Climate change deniers are “ridiculous” and akin to “flat-earthers”, according to Sir Nicholas Stern, who advised the government about the economic threat posed by global warming. The respected economist compared climate naysayers to those who deny the link between smoking and cancer or HIV and Aids in the face of mounting scientific evidence.
Socialist/activist/columnist George Monbiot chimes in with another funny analogy. Apparently if you question the global warming agenda you think AIDS can be treated with beetroot and lemon juice. Interesting assertion by a non-existent association. I mean, cripes!
Sammy Wilson’s appointment as Northern Ireland environment minister appears to have been conceived as some sort of practical joke. It’s no longer very funny. He fills the same role as the former South African health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who claimed that Aids could be treated with beetroot and lemon juice.
Huh?
#7 – brm,
I might believe in ‘climate change’ if they could produce a model that makes accurate predictions. Until then…
You’re right. Observed global warming thus far is happening much faster and is far worse than any of the models predicted.
#8 – MikeN,
We’ve been hearing about how there’s a small window of opportunity before a tipping point is reached, for at least 20 years now.
Is this close enough for you?
http://e360.yale.edu/conten/feature.msp?id=2081
#8 – MikeN,
How about this?
http://tinyurl.com/ctsm8l
#9 – MikeN,
If the science is settled, then show me where those scientists predicted a cooler Earth. Who came up with that in their models?
The only one I know is Lindzen, a global warming skeptic, and even he gave it about 50-1 odds.
A cooler world, no. How about providing a link to some peer-reviewed data that shows that the world is getting cooler?
#12 – smittybc,
Without addressing the narcissism, there’s no getting around if you don’t believe in all three you are just wasting your time.
Narcissism? How about misanthropy?
More importantly though, are you aware of the percentage of the earth’s forests we’ve already cut down? How about the number of species we’ve already caused to go extinct? I think humans have been changing the world quite dramatically for quite some time now.
Are you aware that 90% of the ocean’s fish large enough to be of concern to humans are already dead? And, we don’t even live in the ocean.
#12 – smittybc,
I should also point out that the argument from incredulity is not a scientific argument. It works no better to disprove global warming science than it does to prove the existence of god.*
* The use of the argument from incredulity is far more often applied to god, which is the only reason I connect the two.
It used to be that the bibble supported flat earth because Noah collected the animals from “the four corners of the earth.”
Course, with advanced scientific theory corrupting the holy word, modern translations of the bibble take that language out, or footnote it as compass directions.
#13 – MikeN,
Mind providing a bit of context around those quotes. The first, in particular, sounds very much like something one might say with the caveat that we actually take strong and decisive action against climate change. If we do nothing, the prospects get far worse.
#14 – Sinn Fein,
Has it ever happened before in the entire history of the planet? The answer (and the g
GIGANTIC hurdle climate change/global warming proclaimers, aka, The Sky is Falling! Nutballs, can’t get around) is, not only yes but, HELL YES!
I don’t think anyone is going to contradict you on that. Just remember, homo sapiens is a very young species, a mere 200,000 years old, compared to horseshoe crabs at 400,000,000 years (count the zeros).
We have survived small ice ages. We have not survived any significantly warmer periods in the earth’s history. Global warming has indeed occurred previously. It is strongly coupled with huge extinction events.
The worst extinction event in history was caused by global warming.
http://tinyurl.com/cs6bh8
#20 – Paddy-trOll,
we’ll never be able to change it ourselves, at least until we advance enough to do terraforming.
We can’t even keep this planet terraformed. If we can’t figure that out, we won’t live long enough to learn to terraform anyplace else. Go back to sleep.
#11 – Sea Lawyer,
You’re too smart for that argument. Wear your seat belt and cut your speed as much as possible. You may survive it. Otherwise, death is a certainty.
Similarly with climate change/global warming/global heating (the name is irrelevant despite the claim by some that it is all that matters), we must do everything we can to mitigate the damage and to adapt to the change we can’t prevent.
How I long for the days when climate was static.
#24 – horacesmiley,
Excellent point about the term climate change denier. The problem is that we then need another term. Climate change skeptic is incorrect because they do not skeptically look at the data and make a correct conclusion. They have their conclusion and refuse to pay any attention to the great wealth of data available in peer-reviewed publications.
So, what term would you suggest for someone who denies science and believes ExxonMobil propaganda in spite of all that we see around us every day?
What term would accurately represent that these people genuinely do deny climate change despite evidence?
What term would convey such denial without the association to the holocaust?
Anti-climate-changer? (no, that should be for those of us who read the science.)
Anti-Scientist?
Anti-evidence-er?
Climate-change-head-in-the-sand-moran?
Hot-head?
Planet-destroyer?
Coalist?
fossil-fueler?
desert-er?
Just because it *appears* a mass majority of people believe something doesn’t make it correct nor true. A lot of people pirate music and movies, but that’s not correct either, but it is true.
#32 – bob,
how does it make sense for us to break our collective economic backs, with all of the lost human potential and increased human misery that choice entails, in order to make a small impact on a system that is subject to huge, rocking impacts on a random basis all the time?
Why do you assume this will negatively affect the economy?
Clean energy would be a whole new industry, one which we are very much in need of at the current economic moment.
Clean energy, if we could catch up with the rest of the world and become a supplier, would actually give the U.S. something it could sell to other countries. Imagine that.
Clean energy would prevent severe damage to the ecosystem on which we depend for our very lives. The ecosystem we are destroying provides an estimate $30,000,000,000,000 dollars a year (that’s thirty trillion every single year) in services. If we had to provide clean water and clean air and all the rest of the things the ecosystem gives us for free, we would see far worse financial times than anything you have yet imagined.
