Industry caught in carbon ‘smokescreen’ – FT.com: Well, this shines a new light into Al Gore’s use of carbon trading to offset the energy requirement of his house, making it carbon neutral.
A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place.
The growing political salience of environmental politics has sparked a “green gold rush”, which has seen a dramatic expansion in the number of businesses offering both companies and individuals the chance to go “carbon neutral”, offsetting their own energy use by buying carbon credits that cancel out their contribution to global warming.
The FT investigation found:
■ Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.
■ Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.
■ Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.
■ A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.
■ Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.
Mr. Fusion, virtually every mammal on earth exhales CO2 and virtually all plant life requires it to live. Are all mammals polluters just by breathing? Before the rise of mammals, back when life on the planet was mostly vegetation, was there O2 pollution? (An aside to your Reagan comment).
At what point does any naturally occurring elemental compound become pollution? Are the oceans now polluted with H2O? Therein lies the rub. Who is to say what level is acceptable and what level is unacceptable? This is a debate that will never end because someone will always say the level of this or that is too high or too low and there will always be opportunists and politicians there to cash in.
BTW, is there any real need for name calling? The use of personal insults is not an acceptable debating method. I have agreed with you in the past on other subjects, so I can’t be a complete “dufus”, huh?
#28 – JimR,
Sorry, I really don’t mean to offend you. I have have no other way to say it than BULLSHIT that you “didn’t want to kill the thread with my list”
That’s exactly what you were trying to do, impress people with a long list. Your still trying. Why don’t you just post a link to some list. If it has more scientists than the IPCC, perhaps it begins to become interesting. Then follow their funding to Exxon/Mobil.
Further, why don’t you just try posting links to a PEER REVIEWED article published in say the last 3 – 5 years. You won’t find many. You’ll find a few claiming that cosmic rays may account for 5 to 15 percent of global warming and one that says 5 – 30 percent, leaving humans responsible for at least 70%.
#31 – Pmitchell,
“God has a sense of humor ,no other way to put it, he made those idiots look like the morons they are.”
Wow, if you can see no other way to look at that set of events, then you really might just need a bit more flexibility to your thinking. Here’s another way.
Gore has been tirelessly campaigning about global warming. He’s been all over the world. One of the days he was campaigning was cold. I’m sure many, in fact, were cold. Some, probably many, were also hot.
If your God does exist, his humor would be better described by the Depeche Mode song Blasphemous Rumors.
And, oh yeah, my way of looking at it weather also hits Al Gore. Shocking … NOT!!
M Scott, I think I made my point well. You obviously have a problem dealing with a real possibility that your position is wrong and your best comeback is bullshit?
Enough said. I think we all get the picture.
#39 – JimR,
Sure, if you say so. I also feel I made my point well, but perhaps not well enough.
If you think even 82 scientists is a statistically significant number of climate scientists in the world, fine. If you say this is not a true consensus, maybe. I think you can probably find that many scientists that will state that they have a problem with any or all of relativity, quantum mechanics, evolution, and natural selection. It is, after all, science not religion.
However, active scientists publish in peer reviewed scientific journals. Post some links to a few of their papers, the ones specifically saying it is not in large percent human caused. It won’t even take that many to convince me that there is real disagreement.
As for ‘we all get the picture.’ I doubt it. We’re humans. I think we all have different pictures, else we wouldn’t want to have the debate.
Scott, please find and post a link to a peer reviewed document that supports Algore’s vision in his fantasy movie.
There is general consensus that there is some warming. There is consensus that man had some contribution in the latter half of the 20th century. There is not consensus on how much. There is also consensus that man had no contribution to the warming that happened in the first half of the 20th century.
There is NO peer reviewed document or reputable scientist that supports Algore’s vision of all ice melting, oceans rising 20 ft by 2100, etc. In fact the latest IPCC prediction is a 16 inch rise at maximum.
The reason more and more scientists are breaking ranks is not because they disagree that warming is happening. What the disagree with is the hysteria. We’re not all gonna die. We don’t all need to sacrifice everything good in life to survive. It’s just not that big a deal.
There have been numerous posts, here and elsewhere, referencing peer reviewed articles around the world. Hypocrites like TGW ain’t going to respect or read them. Cop the Philistine attitude on your own page!
M Scott, Is it really about numbers? If you have 120 scientists that were hired to do a job and are PAID for their services, and I find 99 that have courageously come out of hiding that aren paid to write papers and who have OTHER jobs at the moment, that disagree… does that mean you “win” because you have 20, 50, 100 more paid scientists on board?
