Like racism, climate denial is likely to be with us for a long time – Miami shows us that, even as the water laps up around climate denier’s ankles, they continue to find reasons to look away. Humans are just like that.
Is organised climate science denial finished?
After global heat records were continually broken over the last decade, and as sea levels rose and scientists reported the accelerated melting of polar ice sheets, you might be forgiven for thinking the debate over climate change had shifted.
No more arguing over the science? It’s more about the policy now, right?
Well, wrong. At least according to a new study that has looked at 15 years worth of output from 19 conservative “thinktanks” in the United States.
“We find little support for the claim that ‘the era of science denial is over’ – instead, discussion of climate science has generally increased over the sample period,” the study concludes.
The conservative thinktanks under the microscope are the main cog in the machinery of climate science denial across the globe, pushing a constant stream of material into the public domain.
The study, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, analysed more than 16,000 documents published online between 1998 and 2013 by mainly US groups like the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.
Contrary to some commentators, the study found attacks on science had increased in later years. At the same time, the thinktanks were focusing less on policy issues.
These findings are supported by recent investigative news reports, which show that since the 1970s, top executives and scientists in the fossil fuel industry have been well aware of the evidence that their products amplified climate-warming emissions. They conducted their own extensive research on the topic and participated in ongoing scientific discussions. The American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group, even circulated the results to its members. By 1978, a senior executive at ExxonMobil proposed creating a worldwide “CO2 in the Atmosphere” research and development program to determine an appropriate response.
Unfortunately, that path wasn’t taken. Instead, in 1989, a group of fossil fuel corporations, utilities and automobile manufacturers banded together to form the Global Climate Coalition. This group worked to ensure that the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, was not adopted by the United States. In public statements, the Global Climate Coalition continued to deny that global warming was occurring and emphasized the uncertainty of climate science.
The spreading of misinformation continued. In 1998, API, Exxon, Chevron, Southern Co. and various conservative think tanks initiated a public relations campaign, the goal of which was to ensure that the “recognition of uncertainties (of climate science) becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’”
While that coalition disbanded in 2001, ExxonMobil reportedly continued to quietly funnel climate misinformation through “skeptic” think tanks, such as the Heartland Institute, until 2006, when its funding was exposed. The company — the nation’s largest and wealthiest — continues to work with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a so-called public-private partnership of corporations and conservative legislators, to block climate change policies.
For years, ExxonMobil had been a participant in public efforts to sow doubt about climate change. Yet at at the same time, the corporation was at the leading edge of climate science and its executives were well informed regarding the scientific consensus on climate change. This allegedly deceitful conduct has generated public outrage and recently led New York’s attorney general to initiate an investigation into whether ExxonMobil has misled the public and investors about the risks of climate change.
It turns out that a lot of Americans still don’t know much of anything at all about climate change, but the majority do know something. That’s according to a poll reported by WUWT (and probably some other climate conspiracy blogs), as well as various media outlets. The poll was conducted by Monmouth University. (Climate denial blogger)Anthony Watts has a guest article by David Middleton. The headline reads:
Poll: 73% of Americans reject so-called AGW consensus (but you wouldn’t know it from the headline)
Now what that shows is that David Middleton, unusually for a science denier, understands that since around the middle of last century, the scientific consensus is that probably all the warming we’ve had is because of human activity. What has shocked him is that the media reports it differently. He’s appalled at a headline that reads:
Poll: 70 percent believe in climate changeSo am I, but for different reasons. From where I sit (in Australia) it should read: “Poll: 70 per cent believe in climate change” or better yet: “61% in the USA know that humans are contributing to climate change”.
David wants people to read the results differently. He would prefer that the headline showed that 22% don’t think climate change is happening and 8% don’t know whether it is or not.No, that’s not quite it.
What he wants people to understand is that only 27% of respondents know that humans are primarily responsible for climate change. (He pushed the point that the scientific consensus is with the 27%, which might explain the “thoughts”. )
There are a lot of Americans (34% judging by the responses) who think that climate change is about half and half from human activity and natural causes. Add that to the 27% and you get 61% who think that humans have caused at least half the warming or more. That’s not too bad, given we’re talking about America, where people suffer disinformation from Fox News and denier politicians. It’s not good either.
