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The definition of 'news' is fluid in Wingnut World.The dangers of bone-headed beliefs
Surely it's time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies.Scratch a leftist, find a tyrant.
Not necessarily on the forehead; I'm a reasonable man. Just something along their arm or across their chest so their grandchildren could say, ''Really? You were one of the ones who tried to stop the world doing something? And why exactly was that, granddad?''
On second thoughts, maybe the tattooing along the arm is a bit Nazi-creepy. So how about they are forced to buy property on low-lying islands, the sort of property that will become worthless with a few more centimetres of ocean rise, so they are bankrupted by their own bloody-mindedness? Or what about their signed agreement to stand, in the year 2040, lashed to a pole at a certain point in the shallows off Manly? If they are right and the world is cooling - ''climate change stopped in the year 1998'' is one of their more boneheaded beliefs - their mouths will be above water. If not
OK, maybe the desire to see the painful, thrashing death of one's opponents is not ideal. But, my God, these people are frustrating. You just know that in 20 years' time, when the costs of our inaction are clear, the climate deniers will become climate-denial-deniers. ''Who me? Oh, no, I always believed in it. Yes, it's hard to understand why people back then were so daft. It's so much more costly to stop it now.''
That's why the tattoo has its appeal.
Read more: The dangers of bone-headed beliefs
was this madness actually published in a newspaper ?
My goodness, you're a dim bulb.You had to go all the way to Australia to find an opinion piece with which to try to broadbrush over 50% of Americans?They sure don't seem to be making even a token effort to hide it anymore, do they?You don't even have to scratch 'em.
Well...good luck.
No, you went Down Under to find someone writing an opinion column for a newspaper.My goodness, you're a dim bulb.You had to go all the way to Australia to find an opinion piece with which to try to broadbrush over 50% of Americans?They sure don't seem to be making even a token effort to hide it anymore, do they?
Well...good luck.
I was talking about leftists, not liberals. You can tell because I said "leftists", not "liberals". Dumbass.
Leftists are a small portion of the population, not half of Americans.
Leftists are far left extremists who hate individual liberties and support a powerful nanny-state central government that controls people's lives.
Leftists are, for the most part, stupid.
You, for instance, are a leftist.
I can understand why you're upset that someone highlighted hateful and intolerant views you share. But do you really think that mindlessly lasing out is a valid response?No, you went Down Under to find someone writing an opinion column for a newspaper.My goodness, you're a dim bulb.You had to go all the way to Australia to find an opinion piece with which to try to broadbrush over 50% of Americans?
Well...good luck.
I was talking about leftists, not liberals. You can tell because I said "leftists", not "liberals". Dumbass.
Leftists are a small portion of the population, not half of Americans.
Leftists are far left extremists who hate individual liberties and support a powerful nanny-state central government that controls people's lives.
Leftists are, for the most part, stupid.
You, for instance, are a leftist.
Congratulations!
Yep, I was right: Mindlessly lasing out is your only response.Hey daveman!
I hear that there's an opinion columnist for the Wairarapa Times-Age in Masterton, New Zealand who advocates for Universal Healthcare!
Sic 'em, boy!
Dave,
I deal with numbers for a living, and from this accountants point of view the data is too unreliable to be treated without a healthy degree of scepticisim. There have been too many scandals involving labs fudging numbers or waging campaigns to marginalize dissenting view points and data for the averge person to conclude that the climate change science isn't as sound as they want us to think it is. I have no doubt that the climate is changing, but i do have doubts about the exact causes, or that we even understand enough about how climate works to determine the exact causes. That being the case, whenever someone tells me we have to act now I start trying to figure out what they stand to gain if we all go along with the idea. What's their angle, and what are they selling? Yes, I'm a cynic, but it's dealing with people that made me this way.
Now, just for the sake of argument, let's say your right about the climate. Sea levels are going to go up, it's going to get warmer, etc. First, how will this be any different they the other times the earth has been that warm in the past? Does it mean Greenland and Northern Canada are going to be become good crop land for the first time in about 900 years? Does it mean that Europeans won't need to spend as much to heat their homes and will be able to wear the same sort of minimal clothing that we see in Greek and Roman art?
