Larouche emerges with attacks on Al Gore and Climate Science
If you have not heard of Lyndon Larouche, you will soon.
Lyndon Larouche is:
- a convicted criminal who spent 6 years in prison for conspiracy and mail fraud
- a political extremist
- a conspiracy theorist
- a cult leader
- someone who has been accused to be an anti-Semite
Even the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation has said that Larouche “leads what may well be one of the strangest political groups in American history.”
But, above all, Larouche is an opportunist.
His tactics are well known:
- Find high profile targets to attack
- Develop a series of conspiracy theories that paint the targets as a cabal of Judas and the anti-Christ
- Recruit young impressionable people to become “followers” of your “movement”
The most recent high profile targets that Larouche has chosen for his newest crusade are Al Gore and climate science.
Larouche’s cult-like minions have begun showing up at public forums on global warming and have been vacuuming e-mail addresses off the web to spam people with their new “expert” knowledge of all things science.
If you want to see some of the vitriol Larouche and his minions can spew, read Larouche’s attack on Gore called:
Below is an email that the Larouche people are using as a recruiting tool:
Greetings to contacts of the LaRouche Youth Movement in Boston!Our organization is mobilized to destroy the reputation of mALthusian GORE, the buffoon most avidly promoting a neofeudal form of oligarchy and population reduction converging on genocide under the banner of ‘man-made Global Warming’. This, when the Democratic party must be MOVING in coordination with LaRouche to reorganize an utterly bankrupt world monetary-financial system and rebuild the physical economy. Al Gore’s popularity stunt is the latest plot by the Anglo-Dutch financial establishment to foster hysteria in the population and lure the global economy into a planet-wide Dark Age. We must ruin big, fat, loser Al Gore by exposing his vile past and blatant lies in order to establish Lyndon LaRouche’s undisputed leadership in the Democratic Party. Civilization is on the line…
Do Your Part!? Master this material and become a beacon of truth. Pass this e-mail on to your close contacts. This information is your survival kit for the present political period.
Recent Findings by 21st Century Science and Technology refute the scientific method of Al Gore’s IPCC.
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/press_releases_files/2007/0223_inconvenient_gore.shtml
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/press_releases_files /2007/0223_inconvenient_gore .shtml The Great Global Warming Swindle: an excellent British documentary with leading scientists debunking the global warming fraud.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pULaRouche’s March 7 Webcast: “Implications of the Gore Hoax for International Policy”
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/audio_video_files/2007/070307_webcast.shtmlAn Article by an EIR Intelligence Team on Gore’s Connections to the British
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/otherartic_files/2007/0312_blood_gore.shtmlA Thorough Annihilation of the Global Warming Fraud by a leading glaciologist
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_10-19/2007-11/pdf/38_711_science.pdfhttp://www.larouchepub.com/eiw
/public/2007/2007_10-19/2007 -11/pdf/38_711_science.pdf
The email talks about: “LaRouche’s undisputed leadership in the Democratic Party. Civilization is on the line…”
If that sounds just a bit egomaniacal to you, you are beginning to get the point of where these people are coming from.
Here are some responses to these attacks:
The “documentary”, “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, that the Larouche followers point to as “definitive proof” that global warming is not a problem.
This film is a fraud and a sham. It uses every trick in the book to deceive its viewers and it has been debunked:
- Desmoblog debunking the film
- A PowerPoint dissecting the falsehoods in the film
- A full page video version of the above PowerPoint Presentation
- Google video of the PowerPoint
- A dissection by Monbiot
- Another Monbiot analysis
- A Rebuttal (pdf) to the film put together by Colin Chase
- British Antarctic Survey response to the film
- An analysis of the errors in the film by The Independent
Most of the people who appear in the film are NOT respected climate scientists but long-time climate deniers: many of who have received significant funding from companies like ExxonMobil and Philip Morris. The arguments used are the same warmed-over arguments that have been thoroughly and carefully considered by the majority of climate scientists… and rejected.
