Effects of burning fossil fuels:

Status
Not open for further replies.

SuburbanTDI

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2004
Location
Midwest
TDI
Beetle TDI, and two Jetta TDI
nicklockard said:
Urban Myth. Hogwash.
Try not to say things that are patently not true.

You may be able to rewrite history for those that are too young to have lived through it, but millions still walk the earth that had these fears of "cooling" and the new ice age pressed upon them.


Here is the text of Newsweek’s 1975 story on the trend toward global cooling. It may look foolish today, but in fact world temperatures had been falling since about 1940. It was around 1979 that they reversed direction and resumed the general rise that had begun in the 1880s, bringing us today back to around 1940 levels. A PDF of the original is available here.
A fine short history of warming and cooling scares has recently been produced. It is available here. — D.D.

[SIZE=+2]T[/SIZE]here are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”
[SIZE=+2]A[/SIZE] survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”
[SIZE=+2]M[/SIZE]eteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.
“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
 
Last edited:

SuburbanTDI

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2004
Location
Midwest
TDI
Beetle TDI, and two Jetta TDI
Originally Posted by TornadoRed
When the Earth was cooling in the 1960s and 1970s, there were many models that explained why the cooling was expected to continue.





nicklockard said:
Urban Myth. Hogwash.

And just to really ram the point home, and make it crystal clear that you are engaged in fraudulent historical revisionism, here's a snippet from the biggest song from the biggest album of one of the biggest groups of the era:

The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in
Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear era, but I have no fear
’Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river

The Clash
“London Calling,”
released in 1979
Popular culture is nothing if not a reflection of the times that gave it birth.



 
Last edited:

nicklockard

Torque Dorque
Joined
Aug 15, 2004
Location
Arizona
TDI
SOLD 2010 Touareg Tdi w/factory Tow PCKG
:rolleyes: The lyrics warn of nuclear winter, duh:rolleyes:

Who is the original author/scientist of "global cooling" theory? I have yet to see any attribution. How much published data/papers were there on that subject?

Oh yeah, you saw it in Newsweek...it must be valid:rolleyes:

Guess what? I was alive in the 70's and never heard a damn thing about this

U-r-b-a-n
M-y-t-h

If it was such a hot topic and widely known, how come no one ever heard of it till about 2 years ago? The phrase "global cooling" didn't even appear anywhere until recently!

Keep repeating it, but it's a hogwash myth. Hogwash hogwash hogwash, ministry of disinformation.

Sheesh. I hate to copy/paste, but wikipedia really does cover this adequately:

snippet from wikipedia said:
[edit] 1970s Awareness


The temperature record as seen in 1975; compare with the next figure.



Instrumental record of global average temperatures.


Concern peaked in the early 1970s, partly because of the cooling trend then apparent (a cooling period began in 1945, and two decades of a cooling trend suggested a trough had been reached after several decades of warming), and partly because much less was then known about world climate and causes of ice ages. Although there was a cooling trend then, it should be realised that climate scientists were perfectly well aware that predictions based on this trend were not possible - because the trend was poorly studied and not understood (for example see reference[8]). However in the popular press the possibility of cooling was reported generally without the caveats present in the scientific reports.
The term "global cooling" did not become attached to concerns about an impending glacial period until after the term "global warming" was popularized. In the 1970s the compilation of records to produce hemispheric, or global, temperature records had just begun.
A history of the discovery of global warming states that: While neither scientists nor the public could be sure in the 1970s whether the world was warming or cooling, people were increasingly inclined to believe that global climate was on the move, and in no small way.[9]
In 1972 Emiliani warned "Man's activity may either precipitate this new ice age or lead to substantial or even total melting of the ice caps".[10] By 1972 a large majority of a group of leading glacial-epoch experts at a conference agreed that "the natural end of our warm epoch is undoubtedly near";[11] but the volume of Quaternary Research reporting on the meeting said that "the basic conclusion to be drawn from the discussions in this section is that the knowledge necessary for understanding the mechanism of climate change is still lamentably inadequate". Unless there were impacts from future human activity, they thought that serious cooling "must be expected within the next few millennia or even centuries"; but many other scientists doubted these conclusions.[12][13]
So lessee: one or two scientists publish papers on a noted cooling trend, the popular press picks it up and distorts it all out of proportion (but not enough for us average folks to hear of it until 30 some years later apparently), most scientists at that time discount it, a conference on the general subject topic concludes: "we don't know sh|te about the global climate...we really need better studies and data", 35 years later Rush Limpwrist or your favorite minister of disinformation starts spewing garbage about it, you recycle it as if it were fact....

