Senate Report: Gore Lies, Media Biased, Advocates Misrepresent

[Zkribbler]

So...Lord Mockton is admitting the only way ExxonMobile can get scientists to say there is no global warming is to pay them??

Hey, pay me enough and I'll argue that there's no global warmng, that the Earth is flat, and that I've danced to Elvis's rock-and-roll aboard his pink flying saucer.

[Jack_www]

Originally posted by Ned
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Lord Monckton, Viscount of Brenchley, has sent an open letter to Senators Rockefeller (D-WV) and Snowe (R-Maine) in response to their recent open letter telling the CEO of ExxonMobil to cease funding climate-skeptic scientists. (http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061212_monckton.pdf).

Lord Monckton, former policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, writes: "You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to 'senior elected and appointed government officials' who disagree with your opinion."

In what The Charleston (WV) Daily Mail has called "an intemperate attempt to squelch debate with a hint of political consequences," Senators Rockefeller and Snowe released an open letter dated October 30 to ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, insisting he end Exxon's funding of a "climate change denial campaign." The Senators labeled scientists with whom they disagree as "deniers," a term usually directed at "Holocaust deniers." Some voices on the political left have called for the arrest and prosecution of skeptical scientists. The British Foreign Secretary has said skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and must be denied access to the media.

Responds Lord Monckton, "Sceptics and those who have the courage to support them are actually helpful in getting the science right. They do not, as you improperly suggest, 'obfuscate' the issue: they assist in clarifying it by challenging weaknesses in the 'consensus' argument and they compel necessary corrections ... "

Lord Monckton's Churchillian reproof continues, "You acknowledge the effectiveness of the climate sceptics. In so doing, you pay a compliment to the courage of those free-thinking scientists who continue to research climate change independently despite the likelihood of refusal of publication in journals that have taken preconceived positions; the hate mail and vilification from ignorant environmentalists; and the threat of loss of tenure in institutions of learning which no longer make any pretence to uphold or cherish academic freedom."

...

Concludes Lord Monckton, "I challenge you to withdraw or resign because your letter is the latest in what appears to be an internationally-coordinated series of maladroit and malevolent attempts to silence the voices of scientists and others who have sound grounds, rooted firmly in the peer- reviewed scientific literature, to question what you would have us believe is the unanimous agreement of scientists worldwide that global warming will lead to what you excitedly but unjustifiably call 'disastrous' and 'calamitous' consequences."

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/1...18.DCM029.html

This is a very bad day when etheir side of the debate in Gobal Warming tries to scilence the other side. We live in the free world, where freedom of speech and free exchange of ideas is one of the things that makes it so great.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
So...Lord Mockton is admitting the only way ExxonMobile can get scientists to say there is no global warming is to pay them??

Hey, pay me enough and I'll argue that there's no global warmng, that the Earth is flat, and that I've danced to Elvis's rock-and-roll aboard his pink flying saucer.

I don't think he admits any such thing. In fact quite the opposite.

"You acknowledge the effectiveness of the climate sceptics. In so doing, you pay a compliment to the courage of those free-thinking scientists who continue to research climate change independently despite the likelihood of refusal of publication in journals that have taken preconceived positions; the hate mail and vilification from ignorant environmentalists; and the threat of loss of tenure in institutions of learning which no longer make any pretence to uphold or cherish academic freedom."

He pretty much says these scientists that express such views are true to the spirit and intent of science and do so for science sake not because of lucrative teh evil oil contraks even at risk of great professional peril.

OTOH you cold probably read into what he is saying that those craving professional success are incented via tenure and easy publishing hurdles to adopt 'consensus' views.

[Zkribbler]

I don't think he admits any such thing. In fact quite the opposite.

Shoot, a meant to put a "" after my assertion that Monckton was admitting that ExxonMobile could only get scientists to say there was no global warming by paying them to say so.

Reading between the lines of Monckton's letter, it appears the Senators are concerned that Exxon's funding of scientists with a anti-global-warming bias skews the outcome of any research they do, thus muddying the water of the debate.

