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The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

smithsonianmag.com

241–250 of 276 posts

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#241
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say that because of technology. Name another species that can create its own energy, create new materials and cure diseases.

We create our own energy? How? Ever heard of Thermodynamics?

This is where we’re feeling the real harm of fossil fuels, I think. We quickly moved from traditional energy levels to astronomically more energy just by burning oil and coal. We can lug around freight with relatively small amounts of fuel. We could do even more astronomical feats with nuclear fission, but introduced the technology to ourselves by blowing up two of our cities. So it’s associated with mass death meanwhile the death associated with pollution and fossil fuels are less visible.

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#242
post #203
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all life, humans are probably the most adaptable.

Why do people keep saying this? We're around only for a couple million years if you count australopithecus. And during that time there were possibly several periods with less than 100k individuals. Going from 7B to 100k would be pretty close to extinction. 0.00143% The question is can we keep industrial scale food production going? Can we get people enough clean water?

People also aren’t adaptable to the ocean rising above their nation and swallowing their land below the oceans waves. The projected effects from each degree c of change are not linear. But the IPCC report assumed linear effects - 1% gdp per degree c change, according to a talk someone else posted. That’s highly unlikely. At one projection the earth may only be able to carry 1 billion people but be projected to have a gdp only 4-8% lower than today. Any economist worth their salt should be able to tell you that losing 6/7ths of humanity is going to shrink the global economy by something way, way higher. It probably doesn’t even make quite the same relevance to discuss global gdp in that world.

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#243

I'm given to understand that climate denialism is more-or-less confined to the USA, can anyone shed some light on that?

Absolutely not. Here in the Netherlands it's rampant.

Interesting. The resurgence of "local idiot" nationalism has led to virulent anti-expertise in general and anti-environmentalism in particular in Poland, East Germany, arguably France ... what is denialism like in the Netherlands?

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's ridiculous about a scientific consensus? It's a trend in the publication of scientific facts. Show me a better way of unearthing what the data is showing than extrapolating from publications of hundreds of independent research. Especially when you follow it with a steam of unfounded speculations.

Science is not determined by consensus. It's determined by fact. If 100% of scientists paid for by a government declare what the government wants to hear as "fact", it does not become fact. Especially if it's based on arbitrary models that have been shown wrong. In the 1970s the "scientific consensus" was about global cooling, now it's about global warming, and Al Gore promised that Manhattan would be submerged under…

So why have the government's scientists not changed their tune in 2016? Why were the saying the same things during the Bush years that they said during the Obama years?

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#245
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say that because of technology. Name another species that can create its own energy, create new materials and cure diseases.

We create our own energy? How? Ever heard of Thermodynamics?

Alright, energy sources if you want to be pedantic.

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the time of Galileo, were there extremely powerful corporations whose profits would be boosted by pro-heliocentric and pro-heretical views? Definitely. The State and Church were dominant and depended on a heliocentric view (ie, rule by divine right).

I thought the church supported the geocentric view at that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Inquisition#Galileo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

You are right. I meant geocentricism. Earth as center of the universe was due to God making earth. Church was God on earth. God chose kings.

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that the arguments are ideologically motivated and are not put forth for their own merits.

Of course the arguments are ideologically motivated. Look at the left wing of the climate change movement, which has incorporated all sorts of social justice and primitivism elements into climate change. (Rejecting nuclear power, rejecting market solutions like carbon taxes, emphasizing “indigenous technology,” etc.) Look how the Green New Deal is being pitched as a reincarnation of the labor movement, a jobs program…

> Rejecting nuclear power

Plenty of people reject nuclear power. It's not just "the left wing of the climate change movement". "Until 2012, no U.S. nuclear power plant had been authorized to begin construction since the year before TMI."[1]

> rejecting market solutions like carbon taxes

Who's doing that? I've never heard of this. Is this a universally and deeply held opinion among "the left"? Most people I know are in the "let's do something if it's going to work" boat. The other side isn't even at the "let's do something" point yet.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#Eff...

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's incompatible with their policies and principles, but it is incompatible with their current funding sources (coal, oil, Russia, Saudi) and voting base (old people who will die relatively soon soon). Competition from China and EU showing it's possible and profitable and voters dying out might flip them surprisingly quickly.

China, which has recently added an entire United States worth of new coal emissions?

> Climate change isn't real

> Even if it's real it's not due to humans

> Even if it's due to humans, it'll cost too much to fix

> To fix it cheaply we need nuclear power. Nothing else will do. But no one will allow that, so forget about it.

> And really there's no point because China/India/Nigeria/Brazil

> Countries at higher latitudes might actually be better off in a warmer world. Should we even do anything?

Does that cover everything?

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to distinguish between the scientific base, and activism through a particular political lens. The latter can be hysterical, that doesn’t have any relevance to the former.

Of course it has relevance to the former. Today’s science is highly politicized, and driven by ideology rather than objective observation. What else can be expected in a government-grant-driven system.

> Today’s science is highly politicized, and driven by ideology rather than objective observation.

Are you accusing all cliamte scientists of fraud?

Re: The Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (2013)

#250
STOP! This is a 2013 paper. It is 2019.

Climate change is supported by evidence and we humans are the cause. The situation is worse than we ever imagined. It is an existential crisis, which must be mitigated. If we don't do something major and do it soon, extinction of much of life on earth will be the result. In fact, we may already be too late to be able to take actions to avert collapse.

Climate deniers are irresponsible, distracting, and amoral. They don't seem to understand how science is done and how scientific knowledge is created. They are well funded, apparently by the same cabal of folks that protected tobacco companies and blessed clean coal.

It is true that Global Climate and its various drivers is not well understood, yet we persist in under-funding research. We have too little data, too few people working on the problem, and no organization with global reach and global authority coordinating things, setting rules, and running things. Decisions about mitigation need to be based on rational analysis and not on political, economic, or social grounds. Some decisions and actions will necessarily be unpopular.

I too like what Eric Weinstein said about climate change:

">The fact that we do not have much historical data and good verifiable models to understand how the planet climate behaves under large changes in parameters (CO2 emission, etc.) makes it even more important and urgent to act. We never know at what moment the system will cross the threshold, and damage becomes irreversible, and planet destruction accelerates."

We are already in regimes which are outside historical experience and data, that is, in uncharted territory.

Personally, I think it may all be over and that everything will collapse sometime between 2030 and 2050 while everyone is sitting around denying that there is any problem.

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