The Denial Machine (global warming?)

[Curiosity]

Thank you Tonington/JohnMuff

We cannot control government but there is nothing in our nations which dictates we have to sit back and let things happen around us. Some people have to rely on their transportation as part of their work - so that is a given - but there are many ways we can contribute to cleaning up our own environment.

I think if communities began their own programs - it would shame some politicians into getting on the program - and who knows where it could lead?

Sorry I got "naggy" - but I think we can all do so much more without even suffering the difference in our lifestyle. Nobody wants to feel they are "losing something we have".... but rather we should think of it as
"reusing" something we don't need or want.

They are talking a lot about heating/cooling homes now with geothermal units which dig deep on site. I still don't know how all this works.... but it could be one alternative for extreme conditions ...

 

[John Muff]

Civic duty

Thank you Tonington/JohnMuff

[...]

Sorry I got "naggy" - but I think we can all do so much more without even suffering the difference in our lifestyle.

[...]

They are talking a lot about heating/cooling homes now with geothermal units which dig deep on site. I still don't know how all this works.... but it could be one alternative for extreme conditions ...

Hi there,
Curiosity brought the good alternative of the gorthermal pump. They are great and keep your bill low. Savings are largely on an environmental point of view due to the high cost of installation. But, having it done myself I'm glad I did it for all of us.

Tonington brought the point of his landlord. Do they have to respect rules on emissions based on a per capita. This is exactly where governments should be able to say that changes must be done... Strict rules and penalties.

John Muff

 

[John Muff]

Denial or profits, what'sthe difference anyway???

Hi again,

My point to bring it back to the question is that we shouldn't let industries make profits on futur security and the still not catastrophic state of our own health.

We share the land and should respect our neighbors: which I doubt citizens in Hamilton (ON), if you ever been there could say that industries are not provoking major shift in ecological landscape.

Finally,

THEIR DENIAL IS AS BIG AS THE PROFITS THEY DO ON THE BACK OF OUR FRAGILE PLANET AND ECOSYSTEMS.

Right on it !

John Muff

 

[Toro]

THEIR DENIAL IS AS BIG AS THE PROFITS THEY DO ON THE BACK OF OUR FRAGILE PLANET AND ECOSYSTEMS.

Less profits = less jobs.

 

[John Muff]

Wow !!! ...are we that far.. Really ???

Less profits = less jobs.

Wow, are we in such a bad situation to prove this lack of environmental efforts on job growth.

Government must always increase it's production. Based on this mentality, the one Mr. Bush, Mr. Harper and toro adopt, we should turn a blind eye on the current situation, because it would hurt the econimy. Hooooo!!! Poor babies, you wont have big profits anymore, because production would become more expensive. Poor you !!! I just hope that there it's that many that will follow your brightness...

As I said,

THEIR DENIAL IS AS BIG AS THE PROFITS THEY DO AND WILL ALWAYS DO (Because there is still too many "toro" out there) ON THE BACK OF OUR WORLD... Isn't that hard to get this ? I'm not giving an opinion here "toro", I am giving facts.

To all employers, change your ways of doing it if it help the environment instead of hiring another employee. It's just collective efforts that will change the wind. Not denial as I'm fighting right now...

John Muff

 

[Toro]

Government must always increase it's production. Based on this mentality, the one Mr. Bush, Mr. Harper and toro adopt, we should turn a blind eye on the current situation, because it would hurt the econimy. Hooooo!!! Poor babies, you wont have big profits anymore, because production would become more expensive. Poor you !!! I just hope that there it's that many that will follow your brightness...

Its funny that you comment on my brightness when you are saying its government that always increases production.

Pretty much sums it up.

 

[Tonington]

I get a real kick out of hearing all the time from politicians and financial gurus how strong economies are. The minute some one talks about controlling emissions that flies out the window. Is our economy really that fragile? Lets set the record straight, emission control is not some absolute process, it is a process which would be gradual and metric. The strength of any economy depends on a number of variables, I'll mention two of them. A sustainable approach involves the environment and highly skilled adaptable workers. If the environment takes a swing for the worse, and we don't have clean drinking water or enough food resources, the economy suffers. I believe our workforce is skilled and adaptable. What is the point of having a srtrong economy if only the wealthy corporations will benefit? If the population is suffering as a result of environmental strain on resources, how does inefficient workers affect the corporations bottom lines?

 

[John Muff]

Keep denial, toro. Hoping you are one of the wealthy left...

