'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change

Well to keep it brief, l haven't heard about Tony's scheme, so l can't really comment on that!

And the carbon tax will affect virtually all Australians, some in a negligible way and unfortunately l suspect some in a more substantial way, (electricity being the main one, l know that we will get compensated, but l suspect that we will still be paying more with the Ctax).

As for the Ctax being legitimate, or a scam, l will let the first video above speak for me!

Shane

Well, there is such a thing as context and intention when evaluating someone's comments. Comparing a stand-up comic whose reputation was made by being controversial and a bit dark with serial killers is a little silly.

We don't have to cull anyone. Mom nature's getting ready to do it for us. The first stages of famine have already begun. Right now it will be price and distribution causing the famine (i.e. - manmade). Within the decade it will be natural caused (shortage of food). Then there will be a lot of people dying in food wars, too. Humans, whether we want to think so or not, are subject to natural law - and when a species grows beyond carrying capacity populations, they ALWAYS strip their sustenance resources and have a die off. Can't explain why we thought we were different than anything else on earth. Hopefully when things stabilize again humans will have learned to stop reproducing like rabbits.

Kurt - I didn't cite Putin as an expert. He made a hilarious joke about US planes getting frozen during the "warming" talks. As far as Russian scientists, though - I never take them lightly. Russia has always had first rate scientists.

Not all climate change is our fault. The Sun has one hell of a lot to do with how warm earth is. C202 was only cited because it was taxable and that's all politicians care about is how can they slant things to make more money. You go into the REAL backroom debates with the scientists themselves - minus the press and minus the political editing and the culprit is desertification.....which is.......human caused. Where forests have been leveled climates are dryer and usually hotter. What are politicians doing about this? Selling out to major corps who want to cut more trees instead of allowing growth of hemp for things like paper and fabric, etc. Love of money may or may not be evil. It is very obvious these days that it is very deadly, though.

What cracks me up is someone citing Putin as a source on global warming. Seriously?

BTW, Russia has more to gain from global warming than anyone. Siberia will become the beadbasket of the World and a Northern Passage for trade between Europe and Asia would bring billions and billions to Russian sea ports.

And...Russia, the US and Canada are already arguing over who owns what in the Artic.

Cold war? All Russia has to do is wait another 50 years and they will be the World's #1 power by winning the "Warm War". They don't have to fire a single shot. They just need to convince people that there is no global warming.

And tell the people who have built homes on the melting permafrost in Russia why their homes are sinking that it's not getting warmer...

<< That humans are causing global warming is the position of the Academies of Science from 19 countries plus many scientific organizations that study climate science. More specifically, around 95% of active climate researchers actively publishing climate papers endorse the consensus position. >>

The fact that a majority of people in a certain group believe something doesn't constitute proof. That's what's known as the argument from authority. There are political and economic reasons for people to believe something once it's the conventional view. There is also the herd mentality that causes people to repeat the accepted view out of fear of being ridiculed by their peers.

Whether or not there's climate change, and whether or not humans are causing it are two separate questions. I see plenty of evidence for climate change (which is a more accurate term than "global warming"). But proving that humans are the cause is something else entirely. How could you do this conclusively, unless you had a parallel earth somewhere that had all the same conditions -except without any humans?

It's far more likely that climate change is mainly a natural phenomenon. Since there has been increased sun activity in recent years, and there is also evidence of climate change on other planets, this is completely plausible.

This doesn't minimize the problem of pollution or the many threats to our health caused by pesticides, electromagnetic fields and other such aspects of the modern world. It's also likely that the government and military are experimenting with using weather as a weapon and may be responsible for some "natural" catastrophes. That doesn't just mean the U.S., but any nation with a heavily funded military -e.g. China, Russia, etc.

What? A link, but no comments about it? Hmmm. Okay, I am not a mind reader, but I'll give it a shot. From the link:

95% of active climate researchers actively publishing climate papers endorse the consensus position

and

97.5% of climatologists who actively publish research on climate change responded yes.

Are these the same group of climatologists that were claiming an impending Ice Age some years prior to the IPCC report? Hmm? I am just 3 days shy of 40, and I don't mean to insult Kurt, but your avatar leads me to beleive that you might be a bit more youth challenged than myself. If I can remember that, surely you can too.