According to George Monbiot, “this is not the first time that the director, Martin Durkin, produced a film full of fraud attempting to make the same points. In 1997, Durkin, produced very similar film series called “Against Natureâ€, which also maintained that global warming was a scam dreamt up by environmentalists. It was riddled with hilarious scientific howlers. More damagingly, the only way in which Durkin could sustain his thesis was to deceive the people he interviewed and to edit their answers to change their meaning. Following complaints by his interviewees, the Independent Television Commission found that “the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing†and that they had been “misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part.†Channel 4 was obliged to broadcast one of the most humiliating primetime apologies it has ever made. Are institutional memories really so short?”
Larouche’s followers are waiving a supposed published “scientific paper” to support their claims:
http://larouchepub.com/eiw
The supposed “scientific paper” published in something called: “EIR Intelligence”This article is NOT a peer-reviewed scientific paper and the NEITHER is EIR a scientific journal.
- The article is NOT a peer-reviewed scientific article. It is mocked up pretty professionally to to look like one to get unsuspecting people to think it is one.
- If you look at the “article”, you will see n the bottom left hand corner the word “Science.” This is an obvious attempt to confuse the unsuspecting readier into thinking that this was printed in the journal Science
which is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). I am a member of AAAS and I can assure you that the journal Science would never publish this.- Here is a link to the real journal Science:
http://www.sciencemag.org/ - And here is a link to a statement on climate change approved and
released by the board of AAAS.
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/0218am_statement.shtml
- Here is a link to the real journal Science:
- EIR (Executive Intelligence Review) is NOT a scientific journal but nothing more than a publication and press service produced by the Larouche organizaion.
- The article lists as its author Zbigniew Jaworowski: a known long-term climate-change denier. His arguments are not new, have been considered and dismissed by the scientific community.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Jaworowski
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Zbigniew_Jaworowski
Larouche’s followers have used other “EIR” publications in their arguments (which have to be dismissed out of hand since they have no scientific credibility) and also unpublished manuscripts to support their claims:
Chris Merchant of University of Edinburgh did an excellent job of the techniques that were used in the “Swindle” file to confuse and convince people of the anti-global warming ideology. The Larouche followers are using the same techniques. These techniques are very effective in persuading people who have a poor understanding of the process of critical thinking.The techniques are:
- Prepare slick-looking polemical presentations including films and documents that “appear” to have an air of credibility.
- Incorporate many half-truths - people who are “already in your court” are ready and willing to believe: just give them something that sounds that it could be truthful (Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”)
- Provide false dichotomies: most people are easily fooled by the use of the false dichotomy
- Use selective or even distorted data
- Use Ad hominen attacks. Forget reality: attack the messenger. Attack those money-grubbing climate scientists and that liberal Al Gore. People will believe you more if you get them first angry at the other side. (If you are going use this technique, you might as well lie when smearing the messenger: people who buy this approach are already NOT thinking about the content of your arguments).
- Appeal to authority: Make sure to find at least a few people with advanced degrees to support your arguments. It won’t matter to the “true believers” in your audience or those easily persuaded that your “experts” represent only a tiny fraction of the population of scientist and experts who might be working in this field. Your audience won’t know that hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and thousands of other scientists disagree with “your experts.”
- Finally, quote out of context. Al Gore NEVER said that he “invented the Internet”. Doesn’t matter. That did not stop people from taking his words out of context and from endlessly repeating that and other misquotes to paint Gore in a bad light when he was running for President in 2000.
I just waited for a VIDEO that debunks the “Great global warming swindle” just like screwloosechange.blogspot.com debunks 911 conspiracies. Yours is close enough but it lacks style and sources in the video while there is plenty of both in this blog.
Not that it is hard to debunk the #1 viral video with ~150 blogs linking to it and 2/3 of them mentioning flaws. I really needed to have a video for people who lack critical thinking and a summary for people too lazy for own fact checking.