Yup, all the markings of urban mythology. This topic and the debunking of this rehashed lame-O myth your ministers of disinformation keep trotting out has been covered umpteen times here:

Many of these threads contain that exact topic and a debunking: http://forums.tdiclub.com/search.php?searchid=1089368
 
Last edited:

SuburbanTDI

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2004
Location
Midwest
TDI
Beetle TDI, and two Jetta TDI
Here's more real documented history of fears of global cooling from 30 odd years ago.

You're delusional to continue to say that fear of global cooling never existed and that you somehow managed to live in a bubble and were completely unaware of it.

The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970, amidst hysteria about the dangers of a new ice age. The media had been spreading warnings of a cooling period since the 1950s, but those alarms grew louder in the 1970s.

Three months before, on January 11, The Washington Post told readers to “get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters – the worst may be yet to come,” in an article titled “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age.” The article quoted climatologist Reid Bryson, who said “there’s no relief in sight” about the cooling trend.

Journalists took the threat of another ice age seriously. Fortune magazine actually won a “Science Writing Award” from the American Institute of Physics for its own analysis of the danger. “As for the present cooling trend a number of leading climatologists have concluded that it is very bad news indeed,” Fortune announced in February 1974.



“It is the root cause of a lot of that unpleasant weather around the world and they warn that it carries the potential for human disasters of unprecedented magnitude,” the article continued.


That article also emphasized Bryson’s extreme doomsday predictions. “There is very important climatic change going on right now, and it’s not merely something of academic interest.”

Bryson warned, “It is something that, if it continues, will affect the whole human occupation of the earth – like a billion people starving. The effects are already showing up in a rather drastic way.” However, the world population increased by 2.5 billion since that warning.

Fortune had been emphasizing the cooling trend for 20 years. In 1954, it picked up on the idea of a frozen earth and ran an article titled “Climate – the Heat May Be Off.”

The story debunked the notion that “despite all you may have read, heard, or imagined, it’s been growing cooler – not warmer – since the Thirties.”

The claims of global catastrophe were remarkably similar to what the media deliver now about global warming.

“The cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in poor nations,” wrote Lowell Ponte in his 1976 book “The Cooling.”

If the proper measures weren’t taken, he cautioned, then the cooling would lead to “world famine, world chaos, and probably world war, and this could all come by the year 2000.”

There were more warnings. The Nov. 15, 1969, “Science News” quoted meteorologist Dr. J. Murray Mitchell Jr. about global cooling worries. “How long the current cooling trend continues is one of the most important problems of our civilization,” he said.

If the cooling continued for 200 to 300 years, the earth could be plunged into an ice age, Mitchell continued.

Six years later, the periodical reported “the cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.”

A city in a snow globe illustrated that March 1, 1975, article, while the cover showed an ice age obliterating an unfortunate city.

In 1975, cooling went from “one of the most important problems” to a first-place tie for “death and misery.” “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind,” said Nigel Calder, a former editor of “New Scientist.”

He claimed it was not his disposition to be a “doomsday man.” His analysis came from “the facts [that] have emerged” about past ice ages, according to the July/August International Wildlife Magazine.

The idea of a worldwide deep freeze snowballed.

Naturally, science fiction authors embraced the topic. Writer John Christopher delivered a book on the coming ice age in 1962 called “The World in Winter.”

In Christopher’s novel, England and other “rich countries of the north” broke down under the icy onslaught.

“The machines stopped, the land was dead and the people went south,” he explained.

James Follett took a slightly different tack. His book “Ice” was about “a rogue Antarctic iceberg” that “becomes a major world menace.” Follett in his book conceived “the teeth chattering possibility of how Nature can punish those who foolishly believe they have mastered her.”




Your comment:

Guess what? I was alive in the 70's and never heard a damn thing about this
is either the result of gross ignorance or .... worse.



 
Last edited:

nicklockard

Torque Dorque
Joined
Aug 15, 2004
Location
Arizona
TDI
SOLD 2010 Touareg Tdi w/factory Tow PCKG
here's a good debunking, MOD

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?p=1374844&highlight=global+cooling#post1374844

origin: http://www.pewclimate.org/state_of_fear.cfm

Let's start a little poll: who heard about "global cooling" DURING the 1970's?

Another Q: Who has read any primary peer-reviewed scientific literature on "global cooling" or has heard of any or knows of any? Science News, Newsweek, et. al. are NOT peer-reviewed and do not count. Source must be a well known and respected peer reviewed journal that was in existence during the 1970's. Michael Crichton is not an acceptable source.
 
