Sustainable environment, free flying and occasional fun.
Joint US/China statement 13/04/2013:
The U.S.A. and the People's Republic of China recognize that the increasing dangers presented by climate change measured against the inadequacy of the global response requires a more… urgent initiative... Both sides consider that the overwhelming scientific consensus regarding climate change constitutes a compelling call to action crucial to having a global impact on climate change.
Showing posts with label "crock of the week". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "crock of the week". Show all posts
The famous “Oregon petition” of 32,000 so called scientists is roundly debunked.
This “Climate Crock” below resurrects an old warning from 1956 (54 years ago!!). This is an old science program recording, featured in the video. It portrays a few bits of the science in rather misleading way but it is mostly correct by today’s knowledge – mainly the bit about water vapour is a bit shaky.
I reproduce Pete Sinclair’s introduction:
“Many climate deniers still seem to think global warming was invented by Al Gore, in 2006. As this recently uncovered recording from 1956 shows, the outlines of climate change science have been clear for many decades.
I showed this to my 25 year old son, who happened to be home from school. He watched in silence, but I knew what he was going to say. ”It makes me angry. They’ve known about this for all these years.” I don’t have a good answer for him. I hope I have an answer for his children.”
If you read the comments sections of any climate related website or blog you will see the most outrageous assertions from the denialist peanut gallery. Inadvertently demonstrating their own gullibility and irrationality and yes, I'll use the "S" word - STUPIDITY, these people just mindlessly regurgitate the propaganda which they have swallowed. Perhaps the "smoking gun" that most shows them up as the dangerous, suckered idiots that they are, is their frequently repeated cry to show them the science and the scientific papers that prove there is such a thing as global warming, usually ending with a phrase like "you can't because there is none LMFAO - it's all a conspiracy!!!" These mindless types have read this blatant lie on denialist websites and just parrot it because they want to believe it. How irresponsible is that?
They often hate being called deniers and usually describe themselves as sceptics or independent thinkers. The big lie here is that they do not understand what being a "sceptic" actually means. Clearly, they disbelieve anything the science says that they don't like the sound of yet they uncritically accept any old nonsense, lies or misdirection, as long as it sounds sort of "sciency", from the denialist movement, whether from the professional propagandists or their unwitting dupes and the hordes of willing amateurs who run blogs. Their idea of scepticism is nowhere near the true definition, which would look at all sides critically. It is blatant and obvious wishful thinking and closed mindedness combined with astonishing arrogance and inability to judge the credibility of those sources they fawn over so eagerly.
The video below is the latest in the "Climate Crock of the Week" series from Pete Sinclair that does exactly what the denialist hordes keep screaming for (without realising that they really don't actually want to hear it!). It lays out a very condensed version of the basic physics underlying climate science. None of this science is in dispute by any credible scientist or should be disputed by anybody else with their heads screwed on. Even those such as "darling-of-the-deniers" Richard Lindzen, frequently cited by deniers in support of their position, would not dispute it. The only way that deniers can wriggle out of this is by claiming that the whole scientific AGW case is a massive conspiracy going back over a hundred years. Many of them do! As I pointed out in a recent blog post, and Pete Sinclair does too in this video, any "conspiracy" must be so gigantic that even birds and animals and glaciers are in on it - here's a quote from my post from last month "Global warming is a hoax"
"Tens of thousands of people have faked the scientific theories since the early 1800s, the actual measurements of reality, the historical records, the pre-historical records, the even further back than that records. This colossal hoax is so all pervasive that even animals, birds and insects are joining in by pretending to be affected by non-existent changes in ecosystems. God help us, the conspirators have even persuaded dumb ice sheets and permafrost to fake it for the cause. Nature really is a lying traitor and we should never trust her again!"
Enjoy ten minutes of concentrated anti B.S. Crash and burn, deniers...
It's been a while since Pete Sinclair came out with one of his marvellous Climate denial "Crock of the week" videos but here is the latest. It's a revisit of the old denier scam which goes - "whatever happened to global warming? - because its flipping cold here".
In his usual sardonic fashion he shows us the big picture, which the deniers never do. Just because it's very cold where you are doesn't mean that it's very cold everywhere. Australia is currently frying.
One of the first rules of propaganda, designed to inculcate a certain belief in the minds of the public, is to appear to be helpfully giving out information whilst the public never realises that it is highly specific cherry-picked information - if the public's mind ever zoomed out from the specific info that the deniers want them to only look at they would clearly see how they were being misled. The denial industry and blogosphere also rely on too many stupid people only wanting to listen to what they want to hear. Those silly people who live as if believing their glass is always half full actually impacts on reality a jot should grow up and get a sense of responsibility.
