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The Independent - 07/02/10

An orchestrated campaign is being waged against climate change science to undermine public acceptance of man-made global warming, environment experts claimed last night.

The attack against scientists supportive of the idea of man-made climate change has grown in ferocity since the leak of thousands of documents on the subject from the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit last December.

Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe.

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Oilgate!

Looking briefly at the replies to this article, I find it amazing the number of hysterical GW skeptics who must trawl the web constantly for pro warming articles to attack. The antis in these replies always outnumber the pros by a huge margin. That I find very suspicious.

Hahaha! "Hundreds of thousands of pounds..." The equivalent of loose change and breathmints compared to what the governments spend on IPCC and related "research".

I'm pleased to see this thread isn't in 'News'.

And how is that evil? The oil companies want to continue making money from their prime product. That some of the loony left hippy animist ecosystem outweighs human lifers want all the oil, gas and coal to stay in the ground is in what way more morally correct than those who disagree, want to stay warm, fed and employed?

Hmmm?

fifthcolumn wrote:And how is that evil? The oil companies want to continue making money from their prime product. That some of the loony left hippy animist ecosystem outweighs human lifers want all the oil, gas and coal to stay in the ground is in what way more morally correct than those who disagree, want to stay warm, fed and employed?

If we carry on pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, GW/CC aside, we will at the very least acidify the oceans so much that we will lose most of the very low fish stocks that we have left. That may not cause us rich people much of a problem but most poor person living in a coastal region rely on fish for a living and/or food. It would impoverish millions of people and cost us a fortune in aid and extra costs put on alternative protein sources.

Oxygenation of the atmosphere could also be effected by loss of plankton caused by ocean acidification. Now that could effect our ability to "stay warm, fed and employed".

They are the known problems with acidifying the oceans. What are the unknown ones? Whenever man mucks about with an ecosystem there are always unthought of problems that arise.

The tobacco companies only wanted to "continue making money from their prime product" despite the fact that they were killing people and shunting the costs for medical help onto the community. And before you say it, the taxation from tobacco was not enough to cover the full costs of health problems.

For years the tobacco companies funded a campaign to deny the problems caused by their products and against any taxation to pay for the problems. Does that ring any bells? In fact the same "scientists" who worked for the tobacco companies are now "working" for the oil companies. What is their scientific expertise? Disinformation?

kenneal wrote: If we carry on pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, GW/CC aside, we will at the very least acidify the oceans so much that we will lose most of the very low fish stocks that we have left.

Will we? Supposedly acidification of the ocean would dissolve the calcium shells of creatures that have such things. I'm not so sure fish have calcium shells and I'm not so sure that fish were mostly wiped out during the last spell of global warming in the Eocene either.

That may not cause us rich people much of a problem but most poor person living in a coastal region rely on fish for a living and/or food. It would impoverish millions of people and cost us a fortune in aid and extra costs put on alternative protein sources.

I wonder then, why in some areas fish stocks are recovering in spite of the alleged acidification difficulties they are facing. Perhaps instead it was overfishing that did it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ks-recover

Oxygenation of the atmosphere could also be effected by loss of plankton caused by ocean acidification.

I assume you mean "affected" and not "effected" right?
Also very interesting that one of the foremost experts on oxygen in the atmosphere says the following: "We are no longer so sure how Earth's atmosphere got - and retained - its oxygen-rich atmosphere".
So if he is not so sure, how is it that you are? Again, I think not.

What are the unknown ones? Whenever man mucks about with an ecosystem there are always unthought of problems that arise.

So now we're down to it. It's all about the furry little animals and the ecosystems. Well here's what will happen:
We will simplify and arrange the ecosystem to suit our needs same as we have always done. It's called farming.

The tobacco companies...

Ah, attempted linkage to undesirables eh ken? Nice try mate. Nice try.

Why do some folk write crap about subjects they clearly know nothing of?

biffvernon wrote:Why do some folk write crap about subjects they clearly know nothing of?

Yeh, stupid free speech. I don't know why my grandparents fought a war to defend it. There is only one truth, there is only one truth.....ommmm.

biffvernon wrote:Why do some folk write crap about subjects they clearly know nothing of?

Please repeat that statement at least ten times a day. In front of a mirror.

fifthcolumn wrote:

kenneal wrote: What are the unknown ones? Whenever man mucks about with an ecosystem there are always unthought of problems that arise.

So now we're down to it. It's all about the furry little animals and the ecosystems. Well here's what will happen:
We will simplify and arrange the ecosystem to suit our needs same as we have always done. It's called farming.