I would like to see the list of IPCC scientists. I hear a lot of nombers bandied about, but no list. Are they all real scientists? How many are in the same category of activism as David Suzuki?
Mr Fusion, China is close to signing on to Kyoto, and the addons including her in a emissions reduction scheme. Namely, give China a very high number to start with, and they’ll trade below that number so Europe can keep emitting, China gets Europe’s money, and Europe gets to claim that they are doing something about global warming and the US isn’t.
A little red meat for the rightists, hm, makes it “balanced”.
Lissen: the moderates are trying to find common ground with the free trade religionists by creating a market system. I myself opined just last week that it would be a disaster, not because hypocritical people would use it to excuse their pollution – somehow conservatives are better because they don’t care? – but because if you let free trade ahve its head here they will turn it into yet another fraudulent commodities market, Enroning us into a steambath while they make out like the looters they are. Come the apocalypse, traders will be buying and selling futures in blood-filled seas. They make money at any cost, and that goal is incompatible with what has to be done to stabilize the atmosphere. They will *cheat*. Enron was not the exception, it was the model, set on fire for all to see.
Let’s see if you guys can grasp the problem with the global warming scare scenario. The scientific concensus is wrong and self contradictory if you read the reports and look into the models. Even assuming the science is 100% accurate, the models still require guesses about future CO2 emissions. These emissions are calculated based on estimates of economic growth. For their model calculations, the scientists used estimates of growth rates that the US was not able to achieve in the 1900s or the 1800s. How likely do you think it is that the developing world is going to grow faster in the 2000s than the US did in those centuries?
Now let’s assume the scientists are right about this. Then how likely do you think it is that countries that grow that fast anf are going to be so wealthy are going to suffer the problems that the scientists then conclude will happen? Don’t you think wealthy countries will be better able to adjust to climate change?
If you plug smaller economic growth into the models, then the climate change is less severe, which is also the idea behind Kyoto, only it uses severe economic damage for very little climate change.
If consensus = truth, then Copernicus was wrong.
#45 – MikeN
We can have our cake and eat it too. Economic growth is enhanced by environmentalism. See Haiti and the Dominican Republic for an example.
There is a lot of money to be made in new energy technologies.
#46 – Ivor Biggun,
Good point, actually. Though he was actually in trouble not from other scientists but from the church. Still, it’s a good reason to seek out peer reviewed publications as your source of information. When they get too technical or expensive, as the often do, at least pay attention to which articles in the popular press reference articles in Nature, Science, or other scientific peer reviewed publications.
Peer review is not perfect, but it’s a lot better than believing J. Random Blog, this or some blog by a scientist. Anyone can say anything they want on a blog or on their own website. Peer review is much stricter.
#40 – TheGlobalWarmer,
Give me a particular detail you think is fantasy. His documentary was the result of many hours of digging through many sources on a large variety of subjects. For any particular detail you think is fantasy, I’ll do my best.
I have yet to hear anyone question a single piece of the data. Instead, they attack his personal life. If you want a source for a particular bit of information, I’ll search for it.
Alternately, I’d strongly recommmend the book The Weather Makers. Pages 320 through 343 contain the list of footnotes to the book in a nice convenient location. Here’s a link for anyone that wants to read up on the subject.
http://www.bestwebbuys.com/9780802142825
When the 1995 IPCC report was released, Dr. Frederick Seitz, president emeritus of Rockefeller University and past president of the National Academy of Sciences, publicly denounced the IPCC report, writing “I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report”. He opposed it in the Leipzig Declaration of his Science and Environmental Policy Project.
My question is …what has changed since then?
Why must anything change? That’s one opinion. I disagree. Most of the scientists I’ve heard lecture don’t like the IPCC because it’s too moderate. The report gets too watered down in order to reach consensus.
More importantly though, one need not be on the IPCC to publish a peer-reviewed paper. One need only have good scientific data.
And scientists who are willing to sign off on being labelled as corporate sellouts. And a publisher who is willing to publish something thatgoes against his politics.
Global warming is a scientific fact. So I’m sure you would all agree that the US government should stop spending the billions of dollars that it gives for climate research. That money could be spent on so many other things to alleviate climate change. Perhaps we could start by shutting down the burning of the Indonesia peat bogs, which would lower global emissions by 10-30 percent. These peat bogs act as carbon sinks, so their burning is doubly destructive.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6613
We’re not necessarily discussing whether global warming is a fact or not here. It’s whether the many conclusions on the subject to date can be accepted without question. The evidence is that they can’t.
