A Convenient Falsehood

[Conan71]

Buried in ABC News:

"Al Gore's "traveling global warming show," the award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," includes a long flyover shot of majestic Antarctic ice shelves. But this shot was first seen in the 2004 blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow." Sculpted from Styrofoam and later scanned into a computer, the ice shelf "flyover" looks real.

Karen Goulekas, the special effects supervisor for "The Day After Tomorrow" said the shot is a digital image. She was glad Al Gore used it in the documentary since "It is one hell of a shot." Both movies use the shot to convincingly portray global warming, but it is left to the audience to decide if this created image can both entertain and educate us about our changing planet."

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=4682216&page=2

Documentary my donkey.  This is the sort of stuff used to frighten people into supporting his own self-serving profit-making schemes.

Proven a liar once more.

[we vs us]

In other news:

"We badly underestimated the degree of damages and the risks of climate change," said Lord Stern in a speech in London yesterday. "All of the links in the chain are on average worse than we thought a couple of years ago . . . . A year and a half on from its publication, Lord Stern dismissed the doubters and renewed his call for urgent global action: "People who said this was scaremongering are profoundly wrong. If anything, I was too reticent. What we are playing for is the transformation of the planet," he said."

Lord Stern is Head of the Government Economic Service in Britain, and published the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change for the British government in 2006.  

[cannon_fodder]

lol, who needs polar ice we'll just make some out of styrofoam whenever we need it!  

The new "documentaries" irritate me.  From Michael Moore to Al Gore, they are suppose to be commercially successful first, then persuasive, and then maybe actually document something.  How that is called a "documentary" and compared to National Geographic, the Smithsonian, and other actual documentary works I'm not sure.
- - -

Wevus:  The Baron of Stern is an economist.  His report measures emissions and then takes other data to extrapolate the result.  From that result he estimates the economic impact to determine what government action would be appropriate.

I applaud his measures and his tactics.  I think he is really trying to look at it from a logical perspective.

However, the fact remains that his conclusion is only as good as the science that he is examining.  And I disagree with the level of conclusiveness in the selected studies.  In spite of dire predictions Global Warming has ceased over the last decade, the oceans have absorbed more carbon, and no conclusion of man-made warming has been made.  

The cold hard fact is we don't know.  People hate that.  You can't run models or make policy based on "I don't know" so we latch on to possibilities and present them as fact, or invent things and hold them out as fact (see, e.g., world religions).  

Again, I think pollution buildup will have an impact on the environment (by that I mean as it relates to human wellbeing, since when we boil it down that's what all this is really about for 95% of the people).  Clearly most forms of pollution are detrimental to our cause.  I also think we are probably having an effect on the global environment, from changing levels of C02, ozone, methane, salt concentrations, and a horde of other things.  

But like everyone else, I don't know what that result will be.  Nor do I know if it will be offset or overshadowed by other factors (2C will not stop the next ice age from eventually coming nor compensate for reduced solar activity should it arise again).

I guess what I'm saying, is I wish they would present it more as a "best understanding" instead of pretending like they have it all figured out.

[cannon_fodder]

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh.  By Phil Chapman.  April 23rd, 2008.
Evidence of a New Ice Age

quote:Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.
. . .
That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

See the caveat in the last sentence?  To me that indicates a little scientific integrity.  

• Largest single year temperature drop ever recorded.  


• New record lows here, there, everywhere.  


• More Arctic sea ice than ever recorded.  
• Average 10year temperature back to where we were in 1930.  


• No yearly increase in temp in the last decade.


• Reduction in solar energy output.

But Global Warming marches on as fact and official policy.  

Do you at least see what I want consideration of the issue?

[Gaspar]

quote:Originally posted by cannon_fodder

lol, who needs polar ice we'll just make some out of styrofoam whenever we need it!  

The new "documentaries" irritate me.  From Michael Moore to Al Gore, they are suppose to be commercially successful first, then persuasive, and then maybe actually document something.  How that is called a "documentary" and compared to National Geographic, the Smithsonian, and other actual documentary works I'm not sure.
- - -

Wevus:  The Baron of Stern is an economist.  His report measures emissions and then takes other data to extrapolate the result.  From that result he estimates the economic impact to determine what government action would be appropriate.

I applaud his measures and his tactics.  I think he is really trying to look at it from a logical perspective.

However, the fact remains that his conclusion is only as good as the science that he is examining.  And I disagree with the level of conclusiveness in the selected studies.  In spite of dire predictions Global Warming has ceased over the last decade, the oceans have absorbed more carbon, and no conclusion of man-made warming has been made.  

The cold hard fact is we don't know.  People hate that.  You can't run models or make policy based on "I don't know" so we latch on to possibilities and present them as fact, or invent things and hold them out as fact (see, e.g., world religions).  

Again, I think pollution buildup will have an impact on the environment (by that I mean as it relates to human wellbeing, since when we boil it down that's what all this is really about for 95% of the people).  Clearly most forms of pollution are detrimental to our cause.  I also think we are probably having an effect on the global environment, from changing levels of C02, ozone, methane, salt concentrations, and a horde of other things.  

