Just A Theory wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:The ever increasingly obscure nature of scientific knowledge - the fact that people can't see things with their own eyes, and don't have the mental tools to assess scientific findings. It's a problem of education.

It's also a problem of sponsored obfuscation. While free speech is laudable, on many levels our society is set up to allow those with the deepest pockets to have the loudest voice and reach the most people. Those same deep-pocketed individuals and companies have a vested interest in preserving the status quo in terms of current taxation laws, regulatory laws and public attitudes towards the commons. It makes perfect economic sense for them to oppose the dissemination of climate change facts.

Much of this comes from the incorrect narrative that corporate directors (C level employees) have a legal duty to maximise returns for shareholders. I know of no such legislation anywhere but it is a persistent "zombie" lie that keeps popping up every time one tries to address corporate lobbying. The fiduciary duty of C level employees is entirely phrased in the negative. They must not make material misrepresentations/omissions to investors and they must not commit fraud. Maximising shareholder value is a tool for enabling the company's debt issuance and for maximising C level renumeration - oh wait, I think I've answered my own question...

It was not legislated. It is a legal precedent set in the Dodge brothers vs. Henry Ford case settled by the Michigan supreme court in 1919. Ford wanted all his workers to make a descent living and had a plan for this that included putting profit back into expansion and he paid his employees at least five dollars a day.

My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business. - Henry Ford

The Dodge brothers owned a minority in the company and wanted more dividends payed out. The court decided that the duty of any corporation was to maximize short term profits for stock holders.

Oldskeptic wrote:
It was not legislated.

I knew that. I was just more commenting that there is a persistent narrative that it has been legislated.

It is a legal precedent set in the Dodge brothers vs. Henry Ford case settled by the Michigan supreme court in 1919. Ford wanted all his workers to make a descent living and had a plan for this that included putting profit back into expansion and he paid his employees at least five dollars a day.

My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business. - Henry Ford

The Dodge brothers owned a minority in the company and wanted more dividends payed out. The court decided that the duty of any corporation was to maximize short term profits for stock holders.

I didn't know this, thanks

A favorite misconception we've been confronted with on the forum with quite a few times: "Climate science predicted an ice age in the 70's".

A review of the research and articles at the time says otherwise: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10. ... BAMS2370.1

Peterson, C., Connolley, M. & Fleck, J. (2008). The myth of the 1970s global cooling scientific consensus. American Meteorological Society.

JB has lost just about any respect he might have had by continuing his completely hopeless denial of AGW.
It taints any other "campaigns" he undertakes that are rational based.

If he argued "policy" to deal with AGW and what risks are near term and what risks are long term.....then maybe he would earn some cred back.

Right now he's as blinkered as any anti-evo, anti-vax, wooster. Too bad.

Educational resources

Background/history
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/summary.htm

Carbon cycle
http://wufs.wustl.edu/pathfinder/path20 ... _13_07.htm

The Arctic Yearly report - multi-disciplinary - multi-national
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/

Getting started from the top climate scientists - many links
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... tart-here/

http://tamino.wordpress.com/climate-data-links/

How bad could it be... these are the long term consequences and in my view by the turn of the century we will see a substantial portion of this come true - I do not see us dodging 4 degrees C and we will have altered the climate for even the long term future with no recourse.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said that if the*
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/ ... 1-billion/

Monaco declaration > this one could be the real killer in the long term tho there is some evidence the biome in the ocean is coping to a degree.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7860350.stm

MITs updated assessment - risk assessment done properly.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases... ... 134843.htm


where do I stand??.....in agreement with this

Here is what Gammon had to say concerning links between humans and climate change.

This is like asking, ‘Is the moon round?’ or ‘Does smoking cause cancer?’ We’re at a point now where there is no responsible position stating that humans are not responsible for climate change. That is just not where the science is.…For a long time, for at least five years and probably 10 years, the international scientific community has been very clear.”

In case there is any doubt, Gammon went on:
This is not the balance-of-evidence argument for a civil lawsuit; this is the criminal standard, beyond a reasonable doubt We’ve been there for a long time and I think the media has really not presented that to the public.”

Dr. Richard H. Gammon
Professor of Chemistry and Oceanography*
Adjunct Professor Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington

Links to Climate Change articles...115 pages from mainstream sources..