Its funny that you comment on my brightness when you are saying its government that always increases production.

Pretty much sums it up.

Yes, governments must always increase their production a/p human nature... We, as a country, by challenges we ask them to be good leaders; they unfortunately take this as increasing production on the back of the environment... This is the denial. In fact, they should understand that we only require some good intentions toward TRYING to reduce GHG.

In my mind, my sole opinion, we are not doing enough to find ways to better produce in a more environmental friendly way. I guess you could read on ISO-9001, it would help you understand how this simple tag, can change ways in how single individuals, in their daily life at work, could contribute to let the vegetation and trees breath a little better.

We have one been recognized as a lung for our planet. Please watch "L'erreure boréale" fro D. Lepage. It may help you understand how small steps in the wrong direction made the goal to achieve significant reduction in GHG almost impossible.

Have a good one toro... Hoping you will be in the wealthy remaining survivors, when food and water become poison, or that we destroy vital links in the food CHAIN, we expose ourselves to extinction, no matter how production has been good in: 2005, 2004, 2003, and so forth.

Be sure to keep your head above water too... LOL

I think it Pretty much sums it up... Hehe !

John Muff

 

[MMMike]

Thirty years ago we were going into an ice age, now the same scientists are calling for global warming. They sound much like weather forecasters and should probably be given the same amout of heed to there opinions.

In the past 30 years there has been a vast amount of research into climate change, and a vast amount of new evidence. In particular, recent temperature increases and spiking CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. We now have ice cores done in the Arctic that document asmospheric conditions going back thousands of years that show how abnormal the current trend is, even looking at a large time scale. We ignore this evidence at our own peril.

 

[John Muff]

Tonington is right

I get a real kick out of hearing all the time from politicians and financial gurus how strong economies are.

[...]

What is the point of having a srtrong economy if only the wealthy corporations will benefit? If the population is suffering as a result of environmental strain on resources, how does inefficient workers affect the corporations bottom lines?

Thank you Tonington, it shows just how the capitalism is in fact week. Why don't we have our say in how money should be spent. We are electing choices so far from the reality.

Can we justify our innactions on switching power balance. We should have the right for a real COLLABORATION between COLLEAGUES rather than DIVISIONS between OPPONENTS.

It's in having peoples like "Tonington" that we can hope for a better understanding of our values, Thank again Tonington.

John Muff

 

[#juan]

In the past 30 years there has been a vast amount of research into climate change, and a vast amount of new evidence. In particular, recent temperature increases and spiking CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. We now have ice cores done in the Arctic that document asmospheric conditions going back thousands of years that show how abnormal the current trend is, even looking at a large time scale. We ignore this evidence at our own peril.

Couldn't be said more concisely or any better.

 

[jimmoyer]

Oy veh !!!

After the recent death of Milton Friedman we are subject to those who know not
of the Silent Hand of Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations.

Save this thread Toro !!!

Tonington, noted the irony of capitalists claiming market economics to be robust
and yet so fragile if govt regulation comes into play.

This misses an understanding of simple human nature.

We don't bear costs willingly when looking for profit. Simple.

However some far-seeing leaders do bear the kinds of costs that might reap much greater profit
in the long run in this very tyrannical short term profit world.

Yet it was Keynes, who said, "In the long run, we're all dead."

Which makes us short term profit seekers, eh ?

 

[Jay]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml

 

[Tonington]

Which part of human nature supercedes the others, do we really want to start assigning rank here? There are other aspects of human nature vital to this discussion. Such as our curious nature which allows us to make observations of the natural world around us. If profit blinds that, I would suggest some people need to serious think over their own ideas of self preservation, or maybe generational preservation.

Indeed we are profit seeking, but profit doesn't necessarilly mean the bottom line. I make sacrifices every day which gives me profit in return. I don't want to contribute to a deteriorating natural world any more than I can help. Most of my life I have been connected to the outdoor world. I played outside building tree forts, caught frogs and brought them back to our ponds, I spent a whole afternoon pretending I was a biologist, documenting the behaviour of the ducks in our ponds. I actually chose these activities over watching TV and playing video games. I noticed early on the impact man can have, when the frog ponds I visited were being killed by run-off from gravel pits, and land stripped of the trees to make new pits and landfills. I've seen the effects of overfishing first hand. The reefs I snorkeled in PEI don't have anywhere close to the same biodiversity they had when I got my first fins.