Last edited:

40X40

Experienced
Joined
Feb 12, 2006
Location
Kansas City area, MO
TDI
2013 Passat SEL Premium
Here is a NEWSWEEK article (todays article, in fact) about global warming/
cooling and it mentions the old article.

400+ readers rated this article 4 out of 5.... So it is getting read.

Here is the article itself:


http://c.msn.com/c.gif?NC=1255&NA=1154&PS=73838&PI=7329&DI=305&TP=http%3a%2f%2fmsnbc.msn.com%2f</IMG>
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]MSNBC.com[/FONT]
</IMG>
Samuelson: The Dirty Secret About Global Warming
From politicians to the corporate world, everyone's talking about saving the planet from disastrous climate change. But for now, it's just talk.
By Robert J. Samuelson
Updated: 10:40 a.m. CT Feb 7, 2007

Feb. 7, 2007 - You could be excused for thinking that we'll soon do something serious about global warming. Last Friday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—an international group of scientists—concluded that, to a 90 percent probability, human activity is warming the Earth. Earlier, Democratic congressional leaders made global warming legislation a top priority; and 10 big U.S. companies (including General Electric and DuPont) endorsed federal regulation. Strong action seems at hand.
Don't be fooled. The dirty secret about global warming is this: We have no solution. About 80 percent of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas), the main sources of man-made greenhouse gases. Energy use sustains economic growth, which—in all modern societies—buttresses political and social stability. Until we can replace fossil fuels or find practical ways to capture their emissions, governments will not sanction the deep energy cuts that would truly affect global warming.
Considering this reality, you should treat the pious exhortations to "do something" with skepticism, disbelief or contempt. These pronouncements are (take your pick) naive, self-interested, misinformed, stupid or dishonest. Politicians mainly want to be seen as reducing global warming. Companies want to polish their images and exploit markets created by new environmental regulations. As for editorialists and pundits, there's no explanation except superficiality or herd behavior.
Anyone who honestly examines global energy trends must reach these harsh conclusions. In 2004, world emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2, the main greenhouse gas) totaled 26 billion metric tons. Under plausible economic and population assumptions, CO2emissions will grow to 40 billion tons by 2030, projects the International Energy Agency. About three-quarters of the increase is forecast to come from developing countries, two-fifths from China alone. The IEA expects China to pass the United States as the largest source of carbon dioxide by 2009.
Poor countries won't sacrifice economic growth—lowering poverty, fostering political stability—to placate the rich world's global warming fears. Why should they? On a per-person basis, their carbon dioxide emissions are only about one-fifth the level of rich countries. In Africa, less than 40 percent of the population even has electricity.

Nor will existing technologies, aggressively deployed, rescue us. The IEA studied an "alternative scenario" that simulated the effect of 1,400 policies to reduce fossil fuel use. Fuel economy for new U.S. vehicles was assumed to increase 30 percent by 2030; the global share of energy from "renewables" (solar, wind, hydropower, biomass) would quadruple, to 8 percent. The result: by 2030, annual carbon dioxide emissions would rise 31 percent instead of 55 percent. The concentration levels of emissions in the atmosphere (which presumably cause warming) would rise.
Since 1850, global temperatures have increased almost 1 degree Celsius. Sea level has risen about seven inches, though the connection is unclear. So far, global warming has been a change, not a calamity. The IPCC projects wide ranges for the next century: temperature increases from 1.1 degrees Celsius to 6.4 degrees; sea level rises from seven inches to almost two feet. People might easily adapt; or there might be costly disruptions (say, frequent flooding of coastal cities resulting from melting polar ice caps).
I do not say we should do nothing, but we should not delude ourselves. In the United States, the favored remedy is "cap and trade." It's environmental grandstanding—politicians pretending they're doing something.
Companies would receive or buy quotas ("caps") to emit carbon dioxide. To exceed the limits, they'd acquire some other company's unused quotas ("trade"). How simple. Just order companies to cut emissions. Businesses absorb all the costs.
But in practice, no plausible "cap and trade" program would significantly curb global warming. To do that, quotas would have to be set so low as to shut down the economy. Or the cost of scarce quotas would skyrocket and be passed along to consumers through much higher energy prices. Neither outcome seems likely. Quotas would be lax. The program would be a regulatory burden with little benefit. It would also be a bonanza for lobbyists, lawyers and consultants, as industries and localities besieged Washington for exceptions and special treatment. Hello, influence-peddling and sleaze.
What we really need is a more urgent program of research and development, focusing on nuclear power, electric batteries, alternative fuels and the capture of carbon dioxide. Naturally, there's no guarantee that socially acceptable and cost-competitive technologies will result. But without them, global warming is more or less on automatic pilot. Only new technologies would enable countries—rich and poor—to reconcile the immediate imperative of economic growth with the potential hazards of climate change.
Meanwhile, we could temper our energy appetite. I've argued before for a high oil tax to prod Americans to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. The main aim would be to limit insecure oil imports, but it would also check CO2emissions. Similarly, we might be better off shifting some of the tax burden from wages and profits to a broader tax on energy or carbon. That would favor more fuel-efficient light bulbs, appliances and industrial processes.
It's a debate we ought to have — but probably won't. Any realistic response would be costly, uncertain and no doubt unpopular. That's one truth too inconvenient for almost anyone to admit.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17025081/site/newsweek/
© 2007 MSNBC.com