AV spat again,
Right you have earned your ownership of this and probably a few pages of replies back at that.
Now I am leaving you AV having grown tired of wiping your spittle off the back side of my screen.
If one listens long enough to this version then the character of the ‘B side’ becomes evident answering the question I posed under another more recent article. I did not find this particular video until today.
Look more closely at the backside of your screen, Lionel. That’s not “spittle”, but flecks of mandibular diarrhea. I suggest using rubber gloves and a strong disinfectant when you clean your screen. No telling what The Drunk is infected with, considering all the denier bullshit he has devoured over the years.
I too am getting tired of The Drunk. One of the cardinal rules of the police I worked with in the school business was “Never argue with A Drunk”, and the few of us who have tried to conduct a discussion with Adrian have proven that to ourselves several times over.
I don’t think I will have much to say to Adrian until he answers my question about Moore’s huge error.
You two make a perfect pair: Why don’t you get a room?
Even a casual reader of your ravings realizes you have no reason or right to call me a “drunk.” I could well be a Mormon or a Muslim, for all you know, and prohibited from even touching alcohol. You are both raving in ways that suggest something is wrong with you. Alcohol? Could be, but I would not be so foolish to make an accusation without evidence. It is that characteristic you bring to this issue and discussion that dashes everything you say. You are your own worst enemies and probably behave that way in life; going off half-cocked all the time.
That you cannot understand the concept of a “trace gas” and the absorption spectrum keeps you and the ill-informed liberal public at the mercy of a corrupt elected ruling class that wants to tax carbon as it is responsible for 80% of all our energy, the key to our economy. If they can pull this off they will make CO2 a very expensive industrial waste and my patents make me an instant billionaire. Is that what is bother you? That you cannot understand that I take pride in being a patriot and do not want to see my country ruined for my children, and theirs, even though I can leave them enough money to live very well. I do not want them to live in a dark age dominated by idiots like the two of you.
Lionel and I most assuredly WOULD enjoy each other’s company—-we could laugh ourselves silly telling “Adrian stories” over a meal or some drinks in a pub. Since we both understand climate science (you don’t), we could fruitfully talk about that as well. Should Lionel ever visit Washington , DC, I hope he will let me know so we can get together.
Your utter cluelessness has now given us fodder for yet another Adrian story. Do you know the meaning of “metaphor”, Adrian?. You most certainly are a “drunk”, but that does not mean that alcohol has ever passed your lips. (And I shudder at how incoherent you would become if you ever DID suffer from actual alcohol intoxication)
Even a casual reader of this thread realizes that I have EVERY reason and right to call you a metaphorical “drunk.” You are truly “drunk” on your narcissism—your egomania, grandiosity, and your delusions of superiority—and that truth led me to the word play in Adrian-Adrunk-ADrunk-The Drunk—it was just too hard to resist. The whole “drunk” thing is just me messing with your head, Adrian, but your head is too messed up for you to understand that.
And please stop cutting and pasting that tired old paragraph to end your demented rants.. It is soooooooooo booooooooring——ZZZZZzzzz……!!!!
Generally, the one who leaves the ring is the defeated. Your arguments have been vapid. Your language “junior high school.” You have not dealt with the issue of “trace gas,” which what every atmospheric authority classifies the place of CO2 in the atmosphere. You lost.
Generally, the moron wearing the Demented Rooster suit and crowing in the barnyard about his imagined victory is actually the one who is “defeated”. But one has to be other than clueless to understand that, and The Drunk is perhaps the most clueless denier to ever visit Crock.
The only reason that we will “leave the ring” is that we will have become exhausted and bored beyond belief by The Drunk. I too am just about ready to abandon this thread and leave Adrian to his delusions. Not until he answers my question about why Moore’s statement is wrong, though. I want to give him one last chance to prove that he is/was the world’s greatest science teacher.