#38 – Paddy-trOll,
Most of the pacific coast is steep and rocky. How high above sea level are you? How detailed are your measurements? How many years have you been keeping track?
Have you heard of Tuvalu?
#63 Scott:
From your article:
“So little data is available from the Arctic Ocean that no scientists dare say with certainty…”
“Scientists are unsure how rapidly the subsurface permafrost is thawing, or the exact causes. One possible cause could be geothermal heat seeping through fault zones.”
Maybe I missed something in the article.
What I’m asking is, do the models make good predictions. I’m not asking for possible measurements of a gas that the models say will raise the temp.
It’s not about percentage of the planet that is paved. That’s just one way we destroy what was here before us. Check out the percentage that has been deforested. If that doesn’t convince anyone that we can and do modify this planet in a huge way, I can’t imagine what might.
http://tinyurl.com/ddgzrr
#79 – Me, #24 horacesmiley,
Sorry, my prior comment was regarding the amount of planet under pavement, as brought up in post #24. I should have referenced that.
#40 – Lou Minatti,
It’s not happening on the Gulf Coast.
Really? I thought we already had 250,000 climate refugees from Katrina. It’s most noticeable in the storm tides.
http://tinyurl.com/bhmnpg
#70 Misanthropic Scott
MS, That was a halfway decent article that made a little sense clear up to the point about not giving someone oxygen during a heart attack……
If you get the chance please try that and get back to us on it works out for you.
Seemed just a little too far out there to be credible.
# 51 freddybobs68k
Doh!
😉
#61 – faxon,
it is so easy to use this canard to support all of the reforms that politicians and liberals want
Well, let’s take a look a the things that only liberals want and you neocons do not:
1) Clean air. Every year 70-130,000 people in the U.S. alone die of air pollution.
2) Real energy independence.
3) Avoiding sending money to terrorists with every fill-up.
4) Really cheap energy, as opposed to that which is subsidized by my income tax bill.
5) Clean safe mass transit so that I need not sit in traffic. Luckily, I have this in NYC. Most people do not.
6) An economy built on new technology that will allow the U.S. to take the lead in something other than exporting toxic waste.
7) A habitable planet.
I’m sure there are many more that I’m not thinking of at the moment.
#78 – brm,
What I’m asking is, do the models make good predictions. I’m not asking for possible measurements of a gas that the models say will raise the temp.
I’m sorry. Perhaps you misunderstood. This was predicted and is now fact. The prediction was that a warming planet would cause clathrates to melt and release methane. It was predicted as a possible tipping point. We are past it now. If it is a tipping point, we are already toast. We must hope it is not.
Either way, the models all predicted melting clathrates and methane release from the arctic ocean. Now it is a fact.
As for accuracy of the models, none of them predicted that it would get this bad this quickly. The models have been consistently wrong. They have painted a picture of slow and gradual change. Instead we see rapid catastrophic change.
Wait for the accurate models though … just as you would not take action on your 320 cholesterol level until your actual heart attack. The doctors would not be able to accurately predict the date of a heart attack or even that it would definitely occur based on a cholesterol of 320. But, you probably would take action, wouldn’t you?
I say there is an economic cost to doing this because that is what the advocates say when they are not trying to sell their agenda politically. Nicholas Stern talks about 1-2% of GDP which is hundreds of billions of dollars per year, for the US alone. Higher taxes are an economic cost. Reduced development is an economic cost. Why do you deny these things, when you advocate them at other times?
#84 Scott:
“things that only liberals want and you neocons do not”
I’m sick of this false dichotomy. I find both labels equally offensive.
“Real energy independence.”
Drilling our own oil and burning our own coal and running our own nukes is independence. It might not be what you want, but it’s ‘real.’
“Avoiding sending money to terrorists with every fill-up.”
Canadians are not terrorists.
“An economy built on new technology that will allow the U.S. to take the lead in something other than exporting toxic waste.”
Maybe if we got rid of the minimum wage law, we’d have a manufacturing industry again.
If preventing a heart attack means cutting off an arm and a leg, you might want to think about it.
#86 – MikeN,
When exactly have I stated that a green economy would be a drain on the economy?
http://tinyurl.com/greenecon
#87 – brm,
Sorry the term neocon offends you. Liberal does not offend me in the least. It is the opposite of stingy. What label would not be offensive for the other side? Conservative has real meaning that does not reflect the beliefs of most of those whom I would term neocons and certainly not of the republican party. Perhaps I can use liberal versus republican? Democrat is the same as republican since Reagan, at least from a finance perspective. So, I can’t use that.
As for what I was defining on my want list, those were ANDs not ORs. You can’t have oil, coal, AND clean air.
Canadians are indeed not terrorists. Nor are all Saudis terrorists. But when filling a tank, the oil is from all over. And, Canada is a very small portion of it, even if the dirtiest and most expensive oil in the world becomes marketable.
Though Canada has by far the largest reserves in North America, all of North America is still only 16% of world oil supply.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves
#88 – MikeN,
What if preventing a heart attack means getting into better health and having a more active and fulfilling life? I think, and have seen numerous articles showing it, that a green economy is exactly what this nation needs to get back to having a healthy economy. We have not had one in decades, as evidenced by the full container ships coming here from China and going back empty (or full of hazardous waste).
#92 Scott:
“What if preventing a heart attack means getting into better health and having a more active and fulfilling life?”
This why I hate metaphors.
The real consequence of all this regulation is going to be a loss of liberty, and higher prices for everything.
Most of you haven’t studied the math of chaos theory, so I’ll simplify a lot.
First, both air flow and water flow are chaotic, which means that there is inherent uncertainty about where water, especially ocean water, flows. Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist, was the one that discovered that fluid flow was difficult to predict, especially with air.
If you want to dig into this more, go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
You have stated that materialism is the problem, and the US needs to have less consumption.