Bill
 
Last edited:

SuburbanTDI

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2004
Location
Midwest
TDI
Beetle TDI, and two Jetta TDI
I have no doubt your children believe you.



[SIZE=-1]Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
[/SIZE][SIZE=+2]Press Release [/SIZE]

Release No.: 03-10
For Release: March 31, 2003
20th Century Climate Not So Hot


Cambridge, MA - A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1000 years. The review also confirmed that the Medieval Warm Period of 800 to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900 A.D. were worldwide phenomena not limited to the European and North American continents. While 20th century temperatures are much higher than in the Little Ice Age period, many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.
Smithsonian astronomers Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, with co-authors Craig Idso and Sherwood Idso (Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) and David Legates (Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware), compiled and examined results from more than 240 research papers published by thousands of researchers over the past four decades. Their report, covering a multitude of geophysical and biological climate indicators, provides a detailed look at climate changes that occurred in different regions around the world over the last 1000 years.
"Many true research advances in reconstructing ancient climates have occurred over the past two decades," Soon says, "so we felt it was time to pull together a large sample of recent studies from the last 5-10 years and look for patterns of variability and change. In fact, clear patterns did emerge showing that regions worldwide experienced the highs of the Medieval Warm Period and lows of the Little Ice Age, and that 20th century temperatures are generally cooler than during the medieval warmth."
Soon and his colleagues concluded that the 20th century is neither the warmest century over the last 1000 years, nor is it the most extreme. Their findings about the pattern of historical climate variations will help make computer climate models simulate both natural and man-made changes more accurately, and lead to better climate forecasts especially on local and regional levels. This is especially true in simulations on timescales ranging from several decades to a century.
Historical Cold, Warm Periods Verified
Studying climate change is challenging for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the bewildering variety of climate indicators - all sensitive to different climatic variables, and each operating on slightly overlapping yet distinct scales of space and time. For example, tree ring studies can yield yearly records of temperature and precipitation trends, while glacier ice cores record those variables over longer time scales of several decades to a century.
Soon, Baliunas and colleagues analyzed numerous climate indicators including: borehole data; cultural data; glacier advances or retreats; geomorphology; isotopic analysis from lake sediments or ice cores, tree or peat celluloses (carbohydrates), corals, stalagmite or biological fossils; net ice accumulation rate, including dust or chemical counts; lake fossils and sediments; river sediments; melt layers in ice cores; phenological (recurring natural phenomena in relation to climate) and paleontological fossils; pollen; seafloor sediments; luminescent analysis; tree ring growth, including either ring width or maximum late-wood density; and shifting tree line positions plus tree stumps in lakes, marshes and streams.
"Like forensic detectives, we assembled these series of clues in order to answer a specific question about local and regional climate change: Is there evidence for notable climatic anomalies during particular time periods over the past 1000 years?" Soon says. "The cumulative evidence showed that such anomalies did exist."
The worldwide range of climate records confirmed two significant climate periods in the last thousand years, the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. The climatic notion of a Little Ice Age interval from 1300 to1900 A.D. and a Medieval Warm Period from 800 to 1300 A.D. appears to be rather well-confirmed and wide-spread, despite some differences from one region to another as measured by other climatic variables like precipitation, drought cycles, or glacier advances and retreats.
"For a long time, researchers have possessed anecdotal evidence supporting the existence of these climate extremes," Baliunas says. "For example, the Vikings established colonies in Greenland at the beginning of the second millennium that died out several hundred years later when the climate turned colder. And in England, vineyards had flourished during the medieval warmth. Now, we have an accumulation of objective data to back up these cultural indicators." The different indicators provided clear evidence for a warm period in the Middle Ages. Tree ring summer temperatures showed a warm interval from 950 A.D. to 1100 A.D. in the northern high latitude zones, which corresponds to the "Medieval Warm Period." Another database of tree growth from 14 different locations over 30-70 degrees north latitude showed a similar early warm period. Many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.
 
