Prosecutions Coming for Global Warming Deniers?

[RiversideGator]

by the way, statements of this sort expose you to be either a liar or a fool.

Name calling rarely carries the day in debates which are decided by facts and logic.

Please read your statement and compare it to the last sentence of your post.

I read the entire piece and the disclaimer.  Had I been "typically dishonest" I might have left off the last sentence rather than including it in the quoted text.  The fact remains that there are significant numbers of physicists who disagree with your precious "consensus".  This again weakens one of the main pillars of the global warming religion.

[RiversideGator]

wow River,  How embarrassing for yor point.  If your argument keeps relying on new psuedo science that keeps getting debunked sometimes simultaneously as you are posting it, most people with a smidgeon of intelligence would abandon ship.

What pseudo-science did I post?  The temperature chart showing cooling over the last 10 years?  Please be more specific and clear rather than just attempting to claim some imagined victory over me.  BTW, please explain to us why temperatures are declining as CO2 levels are rising.  While you're at it, please explain why temperatures in the past have been warmer when CO2 levels were lower:

Global average temperature reconstruction based upon 18 temperature proxies for the period 1 A.D. to 1995, combined with the thermometer-based dataset from the UK Met Office and University of East Anglia, covering the period 1850 to 2007. Note that for both datasets each data point represents a 30-year average.

http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm

[RiversideGator]

So, what does he know?

Obviously not as much as the inhabitant of riversidegatorworld^tm.

Gosh that little trademark thingie is funny.   

[RiversideGator]

additionally, Roy Spencer is NOT a climatologist, he has a degree in meteorology and is notable for his research in microwaves NOT climatology.

Source please for your contentions.  According to wikipedia:

Roy W. Spencer is a principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville. In the past, he served as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Spencer is a recipient of NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.

Sounds like a "climatologist" to me.  In any case, he is FAR more of a climatologist that you or I are.   

Here is a list of the far right wing, fundamentalist groups that he belongs to: http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=19#src2

Ahh the noted scientific website "Exxon Secrets".   

I actually clicked on the link and found that it was not exactly as you described.  Instead I found that he appears to be a mainstream conservative.  Are scientists not allowed to hold political views?  If not, are the views of those scientists with a leftist persuasion similarly discredited?

and here is the rest of the wikipedia post on william gray that you 'conveniently' left out.

Gray's statements on Global Warming have been the subject of criticism. Peter Webster, a Georgia Institute of Technology professor, has been part of the anonymous peer review on several of Gray's National Science Foundation proposals. In every case he has turned down the global warming research component because he believed it was not up to standards, but recommended that Gray's hurricane research be funded.[6]

Webster, who has co-authored other scientific papers with Gray, is also critical of Gray for his personal attacks on the scientists with whom he disagrees. "Bill, for some very good reasons, has been the go-to man on hurricanes for the last 35 years," says Webster. "All of a sudden there are a lot of people saying things Bill doesn't agree with. And they're getting a lot of pressâ€"more press than I like, actually. I like the ivory tower. But he's become more and more radical."[6]

So, because Dr. Gray criticizes other scientists with whom he disagrees you think this discredits his research and findings?  If so, your boy Hansen is also out since he is one of the most vitriolic people around with his attacks on those with whom he disagrees about the cult of GW.   

[RiversideGator]

Meanwhile, temperatures are still falling:

Since the phase-transition in mean global surface temperature late in 2001, a pronounced downtrend has set in. In the cold winter of 2007/8, record sea-ice extents were observed at both Poles. The January-to-January fall in temperature from 2007-2008 was the greatest since global records began in 1880. Data sources: Hadley Center monthly combined land and sea surface temperature anomalies; University of Alabama at Huntsville Microwave Sounding Unit monthly lower-troposphere anomalies; Linear regressions

http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm

[BridgeTroll]

Below are some recent quotes by Al Gore.  Al was on "Meet the Press" Sunday... He actually put the blame on High oil prices where they belong... I was quite surprised to hear him say "increased consumption by China and India" rather than some obscure conspiracy by "Big oil". 

The quotes below illustrate MY problems with the GW debate and how to solve them....

“The idea that we can drill our way out of this is just so absurd,” he said, comparing the push for offshore oil drilling â€" which has gained popularity and put environmentalists on the defense â€" to dealing with a hangover by having another drink.

