We have always wondered how the climate trolls do it. Matt Nisbett points to the Denial Industrial complex which is busy funding the best and dumbest of trolldom. Tim Lambert identified the Lake Denial Echo Chamber where blather is amplified. Sure enough, came one BernardBlythe swimming up the Ethernet to mate with the comment section. Eli, with thanks to Crooked Timber has discovered the School of Denial Final Exam. (somewhat modified from the original by Bill Pollard and Soran Reader). All the best trolls have to pass this test before they are transmongrified into electrons and whizzed onto the INTERTUBES.
If you are ready to take the test, read below.
- Patch together some things you have read on blogs, in no particular order
- It is well known that all complex problems have simple, but wrong answers. Provide examples but explain in detail how YOUR wrong answers are right.
- Create an impression of original thought by impassioned scribbling (your answer may be ungrammatical. Extra points if the post is all CAPS).
- Does the answer to this question depend on your personal political or theological beliefs? Explain how this makes everyone else an atheist communist eco-Nazi.
- How much irrelevant scientific background can you give before addressing this question? Extra points for including references to papers that say exactly the opposite of what you claim
- Describe the consensus view of climate change and your personal view are simply two equal sides of the argument, then say what you personally feel. When it is pointed out that there is no reason to listen to you say that the atheist communists eco-Nazis hate freedom.
- Rise above the fumbling efforts of others and speculate freely on why climate is changing (it's pirates!).
- Either (a) Answer this question by announcing that it really means something different (and much easier to answer, see question 1) or (b) Give the same answer you gave in your 50 previous comments in the same thread. This is very easy using copy and post.
- Protest your convictions in the teeth of obvious and overwhelming objections.
- Insult the blog owner and then whine that you got banned.
Posts
29 comments:
I think you missed one:
Mention that "Scientists are not always right, even Einstein was wrong" -- and that you have proved it.
Rabbit, I could swear I've heard your graduating classes mumble about what you teach them.
Rather than gases 101 they describe the class as “ How to Pump Gas” 101
Is that true? Come on fess up.
I love it.
And another one (Horatio touched on it):
Always present your evidence as “proof.”
Arch Stanton
In response to a thorough fisking always remember to retrench and fire back the same spent ammunition you used before, e.g. "Well, that's all very nice and scientific-sounding, but..."[restate previous arguments].
billygoat gruff
MarkeyMouse says:
Item 4 applies to yourself and most of the Warmers.
Also, Lambert just censors anyone who disagrees with him, same as RealHalfWit, and Closed Mind.
Rabbett to his credit, doesn't seem to.
from stewart:
Never bother to provide evidence why all those who disagree are governed by some belief - it's enough to assert that green atheist commo eco-nazi scientists just want to do this, and that all scientists are part of this group.
Oh, and sorry about your recent outbreak of trolls - they seem particularly nnoyed at sites that emphasize data, for some reason.
Yep Rabbett, gave myself a tick with all those, troll I must be then. Funny thing is, old Dano, little Stevie Bloom and even your good self Rabbett can each tick the same points as I and for the same reasons as I. I'd say the same about all you anons, but you all look the same to me.
But the ice Rabbett, the ice- the world has not come to an end yet.
JohnS
Markey, Eli IS a warm and fuzzy Rabett, and Ms. Rabett agrees. The others have to take care of themselves.
JohnS:
Ah yes, the ice...
The ice area is precisely where it was at this time last year...
can you say "on track to at least tie with last year's record low"?
funny how ice "recovery" only occurs in the winter, isn't it john?
You forgot, "Point out that there are extremists on both sides of the issue, and that's why we need calm, reasoned thinking on the matter."
Then launch into some half baked argument. Can I get and Honest Broker?!
Mus musculus anonymouse
Also,
Never ever admit that you are wrong, even in the face of the most grotesque errors of fact. The heat generated from enraged opponents will power your obfuscation screens for a week.