I found you by regularly checking Google for long videos, usually new BBC uploads. Thanks, you got a new fan.
The presentation is now on Google video.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656640542976216573
Stephen
Really Ive went through your work and realized you have nothing that debunks that movie and Im a critic of it too… Do better work and more research!
sorry but I can see you pro-warmers are sweating it out (pun intended)
As has been demonstrated in at least the two recent papers by Jaworowski Ice Core Data Show No Carbon Dioxide Increase, and CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time, and shown beyond doubt by Ernst-Georg Beck, ice core data, as used by proponents of threatening anthropogenic global warming, does not represent carbon dioxide concentrations history, and that, based on C-13 predominance in biogenic carbon dioxide (such as that released from fossil-fuel burning), CO2 does not accumulate with the significance attributed by the IPCC, and has a atmospheric life-span about 40 times shorter than claimed by IPCC.
Also, as pointed out by Leroux in There’s No Global Warming, Because There’s No Global Climate, `mean global temperature’, as used, for example, by Merchant, is no useful indication of the dynamic development of climate.
None of even these preliminary considerations have been addressed, e.g. by Merchant. In fact, the Petition Project has gathered more than 17,000 signers since 1998, who cover a large array of scientific expertise. The petition on their website includes the following:
It is indeed ironic that you refer to Merchant’s argument, including against ad hominem arguments, but you propose nothing but this against authors mentioned above, and LaRouche. For example, what is your objection to Beck’s refernce to hundreds of papers over the past 200 years containing over 90,000 measurements of CO2 concentration by various chemical methods using direct probes from the atmosphere, which measurements disagree with the ice core data?
Indeed, I see no honest reason to assume that `[i]n the bottom left hand corner the word “Science”‘ is `an obvious attempt to confuse the unsuspecting readier[sic] into thinking that this was printed in the journal Science‘ when it not unusual for news publications to have a `Science’ section, the title of which may appear at the bottom of the page. Indeed, the bottom of every EIR page also says `EIR‘ in boldface. Such fallacy of composition is indeed found in what is promoted as Merchant’s refutation of The Great Global Warming Swindle movie.
In fact, if a by-comer looks at this BLOG page, especially someone who has actually read and understood a policy statement by LaRouche, one may be inclined to think that what you feature on your page is just hysteria. I would ask you, for example, what your policy for the next 50 years of humanity is, and what is it about LaRouche’s policy that you disagree with.
Editorial Comments from Stephen Nodvin
PP has decided to cite “papers” by Jaworowski, which as I described in the original post are NOT peer-reviewed scientific papers but just documents published by the Larouche organization that are made to appear to be valid scientific publications.
PP may think that Larouche’s “policy” is new but this stuff is the same recycled strange and twisted rhetoric that Larouche and his followers have been using for decades. Larouche’s and his followers rantings about “Anglo-Dutch” conspiracies have been repeated on-and-on long before the recent public interest in global warming emerged.
The Larouche rhetoric makes little sense. Sometimes the things his followers say seem conservative, sometimes liberal, often bigoted, but always confused and confusing. There is always a group of people who tend to become enamored with complex rhetoric and conspiracy theories and the people like Larouche who espouse them. Fortunately such groups are often just an annoyance and as one writer said: “I wouldn’t go out of my way to pay attention to LaRouchies. Life is too short. There are far more efficient ways to find useful information.” Unfortunately sometimes these type of charismatic conspiracy leaders and their followers become more than an annoyance when they and their groups become large enough to harm themselves and others (e.g. David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, Jom Jones and the Peoples Temple, and Adolf Hitler and the NAZI movement).
Hi Stephen,
Thank you so much for your great blog. I read all of Z.J.’s paper on the greatest scientific scandle….