So let’s get to it , ADrunk—-You want to “win” and be the last fool standing in the ruins of your comments? Give us a satisfactory answer to my question. I HAVE given you hints.
I have given you a detailed, astronomically correct analysis on why Moore’s statement is clearly correct. Earth has had warmer periods than now without any help from man as these periods happened eons ago.
You and Lionel know nothing, have no credentials, publications of any kind, awards, radio and TV credits, films, books, publications in ten national magazines from SEVENTEEN to The Smithsonian with every photo magazine from here to the UK, where I was given an award and an honor no other American has earned.
You refuse to learn what “trace” means in meteorological publications and references. You refuse to see that the corrupt elected ruling class sees this as a great opportunity for more money they can steal. I have not only developed systems that will create a carbon economy to save America should they win, but make me a billionaire in that case and devised a strategy that gives me patents in perpetuity that I can activate when the electeds win, you lose and I win. You are too stupid to see what most of the readers here understand and are shocked to learn. But again:
You are both profoundly ill people; mentally ill and in need of psychiatry. Seek it.
You cite your “past accomplishments”, Adrian, but fail to recognize that you are now a has-been and a loser, that your only accomplishment now is to be a deluded and demented village idiot that provides comic relief for those of us who watch your antics and listen to your phractured physics. Why do you spend ANY time here on Crock at all whn you have billions to count, awards to polish, and books to sell? (Regarding that last, I feel safe in saying that NO ONE who visits Crock will ever pay one penny for ANYTHING with your name on it)
You mindlessly blather on about “trace gas” in spite of the large numbers of Crock commenters who have provided you with the real science behind CO2 and global warming. You are plainly and simply a crank and a crackpot, Adrian. You prove that by ONCE AGAIN pasting in a paragraph that is a melange of right-wing BS, self-aggrandizement, and self-delusion.
You have BY NO MEANS “given me a detailed, astronomically correct analysis on why Moore’s statement is clearly correct”. The reason he is wrong has NOTHING to do with astronomy—-it’s all here right on the planet and always has been—and a handful of bullshit sentences are by no means “detailed” anyway. You’re a charlatan and a poseur, Adrian. You know little about climate science beyond the “talking points” you repeat endlessly, and I’m giving you just one last chance to answer the question about Moore’s error. My final hints—look at the words “climate”, “weather”, and “changing since the beginning”.
Enjoy your fooldom while I count my money and bless my offspring, and theirs, with wealth a la Joseph Kennedy hoping that I can turn them into reasonable people not spoiled by money as happened to the Kennedy clan.
For you to deny the Medieval Warming and the five warm periods documented in the Vostok Ice Core Studies as well as Chinese records that correlate with the Medieval Warming and that Earth had warm periods in the last 1.5 billion years while life was developing is to deny the evidence of coal and petroleum deposits north of the Arctic Circle where both prove their were much warmer times before and during the early days of man. From where do you think the Anwar oil came from? Lots of green plants grew there for many years to make all that oil.
To deny the meaning of “trace gas” or the appropriateness of the Le Chatelier equation over Clausius-Clapeyron, which is only about the three states of matter for water in the range Earth temperatures and has nothing to do with atmospheric temperatures, but is in Calculus and impresses the ladies at the garden club luncheon where Le Chatelier would educate correctly and in a way anyone can understand by reading my book “Vapor Tiger,” on sale at Amazon.com is to turn to ignorance for solace as you know in your heart that you are wrong. Continue to applaud Democrats who steal you blind, sentence you to misery and you continue to swallow it. I tried.
Ah! So you reckon Joseph ‘Democracy is Finished in Britain’ Kennedy do you! He who had a daughter lobotomised. Maybe you have had similar treatment – would explain allot. Check out Kennedy’s career, chancer and unlikely to be humanity’s best shot at sustainable living.
That is another ‘jerk’ mark against you. I have rarely felt such disgust for a troll such as you have turned out to be, with your evasion of caerbannog666’s challenge you turned yourself into more of a joke. BTW you have been the subject of counter-trolling which brought your true nastiness to the surface.