Of course it is... I do not think there is a person alive who thinks we can do so.  But that is not the question.  The idea is to lessen our reliance in foriegn oil.  Alternatives are great... but we will still and always need oil.  It only makes sense that we exploit our own oil reserves.

"They will say we can’t switch away from oil."

I dont think anyone is saying this...  But to do so will take time... longer than the 10 years proposed by Al and even then there will still be a significant need for oil.

Seems to me that a smooth economic transition to new power sources is much more desireable than forcing oil prices higher to curb usage and force the populace into alternatives...

I copied the quotes from here...
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0708/Gore_compares_offshore_drilling_to_invasion_of_Iraq.html
I cannot verify the veracity of the quotes but they are only used to illustrate my frustration with some of the arguments used...

[RiversideGator]

Here is yet another scientist expressing his doubts as to the GW theory:

No smoking hot spot

David Evans | July 18, 2008

I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.

FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.

When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.

Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.

The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.

Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.

So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.

In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.

If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?

The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.

What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.

The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.

Dr David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html

[Charleston native]

BTW, Stephen, your source for the "debunking" of the OISM is highly biased and full of horse manure, since SourceWatch is a project stemmed from the Center for Media and Democracy, a far-leftist organization at that. Let's see where SourceWatch gets its funding:

Center for Media & Democracy
520 University Avenue, Suite 310, Madison, WI 53703
Phone 608-260-9713 | Fax 608-260-9714 | Email editor@prwatch.org

The Center for Media & Democracy (CMD) is a counterculture public relations effort disguised as an independent media organization. CMD isn’t really a center it would be more accurate to call it a partnership, since it is essentially a two-person operation.

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber operate, as do most self-anointed progressive watchdogs, from the presumption that any communication issued from a corporate headquarters must be viewed with a jaundiced eye. In their own quarterly PR Watch newsletter, they recently referred to corporate PR as a propaganda industry, misleading citizens and manipulating minds in the service of special interests. Ironically, Rampton and Stauber have elected to dip into the deep pockets of multi-million-dollar foundations with special interest agendas of their own.

Their books Mad Cow U.S.A. and Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! were produced and promoted using grant monies from the Foundation for Deep Ecology ($25,000) and the Education Foundation of America ($20,000), among others. Along with the more recent Trust Us: We’re Experts, these books are scare-mongering tales about a corporate culture out of control, and each implies that the public needs rescuing. Guess who the heroes in this fantasy are?

Despite his wild claims that federal agencies have covered up U.S. mad cow disease cases, John Stauber has become a quotable celebrity on the subject. In 1997, at the height of the initial mad-cow panic, a CMD press release warned: Evidence suggests there may already be a mad-cow-type of disease infecting both U.S. pigs and cattle. Rampton and Stauber have never provided any documentation to back up this reckless claim; no cases of mad-cow disease have ever been documented in U.S. livestock. John Stauber was one of only four mad-cow experts offered to reporters by Fenton Communications’ media arm, Environmental Media Services.

As the liberal Village Voice commented in April 2001, “These guys come from the far side of liberal.” Seen through this dynamic duo's socialist lens, society’s major problems are capitalism in general and corporations in particular. If someone in a shirt and tie dares make a profit (especially if food or chemicals are involved), Rampton and Stauber are bound to have a problem with it. Unless, of course, that food is vegetarian, organic, certified fair-trade, shade-grown, biodynamic, or biotech-free â€" in which case, the sky’s the limit!

Rampton and Stauber’s latest book (Trust Us, We’re Experts! ) was delivered to the media with a slick press kit, citing favorable reviews from media experts. The packet also included a prewritten list of questions for reporters to ask when interviewing the authors. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel blew the whistle, though, noting that “a somewhat sheepish Stauber” offered the following feeble excuse: “What you see is a true PR campaign around our book. This is how book publishing is done. I think it’s bad. I hate it.”

http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/12

[Charleston native]

Here are some facts about the OISM:

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine is a small research institute in southern Oregon. It was founded in 1980 to conduct basic and applied research in subjects immediately applicable to improvements in human life - especially in biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine, and the molecular biology of aging.

The Institute is entirely supported by donations and the independent earnings of its faculty and volunteers. It does not solicit or accept government funds.

http://www.accesstoenergy.com/view/ate/s41p945.htm

Now I already know what you're going say: "This institute is not a climatology center, so anything that comes from it is bunk." This would be a fallacious statement. All the institute did was send out a survey/petition to scientists from around the world.