I am guessing this is the kind of stuff you wanted me to pull from it, that which I put into italics. Nothing new to me, as I have studied this issue in depth for several years now. However, the info in the video I posted I can guarantee you is new to most people. Especially those who are firm believers in anthropogenic (man caused) Global Warming. You noticed I used the term Global Warming instead of Climate Change, right? I'll get into that. And I'll address those quotes. But first, I'll further explain the consensus thing and the IPCC.

Unfortunately, issues like this do not lend themselves to one or two paragraphs, but I'm not a afraid of words, so I'll explain my position a bit further. On top of that, between you and the three people that thanked you for your post, I seriously doubt more than one of you even bothered to watch that 1.5 hour video and I certainly wouldn't bet any money, let alone my life, that any of you did. So, since you did respond to me and three others thanked you for that response, and I am not a mind reader but do not suspect any of the four of you, and certainly not the majority of the four of you, watched that video, at least give me that minute, or maybe two, that it might take to read my post so you guys can expose yourselves to as much information as possible before making decisions you will take into the voting box and start pushing for things like global taxes on CO2 production.

But, again, I am not a mind reader, so I could be wrong. Regardless, most people (read: the vast majority of us humans) have never been exposed to the other side of the story, so I'll try to give a bit of a synopsis for you guys that haven't done the research that I have into this issue.

The first main issue is that word consensus. Don't worry, I see that 97.5% number and I will get to that, but long before any type of stat could be compiled like that, this word consensus was already being foisted upon the public. From where did it originate? From the UN's IPCC report. It has been a few years, so I would have to dig a bit for the source, but that word consensus can be traced back to Canadian media outlet, from which it spread like wildfire.

Wildfire that might warm the globe, errr, I mean change the climate, if it caught on. We have been told, through the media and people like Al Gore, that there is and has been a consensus since day one. And this consensus all started with the original IPCC report. What came first Kurt, the chicken or the egg? The falsely reported consensus of IPCC or the current consensus of climatologists? But I am getting ahead of myself.

Two things that ought to raise anyone's eyebrow:

• At some point, this whole topic got renamed. It went from Global Warming to Climate Change. Any ideas why? Think about it and ask me if you can't figure it out.
• When scientists, including climatologists, began voicing opposition to the consensus that was purported to exist and traces its roots back to that one IPCC report, they began being labeled as Deniers. Anything important about that word? Of course there is. It is a pejorative. It is used to capitalize upon the negative connotations of that word to stifle any dissent being proffered. It is designed to evoke notions of people as silly as Holocaust Deniers. It is designed to evoke ideas of backwards, racist skinhead type Neo-Nazis. You don't want to be a denier, do you? Of course not. You're not one of them, you are educated and tolerant, so you better just keep your mind closed, your mouth shut and accept what you are being told and DO NOT question it, lest you align yourself with Neo-Nazis. Subtle, yet effective. Effective, unless of course, like myself you are not persuaded by semantic infiltration and propaganda and can see right through that sh#t.

The fundamental assumption we are supposed to accept here, what this whole nonsense is based upon, is that man made and produced CO2 is causing Global Warming, errr, Climate Change. So, of course, we must let the spittle fly from our mouths as we point our fingers and scream 'Climate Criminal!!!' at the top of our lungs. Right? Man made CO2 is the cause of all of this. So let's just get rid of it and we are fine, right? No more man made CO2 and we can rest easy, right? Hardly. If every bit of man made CO2 production ceased tomorrow, well, Kurt, we are still screwed. Doomed to be inhabitants of a planet that is going to one big ass Sahara Desert. Why? Here is why:

Things that release more CO2 into the atmosphere, day after day, year after year, than do we through our factories, power plants, automobiles, airplanes, etc. A LOT F'ING MORE. These following things dwarf what we produce.

• Volcanoes
• Animals and bacteria
• Decomposing plant matter
• And, the grandaddy of them all, the ocean

So once we stop the man made production, which emits WAY LESS than what I listed, what do we do next? Do we cut down every forest and every plant we can find? Do we make big ass corks and shove them into the mouths of volcanoes? Do we kill every living thing on this planet? Do we break out one huge blowtorch and try to boil off the oceans (oops better not do that - water vapor; see below)? Or start scooping it out and launching it into space to rid our planet of those evil, nasty, Climate Criminal Oceans? To save ourselves and mother earth from this nasty disease and harbinger of death and destruction?