Joe Kennedy is a big hero to your kind: He enabled a dynasty of real scoundrels with “Baston” accents that only the likes of John F. Kerry could emulate badly.
I continue to be amazed that so many people could be so easily fooled when the proof of what I am saying is in one equation I could teach to anyone, including a lady’s garden club or service club members and do very simply in my book “Vapor Tiger” on sale at Amazon.com.
All you fools have no credentials, publications, radio and TV shows, books, films, awards, patents or credits of any kind. I do and you only have invectives, curses and socially unacceptable language, nothing original, intelligent or even coherent much of the time. I feel like I am at a zoo feeding the animals.
“Explain to you why Moore’s statement is wrong?” It we are talking about the same thing he is right, have you slipped that far? Moore’s presentation was excellent. What “statement” are you alluding to?
No Adrian, Moore’s presentation was not “excellent” but just a snow job for those who are ignorant of science, he is dead wrong, and your “forgetting” is a convenient evasion of the need to answer the question and show us how smart you are.
Here’s the statement that Moore makes within the first seconds of that video.
“The climate has been constantly changing since the Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago”.
It’s wrong—why don’t you simply admit that you don’t know why and ask me to explain it to you? Continuing to insist that it’s correct is as dumb as insisting that the sky is green (with purple stripes).
If you are saying that Earth’s climate has been stable for 4.6 billion years you are wrong and a nutcase at the starting line.
In the beginning the planet formed from odd lumps of space rocks eventually forming a sphere. As gravity compacted all the rocks those at the center fused (melted) and gases boiled out. The heavier elements settled to the center and among them were the heavier trans uranium series that were decaying and producing energy in the process. Eventually we had a very large molten ball and then an asteroid crashed into it and the moon was ejected to fall into an orbit that causes us to zig-zag on our oblate orbit around the sun. At some point we tilted to what is now 23.5 degrees out-of-orbital plane that varies in a 44,000 year cycle.
Our atmosphere formed from gases emitted from the cooling rock and initially had 12% CO2, but after a few billion years the first cell formed out of the soup that would become our seas. The one cell divided to two and that process continued, with variation until rudimentary plants and animals were formed in the seas.
For billion years the seas were like pea soup, filled with algae and protista. Dying algae fell to the sea floors and became petroleum. Every known oil field was a sea bed. Is every sea bed and oil field? I say yes and per the Woodwell Earth Carbon Inventory (Scientific American, January 1978 issue), we have a 10,000 year supply of petroleum that can be recovered by robot mining equipment and all very high quality crude!
If you read “The Gaia Hypothesis” by James Lovelock, and give it serious consideration, you will come to the conclusion that it is man’s destiny to burn stuff and replenish the atmospheric CO2 for the sake of green plants. Since the recent increase from 280 ppm to 390 ppm, the corn and orange harvests are up 35% which tracks well with the current 39% increase. The truth of the matter is that the atmosphere of Earth needs CO2 and we need to burn more stuff.
No Adrian, I am most decidedly NOT saying that Earth’s climate has been stable for 4.6 billion years. What’s wrong with Moore’s sloppily thrown off assertion that “The climate has been constantly changing since the Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago” is that the Earth HAS NOT HAD a “climate” for but a small portion of that 4.6 billion years.
Ignoring the often egregious and childish errors of science and math in your little “two minute lesson” on Earth history (and Gish Gallop of irrelevant bullshit), you have mostly gotten the bigger picture but totally missed the point, in spite of my giving you clues like “weather”.
(One egregious error that can’t be ignored is your contention that “anyone who reads “The Gaia Hypothesis” will come to the conclusion that it is man’s destiny to burn stuff and replenish the atmospheric CO2 for the sake of green plants”. That may be the most stunningly wacky thing you have ever posted on Crock. Lord love a thousand ducks!!!!)
I won’t waste time on a detailed explanation because you neither comprehend nor TRY to comprehend what we tell you. Simply stated, “climate”, which is the long-term “weather” pattern, did not exist until there was an atmosphere and an ocean. I would also contend that “climate” and “weather” are human constructs, and that plants and animals don’t “think” about them the way we do—they merely respond—hibernate, migrate, shed leaves, etc.—-so the idea of “changing climate” may in fact be only a few thousand years old at most.