Monckton then accuses the Senators of trying to silence the anti-global-warming side of the debate. However, nothing indicates that the Senators are trying to end any research that isn't bought-and-paid-for by the oil companies.

Thus, my flippant observation that Monchton was "admitting" that research had to be bought and paid for by oil companies for it to show that global warming isn't a problem.

[Odin]

Looks like winter has been officially canceled in the Alps...

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2081644.ecehttp://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2081644.ece

Climate change: So where has all the snow gone?

With trees bursting into bud and ski runs looking like spring meadows, the Alpine winter appears to have been cancelled
By Geoffrey Lean
Published: 17 December 2006

Midwinter's day may not fall until later this week, but spring already seems to have come to the roof of Europe.

Holiday-makers turning up in the Alps for their annual dose of winter sports are being met by green meadows, not white pistes. Competitors in the skiing World Cup used to be being swaddled in thermals and Lycra, are instead lounging around in T-shirts as their races are cancelled for lack of snow.

Daisies have been poking though the grass at Austria's St Anton resort. Azure Alpine gentians are blossoming even 3,300ft up, while spring forsythia are giving the valleys an unprecedented splash of colour. And over in the French Alps, fruit trees are already coming into bud.

Right across Europe's highest mountain chain, says the World Meteorological Organisation, only a third as much snow as usual has fallen so far this winter. Temperatures are up to three degrees centigrade higher than normal, and in some resorts the weather is so warm that even artificial snowmaking machines will not work.

Hotels throughout the Alps are underbooked; the Italian hoteliers' association reckons that the lack of snow has so far cost its members £400m this year. World Cup races have already been cancelled or rescheduled in France's Val d'Isere and Megève and Switzerland's St Moritz, and one was only able to go ahead in Hochfilzen, in Austria, after local people trucked in 15,000 cubic metres of snow from Grossglockner, the country's highest peak, to create a thin white run through otherwise green pastures.

Local people and tourist officials are doing their best to remain optimistic. "I am certainly not getting nervous," says Wilma Himmelfreundpointer, the deputy director of tourism in St Anton. And 81-year-old Madeleine Villard, in Motte-d'Aveillans, France, adds: "The onions have more layers of skin, which are also thicker, and that means it is going to get really cold." Certainly, a fresh dusting of snow did sprinkle the mountains last week.

But those wishing to consult the authentic harbinger of Alpine spring will find little consolation. Standing on the Promenade de la Treille in Geneva's old town, it is neatly marked with a plaque declaring it to be the city's "official" chestnut tree.

Every spring since 1818, a special city official has watched the tree (and two of its predecessors) to spot when it puts out its first bud, and solemnly record the date on a special noticeboard in the town hall. It usually falls some time in March, though it has at times crept forward into February. But this year, for the first time ever, the tree burst into bloom in late October - and is still sporting flowers and leaves. Winter appears, officially, to have been cancelled.

Human oracles are no more reassuring. Last week the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that the Alps are "particularly sensitive" to global warming, and have recently been heating up three times as fast as the world as a whole. It said there would be "even greater changes in the coming decades, with less snow at low altitudes and receding glaciers and melting permafrost higher up".

A two-year study, which the organisation is due to bring out in February, will conclude that at present 609 of the 666 medium to large Alpine ski resorts have adequate snow cover for at least 100 days a year - but that these could drop to just 200 if temperatures rise by four degrees centigrade. This is something that, according to some experts, could happen by 2050, on the worst-case scenario (see graphic above).

Germany would be the worst affected, with just a one degree rise - which the experts say could happen by 2020 - leading to a 60 per cent drop in resorts with reliable snow. In fact, the Alps abound with signs that climate change is already well under way. In the 15 years running up to the turn of the millennium, they lost nearly a quarter of the area taken up by glaciers. And more than another five per cent melted in the blistering summer of 2003 alone. Average snow levels are half what they were 40 years ago.

