I warned you about it earlier. Crank science sites across the internet feature news of another cheap hit on Rachel Carson and science in movie form.
“Not Evil, Just Wrong” is slated for release on October 18. This is the film that tried to intrude on the Rachel Carson film earlier this year, but managed to to get booked only at an elementary school in Seattle, Washington — Rachel Carson Elementary, a green school where the kids showed more sense than the film makers by voting to name the school after the famous scientist-author.
The film is both evil and wrong.
Errors just in the trailer:
- Claims that Al Gore said sea levels will rise catastrophically, “in the very near future.” Not in his movie, not in his writings or speeches. Not true. That’s a simple misstatement of what Gore said, and Gore had the science right.
- ” . . . [I]t wouldn’t be a bad thing for this Earth to warm up. In fact, ice is the enemy of life.” “Bad” in this case is a value judgment — global warming isn’t bad if you’re a weed, a zebra mussel, one of the malaria parasites, a pine bark beetle, any other tropical disease, or a sadist. But significant warming as climatologists, physicists and others project, would be disastrous to agriculture, major cities in many parts of the world, sea coasts, and most people who don’t live in the Taklamakan or Sahara, and much of the life in the ocean. Annual weather cycles within long-established ranges, is required for life much as we know it. “No ice” is also an enemy of life.
- “They want to raise our taxes.” No, that’s pure, uncomposted bovine excrement.
- “They want to close our factories.” That’s more effluent from the anus of male bovines.
- The trailer notes the usual claim made by Gore opponents that industry cannot exist if it is clean, that industry requires that we poison the planet. Were that true, we’d have a need to halt industry now, lest we become like the yeast in the beer vat, or the champagne bottle, manufacturing alcohol until the alcohol kills the yeast. Our experience with Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899, the Clean Air Acts and the Clean Water Act is that cleaning the environment produces economic growth, not the other way around. A city choked in pollution dies. Los Angeles didn’t suffer when the air got cleaner. Pittsburgh’s clean air became a way to attract new industries to the city, before the steel industry there collapsed. Cleaning Lake Erie didn’t hurt industry. The claim made by the film is fatuous, alarmist, and morally corrupt.
When the human health, human welfare, and environmental effects which could be expressed in dollar terms were added up for the entire 20-year period, the total benefits of Clean Air Act programs were estimated to range from about $6 trillion to about $50 trillion, with a mean estimate of about $22 trillion. These estimated benefits represent the estimated value Americans place on avoiding the dire air quality conditions and dramatic increases in illness and premature death which would have prevailed without the 1970 and 1977 Clean Air Act and its associated state and local programs. By comparison, the actual costs of achieving the pollution reductions observed over the 20 year period were $523 billion, a small fraction of the estimated monetary benefits.
- “Some of the environmental activists have not come to accept that the human is also part of the environment.” Fatuous claim. Environmentalists note that humans uniquely possess the ability to change climate on a global scale, intentionally, for the good or bad; environmentalists choose to advocate for actions that reduce diseases like malaria, cholera and asthma. We don’t have to sacrifice a million people a year to malaria, in order to be industrial and productive. We don’t have to kill 700,000 kids with malaria every year just to keep cars.
- “They want to go back to the Dark Ages and the Black Plague.” No, that would be the film makers. Environmentalists advocate reducing filth and ignorance both. Ignorance and lack of ability to read, coupled with religious fanaticism, caused the strife known as “the Dark Ages.” It’s not environmentalists who advocate an end to cheap public schools.
- The trailer shows a kid playing in the surf on a beach. Of course, without the Clean Water Act and other attempts to keep the oceans clean, such play would be impossible. That we can play again on American beaches is a tribute to the environmental movement, and reason enough to grant credence to claims of smart people like Al Gore and the scientists whose work he promotes.