Here are the links to the threads from the dawkins science forum....all 115 pages of articles from main stream climate and science sources
From Nov 2006 to current

Most current 15 pages
RichardDawkins.net Forum • View topic - Global Climate Change Science News (Pt. 2)
http://beyondyourken.com/phoenix/Pages/74571-1.html

previous thread 100 pages
RichardDawkins.net Forum • View topic - Global Climate Change Science News
http://beyondyourken.com/phoenix/Pages/2184-1.html
••••

and since this is the Deniers thread - the smoking gun that they knew the score and still persisted in funding disinformation.

The Deniers
http://www.skepdic.com/climatedeniers.html

and the fossil fuel companies knew this in the mid 90s..

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

By ANDREW C. REVKINPublished: April 23, 2009

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/scien ... .html?_r=2

johnbrandt wrote:There's an awful lot of grant money around if you put in the right papers...and an awful lot of career suicide if you go against the approved state religion which states the Earth is a steady state system that has always had the same climate and will never change ever again in the future...and if it does it must be mans fault...

Please provide some evidence for these assertions (your claims about grant money and career suicide).

No one is claiming that the earth has always had the same climate, so this is nothing but a lie on your part.

Thank you for that very informative post, Macdoc.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP7x11-PHcI[/youtube]

This is a very interesting article as one of the worlds top climate scientists and communicators eviscerates and examines the entrails of a typical denier bit of garbage circulated in the deniosphere....interesting reading

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... more-13252

Must watch on PBS

Climate of Doubt
FRONTLINE investigates how climate skeptics mobilized, built their argument and undermined public acceptance of a global scientific consensus

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/

snicker of the day link

An Illustrated Bestiary of the Climate Blogworld

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2 ... -bestiary/

I snickered

The denidiots never stop trying to alter the reality.

Meet The Climate Change Denier Who Became The Voice Of Hurricane Sandy On Wikipedia
popsci.com
Ken Mampel, an unemployed, 56-year-old Floridian, is in large part the creator of the massive Hurricane Sandy Wikipedia page.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/articl ... edia-sandy

unemployed and he's the voice of authority on climate now.....these guys are nuts

Mampel: "I don't believe in any of that climate change bullcrap"

Welp, that solves it for me. Let's pack up the science and go home.

Good old BBC has finally decided to come to their senses, and will no longer provide "equal time" to climate deniers.

Predictably, climate deniers all over the echo chamber that is the science denial blogosphere are going apeshit. They are calling this a new [insert retarded denialist idiocy here]-gate scandal.

The real scandal here, if there is one, is that the BBC didn't do this sooner. What could they possibly have to gain by giving science deniers equal time?

Remind me again why the public is so skeptical of the whole thing...? Also remind me why countries like Australia are made out to be so evil because we don't do more for the environment? How about concentrating on making the real polluters change first? Our politicians come out with crap that they honestly believe that if a little country like ours changes it's ways, the big countries will somehow suddenly "come to their senses" and restrict their industry and economy the same way...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=china-greenhouse-gas-emissions-rise-past-us

By 2015, China will emit nearly 50 percent more greenhouse gases than the United States, a top Chinese energy researcher said yesterday.
Ye Qi, a professor of environmental policy at Tsinghua University and director of the Climate Policy Initiative, both in Beijing, said China has made enormous strides over the past five years in both reducing energy intensity and developing renewable energy capacity.
But, he said, China's overall energy use has skyrocketed along with its growth, keeping renewable sources just a sliver of the country's overall share. Meanwhile, he said, China's emissions, which were 20 percent higher than the United States' in 2010, could be as high as 49 percent more by 2015.

There is also the little reported fact that while green groups here who crow loudly that China is shutting down 20-odd old dirty coal fired power stations, they conveniently forget to mention that China is replacing these old ones with over sixty new coal fired stations...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-09/asian-water-scarcity-risked-as-coal-fired-power-embraced.html

Inner Mongolia’s rivers are feeding China’s coal industry, turning grasslands into desert. In India , thousands of farmers have protested diverting water to coal- fired power plants , some committing suicide.
The struggle to control the world’s water is intensifying around energy supply . China and India alone plan to build $720 billion of coal-burning plants in two decades, more than twice today’s total power capacity in the U.S., International Energy Agency data show. Water will be boiled away in the new steam turbines to make electricity and flush coal residue at utilities from China Shenhua Energy Co. (1088) to India’s Tata Power Co. (TPWR) that are favoring coal over nuclear because it’s cheaper.

