Excellent article by Kenneth Green about the fact that those who disagree with the Goracles take on global warming are called deniers:
Once upon a time, the media believed in the open exchange of opinions regarding public policy. People who had doubts about one or another claim put forward by activists and crusaders could express those thoughts without fear of censure or ridicule. And, to be fair, that is still the case in many areas of social policy.
But there’s one hot-button issue on which virtually no dissent is allowed: climate change. In a style reminiscent of the old Soviet Union, people disagreeing with any element of the agenda pursued by Al Gore and his climate catastrophists have been derided as “deniers,” a term clearly intended to equate dissent with mental illness, if not post hoc complicity in atrocities (as in “Holocaust denier”). “Fifteen per cent of the people believe the moon landing was staged on some movie lot and a somewhat smaller number still believe the Earth is flat,” Gore says. “They all get together on a Saturday night and party with the global-warming deniers.”
While only a few hotheads have proposed a physical gulag for the deniers, the mainstream press has created a media gulag. Former Boston Globe editor Ross Gelbspan urged the media to do just that in July 2000: “Not only do journalists not have a responsibility to report what skeptical scientists have to say about global warming, they have a responsibility not to report what these scientists say,” he told a Washington audience. Analyses of media coverage show that the three big U.S. television networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC) have taken Gelbspan’s message to heart: in the last half of 2007, only 20 percent of stories about climate change mentioned skepticism or dissenting viewpoints. Essentially, climate catastrophism is treated as fact.
Kenneth details how a columnist for the National Post in Canada profiled many of these “deniers” and found that not one disputed that there is a greenhouse effect, or that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. No, what they do disagree with is how much of that effect is the cause for global warming.
In other words, Solomon found that the “deniers” are, in fact, not in denial at all. They are merely dissidents from the political orthodoxy of climate catastrophism.
This columnist, Lawrence Soloman, wrote a book called The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so
Pretty impressive stuff, but still the left and the MSM enjoys deriding them by comparing them to moon landing deniers and so forth. When their not deriding those who dissent from their view they pulling insulting stunts like this.
See author page
But there’s one hot-button issue on which virtually no dissent is allowed: climate change.
This is a reflection of another ‘hot button’ issue of the day…well, back in the day…the bedrock belief of the Sun revolving around the Earth. Dissenters, namely Galileo and in some facets Copernicus, were ridiculed and censured. Just like our modern day ‘deniers’.
Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe. All this is suggested by the systematic procession of events and the harmony of the whole Universe, if only we face the facts, as they say, ‘with both eyes open’. ~ Copernicus
As a “denier”, and maybe even a whacked out conspiracy theorist, I see a bigger picture of a decades long process that culminates in the redirection of the American way into a progressive new form of socialism. Environmentalism, and the myth of global climate change (formerly known as global warming) is just another in a long list of tools that have been used to reach that goal. I wrote a quick article decrying the advent of this “socia(environmenta)lism. You can find it on my blog here.
I have lived through so many of these fright experiments.
There was Alar. It was going to kill us all. Hollywood starlets (experts in both agriculture and pharmacology, of course) assured us of the mass death from Alar.
There was radon. Radon will kill us all, unless we all buy radon test kits, and massively re-engineer our houses for radon avoidance. The list of victims of cancer due to radon: non-existent.
Hey. Looked at the sun recently? The sun is naked. The sun has no spots. The solar storms are at a minimum. Hey. Looked at Mars recently? Mars has an icecap which varies cyclically along with the sunspot cycle. More sunspots, less Martian ice. Less sunspots, more Martian ice.
Looked at how the National Weather Service measures temperature? Go to wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com and get an eyeful. On-the-site surveys show that temperature gauges are, in far too many instances, sited in a manner inconsistent with regulations. They are surrounded by buildings (in some cases ON buildings). They are surrounded by asphalt. And each re-sited weather gauge has readings which jump UP along with the re-siting.
Another peculiarity: OLD weather records are continually re-revised in accordance with weather models. We no longer have clean data to work with.
And the weather service, which cannot predict the weather 10 days in advance, claims to predict the weather 50 years in advance?
Not.
I am of something of a split mind when it comes to the issue of Climate Change.
Science tells us that there have been temperature fluctuations throughout Earth’s history, concurrent with changes in orbit, sunspot cycles and the like; all of these long before humanity could even dream of having enough influence over its environment to affect change on it.
That being said, it might be a little too complacent of us to assume that we have not reached the point where we could exacerbate those natural fluctuations through our actions. I also have no doubt that the petroleum industry (which has been earning record profits recently) has been investing much of its resources into protecting its interests on a political level. In a democracy, that is their right, but we would be naive to think they will argue for their own phased extinction.
The best time to deal with an issue is before it becomes a full-fledged crisis. We recognize this when coping with terrorism and rogue states, should we not consider using the same strategy when confronting potential environmental problems?
There is a decided national security angle to this as well, which could make for a nice “fringe benefit” to drawing up a new national energy policy. Our current economic woes are in no small part due to the steadily rising costs of oil coming out of the Middle East (with OPEC refusing to increase its output and rising demand from China and India), which are not likely to fall in the foreseeable future. While there may be reserves in ANWAR and there is the possibility of using Oil Shale; why not shift to a nuclear powered future? The U.S. and Canada have more than enough Uranium, and with the process of vitrification (the French have used this most successfully) what nuclear waste you can’t reprocess, can be rendered chemically inert for safe storage. None of this requires undeveloped technologies, and would create more “environmentally friendly” energy, whilst enhancing our energy independence.
