Climate Change Consensus?

[Guest woxof]

Mitch,

A careful read of my posts will show that I show that they are accurate. I provided a link of a high level official who said that skeptics are the equivelent of child abusers, the British PM says we are luddites, and a read through earlier posts here will show the many condescending replies. This is widespread throughout the world. Some might take to feel as if they were accused of all of this if they do not read carefully.

Does these "insults" hurt my so-called "thin skin"? Of course not. I love it. It shows to the undecided how shallow the arguments are on the side of the so-called alarmists.

To the undecided....how strong an argument is whether or not someone has children. What about the argument of having to transfer hundreds of billions because "what if we are wrong by not doing something...anything". What about the idea that it equates to healthier children, and cleaner water(as if new water treatment plants or direct health spending wouldn't be more appropriate).

To the undecided....does it not bother you when no "alarmists" will answer repeated questions on how much they feel would be appropriate for the average Canadian family to annually pay extra to transfer to all these other countries. Does the suggested 1% of Canada's GDP alarm you? What about when the spokespeople of East Anglia university just whine about the criminality of hacking instead of a reosanable explanation of this huge scandal involving their reasearch.

This is your money and we now see the beginnings in Britain of proposals to massively scale back aviation based on what is now dubious science. So now it is your careers and your family. Perhaps not a big worry if you are high seniority or retired.

Read the articles I have posted(after all, it beats going out in -44 in YEG). They are legitimate articles. I see very little legitimate from alarmists unless certain cartoons are reasoned argument.

Ask yourself if all these histerical predictions sound reasonable. Nuclear wars a real possibility according to Gwynn Dyer, hundreds of millions of climate refugees. Insults when questioned. Claims of "the science is finished".

Then read the article I have posted below and just keep an open mind for both sides of the equation. Nothing guarantees that I am right. But as always....I am credible.

[Guest woxof]

Funny...at the beginning of this thread we had the staements of all these scientists who believe that man-made global warming is real. Is it still a legitimate statement?

The Goracle speaks on Climategate

True believers in catastrophic man-made climate change have been waiting for Al Gore to lead them through the Valley of Climategate. This week, The Goracle spoke. Appearing on CNN, he claimed that the emails to and from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia were more than 10 years old and amounted to a mere discussion of "arcane points." What this was really about, he said, was an example of "people who don't want to do anything about the climate crisis taking things out of context and misrepresenting them." But then what would you expect Mr. Gore to say about his corecipients of the Nobel Peace Prize? If they go down, he goes down.

The emails, (which in fact date up to late this year), far from being meaningless or out of context, show alteration of scientific data and flagrant attempts to rig the peer review process, which the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has always claimed was the bedrock of its scientific objectivity.

During his CNN interview, Mr. Gore went through his usual parade of extreme weather factoids, technological wonkery and green stimulus fantasies, while spouting blatant untruths. Asked about the relative contribution of humans to atmospheric CO2 emissions, he claimed that they put up "the majority" (in fact, they are estimated to contribute about one-twentieth). Interestingly, though, Mr. Gore didn't use one of the staples of his climate vaudeville act: that "deniers" are like those who believe that the moon landing was faked. Perhaps even he lacked the gall to bring up conspiracy theories when the evidence of a genuine conspiracy is so obvious.

Mr. Gore and his cohorts have consistently smeared climate realists and policy skeptics as "deniers," paranoiacs or corporate shills. "Denier" invokes Holocaust denial. Paranoia is linked to those conspiracy theorists who claim that Neil Armstrong's lunar landscape was really a movie backlot. The corporate shill angle is usually based on "exposing" some skeptical individual's or organization's link to Big Oil, which is in fact irrelevant unless you judge science on the basis of funding rather than objectivity. Oil companies in fact devote far more money to supporting climate hysteria.

Nevertheless, the corporate angle means that skeptics can simultaneously be identified as crazy conspiracy theorists, and part of a corporate conspiracy! For example, U.S. warmist Senator Barbara Boxer recently claimed that "email-theft-gate" required "looking at a criminal activity which could well have been co-ordinated." We don't have to ask who did the co-ordinating.

The anti-skeptic smears serve to avoid addressing the valid issues they raise. Mr. Gore has resolutely refused to debate his opponents on the basis that there is nothing to debate. The shenanigans at CRU prove there is. The new line of obfuscation is that the past century's temperature record is still intact and the glaciers are still melting! But the key issue is why, and what can or should be done about these alleged facts (which now require treble checking).