Second, how do you propose that we get places like India and China to reduce emissions? If they haven't both already passed us in the pollution department I'd be very surprised, and there are a host of other up and coming economies like Brazil that aren't far behind. How are we going to get them to limit emissions when that's going to mean limiting the economic growth that they are completely dependnt on? Do you actually think the people running those countries are going to sign off on any deal that they know is going to cost them not only a large amount of money, but also a large amount of unemployment and all the unrest that goes with it? And is any deal any of them sign going to be worth the paper it's printed on anyway? Can we really trust any nation (including our own) to meet any of these emissions goals when it means cutting their own throats economically?
OK, let's go downunder for a more credible opinion.
http://www.countercurrents.org/glikson290511.pdf
Beyond 2 degrees Celsius. By Andrew Glikson, 30 May, 2011
1
BEYOND 2 DEGREES CELSIUS
Implications of NASA/GISS updates for the Earth energy
balance, global temperatures, ice melt and sea level rise
Dr Andrew Glikson
Earth and paleoclimate science
Australian National University
30 May, 2011
Of course, this is just a scientist speaking, not an obese junkie on the radio.
I have to admit, though, that I'm rather amused by being described as "controlled by fear" by someone whose stock-in-trade is "Ohmigod, we're DESTROYING THE PLANET! AAAAAGHHH!!"
I don't have to "wonder" about your understanding 'cause you make it obvious that you have no idea what they're talking about. There is a huge difference, which you are clearly clueless about, between the term Dr. Jones is talking about - "statistically significantt" - and the word you're throwing around - "significant". If something is 'significant', that means it has importance or consequence. 'Statistically significant' is something else entirely. Temperature records are what informs scientists that the Earth is significantly warming.Waltky:
Last year, he told BBC News that post-1995 warming was not significant - a statement still seen on blogs critical of the idea of man-made climate change. But another year of data has pushed the trend past the threshold usually used to assess whether trends are "real". Dr Jones says this shows the importance of using longer records for analysis. By widespread convention, scientists use a minimum threshold of 95% to assess whether a trend is likely to be down to an underlying cause, rather than emerging by chance.
If a trend meets the 95% threshold, it basically means that the odds of it being down to chance are less than one in 20. Last year's analysis, which went to 2009, did not reach this threshold; but adding data for 2010 takes it over the line. "The trend over the period 1995-2009 was significant at the 90% level, but wasn't significant at the standard 95% level that people use," Professor Jones told BBC News.
Me wonders if you understand the significance of "significant". Firstly, it does not mean that the earth is warming "significantly".
Wrong again, moron. The warming trend is very statistically significant and strongly detectable in the instrumental and proxy records. 2010 was tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record. Each of the last 10 years (20012010) wound up as one of the 11 warmest on record. This last decade was the warmest decade on record, as was, in turn, each of the three preceding decades. In the past three decades, the GISS surface temperature record shows an upward trend of about 0.36 degrees F (0.2 degrees C) per decade. In total, average global temperatures have increased by about 1.5 degrees F (0.8 degrees C) since 1880.In this case, it means the warming trend (IF it is deemed significant) is BARELY detectable at all.
What is wrong is your comprehension of the science and the data. The climate models don't predict that range of possible temperature increases per decade so I assume you just make up your "facts".And MOST of all it means that the computer model estimates of anywhere between .3 to .6C per decade are WAAAY wrong.
I suspect that you can barely tell what time it is, let alone anything about other debaters on this forum. That's just your idiotic arrogance speaking.Rolling Thunder:
If the public ever realizes the full extent and meaning of what you AGW denier cretins are doing in the service of the oil corp profits, you deniers would probably be hunted down in the streets by angry mobs and strung up from lampposts. And it would be no more than what you so richly deserve for working so stupidly to prevent any effective action to deal with this climate change crisis mankind has created that threatens the lives of billions of humans and large parts of the biosphere. If there is any justice in the world, we may yet see Exxon executives on trial before a world tribunal for 'crimes against humanity'.
I can certainly tell what you read for political news and almost can tell what ate for lunch from that response... Can we decode it?