So...again, I ask...why does Australia have to be under such pressure to change it's ways to somehow save the world when the real big polluters are not required to do anything? I'm always reminded of the cliche of a little kid in the playground surrounded by bigger kids, who are trying to convince him to eat a worm, promising that they will do it as well...as long as he does it first...*snigger*...

As for the BBC decision, I imagine it's comfortable for the faithful to have a news network that decides not to report on such things as this little inconvenient truth and other "denialist" stuff...

There was this though...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19168574

Is Germany's Green Revolution about to turn black with coal dust?
As the country moves away from nuclear, the builders of coal-fired power stations are moving into action.
When Chancellor Merkel announced the closure of all the country's 17 nuclear reactors by 2022, there were loud cheers from environmentalists.
But less well heard were the cheers from the coal industry.
The organisation which represents it in Europe said the change of policy meant "the prospects for coal in general, and especially for coal-fired power plants under construction or in the planning stage, have become somewhat brighter".
Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk, just a river's width away from Germany, was also jubilant.
"From Poland's point of view, this is a good thing not a bad one," he said.
"It means coal-based power will be back on the agenda."

Hey, if you refuse to use nuclear power in an industrialised country, a bit of solar and wind just isn't going to cut it for proper base load reliable power...you need mass power generation, and if nuclear won't do, there's only really one tried and true option...and it's black and hard and comes out of the ground.

Bet the green groups who called for the nuke plants to be shut down didn't see that one coming...

Keeps me in a job anyway...

It's amazing how you can start the post with "remind me again of why the public are skeptical of the whole thing". Which implies you have valid reasons to deny the basic facts of climate change. Then you proceed to rant about one particular tax in one particular country as if it somehow supports your conclusion to deny an entire field of physics. (hint: it doesn't)

We've applied your "china should act first" logic to silly scenarios before and shown it to be worthless logic. And I doubt anyone here who supports an effort to bring down emissions is going to get lectured about who should act/when by someone who would oppose acting on emissions under any circumstances.

I think it 's pretty clear now that the reason you deny climate science is because you are politically motivated. You've come to the right place to discuss your misconceptions, but again you have just ranted on about how one particular tax in one tiny country is somehow a good reason to object valid science.

Don't like the carbon tax? Well don't vote Labor or Liberal because they'll both keep trying to bring down emissions with similar programs. I guess you are left with a choice between the greens, christian democrats or one of those australian tea party movements.

My point is, if controlling emissions is so dramatically vital to stopping climate change, then why concentrate on smaller countries with piddling emissions levels that you know are going to do something anyway, when that something makes a drop in the ocean to total world emissions?

Why not concentrate on the big polluters, as by getting them to cut right back on thier enormous emissions levels, you would actually do something tangible about world pollution levels. This is what gets people skeptical on the whole subject...if carbon emissions are so damaging and are causing climate change, and we know that there are much worse polluters out there than us by many orders of magnitude, why are we the ones who, by changing something or bringing in a tax, are somehow able to change the world climate...?

So - to get this straight - you think that smaller countries should be lobbying larger, more powerful, countries whilst doing nothing themselves? Otherwise they're being hypocritical?


"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." - Edmund Burke

http://www.senseandsustainability.net/2 ... pollution/

In July, China became a surprising leader in climate change policy by announcing plans to put a cap on carbon pollution. In a letter made public last week, China’s political leaders in Beijing requested further progress towards these goals. As Point Carbon reports, China has told seven cities and provinces that will host pilot emissions trading schemes to impose absolute caps on emissions and draw up allocation plans as soon as possible, in a bid to launch the markets in 2013 as planned.

Facing such dire threats, it’s obvious why China has taken action to serve its own interests and help stop global warming. Especially since caps on carbon pollution have consistently been shown (PDF) to have minimal costs (PDF), and more often produce significant (PDF) economic benefits.

http://www.australiasroleintheworld.org ... inability/

China’s efforts to address climate change, including its national investments in clean energy are, in terms of percentage of GDP, three times that of the United States

In terms of who is doing what, it is true that it would be more beneficial to lobby the larger polluters based on volume however that is no reason to not do what we can with our responsibility simultaneously. One might ask of course if we have a responsibility but given our disproportionate consumption of resources per capita it seems a bit redundant.

And I'm more worried about USA's apathy than China's.