Nobody is denying that the past 10 years may have featured some of the hottest years "on record," but that is not what is in dispute. What is in dispute is the degree to which human activity is responsible. Also, "hot compared to what?" The warming of the past century has been relatively mild, and "the record" goes back only a relatively short time.

According to The Scotsman: "The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will investigate claims that the hacked emails have revealed a conspiracy to boost the evidence for man-made global warming."

Fat chance. The IPCC was designed to boost the evidence for man-made global warming. The CRU doesn't consist of some group of rogue scientists. They were, and are, central to the IPCC's fundamental political purpose. The true significance of the "hide the decline" email is not that CRU's head Phil Jones substituted actual for proxy readings in a temperature series, but that the fact that the proxies deviated from actual readings further undermined their validity for judging past temperatures and, in particular, for "getting rid of " the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). The MWP was inconvenient because if global climate was as warm today as a 1000 years ago, then that would undermine the claim that the warming of the past century had to be based on human activity, which was the result needed to meet the UN's larger agenda.

Those who created the IPCC want global taxation and regulation powers, vast new transfers to the Third World (despite the manifest failures of such transfers in the past) and an end to industrial society as we know it. That's not a conspiracy theory; it's their stated purpose.

One of those previously fingered as a deranged conspiracist is Dr. William Gray, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (CSU) and a renowned hurricane forecaster. Dr. Gray suggests that the Climategate revelations "are but the tip of a giant iceberg of a well-organized international climate warming conspiracy that has been gathering momentum for the last 25 years. This conspiracy would become much more manifest if all the emails of the publicly funded climate research groups of the United States and of foreign governments were ever made public."

Now there's an idea. But can you imagine how much "raw data" would, like that of Dr. Jones, get "lost ..." Or am I being paranoid?

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/column...1a-376d2d363619

[Mitch Cronin]

That's it for me on this thread.

....I tried that once too...

[Guest rattler]

suggestion withdrawn

[Lakelad]

One view is long term, the other view- the capitalist one, divides time around the sun into "quarters" and measures profit in relative nanoseconds compared to "earth-time" with a blind, institutional forgetfulness so typical of the capitalist vision.

Which of course explains capitalists' willingness to invest in long life assets such as aircraft (25 yrs), power plants (50 yrs) or office buildings (75+yrs). Certainly the motivation couldn't be the vision of a long term, sustainable enterprise.

[Hadji Ramjet]

Interesting tidbit on Roy Green on Corus radio this morning: Daniel Shewchuk (sp?), Nunavut Minister of Environment, stated that the eastern Arctic polar bear population has increased from 8000 to 16,000 over the past 50 years. That is in complete contradiction to the alleged "scientific consensus."

Lomborg is on in 15 minutes if anyone reads this in time and is interested.

[mo32a]

Watching the CTV Vancouver news last night they were interviewing a young scantily clad girl protesting about climate change.

She stated "every scientist in the world agrees on this, so what are we waiting for?"

Poor misguided thing probably even believes what she said was true, and it is her and her like minded friends who are leading the charge. Pitiful.

[Mitch Cronin]

There's no doubt people, some as easily as sheep, are being led, but I think it comes from both poles of this topic.

The first conversation I had with folks who actually know a thing or two about science, (and without any place or context for an agenda) very nearly had me convinced they must be right. "It's easy to debunk the debunkers" I was told.... I asked lots of questions, but it really wasn't the right time for the conversation, so I didn't get any more at the time (family gathering).... I've since come to see there is much to be learned, and much to digest.... However, and this is not something easily washed aside, if their worst case pictures are as true as they fear, all this time dithering has the potential to severely limit our options. I can only hope someone believable will sometime soon step up to the plate, and resolve the debate, one way or another. ....I know that's going to take time though... time to accumulate and decipher more data... time that some say is costing us much.

....and yes, for those of us with children, I think we do, quite naturally, have more to be concerned about.

[Mitch Cronin]

maybe time for the moderator to close the topic. Those for and against are entrenched and not likely to change their positions no matter how many posts WOXOF and others make.

Rattler, I hope the moderators don't "close" the thread.... Why stifle legitimate debate? Sure, sometimes, in any debate, some might seem offside, but as long as honest debate, and further understanding is possible, any attempt to kill the conversation is itself offside. ...imho

I think there are more not so "entrenched" people here than you're seeing.