I am not yet all up to date with the research that I would be able to counterargue all the points he raises, especially about the ice cores. It would be an absolutely wonderful contribution to all people concerned about climate change if you could put an annotated version of that article on your blog, pointing out mis-interpretations and false statement, and what - if anything - is true. That’d be a lot of work, but well worth it. I had trouble hearing that slide show - maybe it’s my computer or the recording, but I hardly understood anything, and turned it off after a few minutes.
Thank you!
Maiken
Thanks for putting together your rebuttal presentation. Despite the fact that a number of ignorant people will no doubt say otherwise, it was illuminating. I wish more people in your field would spend time explaining the finer points of this subject to us laypeople.
Thank you for posting this! I got sandbagged by a LaRouche Youth Movement type at the train station last night, and this is a nice overview to have in my pocket in case I sandbagged again.
I knew LaRouche is a whackjob, but it’s nice to have specific examples of whackjobbery to point to.
Stage 9 Douchebag Alert for Back Bay station until further notice. I’m also declaring a new word for asshole conspiracy whackjobs who try to sandbag you on your way home from a soul-sucking job: LAROUCHEBAGS. UPDATE: more info on LaRouche’s latest crusade.
Stage 9 Douchebag Alert for Back Bay station until further notice. I’m also declaring a new word for asshole conspiracy whackjobs who try to sandbag you on your way home from a soul-sucking job: LAROUCHEBAGS. UPDATE:more infoon LaRouche’s latest crusade.
Thanks for the presentation about the “great warming swindle”… I thought particularily interesting the disucussion about the inter-realation of C02 and temperature. It’s obviously complicated, in that both can affect one another. One of the most convincing aspects of anthropogenic warming to me, and one I seldom see communicated in popular science, is the infrared absorption graph of CO2. Such a graph clearly shows CO2’s ability to absorb IR energy, and makes it fairly obvious that too much of the gas would lead to an increase in temperature in the atmosphere. Perhaps this is too simplistic, and I know saying that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is shorthand for this, but seeing such a graph is a very convincing way — to me– of understanding the danger of too much of the stuff in our atmosphere.
Anyway… thanks for the logic-based presentation!
Stephen,
I enjoyed your rebuttal of the Great GW Swindle. You make some good points about the correlation graph between Solar Cycles and Temperature (ending in 1980).
As one who is trying to find out the “truth” about this subject, I look forward to your critiques concerning:
Mann’s “hockystick” curve -including Dr. Wegman’s analysis of his statistical methods.
Al Gore’s inferences that sea levels will rise several meters due to Antactica and Greenland melting as opposed to the latest IPCC estimates.
Al Gore’s inferences that all of Antarctica is losing ice volume, rather than just the Western Ice Shelf.
Al Gore’s inference that Polar Bear numbers are shrinking.
General “ad hominim” attacks by Gore and many AGW proponents that skeptics are deniers, flat-earthers, and oil company parrots.
I especially hope you will cover those issues with your students.
Thanks again. Science benefits from healthy skepticism.
Chris Merchant’s response to The Great Global Warming Swindle - Reasoning skills are very weak, if not absurd on almost every point. I think I found one or two small inconsequencial remarks that could have been arguably accurate. Watch the whole film and record the full context. Most of his arguments are either weak or undeveloped at least—certainly, there is some labeling to identify his bias.
lol. that was a pretty sad debunking of the great global warming swindle. I still think the gore community is too certain of things the way they want them to be. The problem is that in any model, there are far too many unknown variables in earth’s climate that we cannot measure. Everything will always be somewhat of a guess. From the past I do believe that the sun drives air temp, which drives ocean temp, which determines the amount of co2 to remain in the atmosphere. But that’s just my theory. Is the best explanation of the data that i can see. I’d agree we could be having an impact on temp with the co2 we are putting into the air, but it appears that it is only fractions of a degree. the politics of this has become quite amusing and the hype unbelievable. I’m guessing in less than five years it will be mostly forgotten as another doomsday theory that too many people jump on the bandwagon for. It has all the signs, and I think it peaked with the oscar award. Strangely I think our carbon use will drop a large amount in the next 50 years because of technology. We will find better, more efficient sources of energy for economic reasons anyway. I just hope we don’t give our economy away to the rest of the world before that happens for something that is still mostly unknown. to quote a fellow newsbuster, “global warming is socialisms trojan horse”
well sure haven’t convinced me.,., but good try., i know that man made global warming a hoax. . .my parenst and all friends are high level sceintists . .and they all laugh in secert at you decieved yuppies . .but ant how . .although i dont like larouche ., or his ways . sadly guys he’ more honest then these other guys . .