We must do something if we are to save ourselves, and, hell, we should address those listed issues first, as they release so much more CO2 into the atmosphere than we pesky humans. We are minor players. Of the CO2 released into the atmosphere, we humans are responsible for but a small fraction of it.

To further get into the fundamental assumption of man caused Global Warming, errr, Climate Change, we can turn to Al Gore's (a guy who is probably one of the biggest hypocrites walking the face of the earth as his 'carbon footprint' definitely exceeds 99.9999% of all other humans - yet he still lives in his big, inefficient mansion, flys around in private planes, globe trotting, etc.) movie, An Inconvenient Truth. A movie I have watched. Remember that nice chart he showed going back 600,000 years? That chart that shows data from ice cores and an aparrant corresponding relationship between the earth's temperature and CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Well, 'Ol Al the propagandist forgot to tell you something. He forgot to mention that CO2 levels lag temperature. He got a little confused with the whole chicken and egg thing. You see, the earth warms and then CO2 levels increase.

Huh? That's right. The ice core samples (you all have heard of those) show precisely that. Lags by how much? By up to several hundred years. Fighting to reconcile that with what you have been fed in the media? It is very simple. It has to do with things like as the earth warms, plant vegetation and life increase (remember, they release way more CO2 than do us humans) and also the ocean is a CO2 sink and as it warms, it releases CO2. As it cools, it retains more.

On top of that, of these things called 'greenhouse gases', CO2 is a minor player. Water Vapor far out shadows CO2 in its effect of retaining heat on the surface of the planet. By quite a bit. Well, hell, now we got to get rid of the water vapor in our atmosphere, lest our surface turns into the Inferno of Dante and we start contemplating which level of hell we occupy that he left us to ponder. Good thing we didn't boil off the oceans and instead formed a bucket brigade to outer space to remove that evil polluter.

Still with me? I am sure many of you think guys like myself are uneducated simpletons, with our heads buried in the sand and refusing to consider the issue on whole and on balance and come to objective and well thought conclusions. Better not say that about me if you haven't made it this far in my post. And I ain't done.

I gots me lots more to say on the subject, but let me wrap it up before anyone's eyes start to glaze over with going back to the current apparent consensus. Why is it not very persuasive to me that 97.5% of climatologists agree? Because, first and foremost, of the data I have already listed as well as some data I haven't. Additionally, before they are scientists, they are humans. Here's the deal, they need to eat. They need grant money. And, most importantly, this is a highly politicized issue.

There is no grant money being offered for any work in climatology that does not toe the party line. That does not support the consensus foisted upon us by propagandists and their accomplices in the media that all stem from that one IPCC report. On top of the stiff competition they face amongst their own group, all competing for limited research funds, there has been a thorough and unscientific ostracization and ousting of any scientist who differs in opinion with Al Gore. They have been silenced, run out of colleges and of course are not given any damn money to pursue research that goes in opposition to Al Gore and the UN.

That is not a minor point. Not at all. And, if you keep your mind open and look for them, you will find many scientists and climatologists that will tell you what is going on concerning that issue.

But you have to have an open mind and be willing to consider and look for these things to understand them. All of this bullsh#t you see like, 'the science is settled,' ought to scare the crap out of you. THAT IS NOT SCIENCE NOR IS IT HOW THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WORKS.

Climatology has now removed itself, in large part, from utilizing the scientific method, of never declaring things 'settled' and hurling vehement opposition and pejoratives at opposing views. Instead of opposing view being considered, they are gagged, tarred and feathered and then run out of town.

Silence! You will not speak against what Al Gore tells us! You petulant fools!

You see, Kurt this whole thing is one big political mess. It has been political since day one and continues to be. I see it for that, have looked at both sides very carefully over the course of years and put way, way more faith in the words and thoughts of the scientists and climatologists interviewed in that video I posted than your website you linked to. Sorry.

If any of you haven't yet watched it, I encourage you to do so. And if anyone wants to respond, feel free, 'cause I have much more to say, much more data to throw out for your consideration and am only ending this post due to its length and fact that I can only hold people's attention on a forum for so long.