Last edited:

TornadoRed

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 3, 2003
Location
West Des Moines (formerly St Paul)
TDI
2003 Jetta TDI wagon, silver; 2003 Jetta TDI wagon, indigo blue; 2003 Golf GL 5-spd, red (PARTED); 2003 Golf GLS 5-spd, indigo blue (SOLD); 2003 Jetta TDI wagon, Candy White (SOLD)
nicklockard said:
Have you ever studied any hard sciences? I find your claim here absurd. My professors never talked politics; in fact they studiously avoided it and bent over backward to be objective. This is just pure conjecture on your part. Hogwash:rolleyes:
I notice from your profile that you are a few years out of university too. As I wrote in a previous message, I don't know exactly when the leftist infection spread to the science departments, but it has. Not nearly to the same extent as in the humanities and especially the social sciences, but it's getting there.

Or do you think everything is just fine in the universities?

Guess what? I was alive in the 70's and never heard a damn thing about this
You were, what, 8 or 10 years old? Hardly surprising.

So lessee: one or two scientists publish papers on a noted cooling trend, the popular press picks it up and distorts it all out of proportion (but not enough for us average folks to hear of it until 30 some years later apparently), most scientists at that time discount it...
So you were actually only 5 or 6 years old at the time? I guess you have an excuse then.

One big difference between then and now is that the politicians in the 1970s didn't know how to exploit public fear of a new Ice Age in a way that would increase their power. Today's politicians are far more sophisticated. Or perhaps even more unscrupulous. All the commonly proposed "solutions" just happen to be things that leftwing politicians want to do anyway... and that rightwing politicians would automatically oppose as an unwarranted infringement on our personal and economic freedoms.
 
Last edited:

nicklockard

Torque Dorque
Joined
Aug 15, 2004
Location
Arizona
TDI
SOLD 2010 Touareg Tdi w/factory Tow PCKG
SuburbanTDI said:
That's really the heart of the problem isn't it?

We have not been diagnosed by competent and neutral scientists. We have been subjected to a political assault and intellectual witch hunt.
Only from the whacky ministers of disinformation: Chrichton, Limbaugh, et. al.

Most scientists abhor the press and politicians because they get it so wrong. However, science, ration, and reason are under such direct attack...it is imperitive that scientists speak up forcefully, else get dragged slowly back into a dark age by your ministers of disinformation.
 

nicklockard

Torque Dorque
Joined
Aug 15, 2004
Location
Arizona
TDI
SOLD 2010 Touareg Tdi w/factory Tow PCKG
TornadoRed said:
I notice from your profile that you are a few years out of university too. As I wrote in a previous message, I don't know exactly when the leftist infection spread to the science departments, but it has. Not nearly to the same extent as in the humanities and especially the social sciences, but it's getting there.

Or do you think everything is just fine in the universities?
Terry, I'm 3 years out. I don't know the current atmosphere, but my friends who are still there haven't complained of any overt bias' :shrug: dunno, I'm not there to see for myself.

As I said above, most scientists and engineers are categorically apolitical. It's time they spoke up though before your ministers of disinformation drag us into another dark age. Before this turns into another pubs-vs-dems bashfest, let me reiterate that I have nothing against true blue conservatives (in fact I am politically MUCH closer to a true blue conservative than most people claiming to be conservative these days!) I am only worried about the paid ministers-of-disinformation liars like Limbaugh, Hannity/Colmes(lapdog), Chrichton, et. al.
 
Last edited:

McBrew

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Oct 30, 2002
Location
Annapolis, MD
TDI
2003 Golf GLS TDI, 5 speed, Silver/Grey
Nick... it's no use arguing any more. I'll tell ya what -- I'm gonna make a nice big pitcher of coolade. Let's drink it like the rest of 'em. If Rush Limpballs says it's true, it must be true. What about the scientists over at Exxon-Mobil? They say there's no global warming. I believe them. Come on... why would they lie to us? So a few papers were altered to make it look like there's no global warming. It's cold outside... global warming must not be happening. Plus, some scientist was wrong about something in the past, therefore they must all be wrong. A bunch of liberal commies, if you ask me.

Mmmmm... this coolade is GOOD!
 

Tsagoth

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 22, 2005
Location
Hanover, ON
TDI
2003 Jetta Wagon Automatic
It's all bull****. With all the latest technology and computers and bloody climate models, meteorologists can't accurately predict the weather TOMORROW. So all this crap about 100 years from now is just that, pure guesswork. Then you go and read some of these guys papers and you learn that one of their assumptions is that in ten years every man, woman and child on the planet will be driving a Hummer. Only they don't mention the ridiculous set of assumptions that are used as the basis for their climate model, they just say omg, we need to do something.