Keep that in mind whilst considering this tangential question...

biffvernon wrote:Why do some folk write crap about subjects they clearly know nothing of?

The answer to that, and many other questions, may be found in the book that this comes from:

In 1973, E.F.Schumacher wrote:Among material resources, the greatest, unquestionably, is the land. Study how a society uses its land, and you can come to pretty reliable conclusions as to what its future will be.

The land carries the topsoil, and the topsoil carries an immense variety of living being including man.

In 1955, Tom Dale and Vernon Gill Carter wrote:Civilised man was nearly always able to become master of his environment temporarily. His chief troubles came from his delusions that his temporary mastership was permanent. He thought of himself as "master of the world", while failing to understand fully the laws of nature.

Man, whether civilised or savage, is a child of nature - he is not the master of nature. He must conform his actions to certain natural laws if he is to maintain his dominance over his environment. When he tries to circumvent the laws of nature, he usually destroys the natural environment that sustains him. And when his environment deteriorates rapidly, his civilisation declines.

One man has given a brief outline of history by saying "civilised man has marched across the face of the earth and left a desert in his footprints". This statement may be somewhat of an exaggeration, but it is not without foundation. Civilised man has despoiled most of the land on which he has lived for long. This is why his progressive civilisations have moved from place to place.

...

The 'ecological problem', it seems, is not as new as it is frequently made out to be. Yet there are two decisive differences: the earth is now much more densely populated than it was in earlier times and there are, generally speaking, no new lands to move to; and the rate of change has enormously accelerated, particularly during the last quarter of a century [to 1973].

All the same, it is still the dominant belief today that, whatever may have happened with earlier civilisations, our own modern, western civilisation has emancipated itself from dependence on nature. A representative voice is that of Eugene Rabonovitch, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

In [i]The Times[/i] of 29 April 1972, Eugene Rabonovitch wrote:The only animals whose disappearance may threaten the biological viability of man on earth are the bacteria normally inhabiting our bodies. For the rest there is no convincing proof that mankind could not survive even as the only animal species on earth! If economical ways could be developed for synthesising food from inorganic raw materials - which is likely to happen sooner or later - man may even be able to become independent of plants, on which he now depends as sources of his food...

Which rather begs the question: "Apart from manufacturing all his food in industrial processes, what else would man do on such a planet?"

foodimista wrote: Which rather begs the question: "Apart from manufacturing all his food in industrial processes, what else would man do on such a planet?"

Even though you were clearly on the opposite side of the fence to my argument I'd say good post.

We're getting a bit off topic from "climate change" but it's an interesting topic anyway:

It's very true that we have left desert in many places where there used to be civilisation and it's telling that the ONLY civilisation that managed to hold itself together while others went through repeated cycles of collapse has now gone down the western route of mining the soil.

The point is, though, that with mastery of energy flows there's no reason why a civilisation that understands and values such things as the phosphate cycle, the nitrogen cycle and the carbon cycle etc couldn't keep going indefinitely. It's like the technotopian solution of skyscraper farms in cities. They would work technically but they run counter to how business works. The land they would be built on is so expensive that the builder of the skyscraper could only make money if food was ridiculously expensive and far easier to just rent out the rooms in the buildings. Of course, there's no reason why we couldn't use that idea but out in the sticks: build farming skyscrapers and solar powered de-sal plants in the middle of the desert where land is cheap, and transport it to the cities via electric rail. Very doable and much more cost effective than building the skyscrapers in the cities.

And trying desperately to bring things back on topic: if we take the (by no means certain) tack that climate change really means climate instability, then controlling climate by growing food in what amount to controlled environments would help people survive even in an otherwise unstable climate.

To be honest I don't even see that as being too different than the idea that you could take a chimpanzee like creature, teach it to make fire and teach it to talk.

To be honest, I could have pulled almost any quote from this thread to refer to because I find the whole arena in which this and other threads take place to be very UGLY.

I am now on my third reading of Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful" book - or should I say my third attempt to read through it. Sure, it is a very difficult book to read, but only because it contains such deep truths, with nearly every paragraph being worthy of a whole discussion in itself, that each rereading brings me to a greater understanding of what he writes about how health, beauty, and permanence have been usurped by debased money-orientated "economics".

Apart from manufacturing all his food in industrial processes, what else would man do on such a planet? Ugly, transient and vile things.

Gosh. Almost forty years ago. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful still ranks and one of the best books I've ever read. If anyone missed it go dig out a copy.

Lots available here for, curiously, 64p