I usually call it the fossil fuel industry, which includes all of the oil, gas and coal exploration and extraction corporations, all of the refineries and processing plants, all of the sea and land shipping that moves the oil, gas and coal, all of the oil and gas pipeline builders, ocean drilling platform builders and all of the other support industries, all of the corporations buying and burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, plus some major economic and political aspects of all of the oil producing nations. Total profit flow to all parts of the fossil fuel industry amounts to a couple of trillion dollars a year. Exxon alone, which is just one oil corporation out of the many oil, coal and natural gas corporations and oil-producing national governments, etc., in the world, regularly makes around $40 billion a year in profit. This mutlt-trillion dollar a year profit flow is what this propaganda campaign to fool the public about the reality and dangers of anthropogenic global warming is really all about. If people understood the seriousness of the situation and the grave dangers we are creating for ourselves and particularly for our children and grandchildren, they would demand that governments do something about the crisis and restrict carbon emissions. Since that would also curtail corporate and national profits from selling fossil fuels, those with a vested interest in the current energy systems are fighting to delay any effective action on carbon emissions. You appear to be one of their deluded dupes or possibly one of their paid, misinformation spreading stooges.1) We're doing this "in the service of oil comp profits". Is there a distinction between oil companies here and nat gas companies? Or coal companies? or does your leftist mantra just lump all that stuff together?
Actually, fecalten, there are a number of contributing sources of this climate change crisis. Burning fossil fuels is a major one. Cement manufacture is another. Deforestation is a big part of it. Even farm animal flatulence has been found to contribute. Those are all factors we have some ability to control by doing things differently. There are also a number of "natural" sources of increasing greenhouse gases that mankind has triggered with our carbon emission driven global warming. Sources like the methane and CO2 that has been locked under the Arctic permafrost but is now being released in increasing amounts as the permafrost melts due to the AGW driven skyrocketing temperatures in the Arctic, or the methane that is locked up on the seafloor in methane hydrate crystal formations that are now, as the oceans warm, starting to break down and release rising columns of methane gas up through the ocean and into the atmosphere. We have no control over these sources other than reducing the warming we're causing with our carbon emissions and hoping that these sources of GHG's don't initiate a snowball effect and drive the climate into runaway catastrophic global warming.Maybe all you care about is car emissions -- which is what "big oil" is contributing to greenhouse gases. But that's FAR from the largest source of greenhouse gases. Try again (in your OWN educated words)
Sure, dude. If the Earth doesn't keep warming more and more and the climate doesn't keep changing faster and faster and the consequences of that don't include droughts, floods, mass starvation and clean water scarcity, huge numbers of climate change refugees, massive death tolls, wars over resources, and various ecological disasters...2) "hunted down.. strung from lamposts"... Can we get a reciprocal agreement?
You're just VOID between the ears, fecalturd (like all denier cultists).It's not like I'm VOID of alternatives (like the eco-left).
Shutting the coal fired power plants would be a great step to curbing carbon emissions.I say we shutter the coal plants, tear down the dams, free the salmon, and build 80 new generation nuclear plants tomorrow. My part to hedge our bets on global warming..
No, I don't "mean" whatever greed and fear driven distorted depictions of possible steps to deal with crisis that you've been sold by your puppet masters. The best proposed solutions include a direct tax on carbon emissions worldwide with the money collected going directly to the transitioning of energy sources away from carbon emitting ones by subsidizing the costs to the people and nations most affected by climate changes and rising fossil fuel prices. Working together for the common good in the face of a planetary crisis is probably beyond the conception of sociopathically greedy and paranoid rightwingnuts like yourself.3)"to prevent any effective action to deal with this climate change crisis mankind has created" Oh you mean like wealth transfer mechanism which are the HIGHEST priority of the UN driven FIX for this "problem"? How much cooling will a $1Trill to Vanuatu buy? How about I get 1st option to buy that sinking island for $1M?
Exxon has been and still is one of the main players and key financial backers in the propaganda campaign of misinformation and pseudo-science that seeks to confuse the public about the reality and dangers of anthropogenic global warming/climate change and delay effective carbon emission restrictions. We know this for a fact because a 1998 internal Exxon memo titled "Global Climate Science Communications: Action Plan" (pdf) was leaked to the press. The stated goal of the plan, whose authors include Randy Randol of Exxon Corp, Sharon Kneiss of Chevron Corp, and Joseph Walker of the American Petroleum Institute, was to change the American public's view that global warming was a threat so that policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions could be stopped. The memo laid out a wide range of strategies and tactics to achieve this goal, budgeting nearly $6 million plus the cost of advertising. Six million is, of course, only a drop in the bucket compared to the amounts of money that eventually went into the disinformation campaign over the years, funded not only by Exxon but also by a host of other vested interests, including the Western Petroleum Association, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Koch brothers.4)" EXXON ... on trial for crimes against humanity". Again Bunky, wrong criminal. Let's at least get the indictments right.. EXXON is not burning that fossil fuel.