Hell, all Eli wants is hot water to cook the carrots in
You forgot: "Compare yourself (or anyone who agrees with you) to Galileo (bonus points: claim that "the consensus used to be that the earth was flat")"; "Assert that Global Warming is a religion led by Saint Al Gore (bonus points: compare carbon credits to indulgences)" and "Say Al 'fat Al' Gore is fat".
JohnS, I must say that admitting you're an idiot and then accusing others of same could be the least effective debating tactic ever.
Don't ever change, though.
Claims of a "global warming" "consensus" continue to melt away.
Senator James Inhofe
(notice the use of scare quotes around the word consensus.)
((notice that the scare quotes around the words global warming may be outdated, as the fact that the globe is warming is now accepted, but notice that continued use of scare quotes may further enhance cred amongst skeptics))
(((notice the use of the clever "melt away" inside joke amongst skeptics. notice, dammit!!!)))
Love it, love it. You guys are all cards.
China and India, what is it, a new coal fired power station a week. Kyoto a wonderful con by those eurocrats.
Hey com'on truth here, you're all a bunch of 21 year olds with your IQ the same number as your age, playing with Prof Rabett's computer. Waiting till you get into the real world and start churning out those gases that you currently have so many problems with.
Ah. you're all funny guys! And I'm the troll? Ay ya killin me!
JohnS
Thank you for the age guess. Wrong as usual, but nice to think about
JohnS is just bitter because his "THEORY OF SEA ICE RECOVERY" (soon to be published E&E) is being falsified at this very moment.
"JohnS THEORY OF SEA ICE RECOVERY" When sea ice area increases in winter, it means sea ice is "recovering" to historic levels.
PS Thickness don't mean squat.
QED
Okay, that was fun, now let's try it the other way around.
Thanks Bob B. from Solar Cycle 24.
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Never acknowledges the indispensable role of fossil fuels in alleviating hunger and poverty, extending human life spans, and democratizing consumer goods, literacy, leisure, and personal mobility.
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Never acknowledges the environmental, health, and economic benefits of climatic warmth and the ongoing rise in the air's carbon dioxide (CO2) content.
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Never acknowledges the major role of natural variability in shrinking the snows of Kilimanjaro and other mountain glaciers.
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Never mentions the 1976 regime shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a natural ocean cycle, which is a major cause of recent climate change in Alaska.
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Presents a graph tracking CO2 levels and global temperatures during the past 650,000 years, but never mentions the most significant point: Global temperatures were warmer than the present during each of the past four interglacial periods, even though CO2 levels were lower.
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Never confronts a key implication of its assumption that climate is highly sensitive to CO2 emissions - that absent said emissions, global climate would be rapidly deteriorating into another ice age.
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Neglects to mention that, due to the growth of urban heat islands, U.S. cities and towns will continually break temperature records, with or without help from global warming.
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Neglects to mention that global warming could reduce the severity of winter storms - also called frontal storms because their energy comes from colliding air masses (fronts) - by decreasing the temperature differential between colliding air masses.
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Highlights London's construction of the Thames River flood barrier as evidence of global warming-induced sea-level rise, but does not mention that London is sinking two to six times faster than global sea levels are rising.
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Ignores the large role of natural variability in Arctic climate, never mentioning either that Arctic temperatures during the 1930s equaled or exceeded those of the late 20th century, or that the Arctic during the early- to mid-Holocene was significantly warmer than it is today.
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Cites a study that found that the number of recorded wildfires in North America has increased in recent decades, but not the same study's finding that the total area burned decreased by 90 percent since the 1930s.
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Fosters the impression that global warming can only be good for bad things (algae, ticks) and bad for good things (polar bears, migratory birds) - depicting nature as a morality play.
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Cites a study by Isabella Velicogna and John Wahr, of the University of Colorado, that found an overall loss in Antarctic ice mass during 2002-2005, but ignores a study by University of Missouri professor Curt Davis and colleagues that found an overall ice mass gain during 1992-2003. Three years worth of data is too short to tell anything about a trend in a system as vast and complex as Antarctica.