Moore would have been correct if he had said “CONDITIONS have been constantly changing since the Earth was formed”, but he, like you, is just a spreader of sloppy denialist bullshit and hopes no one will notice his error.
So, ADrunk, Lionel and I appear to be the last two Crockers wasting our time with you and we have decided to cut you loose. You will now be alone on this thread. You may now proceed to show the world just how sick (and what a complete asshole) you are by strutting around and crowing about how you have “won” the argument. Take the last word, you moron, and prove our point once again.
Not correct: We have not had good ways to examine the climate until green plants developed. Green plants have very specific temperature ranges and their records have been the way we have studied climates in antiquity.
The Medieval Warming that had wine grapes in cultivation all the way to Scotland are the key to documenting that period around the world as we have both written and earth strata records of what was growing where and when.
When fern fossils were found in northern Canada, Alaska and Finland we knew that Earth had been much warmer in the centuries they were growing in those locations, but the presence of coal and oil deposits pretty well tell the story.
To be sure, we had a rapidly changing climate for first 1.1 billion years, but no way to document it. That is the problem and you have only further exposed your ignorance with vituperous postings revealing your anti-social, defective personalities. You are incapable of handling a controversial issue in a civil manner.
Your childish, petulant postings tell us of your immaturity, or defective intellect and that you addressed me as “Adrunk” is just the cherry on the Sundae of your childish ravings. Never forget that if you are successful you will make me very wealthy and you can die of envy seeing me on the Forbes list. So go back to your scruffy little house and life, Dumboldguy.
Rip Van Vance wakes up from his drunken stupor and gives us some childish petulant raving. Booooooooorrrrriiiiiinggg! ZZZZZZzzzzzz…….!!!!
DoG Once again we have evidence that AV is completely devoid of comprehension skills and cannot grasp the context of arguments, indeed he seems to enjoy inverting same. He provides more evidence for this with this from a subsequent post:
At this point I really think it is time to give up arguing with one who consistently acts like an idiot.
Ignorance is forgiveable but failure to overcome that ignorance is a mark of stupidity which could be described by wilful ignorance and characteristic of one suffering from cognitive dissonance. The psychology part of a degree course I completed awhile back tells me all is not right in AV land WRT personality traits.
“At this point I really think it is time to give up arguing with one who consistently acts like an idiot.”
You are correct, except that in Adrian’s case it’s not acting, he IS an idiot. The Drunk has served his purposes here, but he DOES appear to be a completely hopeless case. I will give him the answer to the asked-many-times question that he is unable to answer and then move into DNFTT mode with him. Will see you on other Crock threads that are not dominated by a sicko like The Drunk.
Pick up any book on the subject of Earth’s climate over time or just take a look at the Vostok Ice core studies that cover the last 450,000 years an there you will see five ice ages. The fossilized plants found all over the planet show very well there have been periods when Earth was much warmer. How do you explain the coal and oil deposits north of the Arctic Circle?
I know you people want to say that Earth was perfect before man came along and screwed it up by burning fossil fuel, but of the 166 gigatons of new CO2 produced on Earth every year all but six gigatons are made by the decomposition of limestone which was put down when the areas where they are found were sea beds. The process is continuing now and in the eons to come, as the continents continue to move and expose areas that were once under sea water and are subjected to rain the process will continue. Man only makes 3.6% of all the CO2 produced and where it is a trace gas in the atmosphere, but used by plants and absorbed by the water that covers 71% of our planet, the process continues.
CO2 plays a very minor role in our atmosphere, but not our economy. That is the problem. The elected ruling class see it a great source of political power and money they can steal. It is just that simple.
Please do not put words in my mouth: Before the era of green plants the geophysicists believe the CO2 concentration was 12%, 120,000 ppm, and it was the algae in the seas that took it down to make the oxygen which is now 18% with a major fraction having come from CO2. The algae, on dying, formed petroleum now found in the ancient sea beds we now call oil fields.