[Moon The Loon]

Rattler, I hope the moderators don't "close" the thread.... Why stifle legitimate debate? Sure, sometimes, in any debate, some might seem offside, but as long as honest debate, and further understanding is possible, any attempt to kill the conversation is itself offside. ...imho

I think there are more not so "entrenched" people here than you're seeing.

Mr. Moderator, I second that motion.

I think a lot of understanding of both sides of the issues has developed here amongst AEF'ers. Personality disfunctionalities notwithstanding!

[13820]

It would be wrong to close this thread. There are many good links that take time to review and understand. I would hate to lose all the conversation that has gone on so far.

[Guest rattler]

Suggestion withdrawn......

[Canus Chinookus]

Other than the occasional low blow(do you have kids? ) It's been a very interesting debate.

Hadji I heard that interview too, and to add to what they said, that the entire arctic area has seen an increase except for 2 small areas showing a decline. Otherwise, yeah, a very healthy polar bear population. He also said that the IPCC ignored his data, and didn't invite him to speak at one of their polar bear conferences. The guy has been monitoring arctic wildlife for the last 2 decades or so, and yet they didn't want him to tell them the truth... didn't fit into their scheme.

[Guest woxof]

More descriptions of myself by the UK environment minister....

"Ed Miliband gave his most damning assessment of the sceptics yet, describing them as "dangerous and deceitful".

He said: "The approach of the climate saboteurs is to misuse data and mislead people. The sceptics are playing politics with science in a dangerous and deceitful manner. There is no easy way out of tackling climate change despite what they would have us believe. The evidence is clear and the time we have to act is short. To abandon this process now would lead to misery and catastrophe for millions."

I think he has it backwards.

And Gordon Brown...."we mustn’t be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics."

As for intelligent information being posted by myself(as usual), here is more information about the Polar Bears.....

Is devoured polar bear cub a victim of global warming or act of nature?

Tourists watched as polar bear ate cub

Iain D. Williams, Reuters

A male polar bear eating a cub is photographed last month in an area about 300 kilometres north of Churchill, Man.

The gory photos of male polar bears devouring cubs, dragging shredded carcasses around and creating a bloody mess on the white snow of Canada's North have caused a stir on the Internet and in reports that link the activity to climate change.

But cannibalism among the species is a natural occurrence, says one expert, disputing what is just the latest story to put the polar bear in the debate over man-made global warming.

"Both Inuit and scientific knowledge show that cannibalism in polar bears happens, and it probably always has," said Steve Pinksen, director of policy and legislation for Nunavut's Department of Environment.

The concern over cannibalism comes after a tourist group witnessed adult male bears attacking cubs for food. There have been at least eight reports of similar sights from Churchill, Man. The photos accompanying stories on the issue show bright-red remains strewn across blankets of snow.

Mr. Pinksen, however, called the incidents an "act of nature," and said the public reaction has been taken out of proportion.

"Maybe if you're sitting in an armchair in the city somewhere, these pictures would be a shock, but people up here see these things all the time," he said, adding residents who are hunting animals for food, clothing and income have seen evidence of these attacks in the past.

"A bear eating a bear is not a pretty picture, but nature is not really a pretty thing all the time," Mr. Pinksen said.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?

Of course the sanitized-living city folk sometimes get a surprise when they see the real world.

[Canus Chinookus]

From what I know about polar bears, is that if a cub strays from momma, it's fair game for any adult males in the area. If anything, I'd say it's a sign things are so good for the polar bears that there's so many cubs that the sows are losing track of them. I guess it depends on how you look at it.

BTW as for the 'horror' of seeing a bear eating a bear, mother nature doesn't give a damn about some city slicker's idea of how the world should work when there's a cute, furry, baby animal involved.

[Mitch Cronin]

A "low blow" Canus?

Ok let's try this scenario: Two couples live in a cave... one of those couples has two children, the other has none.... One day the four adults (all nearing the age when their own parents met their makers) are discussing whether or not they should build a door to the cave to keep critters out while they sleep. The couple without kids likes the fresh air and don't want a door.

The couple with the kids wants to keep their children safe...

Who has more at stake? Should the kids get a vote? If those kids are too young to know what's best for them, should their parents be able to vote on their behalf?

"Low blow", my fanny! Seems to me it's a simple fact of life that those with progeny will have more of an interest in what sort of world they leave behind.

I initially asked the question when I began to wonder if some of the difference between opposing points of view might have anything to do with what people have to lose, either way....

Obviously, if there are huge costs involved in reducing our contribution to the greenhouse gasses - and clearly there are - those who stand to lose the most money will have an elevated interest... I submit that likewise, those who have

hopes of thier children, and grandchildren, etc, carrying on their family line, will also have an elevated interest.