i do have a question ., .about your stance , on the earths natural cycle . . and the secret govt. published journals on using man made global warming as a fictional enemy to unite the planet to bring about a world govt’ which they are doing. . ?
(as well as using as land control, and impose landowner’s with these control laws). . .just wonderin’ about ure views on these facts. . .
thanx. .
i would really like an anwser , being an earth activist for as long as i can recall it’s hard for me too accept the hoax thing but these cold hard facts are hard 2 over look.,., (excuse my bad english it’s my third language)
[...] Look who’s back: LaRouche regroups…to attack Goreblog.nodvin.net/?p=190 sent by Zee since 18 minutes I was shocked today, at the A28 Impeachment event in Boston, to see LaRouchies out in force…to attack Gore. A Bostonian environmental professor sounded the alarm a month ago, and his expose is well worth reading. Nodvin exposes the lunatic LaRouche campaign against Al Gore and global warming…let those here who post his identical scare tactics on our monetary system being on the verge of collapse take especial note as to whose screed they’re promoting.tags: larouche targets gore, cults 2 commentscategory: Progressive Issues comments#1 An excerpt of LaRouche recruiting material: Greetings to the LaRouche Youth Movement in Boston! Our organization is mobilized to destroy the reputation of mALthusian GORE, the buffoon promoting a neofeudal form of oligarchy and population reduction converging on genocide under the banner of ‘man-made Global Warming’. This, when the Democratic party must be MOVING in coordination with LaRouche to reorganize an utterly bankrupt world monetary-financial system and rebuild the physical economy. Al Gore’s popularity stunt is the latest plot by the Anglo-Dutch financial establishment to foster hysteria in the population and lure the global economy into a planet-wide Dark Age. We must ruin big, fat, loser Al Gore in order to establish Lyndon LaRouche’s undisputed leadership in the Democratic Party. Civilization is on the line…Do Your Part… Master this material and become a beacon of truth.written by Zee since 15 minutes [...]
Thank you for your rebuttal to “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. You gave me some interesting facts but as always in any debate you left a few questions unanswered.
1) It was stated that the Modelers are using 1% for there man made CO2 instead of 0.42%. I wonder what the model would look like if they used the correct number. In a Finite Element Analysis model if a variable is adjusted higher, even slightly, the affect over time can be large.
2) Why do global warming pundents insist that the Sun has a minor affect on the Earth’s climate. Without the sun we wouldn’t be here. Although, I agree and as stated, it is widely accepted that the ice ages were partly caused by the earth’s changes in orbit this doesn’t disprove the theory that the sun might have more to do with climate change than humans, especially when it comes to the weather. Besides it is odd that solar activity seems to be being blamed, ever more frequently, for satelite outages, cellular phone disruptions, …
3) Interesting that you decided not to touch the reasoning behind keeping the names of scientists that disagreed with the IPCC on their official release. More scientists appearing to agree means more consensus in the worlds view . “Don’t argue with us were right” appears to have taken over science. Will we burn non-beleivers at the stake next…
4) I find it very distressing that you offered no rebuttal to why the IPCC included malaria and an increase in disease carrying mosquitos in their report. Maybe the IPCC should of listened to the experts. This is not to say the entire report is false but obviously this secton is.