As the ice that glues them together has melted, huge masses of rock have started detaching themselves from mountains like the Eiger, and whole cliff faces have disintegrated. And the ever-canny Swiss banks have started refusing to lend to ski resorts less than 4,500ft up in the mountains.

But it is not just the Alps that are sweltering in this warmest of winters. Friday was the hottest winter day ever recorded in Moscow at 8.6 degrees centigrade - as opposed to the usual minus four degrees - and the temperature in the Russian capital is expected to climb even higher over the next few days.

Jaguars have ventured out of their warm lairs in Moscow zoo to enjoy the balmy weather, and bears have refused to hibernate. Buds are sprouting on the trees and spring flowers such as violets and coltsfoot are blossoming. The Russian state weather centre says it is refusing to freeze "even beyond the Arctic circle".

In Sweden, where bears are also failing to turn in for the winter, the gingerbread houses that families traditionally make for Christmas are collapsing as the damp, warm weather melts the icing that is traditionally used to stick them together. "The problem is the mild winter," says Aake Mattsson of Anna's, the country's leading gingerbread wholesaler.

Normally frozen golf courses are still playable in Scandinavia, butterflies have been seen on the wing in Denmark, heather is flowering in Poland, pavement cafés are doing a roaring trade in Rome, and people were still sunbathing and swimming on Spanish beaches in November.

And in Britain, bathed in warm southern and southwesterly winds, a bumper raspberry crop was harvested in Northumberland at the end of November, blackbirds are hatching broods in Sussex, and bunches of black grapes are gracing a wild vine in Essex.

Back in the Alps, resorts are beginning to wonder how they will keep their 160 million skier-days of tourist business a year in a warmer world. Some have built spas; others are offering winter hiking packages. And some experts are beginning to predict that one day the winter sport season could move to summer, using roller skis.

In other news it got to 40F today in Fargo, it was up near 50F a few days ago. There is no snow on the ground except for a few patches is shady spots. This is FARGO we are talking about, whe're supposed to be knee-deep in the white stuff and be having -30F wind chills by now. It's almost Christmas and it feels like October.

[Ned]

No comment on this?

"I challenge you to withdraw or resign because your letter is the latest in what appears to be an internationally-coordinated series of maladroit and malevolent attempts to silence the voices of scientists and others who have sound grounds, rooted firmly in the peer- reviewed scientific literature, to question what you would have us believe is the unanimous agreement of scientists worldwide that global warming will lead to what you excitedly but unjustifiably call 'disastrous' and 'calamitous' consequences."

[Zkribbler]

I commented on it.

I said it looked to me as if the Senators were trying to end Exxon's practice of hiring experts to lie.

[Ned]

That might be their opinion. But the point is Lord M. said that there seems to be an internationally coordinated attempt to silence the skeptics.

Conspiracy?

Truth?

What is your opinion?

[Jack_www]

Originally posted by Odin

In other news it got to 40F today in Fargo, it was up near 50F a few days ago. There is no snow on the ground except for a few patches is shady spots. This is FARGO we are talking about, whe're supposed to be knee-deep in the white stuff and be having -30F wind chills by now. It's almost Christmas and it feels like October.

On the opposite side of things, for California standards it is getting really cold. in the high desert it is in the mid 20s and here where I live it is 40s at night. I think it is one of the coldest winter on record for us here.

[Gatekeeper]

Originally posted by Ned
That might be their opinion. But the point is Lord M. said that there seems to be an internationally coordinated attempt to silence the skeptics.

Conspiracy?

Truth?

What is your opinion?

My opinion, Ned? Well, OK: The next time "Coast to Coast with George Noory/Art Bell" has open lines, give 'em a call. They dig conspiracy theories.

Gatekeeper

[Ned]

Gatekeeper, so, in your opinion, a bunch of green-freak, commie types talking to each other, blogging and whatever, about shutting up the skeptics by cutting off their funding is totally beyond conception, in the land of the tin foil hat crowd?