Eight hundred years ago, Greenland WAS green. It's not today. Obviously we are now in a cold period, and any rise in global temperature is obviously a return to NORMAL. Once Greenland is GREEN AGAIN, -IF- the global temperature continues to rise, then maybe it's time for some concern.

Until then, I'll continue to use 25 times the energy that a peasant in Africa uses and think nothing of it.
 

LongWayHome

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 18, 2006
Location
Somerville, MA
TDI
2006 Jetta TDI Special Edition
It's all one giant pinko conspiracy...

Originally Posted by TornadoRed:
"One big difference between then and now is that the politicians in the 1970s didn't know how to exploit public fear of a new Ice Age in a way that would increase their power. Today's politicians are far more sophisticated. Or perhaps even more unscrupulous. All the commonly proposed "solutions" just happen to be things that leftwing politicians want to do anyway... and that rightwing politicians would automatically oppose as an unwarranted infringement on our personal and economic freedoms."

I suppose the hundreds of scientists are all in on the conspiracy too. Ten years from now, when they can bide their time no more, we'll have a glut of bespeckled scientists and professors lining up to run for public office. They are just waiting until the wool has been pulled over everyone's eyes and then they can seize power. :cool:
 

vwcampin

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2006
Location
Omaha
TDI
2002 GLS TDI Auto
SuburbanTDI said:
I have no doubt your children believe you.
Lets break down who wrote that paper. It was Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon. Sallie Baliunas has extra-academic positions at several think tanks funded by energy industry organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute. Baliunas is a member of at least nine organizations which receive financial support from the petroleum industry. Willie Soon is the science director and a contributor at Tech Central Station (TCS). TCS of course has been funded by companies such as ExxonMobil and Genral Motors. Here is a link that tends to indicate that their argument is not supported by a majority of scientists. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000829C7-70D9-1EF7-A6B8809EC588EEDF

As to TSAGOTH who said:
I love kool-aid!!
If you can present any peer reviewed scientific study that indicates scientists predictions that we will all be driving Hummers?? Also, meteorologists are not quite the same as the scientists studying global warming. So way to wait until a problem has actually occurred until you decide to try and do something. Sorry to poke a little fun at you, but your post was about the most ignorant I have seen on this site.
 

Tsagoth

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 22, 2005
Location
Hanover, ON
TDI
2003 Jetta Wagon Automatic
It's always the same BS with the Chicken Littles. Look at the nonsense that led to the banning of saccharin. Lots of publicity over the fact that it caused cancer in rats. Must take action now. When in fact the poor rats were injected with the equivalent of 800 cans per day of sweetener. Funny how that part got left out. 800 cans of plain water per day would kill you, man we better ban Perrier and the rest.

Yesterday it was saccharin. Today it's climate change. Or those guys who say my god we need to build up the deep space network because you know, might be an asteroid coming.

It has nothing to do with science. It's all about money and empire building. The climate guys want money, plain and simple, so they can build labs, hire people, build an empire and get laid.
 

nicklockard

Torque Dorque
Joined
Aug 15, 2004
Location
Arizona
TDI
SOLD 2010 Touareg Tdi w/factory Tow PCKG
Tsagoth said:
It's always the same BS with the Chicken Littles. Look at the nonsense that led to the banning of saccharin. Lots of publicity over the fact that it caused cancer in rats. Must take action now. When in fact the poor rats were injected with the equivalent of 800 cans per day of sweetener. Funny how that part got left out. 800 cans of plain water per day would kill you, man we better ban Perrier and the rest.

Yesterday it was saccharin. (snipped)
It's excellent that you mentioned this particular case because it is very instructive. If you've read the history of saccharin, you know that the research was highly flawed which concluded that it was a carcinogen/mutagenic agent.

What you DON'T know is that the source of this funding for this flawed pseudo-scientific research was from the rival group of corporations backing a new sweetener (to be later marketed as "Equal".) So thank you for bringing it up. It is a perfect case example of how corporate agenda pushing can easily create pseudoscience, fool government bodies and the public, get huge press, and make you scared to death of real science.

The old saying "ignorance is bliss" needs to be updated for the late 20th/early 21st centuries to "ignorance is your duty. fear everything."

Scientists and the community are partially to blame for the witch hunt that is being done against science, ration and reason. On whole, we do a poor job of "breaking it down" to simple sound bites....the shrinking attention span is a hard thing to work with!