I like the fact that the paleo record does not show that CO2 has ever driven climate change in the past. This is very fun when you consider that carbon dioxide levels have been many times what they are today; but did not then cause global warming.
In other words, the entire idea that carbon dioxide drives climate change is contradicted by the existing historic record. This is a fact quietly ignored by the entire AGW movement.
I think it’s interesting that even folks like Gingrich are saying that it’s time for us to take some action on the issue. I’m not going to point the finger and say that man’s actions are solely responsible for climate change, but I think it reasonable to take simple steps to, as the bankers might say, “limit our exposure” on the question. Given the complexity of the earth’s ecosystem, I don’t see any other reasonable choice; we can’t wait until it’s broken, right?
I must say that the current PSAs on the subject boggle the mind – first it was Sharpton and Robertson, now it’s Pelosi and Gingrich…
Does man have an effect on their environment? Of course they do. But do they have a net effect on the entire climate? That is the real question. My uneducated response is no, and if there is one, I believe it is negligible. Public perception about the environment is very much like the publics impact the economy. If you tell enough people that the environment is going south, and you get enough important people repeating it (such as the mainstream press, Hollywood soapboxers, and well known politicians), eventually the public believes it and stops spending their money, thereby fulfilling the prophecy. If you tell people that climate change is happening, and you get enough important people repeating it, the publics perception eventually changes, and facts or no facts, they start believing that it is a real problem.
Climate change has much more to do with solar radiation and lunar cycles than anything that man does. We are just to arrogant to admit it.
As for oil company profits, of course they are a record highs. The world is consuming more and more oil. As a percentage of their sales, their profits haven’t changed significantly. What has changed is that there are approximately 200,000,000 new vehicles on the road in China alone over the past 10 years. Russia and India have shown comparable growth, all the while we are doing everything we can in this country to limit our own supply. There has not been a modern refinery built in this country for over 35 years because no one wants them be built too close to home.
In the end, it doesn’t matter though, because no matter how bad it gets, Hillary has “so many opportunities for this country!” She’s going to take care of us!
The question isn’t climate change…as a couple have pointed out, the question is whether climate change can be human caused. I’ve been really puzzled by Bush and McCain seeming to hop on this band wagon, but I think the reason for that is a new anxiety – “peak oil”. Just as SS is going to be in trouble at some point in the future and we should be acting to minimize that problem, so too is oil going to be a problem. At some point, there will be no more. Maybe in 50 years, maybe 500, but sometime. Finding an alternative source of energy so that we can continue to live in a fashion that even vaguely resembles how we live now instead of how our cave man forebears eked out a living is not going to be an easy task, so we need to get on with it. If Bush came out and said “you know, oil is going to get scarce” … you’d have a whole new round of the “blood for oil” routine, and nobody would do anything except yell for us to get out of Iraq. So…he’s jumped on the GW bandwagon. He’s looked on as finally wising up, being a good guy, and supporting what “everybody” knows is a problem. The goals are compatible. It works.
It isn’t whether climate change is “human caused”, but rather whether it is “human accelerated” or “human affected.”
Global warming could lead to higher rates of skin cancer by amplifying the harmful effects of the sun’s rays, scientists said.
New evidence suggests that the same amount of sunshine becomes more likely to trigger cancer as temperature rises.
I would sure like a little warming. Especially with the cost of home heating.
Warming would be good economically, agriculturally and in terms of biodiversity, sadly any large scale warming is very unlikely. We would be lucky for the total in the next century to be as large as 1 degree C.
What is it we should do about it? Prevent it? If you want the same effect just take about half of your income, get it in cash and throw it away.
Wondering Aloud mentions that CO2 has never driven warming. He gets this information from scientists. So he belives scientists who say CO2 has never driven warming. I am glad they were there from the beginning, you know 2 billion years ago or whatever.
If a warming earth produces more CO2, then so be it. In our case, a human earth produces more CO2. And March was the warmest March in all recorded history.
CO2, warm, warm, CO2. Thank God coastlines are burping up methane and sulfur dioxide due to over-fishing. That should put the whammy on that pesky CO2.
Imagine what happens to the supply and price of oil when the average Chinese or Indian consumes as much energy as the average US person.
No need to do anything about it now. We can fix anything. We have scientists sitting around making back-up plans to back-up plans that will automatically be flipped on when the moment arrives.
Go watch Survivor. Jason fell for it, so stupid. So Ozzie.
Welcome to Jason’s World.
Hourly Update
Preview: Is global warming behind region’s drought
By Tony Davis
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 04.20.2008
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/235244.php
One of the nation’s leading climate scientists, the University of Arizona’s Nobel Prize-sharing Jonathan Overpeck, says he’s coming to believe there’s “a real likelihood” the region’s drought is caused by global warming. New research at the UA backs that up.
Some other scientists disagree, even as leading climate experts generally agree that someday, global warming will make the Southwest drier.
This drought is already known as the region’s worst in more than a century and one of the worst in the past 500 years.
The dispute has implications for Tucson’s water supply. The drought has already shrunk water levels in the Colorado River, which furnishes Central Arizona Project water that’s pumped to Tucson.
If those believing this drought is caused by warming are right, major shortages could occur much sooner than expected on the river, says Connie Woodhouse, a University of Arizona geography professor who has studied tree-ring records to understand river runoff patterns.