I don't have to "wonder" about your understanding 'cause you make it obvious that you have no idea what they're talking about. There is a huge difference, which you are clearly clueless about, between the term Dr. Jones is talking about - "statistically significantt" - and the word you're throwing around - "significant". If something is 'significant', that means it has importance or consequence. 'Statistically significant' is something else entirely. Temperature records are what informs scientists that the Earth is significantly warming.Waltky:
Last year, he told BBC News that post-1995 warming was not significant - a statement still seen on blogs critical of the idea of man-made climate change. But another year of data has pushed the trend past the threshold usually used to assess whether trends are "real". Dr Jones says this shows the importance of using longer records for analysis. By widespread convention, scientists use a minimum threshold of 95% to assess whether a trend is likely to be down to an underlying cause, rather than emerging by chance.
If a trend meets the 95% threshold, it basically means that the odds of it being down to chance are less than one in 20. Last year's analysis, which went to 2009, did not reach this threshold; but adding data for 2010 takes it over the line. "The trend over the period 1995-2009 was significant at the 90% level, but wasn't significant at the standard 95% level that people use," Professor Jones told BBC News.
Me wonders if you understand the significance of "significant". Firstly, it does not mean that the earth is warming "significantly".
Prof. Jones was hit with a trick question during an interview and you denier cult dingbats have been distorting and misinterpreting his words ever since. But now it is coming back to bite you. Statistical significance is much more meaningful over longer time frames than just 15 years, as Dr. Jones tried to explain. The warming trend is quite positive and very statistically significant over the last century and a half with a confidence level of over 99.99%. Even over only the too short 15 year period used in that question, the confidence level was about 93%, and now it seems it only took one more year of global warming for the temperature trend from 1995 to achieve the arbitrary 95% confidence level that is considered "statistically significant".
From the BBC interview:
B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
What is Statistical Significance?
(short excerpt)
In normal English, "significant" means important, while in Statistics "significant" means probably true (not due to chance)... People sometimes think that the 95% level is sacred when looking at significance levels. If a test shows a .06 probability, it means that it has a 94% chance of being true. You can't be quite as sure about it as if it had a 95% chance of being be true, but the odds still are that it is true. The 95% level comes from academic publications, where a theory usually has to have at least a 95% chance of being true to be considered worth telling people about. In the business world if something has a 90% chance of being true (probability =.1), it can't be considered proven, but it is probably better to act as if it were true rather than false.
Copyright © 2007-2010 Creative Research Systems, All Rights Reserved
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
Wrong again, moron. The warming trend is very statistically significant and strongly detectable in the instrumental and proxy records. 2010 was tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record. Each of the last 10 years (2001–2010) wound up as one of the 11 warmest on record. This last decade was the warmest decade on record, as was, in turn, each of the three preceding decades. In the past three decades, the GISS surface temperature record shows an upward trend of about 0.36 degrees F (0.2 degrees C) per decade. In total, average global temperatures have increased by about 1.5 degrees F (0.8 degrees C) since 1880.
What is wrong is your comprehension of the science and the data. The climate models don't predict that range of possible temperature increases per decade so I assume you just make up your "facts".
I suspect that you can barely tell what time it is, let alone anything about other debaters on this forum. That's just your idiotic arrogance speaking.
I spoke plainly so that even cretins like you could understand it. No "decoding" necessary except in your twisted little pea-brain.
I usually call it the fossil fuel industry, which includes all of the oil, gas and coal exploration and extraction corporations, all of the refineries and processing plants, all of the sea and land shipping that moves the oil, gas and coal, all of the oil and gas pipeline builders, ocean drilling platform builders and all of the other support industries, all of the corporations buying and burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, plus some major economic and political aspects of all of the oil producing nations. Total profit flow to all parts of the fossil fuel industry amounts to a couple of trillion dollars a year. Exxon alone, which is just one oil corporation out of the many oil, coal and natural gas corporations and oil-producing national governments, etc., in the world, regularly makes around $40 billion a year in profit. This mutlt-trillion dollar a year profit flow is what this propaganda campaign to fool the public about the reality and dangers of anthropogenic global warming is really all about. If people understood the seriousness of the situation and the grave dangers we are creating for ourselves and particularly for our children and grandchildren, they would demand that governments do something about the crisis and restrict carbon emissions. Since that would also curtail corporate and national profits from selling fossil fuels, those with a vested interest in the current energy systems are fighting to delay any effective action on carbon emissions. You appear to be one of their deluded dupes or possibly one of their paid, misinformation spreading stooges.