Whenever you see things get changed around, from Global Warming to Climate Change, whenever you see the open dismissal of the scientific method, whenever you see pejoratives thrown around in lieu of reasoned arguments, whenever you see nonsense like, 'The science is settled,' proclaimed, you ought to be very wary and very careful before you choose a side to believe and put all of your eggs in their basket.

Why? Because all of those things I indicate that are occurring are indicative of the fact that there is something else going on. There are ulterior motives lying under the surface. In this case, one of them is to simply to institute a global tax, to keep countries in places like Africa suppressed, to redistribute wealth, to suppress innovation and to keep that goal of one world government and the China Model for all of us plodding along, getting closer and closer to implementation and realization.

Nice link Kurt. Well not really. Nothing new to me in that link, I have seen it all already. And I do mean all. Can you say the same?

I don't know..... One guy once flew like 7 747s so he could go on vacation! He ALSO did that to accept a prize he didn't deserve(14hr trip, BY AIR!). LATER, a friend of his, wih a HUGE home ,KNOWN for its wild waste, flew there to discuss global warming. All relatives of mine that I know of probably TOGETHER, over their entire lives, didn't provide as much waste as those two in one year!

Steve

LOL. that's the funniest thing I've read in a long time.

Sadly, you may be right. Have a look at the shape the UK is in at the moment to see what an Abbott government will bring to Australia, as Abbott wants to implement similar policies to Cameron: Business Insider

And this from one of Australia's leading financial journalists in (shock, horror) Rupert Murdoch's The Australian.

And in the meantime billions are poured into fusion, (hopefully l got the name right - heating up plasma consisting of deuterium, etc found in seawater to make electricity) and putting only tens of millions into solar panels?

It seems that the tech, that isn't a threat to oil or coal, etc to generate electricity gets priority, eventhough as we speak there is one or more systems around that can generate clean, free power. So obviously being a considerable threat to the worlds economy's, it is buried.

Shane

That's even funnier. Toxic Tony Abbott, Joe "$70 billion black hole" Hockey, Sophie "Steals from old men" Mirabella and Bronwyn "keorsene baths" Bishop, to name a few that bring parliament into disrepute.

As Anthony "Albo" Albanese said about Toxic Tony, "In your guts, you know he's nuts". He has tried 52 times to suspend standing orders in parliament and failed on every one of them. As Einstein noted, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over agin, and expectiing it to turn out differently. Surely, after a few times a sane man would try something else, but Toxic Tony (In your guts, you know he's nuts) Abbott keeps on trying, What a loser.

Oh, and BTW, Speaker Peter Slipper has just released documentary proof that the charges levelled against him are false. Another, I repeat another, fail for Toxic Tony.

I'm also comforted by the fact that 52% of the population (women) will never allow Toxic Tony "Get your rosaries off my ovaries" Abbott to become PM.

I'm still on pins and needles waiting for you to respond to my post regarding that discredited video you so highly regard Chris. I realize a cute restless dog and new/old female companion are holding you back, but it shouldn't take too much time to defend that video. After all, you first posted it, then referred to it a few times after that, as something extraordinary that will convince us all that your views are right on this issue.

Sorry to add to your workload but here's a few other critiques of said video:

"Alan Thorpe, professor of meteorology at the University of Reading and Chief Executive of the UK Natural Environment Research Council, commented on the film in New Scientist: "First, let's deal with the main thesis: that the presence or absence of cosmic rays in Earth's atmosphere is a better explanation for temperature variation than the concentration of CO2 and other gases. This is not a new assertion and it is patently wrong: there is no credible evidence that cosmic rays play a significant role...Let scepticism reign, but let's not play games with the evidence."

Here's a well balanced opinion of the video:

"The Royal Society has issued a press release in reaction to the film. In it, Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, shortly restates the predominant scientific opinion on climate change and adds:

Scientists will continue to monitor the global climate and the factors which influence it. It is important that all legitimate potential scientific explanations continue to be considered and investigated. Debate will continue, and the Royal Society has just hosted a two day discussion meeting attended by over 300 scientists, but it must not be at the expense of action. Those who promote fringe scientific views but ignore the weight of evidence are playing a dangerous game. They run the risk of diverting attention from what we can do to ensure the world's population has the best possible future.