5) And last but not least, my personal favorite. The temperature for the time known as the little ice age. Global warming extremists can’t prove why it happened. Some say it was a fluke but at the end of the day it all comes down to the data. It’s funny this is the only place in your rebuttal that you drop the ball and admit that there data could be right.
We don’t know what will happen. It’s okay to admit it. Besides in the 70’s we were all going to freeze to death. Species are going extinct everday and new ones are being found. Mutation or evolution creates them. It is true that Polar bears and penquins have been through several warming and cold periods and they will probably survive this one. If you want to plan for the future then buy a solar panel and hope that it doesn’t cloud up. But I’ll wait for more imperical data before I say the sky is falling.
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Editorial Comment from Stephen Nodvin
Don:
Thank you for your questions. Most of the questions that you have asked have been discussed in detail for scientists for many years. For some reason, certain climate change deniers keep telling people that certain issues have not been discussed or considered. This is not true and, in fact, climate change has been one of the most highly studied subject ares in the history of environmental science research. It is just that the people making these claims have either 1) not bothered to take the time to see that there are answers to all of their questions or 2) have already made up their minds and have no interest in what the actual scientific data have shown.
Since I receive so many of these questions all the time, I have created a site where I can post responses to many of these questions for all to see:
http://denial.nodvin.net
one more item.
It is apparant that you have an extremely negative opinion of Larouch. I don’t know the man and never heard of him before now. So I will afford you the benefit of the doubt that you wouldn’t let your personal feelings for him interfere with any possible scientific basis he might have. After all facts not opinion matter.
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Comment from Stephen Nodvin
Don: I absolutely and completely agree with you that only the facts matter. What I dislike about Mr. Larouche is that his campaigns (which have been going on for 40-50 years) have nothing to do with facts. Look at Larouche’s speeches from decades ago. They are the same. You will find the words “Anglo-Dutch”, prophesies that the world economy is immediately heading into chaos, and there are all kinds of conspiracies between all kinds of unlikely suspects. Remove the names of whatever high-profile politicians that Mr. Larouche was attacking at the time and replace it with the words “Al Gore” and replace the dominant them that Larouche was highlighting and replace that wit the words “climate Change” and you will see that Mr. Larouches dialog has been virtually the same for decades.
I have spent hours reading Mr. Larouche’s hateful documents and more hours speaking with members of Larouche youth. The theories that the Larouche Youth describe only seem confused to me. It makes little sense that Dick Cheney and Al Gore are aligned in some grand scheme for world domination.
Finally I have a problem with Mr. Larouche’s tactics. I understand that by getting people riled up about his complicated anti-conspiratorial campaigns, Mr. Larouche has been very sucessful over the years in attracting followers and monetary contributions from these followers.
But when the Larouche Movement directs its Youth to go to public meetings with the explicit purpose of disruption and then claiming “McCarthyism” when people ask the disruptors to behave civilly, this serves no valid purpose in the public discourse.
What sense does it make that after the nice women on the panel that I was on was trying to describe how her organization was working with elementary schools to help them install solar panels that several Larouche Youth jumped up and accused her of genocide.
I have also listened and watched Mr. Larouche’s video presentations. Frankly, Mr. Larouche, his ideology, and the tactics that his organization teach its followers make no sense. The only purpose I can see in all of this is self-promotion and fund raising for Mr. Larouche and his organizations.
Interesting.
I’d like to respond to just few points from the video.
The claim is that from the 40s to 70s that industrial aerosols cooled the world.
Since the industrialization was not worldwide then, but restricted to Europe and the US, the effects of the aerosols should have been local. Aerosols don’t last that long in the atmosphere, not as long as CO2 or sulfates or methane and they don’t last long enough to diffuse around the globe. So the effects of the aerosols emitted by industry should be limited to the areas where they are emitted or carried by local or trade winds.
There is still a great deal of uncertainty about the effects of aerosols, but NASA reported not long ago that the sign of the effects are determined by whether the aerosols are light or dark, which is better, but it still says nothing about the composition of emitted aerosols, or whether they can change color through oxidation or other processes. In fact, aerosols remain a big uncertainty WRT climate modeling, the net sign of their effects is not well understood.