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Cites a recent study by John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey that found a 0.5#65456; Celsius (C) to 0.7#65456;C per decade wintertime warming trend in the mid-troposphere above Antarctica, as measured by weather balloons, but fails to mention that the same study found much less warming - about 0.15#65456;C per decade - at the Antarctic surface, or that NASA satellites, which also measure troposphere temperatures, show an Antarctic cooling trend of 0.12#65456;C per decade since November 1978.
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Misanthropically sees "success" not in the fossil fuel energy-based civilization that has enabled mankind to increase its numbers more than six-fold since the dawn of the industrial revolution, but in the recent reduction of global population growth rates.
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Compares Haiti - which suffers from deforestation - unfavorably with neighboring Dominican Republic - which enjoys lush forest cover - to illustrate the impact of politics on the environment, but ignores another key implication of the comparison: Poverty is the environment's number one enemy.
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Notes that "much forest destruction" and "almost 30%" of annual CO2 emissions come from "the burning of brushland for subsistence agriculture and wood fires used for cooking," but never considers whether fossil fuel energy restrictions would set back developing countries both economically and environmentally, by leading to more such burning.
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Neglects to mention the circumstances that make it reasonable rather than blameworthy for America to be the biggest CO2 emitter: the world's largest economy, high per capita incomes, abundant energy resources, markets integrated across continental distances, and the world's most mobile population.
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Impugns the motives of so-called global warming skeptics but never acknowledges the special-interest motivations of those whose research grants, direct-mail income, industrial policy privileges, regulatory power, prosecutorial plunder, or political careers depend on keeping the public in a state of fear about global warming.
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Castigates former White House official Phil Cooney for editing U.S. government climate change policy documents, without ever considering the scientific merit of Cooney's decisions to delete certain passages as "speculative."
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Waxes enthusiastic about cellulosic ethanol, a product with no commercial application despite 30 years of government-funded research, and neglects to mention that corn-based ethanol, a product in commercial use for a century, is still more costly than regular gasoline despite oil prices exceeding $70 a barrel.
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Misrepresents the major auto companies' position in their lawsuit to overturn California's CO2 emissions law by neglecting to mention that CO2 standards are de facto fuel economy standards and that federal law prohibits states from regulating fuel economy.
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Blames Detroit's financial troubles on the Big Three's high-volume production of sport utility vehicles, even though U.S. automakers probably would not exist today had they been "ahead of their time" and pushed hybrids during the 1990s, contrary to consumer demand. AIT says nothing about the biggest cause of Detroit's falling capitalization - unaffordable payments for employee benefit packages negotiated decades ago.
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Touts Denmark's wind farms without mentioning any of the well-known drawbacks of wind power: cost, intermittency, avian mortality, site depletion, and scenic degradation.
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Never addresses the obvious criticism that the Kyoto Protocol is all pain for no gain and that any policies far-reaching enough to noticeably slow warming would be a "cure" worse than the alleged disease.
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Claims a study by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala of Princeton University shows that "affordable" technologies could reduce U.S. carbon emissions below 1970 levels even though the authors specifically note that their study does not estimate costs. AIT also neglects to mention that Socolow and Pacala's study is a response to a 2002 study by Martin Hoffert of New York University and 17 other energy experts who concluded that, "CO2 is a combustion product vital to how civilization is powered; it cannot be regulated away."
Coal
MISLEADING
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Implies that a two-page photograph of Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina shows that the glacier is melting away, even though the glacier's terminal boundary has not changed in 90 years.
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Implies that, during the past 650,000 years, changes in carbon dioxide levels preceded and largely caused changes in global temperature, whereas the causality mostly runs the other way, with CO2 changes trailing global temperature changes by hundreds to thousands of years.
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Belittles as ideologically motivated the painstaking and now widely-accepted methodological critiques by Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph in Ontario and Steve McIntyre of the Hockey Stick reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere climate history.
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Cites increases in insurance payments to victims of hurricanes, floods, drought, tornadoes, wildfires, and other natural disasters as evidence of a global warming-ravaged planet, even though the increases are chiefly due to socioeconomic factors such as population growth and development in high-risk coastal areas and cities.