Actually, fecalten, there are a number of contributing sources of this climate change crisis. Burning fossil fuels is a major one. Cement manufacture is another. Deforestation is a big part of it. Even farm animal flatulence has been found to contribute. Those are all factors we have some ability to control by doing things differently. There are also a number of "natural" sources of increasing greenhouse gases that mankind has triggered with our carbon emission driven global warming. Sources like the methane and CO2 that has been locked under the Arctic permafrost but is now being released in increasing amounts as the permafrost melts due to the AGW driven skyrocketing temperatures in the Arctic, or the methane that is locked up on the seafloor in methane hydrate crystal formations that are now, as the oceans warm, starting to break down and release rising columns of methane gas up through the ocean and into the atmosphere. We have no control over these sources other than reducing the warming we're causing with our carbon emissions and hoping that these sources of GHG's don't initiate a snowball effect and drive the climate into runaway catastrophic global warming.
Sure, dude. If the Earth doesn't keep warming more and more and the climate doesn't keep changing faster and faster and the consequences of that don't include droughts, floods, mass starvation and clean water scarcity, huge numbers of climate change refugees, massive death tolls, wars over resources, and various ecological disasters...
...and instead it turns out that foolish, deluded environmentalists were able to crash the economy and impoverish America and Europe with unnecessary energy system imperatives and regulations that caused more harm than good...
...then feel free to hunt us down and string us up...
...as long as you don't mind being called to account for your part in furthering the fossil fuel industry's campaign of misinformation, pseudo-science, lies and propaganda when the consequences become clear to everyone.
You're just VOID between the ears, fecalturd (like all denier cultists).
Shutting the coal fired power plants would be a great step to curbing carbon emissions.
Tearing down dams would not be such a great idea, in most cases. We need the hydro-electric energy even more now since it is non carbon emitting.
More nuke plants are a very bad idea and would cause more harm than good.
No, I don't "mean" whatever greed and fear driven distorted depictions of possible steps to deal with crisis that you've been sold by your puppet masters. The best proposed solutions include a direct tax on carbon emissions worldwide with the money collected going directly to the transitioning of energy sources away from carbon emitting ones by subsidizing the costs to the people and nations most affected by climate changes and rising fossil fuel prices. Working together for the common good in the face of a planetary crisis is probably beyond the conception of sociopathically greedy and paranoid rightwingnuts like yourself.3)"to prevent any effective action to deal with this climate change crisis mankind has created" Oh you mean like wealth transfer mechanism which are the HIGHEST priority of the UN driven FIX for this "problem"? How much cooling will a $1Trill to Vanuatu buy? How about I get 1st option to buy that sinking island for $1M?
Exxon has been and still is one of the main players and key financial backers in the propaganda campaign of misinformation and pseudo-science that seeks to confuse the public about the reality and dangers of anthropogenic global warming/climate change and delay effective carbon emission restrictions. We know this for a fact because a 1998 internal Exxon memo titled "Global Climate Science Communications: Action Plan" (pdf) was leaked to the press. The stated goal of the plan, whose authors include Randy Randol of Exxon Corp, Sharon Kneiss of Chevron Corp, and Joseph Walker of the American Petroleum Institute, was to change the American public's view that global warming was a threat so that policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions could be stopped. The memo laid out a wide range of strategies and tactics to achieve this goal, budgeting nearly $6 million plus the cost of advertising. Six million is, of course, only a drop in the bucket compared to the amounts of money that eventually went into the disinformation campaign over the years, funded not only by Exxon but also by a host of other vested interests, including the Western Petroleum Association, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Koch brothers.4)" EXXON ... on trial for crimes against humanity". Again Bunky, wrong criminal. Let's at least get the indictments right.. EXXON is not burning that fossil fuel.
Climate change denial
***
Ah, come on folks, the sun rotates around the earth, open your eyes and look. How could it be different, are we not the center of the universe, are we not special, possessed of reason and consciousness and language. This Copernicus character is some sort of wacky anti earth person. Time will tell, you just wait and see. (comment attributed to 16th century wingnut, yes, they lived then too)
"Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation." Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory by Hugo Mercier, Dan Sperber :: SSRN