Incidentally, my company is now using saccharine in the fight against infection. Saccharine molecules complexed with silver and other compounds are precursors to making silver nanoparticles. Silver is a broad antimicrobial agent which germs can not develop resistances to. So, saccharine is reborn in a positive light this time around?

Tsagoth said:
It has nothing to do with science. It's all about money and empire building. The climate guys want money, plain and simple, so they can build labs, hire people, build an empire and get laid.
LOL...oh yeah, that sexy science! Riiiiight, hot chix are just banging down the doors to get to sexy scientists (damn! I wish!) But on a serious note, yes, money influences what science gets studied, but it has a far lesser effect on what science gets published, because ultimately all (real science and not corporate whoredom) papers have to clear the hurdle of peer review. Do abuses happen? Sure. Don't abuses happen in YOUR field?

Easy rules to know whether science is bunk or not:
  1. Was it published in a peer reviewed journal of some stature?
  2. Did it have any obvious bias in favor of a major funding partner?
  3. How many citations does it have in the primary-source scientific (not popular press like Science News) literature--IOW: how many other scientists are referring to its methods or results?
  4. Did you hear about it on a radio show? It's probably a damn lie!
  5. Did you see it on cable television? It's almost certainly a bald-faced lie or misrepresentation, no matter the channel!
  6. If you heard of it through tertiary sources and still can't find a primary source...it's utter BS.
Don't be easily fooled.

Definitions:
  1. Primary scientific literature is a science journal such as Science, Journal of the American Chemical Society ("JACKS"), Journal of Organic Chemistry, etcetera.
  2. Secondary source literature is any compendium or review journals which strictly report on hard sciences with no editorializing. Typically an esteemed scientist in that field or closely related field will write the broad review of the topic's papers that were published in that bi-annum, year, or quarter...and then a panel will debate and critique that review, openly and published.
  3. Tertiary source literature is third-hand reporting: examples are Popular Mech., Pop. Sci., Science News...
  4. Quaternary sources are radio, cable television and is garbage, plain and simple.
Remember that game 'Telephone' from when you were a kid? The message became completely garbled, sometimes outrageously to where it came to the opposite point as when it started. Well this is the same deal. Don't trust 4th hand info, be highly skeptical of 3rd hand info, keep an open mind to second hand info, and listen carefully to first hand info!
 
Last edited:

nicklockard

Torque Dorque
Joined
Aug 15, 2004
Location
Arizona
TDI
SOLD 2010 Touareg Tdi w/factory Tow PCKG
McBrew said:
Nick... it's no use arguing any more. I'll tell ya what -- I'm gonna make a nice big pitcher of coolade. (snipped)
Mmmmm... this coolade is GOOD!
Can I have the 'Red flavor'?:D
 

SuburbanTDI

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2004
Location
Midwest
TDI
Beetle TDI, and two Jetta TDI
vwcampin said:
Written by a retired Public Works employee from Canada.
Well, that's not quite true.

Alan Cutler is a visiting scientist at the National Museum of Natural History.
I really get a kick out of the fact that there has not been a single acceptable voice producing even a drop of evidence in opposition to the dictated position.

Not Harvard, nor MIT, The Smithsonian, NASA, the Air Force, etc. etc. etc. None of these have been deemed as up to snuff, members of all of these institutions have been marked as simply not qualified to speak on the subject.

Nobody, Nowhere, At Any Time, Has Ever Managed To Even Cast So Much A Shadow.

There is but one true and everlasting word, and those who posess it shall be it's guardians and the defenders of the faith.
 
Last edited:

nicklockard

Torque Dorque
Joined
Aug 15, 2004
Location
Arizona
TDI
SOLD 2010 Touareg Tdi w/factory Tow PCKG
SuburbanTdi,

Can you clarify? I didn't get what points you were trying to make with your last post. I'm not following your allusions. The post is all very vague on many levels. Thanks.
 

CAATS_Man

Veteran Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Location
South Delta, BC
TDI
2006 Jetta, Pkg2, ESP, DSG, & 8 airbags
Thirty years ago Global Warming would alternately have been called a Communist plot by The West and a Capitalist plot by Moscow. Let's not turn back the clock.

Even if you're certain it ain't gonna happen then find a way to make money on it and laugh all the way to the bank. But, if the unintended result is cleaner, purer air, we'll just have to learn to live with that.

At least one future prognosticator got in his two cents on a Discovery Channel program: he forecast that in future, forests would cease to exist, replaced by grasslands as there would be insufficient atmospheric C02 to support large tree growth. Really.
 

fixer

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 1, 2005
Location
Central NJ
TDI
2005.5/Jetta/5M/Reflex Silver
SuburbanTDI said:
Well, that's not quite true.