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Distracts readers from the main hurricane problem facing the United States: the ever-growing concentration of population and wealth in vulnerable coastal regions, which is partly a consequence of federal flood insurance and other political subsidies.
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Ignores the societal factors - such as poverty - that typically overwhelm climatic factors in determining people's risk of damage or death from hurricanes, floods, drought, tornadoes, wildfires, and disease.
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Implies that the 2006 tropical cyclone season in Australia was unusually active and, thus, symptomatic of global warming. In contrast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) describes the season as "near average."
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Re-labels as "major floods," a category defined by physical magnitude, a chart of "damaging floods," a category defined by socioeconomic and political criteria.
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Re-labels as "major wildfires," a category defined by physical magnitude, a chart of "recorded wildfires," a category reflecting changes in data collection and reporting, such as increases in the frequency and scope of satellite monitoring.
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Conflates the Thermohaline Circulation (THC), a convective system primarily driven by differences in salinity and sea temperatures, with the Gulf Stream, a wind-driven system energized primarily by the Earth's spin and the lunar tides, exaggerating the risk of a big chill in Europe from a weakening of the THC.
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Presents a graph showing the number of annual closings of the Thames River tidal barriers from 1930 to the present, even though the modern barrier system was completed in 1982 and became operational in 1984. This apples-to-oranges comparison conveys the false impression that London faced no serious flood risk until recent decades.
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Blames global warming for the decline "since the 1960s" of the emperor penguin population in Antarctica, implying that the penguins are in peril, their numbers dwindling as the world warms. In fact, the population declined in the 1970s and has been stable since the late 1980s.
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Implies that a study finding that none of 928 science articles - actually abstracts - denied a CO2-global warming link, shows that Gore's apocalyptic view of global warming is the "consensus" view among scientists.
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Reports that 48 Nobel Prize-winning scientists accused President Bush of distorting science, without mentioning that the scientists acted as members of a "527" political advocacy group set up to promote John Kerry's 2004 campaign for president.
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Implies that the United States is an environmental laggard because China has adopted more stringent fuel economy standards, glossing over China's horrendous air quality problems.
Northern Ice 2005 (blue area)
EXAGGERATED
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Exaggerates the certainty and hypes the importance of the alleged link between global warming and the frequency and severity of tropical storms.
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Hypes the importance of NOAA running out of names (21 per year) for Atlantic hurricanes in 2005, and the fact that some storms continued into December. The practice of naming storms only goes back to 1953, and hurricane detection capabilities have improved dramatically since the 1950s, so the "record" number of named storms in 2005 may be an artifact of the resulting data. Also, Atlantic hurricanes continued into December in several previous years including 1878, 1887, and 1888.
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Never explains why anyone should be alarmed about the current Arctic warming, considering that our stone-age ancestors survived - and likely benefited from - the much stronger and longer Arctic warming known as the Holocene Climate Optimum.
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Portrays the cracking of the Ward Hunt ice shelf in 2002 as a portent of doom, even though the shelf was merely a remnant of a much larger Arctic ice formation that had already lost 90 percent of its area during 1906-1982.
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Claims that polar bears "have been drowning in significant numbers," but this is based on a single report that found four drowned polar bears in one month in one year, following an abrupt storm.
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Claims that global warming is creating "ecological niches" for "invasive alien species," never mentioning other, more important factors such as increases in trade, tourism, and urban heat islands. For example, due to population growth, Berlin warmed twice as much during 1886-1898 as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates the entire world warmed during the 20th century.
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Blames global warming for pine beetle infestations that likely have more to do with increased forest density and plain old mismanagement.
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Presents a graph suggesting that China's new fuel economy standards are almost 30 percent more stringent than the current U.S. standards. In fact, the Chinese standards are only about 5 percent more stringent.
Northern Ice 2030 (blue area)
SPECULATIVE
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Warns of impending water shortages in Asia due to global warming but does not check whether there is any correlation between global warming and Eurasian snow cover (there isn't). If Tibetan glaciers were to melt, that should increase water availability in the coming decades.
