? Four years as an Economist and no published papers apparently trumps hundreds of thousands of years of experts experience from an entire field.
The number who agree on human causes and extent is nowhere near that high, though.
Are you intentionally spreading lies, or just happen to be unwillingly or willingly ignorant about the matter?
"Of these papers, 97.2 percent endorsed the "consensus" that global warming is human caused. Once results were in, Cook put together a publicity strategy. "There's no point in doing scientific research if you are not looking to publicize it," he said.Jul 24, 2014"
https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm
Of course, the above is a high percentage of studies, not a percentage of scientists themselves. So, see below.
http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ - every major science group. All of them agree it is a serious problem and man made. Natural cycles alone cannot explain it.
Or go to google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=scientific+consensus+global+warming&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0CBwQgQMwAGoVChMI7Mr7j6yOyAIVkFWICh3ojwOh
Or, lighter reading if you don't want to read scholar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
Is a survey of 3,000+ earth scientists enough for you?
Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, Peter T. Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman
"It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes."
Doran surveyed 10,257 Earth scientists. Thirty percent responded to the survey which asked: 1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant? and 2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
source: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/scientific-consensus-on.html#.VgM7f5Zw1lw
is the Director of Climate Change Communication,
I'm seriously questioning why a university feels the need to have a Director of Climate Change Communication.
The University's identity is distinguished by its public affairs mission, which entails a campus-wide commitment to foster expertise and responsibility in ethical leadership, cultural competence and community engagement.
Crap, sorry. Somehow I lost the text in a quote mishap. My text that should have been above that community engagement sentence was basically:
Why question it? Many schools take public money, and feel obliged to give back to the community in various ways. One of those ways is educating the public. And lots of schools have mission statements that specifically mention community engagement.
Seems the host and main author of the RICO20 letter has been playing fast and loose with NSF grant money.
http://climateaudit.org/2015/0...
I would agree.
Lets start with the main author of this letter.
http://climateaudit.org/2015/0...