Where is the fault in that?

[deicer]

I submit that likewise, those who have

hopes of thier children, and grandchildren, etc, carrying on their family line, will also have an elevated interest.

Where is the fault in that?

Well said Mitch

[Guest woxof]

Obviously, if there are huge costs involved in reducing our contribution to the greenhouse gasses - and clearly there are - those who stand to lose the most money will have an elevated interest...

There a so many who will gain that have an elevated interest. One of the biggest...Al Gore(what a surprise) who is making huge amounts of this scam. Then the pro-global warming scientists with all their funding that is not available to other scientists. Third world countries scrambling to take as much of your money as possible. And then there are the companies and scammers in the carbon trading scheme.

Woxof predicts that many more scams and wasted money on a monumental scale on this issue will arise. How much do AEF'rs want to participate?

Woxof....protecting Canada and Canadians(well maybe western civilization but I'm modest).

Copenhagen summit: Denmark rushes in laws to stop carbon trading scam

Climate change summit host embarrassed as criminals make most of lax laws to pocket VAT on emissions trading

Europe's flagship carbon trading scheme suffered a blow today as the Danish government was forced to rush an emergency law through parliament to clamp down on a virulent form of VAT fraud.

On the eve of the Copenhagen climate talks, which will attract world attention to emissions trading schemes, police and tax investigators across Europe are believed to be investigating hundreds of millions of euros worth of fraud involving carbon quotas originating in Denmark.

Since British, French and Dutch governments took similar action in the summer, much of the "carousel" fraud involving carbon credits moved to Denmark, where registration of carbon quotas for the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is easy and a VAT rate of 25% makes the fraud attractive to international criminals.

Experts said today that Copenhagen had long been an accident waiting to happen in terms of carousel fraud.

Richard Ainsworth, professor of VAT policy at Boston University in the US said: "It is extremely surprising that after the French, British and Dutch had to move against this fraud in the summer that the Danes did not act more quickly, especially with the climate summit about to start."

The Danish government today said it did not know how much money it had lost to the fraud but the number is likely to run into hundreds of millions – if not billions – of kroner.

A spokesman for the Danish Energy and Climate Ministry, which supervises Denmark's carbon quota registry, said the rules for registration were being immediately tightened so anyone applying to trade carbon would face stringent checks.

The fraud occurs when a trader of carbon credits in one EU country buys some from another country free of VAT, then sells them on, charging the VAT to the buyer. The seller then disappears without handing the VAT to the taxman.

Some criminals re-export the credits, reclaiming VAT as they do so, then re-import them. They can do this repeatedly, reclaiming VAT many times, hence the "carousel" label.

Britain lost billions of pounds to carousel fraud, mainly on mobile phones, in 2006 and 2007 before the government changed the mobile trade so that tax was levied only on the final buyer.

The Danes have now introduced similar reforms – a day after a meeting of European financial officials rubber stamped a European Commission decision from September recommending that member states do so.

The news is an embarrassment for the European ETS and for carbon trading generally, which is attracting a growing number of critics.

Europe's carbon market is worth about €90bn a year. It is a combination of futures and spot trading and it is the largely unregulated spot market that was targeted this summer by the fraudsters.

Recent figures from consultants New Energy Finance showed that the ETS suffered its first ever drop in trading volumes in the third quarter of this year because the second quarter had been hugely inflated by fraudulent trades going across France's Bluenext exchange. French VAT rules have now changed.

The European Commission has estimated in the past that EU governments were losing more money to carousel fraud each year than they spent on the Common Agricultural Policy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009...on-trading-scam

[deicer]

Reading an article like this, what I get from it is that the problem isn't with the carbon credit trading, it is with the unscroupulous 'traders' that are milking the system.

Much like what happened in the aviation industry with the unscroupulous types 'unlocking value' so that they could siphon out billions, the same thing is happening here.

The unfortunate part is that as always, governments are left to close the barn door after the criminals have already cleaned it out.

[Mitch Cronin]

The news of the corruption and thieving that's happened in the carbon credit trading business, is sad. It throws another cloud layer of nonsense, that has absolutely nothing to do with the process of getting to the heart of the matter, right smack in the way. ...it's an obfuscation. (hope that word fits? never used it before... sounds right to me....like an obstructive confusion...?....guess I'll lookitup )

Don.... told'ya. ... ...