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Claims that CO2 concentrations in the Holocene never rose above 300 parts per million (ppm) in pre-industrial times, and that the current level - 380 ppm - is "way above" the range of natural variability. Proxy data (leaf stoma frequency) indicate that, in the early Holocene, CO2 levels exceeded 330 ppm for centuries and reached 348 ppm.
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Claims that a Scripps Oceanography Institute study shows that ocean temperatures during the past 40 years are "way above the range of natural variability." Proxy data indicate that the Atlantic Ocean off the West Coast of Africa was warmer than present during the Medieval Warm Period.
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Blames global warming for the record number of typhoons hitting Japan in 2004. Local meteorological conditions, not average global temperatures, determine the trajectory of particular storms, and data going back to 1950 show no correlation between North Pacific storm activity and global temperatures.
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Blames global warming for the record-breaking 37-inch downpour in Mumbai, India on July 26, 2005, even though there has been no trend in Mumbai rainfall for the month of July in 45 years.
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Blames global warming for recent floods in China's Sichuan and Shandong provinces, even though far more damaging floods struck those areas in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
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Blames global warming for the disappearance of Lake Chad, a phenomenon more likely stemming from a combination of regional climate variability and societal factors like population increase and overgrazing.
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Claims that global warming is drying out soils all over the world, whereas pan evaporation studies (which measure the rate of evaporation from open pans of water) indicate that, in general, the Earth's surface is becoming wetter.
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Presents one climate model's projection of increased U.S. drought as authoritative even though another leading model forecasts increased wetness. Climate model hydrology forecasts on regional scales are notoriously unreliable. Most of the United States, outside the Southwest, became wetter during 1925-2003.
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Blames global warming for the severe drought that hit the Amazon in 2005. However, RealClimate.Org, a web site set up to debunk global warming "skeptics," concluded that it is not possible to link the drought to global warming.
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Warns of a positive feedback whereby carbon-induced warming melts tundra, releasing more CO2 locked up in frozen soils. An alternative scenario is also plausible: The range of carbon-storing vegetation expands as tundra thaws.
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Claims that global warming endangers polar bears even though polar bear populations are increasing in Arctic areas where it is warming and declining in Arctic areas where it is cooling.
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Blames global warming for Alaska's "drunken trees" - trees rooted in previously frozen tundra, which sway in all directions as the ice melts - ignoring the possibly large role of the 1976 PDO shift.
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Blames rising CO2 levels for recent declines in Arctic sea ice, ignoring the potentially large role of natural variability. AIT never mentions that wind pattern shifts may account for much of the observed changes in sea ice, or that the Canadian Arctic Archipelago had considerably less sea ice during the early Holocene.
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Warns that meltwater from Greenland could disrupt the Atlantic thermohaline circulation based on research indicating that a major disruption occurred 8,200 years ago when a giant ice dam burst in North America, allowing two lakes to drain rapidly into the sea. AIT does not mention that the lakes injected more than 100,000 cubic kilometers of freshwater into the sea, whereas Greenland ice melt contributes only a few hundred cubic kilometers a year.
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Warns that global warming is destroying coral reefs, even though today's main reef builders evolved and thrived during periods substantially warmer than the present.
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Warns that a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels to 560 ppm will so acidify seawater that all optimal areas for coral reef construction will disappear by 2050. This is not plausible. Coral calcification rates have increased as ocean temperatures and CO2 levels have risen, and today's main reef builders evolved and thrived during the Mesozoic Period, when atmospheric CO2 levels hovered above 1,000 ppm for 150 million years and exceeded 2,000 ppm for several million years.
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Links global warming to toxic algae bloom outbreaks in the Baltic Sea that can be entirely explained by record-high phosphorus levels, record-low nitrogen-to-phosphorus levels, and local meteorological conditions.
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Asserts without evidence that global warming is causing more tick-borne disease (TBD). A 2004 study by Oxford University professor Sarah Randolph found no relationship between climate change and TBD in Europe.
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Blames global warming for the resurgence of malaria in Kenya, even though several studies have found no climate link and attribute the problem to decreased spraying of homes with DDT, anti-malarial drug resistance, and incompetent public health programs.