But let’s run with what was in the video. Let’s say that aerosols cool the globe, no matter what their color and no matter where they were emitted. If that’s the case we have a huge problem as China and India are huge emitters of aerosols and they should be reducing the global temperatures right now. The Chinese use coal for lots of things, and coal cakes are used to heat homes and to cook with. The air quality in China is so bad that I understand it kills 70,000 a year. The particulates emitted are gunking up air quality measurements in the western US. India has a similar problem, although it’s not coal fired. This is country wide for the 2 largest population on the globe.
So if aerosols cooled the globe in the 40s to 70s, then they should be cooling the globe now, and they are not.
That is, I think the ad-hoc explanation for the cooling given is not only overly simplistic, but untenable.
The only other point I have time to respond to is the last part about ad-hominem. I think it’s hilarious given that the AGW believers have been using the same kind of argument for decades and lately they call any skeptic a paid shill of big oil, as if that invalidated anything they might say. AGW believers also argue from authority all the time (the IPCC being the favorite). And you never hear any objections for the logical fallacies carried out in the name of AGW. Nor do you hear any objections when other believers call for Nuremberg style trials for skeptics, holocaust-denier style trials for skeptics, removing professional licenses from anyone not toeing the AGW line, making sure skeptics have no voice or platform for speech, and all the other things AGW believers have no trouble with. There are some severe problems on the AGW side which make the pursuit of truth or honest research impossible. You have the revealed truth already, from the Pope Al Gore, and you are ready to burn heretics at the stake, or use any means possible to silence them. If for no other reason than this, every honest student or scientist should oppose you.
Maybe I’ll get time to respond to some other points later, but in this kind of forum there is a tenancy to be blocked after the first post, so we shall see.
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Editorial Comment from Stephen Nodvin
Rich: You wrote: “but in this kind of forum there is a tenancy to be blocked after the first post”. That is not the case here but I am only one person so I moderate the posts as I can.
Many of the questions that you list are addressed in Chapter 1 of the IPCC Report. This first chapter is now available here. I will be working my way through each of the chapters this spring and summer. Places to start are the Summary for Policymakers, the Technical Summary, and the Frequently Asked Questions.
I just watched your “analysis” of the video documentary “TGGWS” as you refer to it. I find it ironical that you expose all the methods used to sway viewers to the views of the fimmaker, while these same tactics are employed by the AGW. You call the filmakers liars and then cover yourself with a disclaimer, either you know or you do not know. Which brings us to global warming. “very likely” is used by the IPCC GW Report to quantify their findings and cover their respective rear ends. There is no definitive answer to the question, no 100% certainty. So this would mean that they may be right, it could also mean that the TGGWS may be right, but to use your method there might be a 3rd option that still eludes all the parties, scientific and laymen, using the basic premise that no one knows for sure ( and admits it) what all the significant or insignificant (does not mean un-important ) factors are. I think when you take it on faith, there is nothing anyone can do to change your opinion, luckily for humanity we have rather limited lifespans and are not born with the preconceptions of our parents, or I would be afraid to cross our flat earth (all scientific minds of that generation believed this to be true, so by inference and agreeing with you being a scientist, or a Dr. does not make you right) and fall off the edge. Time will tell the truth.
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Editorial comment from Stephen Nodvin
Daryl: I agree with you completely that “time will tell the truth.” Fifteen years ago I was a government scientist on a a national committee reviewing proposed climate change research. Other scientists wanted to start measuring temperatures. I felt that the changes would be too slow to see in our lifetime and I argued for put funds into models to project long-term (centuries-scale) trends. I was wrong. Data collected during the past 15 years have now shown definitive warming of the planet. As I posted this week ( http://blog.nodvin.net/?p=212 ), climate models have actually underestimated the rates of change due to global warming. The Earth’s climate system is extremely complex.