I guess Gallup shouldn't do a poll on what scientists think...since it's not a "climatology organization". 

[RiversideGator]

BTW, Stephen, your source for the "debunking" of the OISM is highly biased and full of horse manure, since SourceWatch is a project stemmed from the Center for Media and Democracy, a far-leftist organization at that. Let's see where SourceWatch gets its funding:

Oops.  CN debunked Stephen's source which Stephen thought had debunked my source.   

[Charleston native]

Here are some more facts about OISM: their petition was endorsed and introduced by professor and physicist Frederick Seitz, President of the US National Academy of Sciences and of Rockefeller University. He was a "vigorous" supporter of the Petition Project since it began in 1998. He passed away earlier this year, so using your logic, Stephen, that would invalidate his analysis and conclusions, right?

Another interesting bit of information about OISM is the fact that their findings are peer-reviewed. Researchers Arthur Robinson, Noah Robinson, and Willie Soon published their findings in a science journal, subject to scrutiny among many Ph. D.'s and other scientists. This article was attached with the petition for the petitioners to read before signing it. Therefore, it wasn't just some out-of-the-blue question sent to these people. And there were scientists who did not respond to the petition/survey for multiple reasons.

Before going off on a legitimate organization, regardless of its size or location--which, BTW, weren't you chastising me for using geographic location as a premise for an argument in another thread?--I would look into the important facts about it such as:

Note: The Petition Project has no funding from energy industries or other parties with special financial interests in the "global warming" debate. Funding for the project comes entirely from private non-tax deductible donations by interested individuals.

http://www.oism.org/pproject/

Oops.  CN debunked Stephen's source which Stephen thought had debunked my source.  

Isn't that just hilarious? 

[RiversideGator]

This is a lie.

More accusations of lying.  Is this more projection?   
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

A few discredited sources outside of the field of climatology, and you are ready to call them significant numbers.

Who says they are discredited?  Certainly none of them have been discredited by anything you have posted.

And incidentally, calling Sourcewatch "Far Left" isnt 'debunking' anything.

I disagree.

Neither of you two are capable of debate in any meaningful way, you cannot assimilate new information and you are hellbent not on discerning the truth, but on finding something that supports your presupposition.

Which you have never adequately defined.

Translation:  You have posted a lot of stuff to which I have no real answer.  I will therefore sidestep the questions raised by simply calling you liars.

As I understand it, from the multiple contradictory statemtents made by the two of you, it is as follows.

Climate Change is occurring, possibly, but due to natural causes such as long term weather cycles, solar activity, and the gradual warming that has been occurring since the end of the last ice age.

Several spurts of warming have occurred in the past, such as the medieval warming period.

IN no way is the pace of warming or climate change either caused by, nor accelerated by the introduction of new gasses in the air which change the proportional gas composite called the atmostphere arising from the activities of Humanity.

CO2, particularly is non contributory to an acceleration in warming the atmosphere, and certainly the amount of carbon produced by industry and man made activities is not a contributing factor to warming.

Is that basically your argument?

No, that is your argument.  Please do not try to put words into my mouth.  Thanks.   

[RiversideGator]

Straw man argument again Stephen.  Lol.  Just kidding.  I think this atlantic hurrican season will cause people to take a step back and say, you know what, maybe there's some truth to this Global Climate Change thingy after all.  I mean, this season is way busy and so soon early too.

If an above normal hurricane season (which may happen this year) proves global warming, then why does a below normal hurricane season (the past two seasons) not disprove global warming?  Cant have it both ways.  Either both do or both do not prove/disprove the GW theory or they are largely unrelated.

[RiversideGator]

Meanwhile, we are below the temperatures of 1989:

[Charleston native]

This is a lie.

A few discredited sources outside of the field of climatology, and you are ready to call them significant numbers.

Discredited? You haven't discredited anybody Stephen.

This is bunk.

And incidentally, calling Sourcewatch "Far Left" isnt 'debunking' anything.

It shows that there is a huge ideology and agenda hidden behind what you consider an "objective" source, thereby making it highly subject to scrutiny and debunking.

Neither of you two are capable of debate in any meaningful way, you cannot assimilate new information and you are hellbent not on discerning the truth, but on finding something that supports your presupposition.

How is this different from your information and discernment of "truth"? Please...you hardly have the intellectual high road.

Gatorback, are you serious or kidding?