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Insinuates that global warming is a factor in the emergence of some 30 "new" diseases over the last three decades, but cites no supporting research or evidence.
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Blames global warming for the decline "since the 1960s" of the emperor penguin population in Antarctica based on a speculative assessment by two researchers that warm sea temperatures in the 1970s reduced the birds' main food source. An equally plausible explanation is that Antarctic ecotourism, which became popular in the 1970s, disturbed the rookeries.
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Warns of "significant and alarming structural changes" in the submarine base of West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), but does not tell us what those changes are or why they are "significant and alarming." The melting and retreat of the WAIS "grounding line" has been going on since the early Holocene. At the rate of retreat observed in the late 1990s, the WAIS should disappear in about 7,000 years.
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Warns that vertical water tunnels ("moulins") are lubricating the Greenland Ice Sheet, increasing the risk that it will "slide" into the sea. Summertime glacier flow acceleration associated with moulins is tiny. Moulins in numbers equal to or surpassing those observed today probably occurred in the first half of the 20th century, when Greenland was as warm as or warmer than the past decade, with no major loss of grounded ice.
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Presents 10 pages of before-and-after "photographs" showing what 20 feet of sea level rise would do to the world's major coastal communities. There is no credible evidence of an impending collapse of the great ice sheets. We do have fairly good data on ice mass balance changes and their effects on sea level. NASA scientist Jay Zwally and colleagues found a combined Greenland/Antarctica ice-loss-sea-level-rise equivalent of 0.05 mm per year during 1992-2002. At that rate, it would take a full millennium to raise sea level by just 5 cm.
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Forecasts an increase in U.S. renewable energy production during 1990-2030 more than twice that projected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Northern Ice 2095 (none left)
WRONG
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Claims that glaciologist Lonnie Thompson's reconstruction of climate history proves the Medieval Warm Period was "tiny" compared to the warming observed in recent decades. It doesn't. Four of Thompson's six ice cores indicate the Medieval Warm Period was as warm as or warmer than any recent decade.
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Calls carbon dioxide the "most important greenhouse gas." Water vapor is the leading contributor to the greenhouse effect.
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Claims that Venus is too hot and Mars too cold to support life due to differences in atmospheric CO2 concentrations (they are nearly identical), rather than differences in atmospheric densities and distances from the Sun (both huge).
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Claims that scientists have validated the "hockey stick" reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperature history, according to which the 1990s were likely the warmest decade of the past millennium and 1998 the warmest year. It is now widely acknowledged that the hockey stick was built on a flawed methodology and inappropriate data. Scientists continue to debate whether the Medieval Warm period was warmer than recent decades.
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Assumes that CO2 levels are increasing at roughly 1 percent annually. The actual rate is half that.
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Assumes a linear relationship between CO2 levels and global temperatures, whereas the actual CO2-warming effect is logarithmic, meaning that the next 100-ppm increase in CO2 levels adds only half as much heat as the previous 100-ppm increase.
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Claims that the rate of global warming is accelerating, whereas the rate has been constant for the past 30 years - roughly 0.17#65456;C per decade.
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Blames global warming for Europe's killer heat wave of 2003 - an event caused by an atmospheric circulation anomaly.
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Blames global warming for Hurricane Catarina, the first South Atlantic hurricane on record, which struck Brazil in 2004. Catarina formed not because the South Atlantic was unusually warm (sea temperatures were cooler than normal), but because the air was so much colder it produced the same kind of heat flux from the ocean that fuels hurricanes in warmer waters.
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Claims that 2004 set an all-time record for the number of tornadoes in the United States. Tornado frequency has not increased; rather, the detection of smaller tornadoes has increased. If we consider the tornadoes that have been detectable for many decades (category F-3 or greater), there actually has been a downward trend since 1950.
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Blames global warming for a "mass extinction crisis" that is not, in fact, occurring.
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Blames global warming for the rapid coast-to-coast spread of the West Nile virus. North America contains nearly all the climate types in the world - from hot, dry deserts to boreal forests to frigid tundra - a range that dwarfs any small alteration in temperature or precipitation that may be related to atmospheric CO2 levels. The virus could not have spread so far so fast if it were climate-sensitive.