People like you have been arguing that scientists and model projections are not infallible (correct). So then when the scientists respond to such criticisms and work hard to qualify projections (with terms like “very likely” which translates to 90-99% likelihood) you condemn them for not being 100% certain.
The qualifications are precisely what the naysayers have been demanding. A 90-99% likelihood means that the scientists believe that there is a 1-10% chance that human activity is NOT responsible for the definitive warming trend that has been observed in the last century. So now people like you can make up your own minds.
So Daryl, my question to you is this: if your cardiologist (who has some expertise in heart disease just like climate scientists have some expertise about climate) told you that there is a 90-99% chance that, if you did not change your behavior, you would have a heart attack within the next 10 years, would you put off any positive actions that might preserve your health or would you passively wait for “time will tell the truth” of your heart specialist’s projections?
you know what is the worst about all these Pro and Contra debates?
Anyone who is not a climatologist has no chance to find out his own truth. Every fraction has its arguments that are valid and every fraction uses every technique known even falsifying data to convince the interested listener of its point of view.
You for example have omitted the argument about the west preventing development of the third and second world countries which I consider a very strong argument. In my eyes our whole wealth is built and their poverty and their inability to change their situation. Imagine that in the early industrialisation the west would have had only solar panels to use. The development would have been slowed down a great deal. But in these ages, there was no regulation or whatsoever to slow down the process and there was no global competetion.
My personal opinion about global warming is that we (the west) should care about our pollution (not only CO2) because we have the resources for environmental friendly behaviour and technology, but we should allow the remaining world to develop on their own speed and their own ways and not tamper with their policy. I am not convinced that the way the west is handling things is the non plus ultra.
Ands lets face it: a coal plant produces much less pollution than all the fires that would have to be burnt instead to get the same amount of energy. And if we would really care about our impowerished neighbours, we could give them modern filters to produce even less pollution.
In writing this I notice that real pollution (not CO2) has vanished into the background. We should care about our environment in the whole instead of CO2 alone.
Sorry Stepen if my English is not perfect, its a little rusty.
I hope an opinion from a private person has a place in this discussion as well.
One last thought: I am always astonished about the arrogance men shows when it comes to nature, even if it is in a negative way like we are responsible for climate change -> means also: we can change climate at our will. Men tends to forget that no nation has an assurance for its special climate.
The biggest arguments against the scientists in the movie is that they are known to be anti-global warming.
Isn’t this a bit of self-defeating statement? They should be dismissed because they are consistent?
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Comment from Stephen Nodvin
Mark:
Thank you for your post.
The problem is is that the deniers have not been consistent. First many of these people have said there is no evidence of global warming. Then many of them said admitted that the evidence does show there is recent global warming but that there is now way that human activity could be a factor. Now some of them are admitting that there is indeed global warming AND humans are a major factor BUT, they are arguing, either there is now way that humans could manage the problem and/or it would be too costly to do so.
I have seen this same pattern of denial and begrudging admission of the scientific facts in my involvement in environmental science over the last 35 years with regards to 1) whether phosphate in detergents causes lake and stream pollution; 2) whether CFCs cause damage to the ozone layer; 3) whether acid rain is “real”, whether the then admittedly real acid rain was caused by humans, and the whether the admittedly human acid rain caused any environmental damage; and 4) whether cigarettes were a health risk, caused, cancer, and were addictive.
This pattern has been repeated many times over on a number of environmental and health issues. With some of the same “scientists” involved and with some of the same “think tanks” funding the alternative research. These “scientists” and industry front groups have relied on the fact that most Americans are unaware of this pattern of resistance to any regulation at all cost, no matter what the issue, by developing “alternate” science to sow doubt by the public and the policy makers. But the old saying goes: “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you can be reasonably sure it is a duck.”
Hopefully Americans will not be fooled again by these tactics.
Stephen Nodvin
http://blog.nodvin.net/?p=190