But like everyone else, I don't know what that result will be.  Nor do I know if it will be offset or overshadowed by other factors (2C will not stop the next ice age from eventually coming nor compensate for reduced solar activity should it arise again).

I guess what I'm saying, is I wish they would present it more as a "best understanding" instead of pretending like they have it all figured out.

Remember CF it's been re-branded.  It's called "Climate Change" now, not "Global Warming,"  so now it doesn't matter if it's getting warmer, colder, dryer, wetter, more windy, or partly cloudy.  As long as the weather is changing, we are in crisis!  

I have decided to start my own "official" research into the phenomena and latch on to some grants before the world ends.  Want to join me?  Basically we can prove just about anything as long as it's alarming and rake in some government cash!

Perhaps we should start with how climate change affects the airspeed velocity of unladen swallows?

[Conan71]

I don't disagree we need to be better stewards to our environment.  This simply illustrates the desparate measures people in a role of leadership or responsibility have taken in pimping the global warming climate change conspiracy.

[iplaw]

quote:Originally posted by cannon_fodder

lol, who needs polar ice we'll just make some out of styrofoam whenever we need it!  

The new "documentaries" irritate me.  From Michael Moore to Al Gore, they are suppose to be commercially successful first, then persuasive, and then maybe actually document something.  How that is called a "documentary" and compared to National Geographic, the Smithsonian, and other actual documentary works I'm not sure.
- - -

Wevus:  The Baron of Stern is an economist.  His report measures emissions and then takes other data to extrapolate the result.  From that result he estimates the economic impact to determine what government action would be appropriate.

I applaud his measures and his tactics.  I think he is really trying to look at it from a logical perspective.

However, the fact remains that his conclusion is only as good as the science that he is examining.  And I disagree with the level of conclusiveness in the selected studies.  In spite of dire predictions Global Warming has ceased over the last decade, the oceans have absorbed more carbon, and no conclusion of man-made warming has been made.  

The cold hard fact is we don't know.  People hate that.  You can't run models or make policy based on "I don't know" so we latch on to possibilities and present them as fact, or invent things and hold them out as fact (see, e.g., world religions).  

Again, I think pollution buildup will have an impact on the environment (by that I mean as it relates to human wellbeing, since when we boil it down that's what all this is really about for 95% of the people).  Clearly most forms of pollution are detrimental to our cause.  I also think we are probably having an effect on the global environment, from changing levels of C02, ozone, methane, salt concentrations, and a horde of other things.  

But like everyone else, I don't know what that result will be.  Nor do I know if it will be offset or overshadowed by other factors (2C will not stop the next ice age from eventually coming nor compensate for reduced solar activity should it arise again).

I guess what I'm saying, is I wish they would present it more as a "best understanding" instead of pretending like they have it all figured out.

Damned Boortz fans and your fancy logic...

[we vs us]

quote:Originally posted by cannon_fodder

lol, who needs polar ice we'll just make some out of styrofoam whenever we need it!  

The new "documentaries" irritate me.  From Michael Moore to Al Gore, they are suppose to be commercially successful first, then persuasive, and then maybe actually document something.  How that is called a "documentary" and compared to National Geographic, the Smithsonian, and other actual documentary works I'm not sure.
- - -

Wevus:  The Baron of Stern is an economist.  His report measures emissions and then takes other data to extrapolate the result.  From that result he estimates the economic impact to determine what government action would be appropriate.

I applaud his measures and his tactics.  I think he is really trying to look at it from a logical perspective.

However, the fact remains that his conclusion is only as good as the science that he is examining.  And I disagree with the level of conclusiveness in the selected studies.  In spite of dire predictions Global Warming has ceased over the last decade, the oceans have absorbed more carbon, and no conclusion of man-made warming has been made.  

The cold hard fact is we don't know.  People hate that.  You can't run models or make policy based on "I don't know" so we latch on to possibilities and present them as fact, or invent things and hold them out as fact (see, e.g., world religions).  

Again, I think pollution buildup will have an impact on the environment (by that I mean as it relates to human wellbeing, since when we boil it down that's what all this is really about for 95% of the people).  Clearly most forms of pollution are detrimental to our cause.  I also think we are probably having an effect on the global environment, from changing levels of C02, ozone, methane, salt concentrations, and a horde of other things.  

But like everyone else, I don't know what that result will be.  Nor do I know if it will be offset or overshadowed by other factors (2C will not stop the next ice age from eventually coming nor compensate for reduced solar activity should it arise again).

I guess what I'm saying, is I wish they would present it more as a "best understanding" instead of pretending like they have it all figured out.

I belatedly realized that might have come off as snark, and I really just wanted to add a counterpoint to Conan's link.  

Though as far as substance goes:  Lord Stern has the resources and access he needs to conduct a pretty thorough investigation, and one might assume (I did) that he would doublecheck that the science that he does isn't based on poor science that others have done. Especially if said investigation concludes that transformational change on a worldwide scale is in order.  

Not that you should believe him if you don't want to, but I found him a credible expert, as did at least one government (England).

[Conan71]

Not so fast about the limeys:

"In what is a rare judicial ruling on what children can see in the class-room, Mr Justice Barton was at pains to point out that the "apocalyptic vision" presented in the film was politically partisan and not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change."

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/corporate_law/article2633838.ece