I really get a kick out of the fact that there has not been a single acceptable voice producing even a drop of evidence in opposition to the dictated position.

Not Harvard, nor MIT, The Smithsonian, NASA, the Air Force, etc. etc. etc. None of these have been deemed as up to snuff, members of all of these institutions have been marked as simply not qualified to speak on the subject.

Nobody, Nowhere, At Any Time, Has Ever Managed To Even Cast So Much A Shadow.

There is but one true and everlasting word, and those who posess it shall be it's guardians and the defenders of the faith.
Let me try. How about this one:
Jan Veizer
Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N 6N5 Canada & Institut für Geologie, Mineralogie undGeophysik, Ruhr-Universität Bochum,Bochum, Germany.

Professor Veizer's credentials are unimpeachable, his research is brilliant and his work in "Celestial Climate Driver: A Perspective From Four Billion Years of the Carbon Cycle" as published in Geoscience Canada, March 2005, is a compelling argument that the primary climate driver may not be CO2, but rather Cosmic Ray Flux/solar energy.
 

LongWayHome

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 18, 2006
Location
Somerville, MA
TDI
2006 Jetta TDI Special Edition
fixer said:
Let me try. How about this one:
Jan Veizer
Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N 6N5 Canada & Institut für Geologie, Mineralogie undGeophysik, Ruhr-Universität Bochum,Bochum, Germany.

Professor Veizer's credentials are unimpeachable, his research is brilliant and his work in "Celestial Climate Driver: A Perspective From Four Billion Years of the Carbon Cycle" as published in Geoscience Canada, March 2005, is a compelling argument that the primary climate driver may not be CO2, but rather Cosmic Ray Flux/solar energy.
I'm certainly not qualified to criticise anyone on the subject of Environmental Geochemistry. According to Wikipedia (an admittedly corruptible source of information) the "cosmic ray theory put forward by Veizer is not generally accepted."

here are a couple of rebuttals of Veizer's theory:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3419975.stm
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=153#more-153

I'm not trying to be a contrarian. But there are at least two sides to every issue.
 

TornadoRed

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 3, 2003
Location
West Des Moines (formerly St Paul)
TDI
2003 Jetta TDI wagon, silver; 2003 Jetta TDI wagon, indigo blue; 2003 Golf GL 5-spd, red (PARTED); 2003 Golf GLS 5-spd, indigo blue (SOLD); 2003 Jetta TDI wagon, Candy White (SOLD)
LongWayHome said:
I'm not trying to be a contrarian. But there are at least two sides to every issue.
Two sides? What happened to consensus? Can't we all just agree on one true description of the way the world works?
 

LongWayHome

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 18, 2006
Location
Somerville, MA
TDI
2006 Jetta TDI Special Edition
TornadoRed said:
Two sides? What happened to consensus? Can't we all just agree on one true description of the way the world works?
There's a difference between healthy skepticism and flying in the face of reason. I'm only opposed to the latter.
 

SuburbanTDI

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2004
Location
Midwest
TDI
Beetle TDI, and two Jetta TDI
LongWayHome said:
There's a difference between healthy skepticism and flying in the face of reason. I'm only opposed to the latter.
Is it reasonable to state that credible evidence exists which casts some doubt on the theory of Global Warming?
 

TornadoRed

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 3, 2003
Location
West Des Moines (formerly St Paul)
TDI
2003 Jetta TDI wagon, silver; 2003 Jetta TDI wagon, indigo blue; 2003 Golf GL 5-spd, red (PARTED); 2003 Golf GLS 5-spd, indigo blue (SOLD); 2003 Jetta TDI wagon, Candy White (SOLD)
LongWayHome said:
There's a difference between healthy skepticism and flying in the face of reason. I'm only opposed to the latter.
Express a healthy skepticism around here and your opinion gets labeled "hogwash".

RE: opinion vs fact. We throw a lot of facts around here, to support one point of view or the other. But, to a significant degree, we really aren't sure which facts are relevant. It is possible to construct a very plausible theory, based on a set of facts that most people agree upon, and still be 100% wrong.

What I find disconcerting is that so many people are absolutely 100% certain about something, when it seems to me that very little is known for sure. And politicians, who never act quickly to solve problems that we know are coming, like Social Security, are now in a state of panic about climate change. To paraphrase Governor William J. Le Petomane, they've gotta protect their phoney baloney jobs.


Edit: The Democrats say that Social Security will be fine until 2027 or so, thus they are opposed to any effort to reform it. I'd rather they fixed SS now, and leave climate change until 2027. That would be a win-win.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top