[Ned]

"Greenpeace, with the assistance of the web monkeys who developed www.theyrule.net, has developed a site that shows the links between Exxon money and some of the loudest climate sceptics being quoted in the media: www.exxonsecrets.org

The website includes dossiers and fact sheets for each organization and person with a description, history, staff bios, quotes, deeds and hidden affiliations.

Designed as a tool for journalists, researchers, policy makers and anyone who wants to get down to the facts, this freely accessible site can be used to research the links between climate sceptic groups and how much funding they get from ExxonMobil. Searches can be made on organisations and individuals, cross referencing automatically with other groups and individuals. If you thought the Six Degrees of Separation game was fun, have a go at tracing the money trail from the sceptics back to Exxon. It doesn't take long to get there.

Of course you don't have to take our word for it. The site is fully referenced so anyone can cross check our sources - existing websites and downloadable documents, Exxon annual reports and other publicly available materials.

The next time you read a story in the press or on line that says climate change is all smoke and mirrors, visit www.exxonsecrets.org and search for the organisation or person being quoted. There's a good chance that ExxonMobil is paying for their microphone.

Take action!

Don't buy ExxonMobil. Don't buy Esso.

Expose the money: If you find articles that quote groups or individuals denying or dismissing the concept of global warming, visit www.exxonsecrets.org and do a search on that organisation or person. If you get a match, you´ll see in the "info" section just how much money ExxonMobil has paid that group. Post your findings at the cybercentre"

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/exxon-secrets

[Ned]

Here's an interesting bit from a Cato Inst. fellow

"Losing It
By Patrick J. Michaels
Published 12/11/2006 12:06:51 AM


What's behind the shameless demagoguery and character assassination being heaped on climate change "deniers"? What's behind the chilling calls for "Nuremberg trials" for dissenting scientists? Why has the green rhetoric escalated to lynch-mob proportions?

"A certain shock treatment is needed," says James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, to the New York Review of Books, "but it would best be delivered with a two-by-four as a solid whack to the head of politicians who remain oblivious to fundamental physical facts."

British writer George Monbiot is even more severe. "[E]very time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned."

History is repetitious. Most of the people being shouted down aren't even guilty as charged. Almost every scientist I know will tell you that the planet is warmer than it was, and that the burning of fossil fuel has certainly contributed to the warming of recent decades.

The science is pretty simple. For a variety of physical reasons, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide should disproportionately warm the winter (which it has), as well as continental regions in the mid-to-high latitudes (which it has, with the exception of Antarctica), and cool the global stratosphere (which it has). Hard to deny.

What's bugging the mob isn't "denial" at all -- that's just a catchy label designed for maximum smear impact -- it's the implications of what has been observed.

It's easy to show that the warming of the last three decades presages a very modest warming for the technologically foreseeable future, and that no policy will do anything to alter the warming trajectory we are on enough to measure its effect in a lifetime.

Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent developing a host of computer models to study how climate changes as carbon dioxide concentrations increase. The problem is, not surprisingly, that different models produce different rates of warming. But, in ensemble, the models have an interesting behavior: they indicate that once human warming is established by increasing greenhouse gases, the warming tends to take place at a constant rate.

As there is a "wisdom of crowds," there is also a "wisdom of models." It's been known for years that a collection of weather forecasting models tends to do better over time than any individual model. The same should apply to climate models, and to their collective behavior, which is a constant-rate warming.

So all one has to do is establish a greenhouse warming, and then demonstrate that indeed it has been constant since it started in the mid-1970s (which it has been, at 0.18 degrees Centigrade per decade), and you know the rate of future warming. Unless, of course, all that modeling work is just dead wrong. And that's the truth that has people so exercised.

In fact, the merging of observed and modeled warming forces the conclusion that 21st-century warming will be near the low end of a much larger range (from 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Centigrade) projected by the United Nations in its 2001 compendium on climate change.

Then there's the problem of what to "do" about this warming. In fact, we have been "doing" something all along: adapting to it. Consider what's going on in North American cities. They warm up, with or without global warming, thanks to all their concrete and blacktop. As cities have warmed in recent decades, heat-related mortality has dropped significantly. Why? Because heat waves became common, and people learned how to live with them. Our hottest cities have the lowest numbers of heat-related deaths. The only major city in which they are increasing is chilly Seattle, and, as it continues to warm, mortality will drop.