"Thirty-seven British scientists signed a letter of complaint, saying that they "believe that the misrepresentations of facts and views, both of which occur in your programme, are so serious that repeat broadcasts of the programme, without amendment, are not in the public interest. In view of the seriousness of climate change as an issue, it is crucial that public debate about it is balanced and well-informed"

"On 5 July 2007, The Guardian reported that Professor Mike Lockwood, a solar physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, had carried out a study, initiated partially in response to The Great Global Warming Swindle, that disproved one of the documentary's key planks — namely that global warming directly correlates to solar activity. Lockwood's study showed that solar activity had diminished subsequent to 1987, despite a steady rise in the temperature of the Earth's surface. The study, to be published in a Royal Society journal, used temperature and solar data recorded from the last 100 years.

In a BBC interview about this study, Lockwood commented on the graphs shown in the documentary:
All the graphs they showed stopped in about 1980, and I knew why, because things diverged after that ... You can't just ignore bits of data that you do not like."

Volume 20 of the Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society presented a critique by David Jones, Andrew Watkins, Karl Braganza and Michael Coughlan.

"The Great Global Warming Swindle does not represent the current state of knowledge in climate science… Many of the hypotheses presented in the Great Global Warming Swindle have been considered and rejected by due scientific process. This documentary is far from an objective, critical examination of climate science. Instead the Great Global Warming Swindle goes to great lengths to present outdated, incorrect or ambiguous data in such a way as to grossly distort the true understanding of climate change science, and to support a set of extremely controversial views."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gre..._and_criticism

Oh God! Get on with it. Geesh. Can't you tell I was mocking your full of yourself BS? I'm so happy you have a doggie and someone who gives you head. :/

I usually put a haha when I laugh at what the other person writes but don't actually laugh out loud. When I do laugh out loud I uniquely use a LOL. Unusual I know. Condescending? Hmm.

The "Politics" argument falls apart when we consider ALL the countries that support the concept of Man Made climate change. It's only in the US where the politics of the deniers gets in the way.

Plus, burning carbons has been PROVEN to pollute our air, causing disease from cancer to diabetes to asthma.

Not to mention, oil is becoming harder to find and will only become more expensive as the demand from China and India increases.

Then there's the fact that we have to import so much oil that it's a major cause of the US trade imbalance, as well as a direct link to half our spending on our military to protect our oil interests abroad...

You deniers fight to keep buring oil despite:
pollution and the health and health costs associated with it
it's running out and getting more costly
US trade imbalance
US military spending, including treasure and lives and limbs

...Too bad so many have been drinking Big Oil's koolaid that they've lost sight of all the other reasons to get off oil. Now who of you are pro-breathing disease?

I find it interesting who you use as references for your arguments here Chris. First, you use that video which has been widely discredited. Now, you want to use Seitz for your case against the IPCC. Sure, Mr Seitz was not ignorant, backwards or racist. ( umm, by the way, why is the word racist used in this case anyways? What does race have to do with this issue? ) Seitz in fact had a very distinguished career as a scientist.

However, later on in his life he seemed to lose some of his standing in the scientific community for certain positions. Seitz directed a program for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company that funded research defending tobacco. Singer co-wrote a report denying the risks of second-hand smoke, funded by the Tobacco Institute, which attacked the science behind the finding that there were health risks from passive smoking and said that it was "part of a political agenda to expand government control over peoples lives". ( Doesn't that last part of that quote sound familiar! )

In fact. Seitz was one of the subjects for the book Merchants of Doubt:

Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway | Book review | Books | The Observer

OH PLEASE!! LOL

It's well-known that the only researchers getting grant money are on the 'man causes warming' side of the fence.

It wasn't all that many years ago that the scientific 'consensus' was that we were heading straight into a mini ice-age.

Science is driven by politics, more accurately, by political money. It always has been, and always will be. If your research shows conclusions that wander outside the mainstream, your funding dries up.

Well perhaps you can worry about the real tradegies going on in life before you try and save the planet. People ignore all the crap that is around them and being done to them, but of course they hop on board the government global warming train.


WOW what an argument.

Come on at least be a little original.