Dr. Mann’s 1998 “hockey stick” paper was co-authored by several climatologists and peer reviewed by several more. But it took a retired (evil) mining geologist to show that the hockey stick was a fraud. That pretty much tells us how worthless “peer review” is where global warming is concerned.
#54 – Smith,
You are incorrect. The peer-reviewed paper that contradicted the hockey stick was later shown to have been written using an earlier version of the hockey stick paper than was available at the time. And, the authors of the hockey stick paper showed that they had, in the later version available prior to the publication of the contradictory paper, already addressed all issues in the other paper.
So, quite the contrary, it shows us the value of the peer review process. No other peer reviewed paper contradicted the hockey stick after that and the hockey stick is considered scientifically valid.
#55 — Scott
“No other peer reviewed paper contradicted the hockey stick after that and the hockey stick is considered scientifically valid. “
Not by Dr. Wegman and his team of statisticians. If the math is wrong, then so are the conclusions. There is nothing valid about the hockey stick. Continued defense of that nonsense only destroys your credibility.
#56, Wegman was supported by Exxon, through the Frazier Institute, a right wing “think tank” to write the denial. No one else is jumping on his bandwagon except corporate sponsors and Republicans.
#32, Jim
Just some tidbits. Carbon Dioxide is not a poison and won’t kill you unless there is no oxygen mixed in with it… ie. suffocation. Oxygen, on the other hand, is poisonous at 100% if breathed for an hour or more and can cause seizures.
OK, so go into a closet, bring an O2 tank with you. Tape up all the openings so no air can enter. Guess how long you will survive? You’ll give out before the oxygen does.
When the atmospheric CO2 increases then the blood can not release its dissolved CO2. This results in acidosis and ultimately death. Yup, CO2 kill ya !!!
Guess what else. That other staple of life, water, can kill ya too. Or did you want to argue that point.
#57 “Wegman was supported by Exxon, through the Frazier Institute, a right wing “think tank” to write the denial. No one else is jumping on his bandwagon except corporate sponsors and Republicans.”
What kind of bullshit is this!!!! Dr. Wegman and his two co-authors are some of the foremost statisticians in the world! They did that analysis pro bono at the request of the U.S. Senate. You people are stark raving mad!
The Sun is to blame for Global Warming
http://tinyurl.com/3vqhj
Re 59: They are not stark raving mad, it’s liberalism.
Liberals see society as unworkable by itself. They believe it has fundamental flaws and deep-rooted conflicts that keep it in some sort of structural imbalance. All this cries out for government fixes, for liberals are certain that there is no social problem that a good dose of power can’t solve.
Oh, I see your point, they are mad.
Well, can someone point out the hockey stick in the newest IPCC report which was peer reviewed? A stark graph like that that shows the problem caused by greenhouse gases would be exactly what’s needed ot move the debate. So if someone could please point a link to it in the report that is the concensus of all these climate scientists, I would be most grateful.
Mr. Fusion, I wasn’t looking for an argument but since you brought it up I looked up CO2 related acidosis.
“In rare instances, increased CO2 production can exceed the patient’s ability to compensate, leading to a respiratory acidosis. This situation occurs during hypermetabolic states, such as extensive burn injury, malignant hyperthermia, or fever when the patient is unable to increase minute ventilation. When PaCO2 accumulates acutely, other organ systems are affected.”
There was nothing I could find re acidosis caused from breathing CO2 when in the presence of ample oxygen. Can you give me a link? 😉
#59…Smith……your dealing with Fusion, the liberal line of the day spouter. Don’t let it get to you…..he’s usually wrong but likes to make anyone who diagrees with him crazy. :_
#60 – BgScryAnml,
From the article you posted (from 2004):
Dr Bill Burrows, a climatologist and a member of the Royal Meteorological Society, welcomed Dr Solanki’s research. “While the established view remains that the sun cannot be responsible for all the climate changes we have seen in the past 50 years or so, this study is certainly significant,” he said.
“It shows that there is enough happening on the solar front to merit further research. Perhaps we are devoting too many resources to correcting human effects on the climate without being sure that we are the major contributor.”
Later articles state a total of 5 to 15% impact from the sun. One states 5 to 30%. Even at the 30% number, 70% is still us.
#61 – MikeN,
The IPCC states their own data. I doubt they used the hockey stick graph in particular. Their data does not contradict it though. If you want to be sure either way, fee free to search hundreds of pages.