[Don Hudson]

Mitch -

My 2c on the "low blow". Other than that, I knoww nawwthing.

[Mitch Cronin]

Thanks Don. Your 2c is worth at least $1.52 in my book.

[Mitch Cronin]

Interesting debate on the topic "The Science and Politics of Climate Change"

(though dated -2007-, most, if not all, is still worth hearing, 2 years later):

http://fora.tv/2007/10/28/Science_and_Poli..._Climate_Change

[AME]

From what I know about polar bears, is that if a cub strays from momma, it's fair game for any adult males in the area. If anything, I'd say it's a sign things are so good for the polar bears that there's so many cubs that the sows are losing track of them. I guess it depends on how you look at it.

BTW as for the 'horror' of seeing a bear eating a bear, mother nature doesn't give a damn about some city slicker's idea of how the world should work when there's a cute, furry, baby animal involved.

Rumoured to be from an SFO newspaper

[Guest woxof]

Yes, it is implied that "one cares more if one has children". This is not a fact that is in dispute as anyone who has come between a sow and her cubs will attest.

Such are the sensitivities of this discussion that such a question can't be broached without introducing sidebars or bruising egos. The question was a legitimate one which could have been answered as forthrightly as it was asked and may have taken the dialogue into more interesting areas than the bun-fight it became.

Or perhaps the point brought up is similar to what this article is written about...the politicizing of children in this whole climate change thing. See the article below on a typical man-made climate change view designed to scare us into paying billions. This by the Danish government to open the conference.

Adrian MacNair: Duck and cover for climate change

Watch the above video. Perhaps the only realistic or relevant thing that happens takes place in the first 15 seconds of the video. Yes, folks, it’s actually believable to see a sudden rain shower emerge out of a gray sky, particularly if you live in Vancouver. The rest of it, however, is what one might call emotionally manipulative drivel, designed perhaps to take the logical hyperbolic extension of the global warming alarmist rhetoric and make a cartoon about it.

What’s particularly disturbing about this video, and others exactly like it, is the usage of the innocent child motif, urging us to act on behalf of the next generation. But what’s most interesting about the child’s reactions in these kinds of videos is how terrified they are by the idea of what horrible things may come to pass on the planet if we don’t do anything to stop global warming. It’s like the nineteen-fifties all over again, but instead of telling kids to duck and cover under a school desk to hide from a 50-megaton hydrogen fission bomb exploding on their city, it’s the demonic monster of global warming.

Is there any “Day After Tomorrow” special effects they won’t use to manipulate the message here? Even if we were to assume that everything the IPCC scientists predict will come to pass, isn’t it a little intellectually dishonest to represent things the way they are in these videos? If this were a product, people would be calling for the government to enforce “truth in advertising”.

Take the polar bears video falling from the sky. What kind of a warped, sadistic mind can equate the carbon emissions of airplanes with the receding population of polar bears? Are they literally being turned into red clumps of hamburger meat on the Arctic tundra by the effects of climate change? Absolutely not.

It’s also a little disturbing that the video evokes more the image of terrorism than of how carbon might be tied to planetary heat which might be tied to polar bear populations. The sound of jets tearing through a city; the indistinct image of bodies falling from skyscrapers; the bloody clumps of matter splattering as they hit the sides of buildings. Truly this would be something to give the families of 9/11 victims flashback trauma.

But the absolute worst has to be the politicizing of children in the climate change debate. I remember when I was a child, being forced to walk in anti-nuclear peace marches in Toronto by my parents. I recall the actions being staged on my behalf, the people shouting about the children and the importance of keeping nukes out of Canada. Little did they realize how much they terrified me with their talk about devastating instantaneous incineration by intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach your city in a half an hour.

The thing is that the climate change issue is foisted on children in much the same way the nuclear scare was. Children can’t conceptualize or put into context what challenges climate change poses to us. All it does is frighten and confuse them and give them an impending sense of some future calamity. Do we really need to inject the next generation with that kind of neuroses? Why don’t we warn them about cancer and AIDS while we’re at it?

At a certain point people are just going to switch off and tune out. People know when they’re being manipulated, which is why we invented both a “mute” button and a channel changer on the remote control for when such commercials come on the television. If climate change is a serious issue, perhaps proponents of it could start by taking us seriously as well, instead of feeding us raining polar bears and children who riot against police officers.

National Post

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/f...ate-change.aspx

By the way...heavy snow forecast for Copenhagen tomorrow(which is unusual) and much colder than normal for when the leaders arrive.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/35