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Cites Tuvalu, Polynesia, as a place where rising sea levels force residents to evacuate their homes. In reality, sea levels at Tuvalu fell during the latter half of the 20th century and even during the 1990s, allegedly the warmest decade of the millennium.
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Claims that sea level rise could be many times larger and more rapid "depending on the choices we make or do not make now" concerning global warming. Not so. The most aggressive choice America could make now would be to join Europe in implementing the Kyoto Protocol. Assuming the science underpinning Kyoto is correct, the treaty would avert only 1 cm of sea level rise by 2050 and 2.5 cm by 2100.
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Accuses ExxonMobil of running a "disinformation campaign" designed to "reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact," even though two clicks of the mouse reveal that ExxonMobil acknowledges global warming as a fact.
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Claims that President Bush hired Phil Cooney to "be in charge" of White House environmental policy. This must be a surprise to White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chairman James Connaughton, who hired Cooney and was his boss at the CEQ.
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Claims that the European Union's emission trading system (ETS) is working "effectively." In fact, the ETS is not reducing emissions, will transfer an estimated #65443;1.5 billion from British firms to competitors in countries with weaker controls, has enabled oil companies to profit at the expense of hospitals and schools, and has been an administrative nightmare for small firms.
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Claims U.S. firms won't be able to sell American-made cars in China because Chinese fuel-economy standards are stricter, even though many U.S.-made cars meet the Chinese standards.
I think Tim Lambert had the right idea:
Since Tilo Reber's comments always seem to take discussion off topic, all further comments from Tilo should be posted to this thread as well as any replies to any comment by Tilo.
Either that or the guy should get his own blog (where he can repeat the denialist talking points all day long to his hearts content)
The really pathetic part is that Tilo can not even put together his own arguments -- or even a single sentence of his own, for that matter (unless you consider "Thanks Bob B." a sentence, that is)
He has to cut and paste in someone else's.
Was that twanging back then the sound of a nerve being touched?
Hi, first post here. I've already posted this at Deltoid but I thought I might be able to format it better here. I have made up nothing in what follows, just summarised the claims/beliefs I've seen.
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How To Be A Global Warming Sceptic
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You might wonder if you should be a Global Warming Sceptic and I thought it might be useful to show you how easy it is.
Just choose any combination of the following beliefs.
Don't worry if you choose the "wrong" ones to start with: you can change any time and as often as you like.
Don't worry if your choices contradict one another or any that you had previously.
If any of your claims are shown to be false or irrelevant, don't apologise or even admit it: just move onto another one!
Go back to ones previously discredited whenever you like.
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Global Warming is a creation of the media and they keep ramming it down our throats.
Global Warming is just a scare tactic thought up by governments to make us use less coal and oil.
Governments don't really believe it or they would ban thirsty cars.
Belief in GW is a religion with fanatical followers. It is almost impossible to reason with them.
The high priest of GW is Al Gore. He is a failed presidential candidate trying to make a name for himself after his failure in politics. He's a hypocrite because he's got a huge energy-guzzling house so we can't trust anything he says.
Anyone who believes in GW is an enviro-fascist who hates freedom and hates America. Most of all, they hate the freedom that the car has given to so many.
GW believers claim that the scientific consensus is on their side but science is not about consensus. It's the evidence that matters and it only takes one person to disprove a theory.
Anyone who doesn't believe in the GW consensus is a heretic. Heretics are usually right in the end. Just look at Galileo and Darwin..
Over 31,000 people with science degrees have signed a petition refuting the so-called GW consensus. This shows where the real consensus lies.
Hundreds of climate scientists have doubts about the science of GW. When lists of them are made public, some complain that they didn't agree to be on the list but this just shows that they are afraid of losing their jobs because they would lose favour with the GW priesthood.
In the 1970s climate scientists said that we were heading into an Ice Age. Why should we believe them now?
Weather forecasters can't predict the weather a week in advance so how can anyone predict the climate 10, 20, or 50 years ahead?