Indeed in the long run we are all dead, I just hope before I go I can make significant contributions so I will be able to showcase the natural world to my own progeny.

 

[Jay]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/12/nclim12.xml

 

[MMMike]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/12/nclim12.xml

I'm a little confused as to why you rely on opinion pieces written by non-scientists as your primary source of information on this subject, Jay. It seems as though you come at this issue with a lot of pre-conceived notions. This is not a left or right issue, it's no left wing conspiracy, it's no wealth transfer scheme. Why don't you read some unbiased reports from scientists, then come back and say there's no problem. And bet your and your children's future on it.

 

[MMMike]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/12/nclim12.xml

This is a dazzling debunking of climate change science. It is also wildly wrong



[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Deniers are cock-a-hoop at an aristocrat's claims that global warming is a UN hoax. But the physics is bafflingly bad[/FONT]

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]George Monbiot[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Tuesday November 14, 2006[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]The Guardian[/FONT]




For the past nine days my inbox has been filling up with messages labelled "Your scam exposed", "The great fraud unravels" and "How do you feel now, asshole?". They are referring to a new "scientific paper", which proves that the "climate change scare" is a tale "worthier of St John the Divine than of science".
Published in two parts on consecutive Sundays, it runs to a total of 52 pages, containing graphs, tables and references. To my correspondents, to a good many journalists and to thousands of delighted bloggers, this paper clinches it: climate change is a hoax perpetrated by a leftwing conspiracy coordinated by the United Nations.
So which was the august journal that published it? Science? Nature? Geophysical Research Letters? Not quite. It was the Sunday Telegraph. In keeping with most of the articles about climate change in that publication, it is a mixture of cherry-picking, downright misrepresentation and pseudo-scientific gibberish. But it has the virtue of being incomprehensible to anyone who is not an atmospheric physicist. The author of this "research article" is Christopher Monckton, otherwise known as Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. He has a degree in classics and a diploma in journalism and, as far as I can tell, no further qualifications. But he is confident enough to maintain that - by contrast to all those charlatans and amateurs who wrote the reports produced by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - he is publishing "the truth".

Read the rest here

 

[Jay]

There are some interesting facts published in these reports, that's why I’m bringing them to the attention of those who will/want to read them.

Some of those facts point out there is some questionability of the "unbiased" nature of scientists in this field, and if you do some digging around here I have posted positions by scientists who don't believe in the human element of GW.....I'm willing to bet my children's future on this just like the people before me were willing to bet my future that the earth wouldn't freeze over and kill us all.

You are more than welcome to go through this stuff and refute it....

 

[Tonington]

It took me a while to find where Monckton was getting his information from for that piece in the paper.

As MMMike says, there are problems with what Monckton has wrote. When Monckton talks about the Stefan-Boltzmann equation as it relates to temperature responses from the radiative effects of greenhouse gases, he completely misses the point of that equations use. This is one of the pieces he uses to try to debunk the UN findings. His point was that the UN used a value of 0.5 for the greek symbol Lambda, when it should be 0.303. The whole point is the Stefan-Boltzmann equation is used for a body which effectively captures all radiation and re-radiates it. It is an expression of an "ideal" planet, which Earth is not. If the Earth captured all the radiation we wouldn't be debating this right now.

When I read the piece he wrote about the Chinese circumnavigating the Arctic circle, I nearly spewed water onto my keyboard. Try finding any evidence that the Chinese made it all the way around the polar region in the 1400's. The proof that they even made it around the whole world, much less the Arctic is not found.

He is actually guilty of precisely what he is arguing in his paper. He says that the "consensus" is trying to miss-represent the facts and omitt others, while he does the same, and worse yet blatantly lies.

 

[Jay]

Read the rest here

A coment from the link...

Contrary to both Monckton and Monbiot, I actually am a physicist and an astrophysicist at that. I know something about the sun, for instance. And what Monckton reported on that point is not wide of the mark and tallies with research on the observed and inferred behaviour of our primary heat source over the past millenium. The good news is that the prediction is that the sun will switch back from its current high activity to a state of low activity, as it has repeatedly done in the past, and quite abruptly so, somewhere in the next 10 to 15 years. Then the current warming trend can turn into a cooling trend again. Perhaps then we even will see research papers appearing about the next ice age, who knows?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Monbiot

George Monbiot (born January 27, 1963) is a leftwing journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist in the United Kingdom who writes a weekly column for The Guardian newspaper.