This "crock" expose is about the view that climate science is mostly based on computer models and that we can't rely on them because they are nowhere near perfect - the proponents of this view (including a certain female Senator in our beloved States of Jersey) believe we should just carry on and not believe all the global warming "hysteria" and we'll all be just fine. Obviously, they feel lucky. It's just a shame that if too many are fooled by this irresponsible point of view, then the consequences will drag us all down along with them. They have a right to gamble with their own lives and futures, and maybe even those of their own children (dubious, ethically) but they have a responsibility not to put the rest of humanity who don't agree with them, including the vast majority of the relevant scientists in the field, at risk.
Today is not all about flying! I'm back to shooting down the sheer garbage that deniers/inactivists try to fool the public with. The latest Crock of the Week video demolishes a few more of the lies they tell, and it actually shows a couple of clips of the most outrageous lies from the "Great Global Warming Swindle" which deniers and the gullible love to quote and represent as some sort of accurate info - what a joke!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This video by Peter Sinclair counters a few misleading claims by the deniers/inactivists about rising seas and ice shelves. Ironically, some deniers are quoting figures from the latest AR4 IPCC report (Assessment Report 4) to attack claims that sea level rise will probably be a big threat. As is often the case, it’s what the deniers don’t mention in their rhetoric that sharply illustrates their very shaky grasp on what is fair comment and genuine scepticism, as opposed to the black propaganda they so often seem to end up spouting. Are they stupid? Are they subtly greedier than Wall Street bankers? Are they evil? You decide…
The "crock" video embedded below is about the "Oregon petition" which was supposedly signed by 32,000 “leading scientists”. It goes into some detail about the background of the initiators of the petition and their dubious values. It also touches upon the past links that some major deniers have to the tobacco industry’s previous long term denial (and deliberate deception about) the risks of smoking. It does not, however, mention probably the most misleading aspect of the petition, the whole text of which follows.
“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, [sic] 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
Firstly, even the re-circulated (in 2007) petition still uses this text which is clearly severely out of date. Secondly, the major deceit comes in the misrepresentation of what can be called scientific philosophy in order to fool the public. When they use the term "convincing scientific evidence" in this way it should be taken to mean there is no final and certain proof that man made emissions will definitely cause catastrophic heating and disruption of the climate. This is true!! What deceitful denialist propaganda like this fails to tell the suckers is that only by "running the experiment", and seeing what actually happens, can there be final proof of the theories. By the time the theories are scientifically proved, if we are then undergoing catastrophic disruption, it will be a bit late to do anything about it.
Another crock that the author is probably working on is the "it's just a fallible computer model" canard. Senator Ferguson loves this one. I'll get around to commenting on that in due course but the basic riposte to this argument is this: seeing as we do not have perfect knowledge of how climate systems alter with varying inputs, nor could we without hundreds of years, possibly thousands, of actual experimental science, the computer models we have, flawed as they may be, are our very best idea of what may happen.
When the best available peer-reviewed scientific prognostication method states that there will be a problem that will range from moderate to catastrophic, it should be basic risk/benefit analysis that we use to show us what to do. Are you feeling lucky, punks?
It is not simply that there is one model anyway - there are at least twenty and they all broadly agree. Even if they are all wrong, policy makers and people generally, and deniers in particular, have to take into account that they can be wrong either way when deciding what to do to mitigate the risk. The models and majority science may be wrong and global warming could turn out to be benign, even ultimately beneficial, compared with our current climate - or it could turn out to be the end of our civilisation and the prelude to one of those mass extinctions of species that happen when some major outside disturbance assaults the planetary systems, like an asteroid slamming in. It would be pretty stupid of the so-called intelligent human race to do that sort of destructive planetary engineering all by itself wouldn't it? Acts of God are one thing but how much dumber would be this “Act of Man”? Jared Diamond would be able to write a much more dramatic sequel to "Collapse”!
Another climate change denial crock of the week video. This one demolishes a favourite denier theme - the so called urban heat island effect whereby the deniers claim that the measured heating up of the planet is actually caused by the temperature measuring devices having been placed in urban areas with concrete etc warming things up thus giving false data. This idea actually spawned a denier blog called "Wattsupwiththat".
This is one of about 8 or 9 Youtube videos which demolish many of the pernicious deceptive myths and black propaganda that the climate denial lobby put out. This one targets one of the ideas of major denier S. Fred Singer and his highly irresponsible recent book, which puts forward one seriously misleading idea after another. It is prejudicially called "Unstoppable global warming every 1500 years" (click on the link to see a detailed expose of this book) and leans heavily on the so called "mediaeval warm period" and the Viking settlements in Greenland to fool people.