Aren't we just moving heat-related death to more northern cities with global warming? No. The world tends to run out of cities north of 60 degrees of latitude. It's not an accident that almost all of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border.

For the sake of argument, though, assume that all the urban warming resulted from greenhouse-gas changes. What could have been done about it? The answer is simple: nothing. There are no known technologies that would have significantly altered their temperature trajectories.

Nor will such technology exist for the foreseeable future. Sure, governments can "encourage" us to buy hybrid cars. But the beaters we trade in simply move down the economic chain. Net emissions rise.

There also isn't any viable legal instrument that will significantly alter the rate of warming. The Kyoto Protocol, which is pretty much moribund, would reduce surface warming by 0.07 degrees Centigrade every fifty years, an amount too small to measure. Kyoto failed because, by and large, no nation could meet its modest emission reduction targets.

That's what's being denied by those who call everyone they disagree with "deniers." Here are the hard facts: Unless you stipulate that the behavior of all those climate models is wrong, you are forced to conclude that future warming will be modest and there really isn't anything you can do about it. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge this is in denial, which, of course, explains the frustration and hyperbole of the mob, now calling for assault and murder.

Where, incidentally, is the outrage?"

http://www.spectator.org/util/print.asp?art_id=10739

[Gatekeeper]

Originally posted by Ned
Gatekeeper, so, in your opinion, a bunch of green-freak, commie types talking to each other, blogging and whatever, about shutting up the skeptics by cutting off their funding is totally beyond conception, in the land of the tin foil hat crowd?

They can talk all they want, it isn't going to happen. Think about it for a second. In a world where folks who use the Internet have just been declared Time's "Person of the Year," don't you think it'd be a bit hard to "silence" someone or cut off their funding without a big brouhaha, especially in the Western democracies?

Anyway, I've made up my mind: Global warming is real, but it *isn't* strictly caused by humans. It's a natural process, but with more than 6 billion of us on this world, doing our thing, we, too, are contributing to it. It's real, its impact is starting to be felt, and we probably need to do something to at least moderate our contribution to the natural cycle because, I'm sure, the planet has a natural ability to "balance" itself out if we do our part.

Gatekeeper

[Pekka]

OK let me voice some reason to this thing.

What's wrong with Global Warming? The same damn thing that's wrong with ID, creationism, Darwin, gay marriages.. that is, they are made political issues.

The problem is the left and the right. You guys are both the problem. Period.

About global warming, yes, there are some wild advocates of it, and some of them are arrogant, are not ready to listen reasoned arguments to debate the issue.

Some of the right wing deniers are the same. They declare, that all they want is a debate. When they get one, the only thing they argue is that global warming does not exist, because it doesn't, because climate goes in cycles, because I didn't bother to ready one single study, but global warming does not exist, because my political opponents claim it does.

A lot of these important issues, like global warming, is totally destroyed in the battle field of left vs right in the political spectrum.

Hey, even if global warming doesn't exist, it makes sense to be more responsible for the environment we live in. First off, it's where we live, I don't **** on my floors where I live, I hope you don't do that either. Second of all, we are leaving this place to our kids, so it would be nice if we didn't **** it up for them.

When you debate this iwth a right winger (stereotypical), all you get is blahblah this is only because oyu want to hurt the rich, you don't want the oil industry to prosper, I mean what EVER it is, it's always about politics, not about clean environment.

The leftist side then comes with their fists raised, that yeah, we want this thing done, we want it done so, that it's unrealistic. Some of the wild ideas about how to actually do this thing are so far fetched, that it's just impossible.

So there is no real agreement, it's politics, nothing is done. Even if GW doesn't exist, it's still a good idea to do something about the environment, but let's not go over the board with that one either. This is a sensible, reasonable approach, but it seems to not be the way to go. People rather go to their political trenches and idiotize each other to death.