Eco-fascists have killed more people than Hitler. They banned DDT, causing tens of millions to die of malaria. Now they intend to cause the deaths of many more millions by denying them cheap energy. Anyone who denies this is like a holocaust denier.
GW is a conspiracy created by the left-green elite to tax and control us all.
Climate scientists are part of this conspiracy. They all know one other so they can get away with this quite easily.
The scientists invented the GW theory so they can keep getting research grants.
A few climate scientists produced a graph called the Hockey Stick to scare us all, but they were shown to have used the data incorrectly so we can say that the stick is broken.
Other scientists, and especially the national bodies such as the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, are part of the conspiracy.
Most scientists are honest. The real conspiracy is in the IPCC, which distorts and misrepresents their work for ideological reasons. There is no real scientific consensus.
Climate models are just a collection of formulae tweaked to produce results that are close to measurements.
Climate models might be based on physics but it's all so uncertain that the results are meaningless.
It's not getting warmer at all. The figures and graphs produced by the climate scientists are all doctored and can't be trusted.
The figures don't need to be doctored: lots of weather stations are unreliable and in any case the Urban Heat Island effect corrupts the data. Garbage in, garbage out.
The figures show that warming has levelled off so it can't have been caused by CO2. It hasn't been any warmer than in 1998 despite continued increases of CO2.
Many places have had the coldest winter for 50 years so obviously GW can't be happening.
There is no such thing as average global temperature. It's a meaningless concept.
Average global temperature dropped by 0.7 deg. C during 2007 so we can see that GW has stopped and we can now expect global cooling.
It has got warmer but it's nothing to do with us. It's all to do with natural cycles.
It was much warmer millions of years ago and we weren't around then so how can we be the cause now?
The Medieval Warm Period was at least as warm as it is now. The Vikings colonised Greenland and grapes were grown in Britain.
Mars has been getting warmer too, so it must be something outside the Earth.
It's electrical heating caused by the solar wind interacting with the Earth's magnetic field.
It's caused by increases in the sun's output.
It's all to do with sunspots. Or cosmic rays.
The so-called greenhouse gases don't cause warming. It's a lie told by the scientists. What really happens is that the temperature rises first and the CO2 follows.
It can't be caused by greenhouse gases because they are only a minute part of the atmosphere and can't have much effect.
Cows produce more greenhouse gas than anything we do.
CO2 is measured on Mauna Loa, an active volcano that spews out CO2, so how can the measurements be accurate?
Volcanoes produce more CO2 each year than all the factories and cars and planes and other sources of man-made carbon dioxide put together so how can we make any difference?
Even if GW is happening and it's mainly caused by CO2 increases, doing something about it will cost far more and cause far more hardship than dealing with the results of increased temperatures.
Greenhouse gases are the cause and global warming is a good thing. More CO2 means that plants will grow faster and who likes being cold? We should increase CO2 output!
GW is happening but we have no idea if it will be a good or bad thing. We should just wait and see.
GW is happening and it's mainly our fault but we can't do anything about it anyway. Even if we cut our emissions, China and India will more than make up the difference.
Eli is depressed.
Since the terms denier/denial/denialist are deliberately used to compare sceptics to Holocaust deniers I hereby invoke Godwin's Law & declare the whole argument about catastrophic warming over.
We won.
It may have helped our cause that temperature is currently cooling.
Neil, you are merely silly. You lose.
Create an impression of original thought by impassioned scribbling (your answer may be ungrammatical. Extra points if the post is all CAPS).
Better by far to use a PRNG or a d6 to generate a series of (psuedo-) random numbers, one for each word. If the number is a 1, 2, or 3, the word remains lower case. On a 4, capitalize only the first letter of the word. On a 5, capitalize all letters of the word. On a 6, choose a single letter at random to capitalize.
YOu wIn
Eli,
What is depressing you? That it so easy to be a climate troll/GWSceptic?
All you need is to lack any real scepticism whilst having no awareness of the continuous doublethink that inhabits your brain.
It helps enormously to be *somewhat* right-wing too.
;)
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