The George Woodwell “Carbon Inventory” article in the January 1978 “Scientific American” had a conclusion that an enormous amount of that formerly atmospheric carbon is in the sea beds as petroleum. Now…
If you think CO2 is so great at atmospheric heating then shouldn’t the pre-Cambrian, pre-3,000,000 BC Earth been like Venus? Or at least hot enough to leave some sign of it. No such evidence exists to my knowledge.
If Ruddiman actually wrote: “Changes of this boundary condition can have huge effects on the burying or release of large deposits of carbon in the form of methane clathrates at tectonic boundaries.” Then he truly knows nothing of physical science as methane is a very poor absorber of IR from sunlight and the amount that would be displaced from earth movements over time would be microscopic as the motion is virtually undetectable, i.e. very slow and not of the kind that would release a gas that is classified as “transparent” in every reference where it is noted. Ruddman is another partisan in search of yet another, bigger grant. That is how academia works.
You and your more insulting friend have both denied that orbital variations, precession, the moon-sun dynamic, etc. have anything to do with climate when the literature is full of articles and papers saying otherwise. See: The Malinkovich Cycle which summarizes these effects into a single factor.
If you do the math on most of this stuff you will find guys like Ruddman are alarmists trying to develop something, get a grant, etc. I got sucked into this business in 1972 when I was hired by Doubleday & Co. to authenticate a set of scripts for a filmstrip series entitled “Energy Now” wherein the two guys who had written them, who were both “greenies” and Harvard Professors, said that the then planned 1,000 new nuclear power stations would turn America into a steam bath with all the water vapor from the cooling towers. I did the math, saw no problem, wrote a paper and sent it to the three top names in the field who agreed and I have been involved ever since. The problem seems to be that the numbers are so big many people do not understand them, or cannot handle scientific notation, or are grant seekers, or have a political power lean.
Repeating nonsense bought and paid for by an elected ruling class that only wants to put you down to the point when they arrive you fall to your knees, bowing to the point of putting your head on the ground while yelling, “We are not worthy! We are not worthy!” is not advancing the issue.
Telling me I should “interface” with the work is pretentious, phony and not impressive to one who has far greater credentials, publications, accomplishments and awards, certifications and Fellowships where you have none. Note that I never play such games and am famous for putting things in terms that everyone can understand and use. That has made millions for me. It is called sincerity and you do not have a minim of it.
I have written ten features for SKIN DIVER and one was turned into a chapter in the US Navy Seals Operations Manual and I have been thanked for it many times. I extracted a usable method for entering and leaving the sea in heavy, dangerous surf zones from Richard Bascom’s “Waves and the Sea,” again illuminating it for all rather than hiding it in mumbo-jumbo to impress people. I long ago recognized that many people in science and engineering are very phony about what they do and have secrets, which is very anti Scientific Method as it requires your best efforts to explain, not confuse, lie and exploit.
AV complains:
I did not.
AV then writes this:
I never implied that Ruddiman wrote that in quote marks which followed.
AV then lies with:
But we have not and I have explicitly mentioned that in replies.
Discussing anything with you is like trying to nail jelly (aka Jell-O) to the wall but it has been fun exposing you for what you are – a ridiculous bragging poseur. Stephen Lewandowsky would have a field day with your level of conspiracy ideation.
Now this really is good by from me. Click!
You, sir, are a fool.
It is not bragging if you have done it. Everything I have had to note here to deal with you fools is accurate and a matter of public record. See worldcat.org and input my name to the search routine and get ready to read 598 listings and that is only 2/3rds of it. All professionally done for the largest, most picky publishers on the planet. The did not publish my magazine articles for ten national and international publishers, nor my audio recordings, radio and TV work or book illustrations for other authors.
Any clear minded person reading this long list of stuff will clearly you and “dumboldguy” are blithering idiots trying to play “scientific intellectual” without the tools, preparation and no accomplishments. Go ahead believe the politicians and sellout scientists, pay those taxes while I clean up with my inventions. The butts i have been trying to save include yours so you hate me for that? What fools.