- “I cannot believe that Al Gore has great regard for people, real people.” So, this is a film promoting the views of crabby, misanthropic anal orifices who don’t know Al Gore at all? Shame on them. And, why should anyone want to see such a film? If I want to see senseless acts of stupidity, I can rent a film by Quentin Tarantino and get some art with the stupidity. [Update, November 23, 2009: This may be one of the most egregiously false charges of the film. Gore, you recall, is the guy who put his political career and presidential ambitions on hold indefinitely when his son was seriously injured in an auto-pedestrian accident; Gore was willing to sacrifice all his political capital in order to get his son healed. My first dealings directly with Gore came on the Organ Transplant bill. Gore didn’t need a transplant, didn’t have need for one in his family, and had absolutely nothing to gain from advocacy for the life-saving procedure. It was opposed by the chairman of his committee, by a majority of members of his own party in both Houses of Congress, by many in the medical establishment, by many in the pharmaceutical industry, and by President Reagan, who didn’t drop his threat to veto the bill until he signed it, as I recall. Gore is a man of deep, human-centered principles. Saying “I can’t believe Al Gore has great regard for real people” only demonstrates the vast ignorance and perhaps crippling animus of the speaker.]
That’s a whopper about every 15 seconds in the trailer — the film itself may make heads spin if it comes close to that pace of error.
Where have we seen this before? Producers of the film claim as “contributors” some of the people they try to lampoon — people like Ed Begley, Jr., and NASA’s James E. Hansen, people who don’t agree in any way with the hysterical claims of the film, and people who, I wager, would be surprised to be listed as “contributors.”
It’s easy to suppose these producers used the same ambush-the-scientist technique used earlier by the producers of the anti-science, anti-Darwin film “Expelled!“
Here, see the hysteria, error and alarmism for yourself:
Ann McElhinney is one of the film’s producers. Her past work includes other films against protecting environment and films for mining companies. She appears to be affiliated with junk science purveyors at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an astro-turf organization in Washington, D.C., for whom she flacked earlier this year (video from Desmogblog):
Remember, too, that this film is already known to have gross inaccuracies about Rachel Carson and DDT, stuff that high school kids could get right easily.
Anyone have details on McElhinney and her colleague, Phelim McAlee?
More:
- A few sane, scientific-minded people have noted the film, too.
- Ecorazzi had some sharp words
- Update, October 12, 2009: One of movie’s producers acting badly, as Al Gore provides evidence of the movie’s errors
Related posts, at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:
- The killer CO2 cloud climate change “skeptics” don’t want you to know about
- Monckton will lie about anything
- Monckton lies again (and again, and again, and again, and again . . .)! The continuing saga of a practicer of fictional science
- Post-film premiere update, here
Please spread the word:
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Let me be blunt, Hexmate. I greatly dislike plagiarism. I think it should be a crime. There’s a link to Coleman’s work posted where your post used to be. If you are not an honorable enough person to indicate what is your work and what is the work of others, you don’t get credit for it.
Now that we know exactly what your occupation is, it seems we’re just haggling about the price.
Or, you could repost with proper attribution.
Your choice.
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Ed said: “It’s odder than hell how you can only see “science” and “facts” in crackpots like Monckton, and not in Nobel laureates who actually do the science.”
Ed I found it interesting that you were referred to as a crackpot. You need to separate yourself from this type of behavior. I thought it was interesting to note a few of the past Nobel winners, because it appears they are not worthy of any great honor or distinction. It’s a really good reason to choose carefully who you believe and admire.
The 1992 winner Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu has been exposed as a Communist agent working for terrorists who were ultimately responsible for the death of her own family. She killed her own family Ed.
The 1994 winner Yassar Arafat was a known terrorist. Another killer.
The 2002 winner Jimmy Carter who allowed the capture of 53 Americans for over 400 days in Iran, was never able to gain their freedom, and who never accomplished anything tangible in his life. He was also responsible for 8 military personnel being killed in a botched rescue attempt Ed.
The 2004 winner Wangari Maathai also claimed that white devils invented the AIDS virus to wipe out the black race – BRILLIANT!
2007 winner Al Gore for his baseless theory on global warming that has been refuted with accurate data by subject matter experts. In addition Gore has enriched himself off of this farce by growing his own net worth by 5000%. What a dedicated environmentalist Ed.
Even murderer Tookie Williams was nominated for the award. Another killer Ed.
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Ed said – “Hexmate, you suffer from an odd form of blindness. I suspect global warming has so damaged your vision that you cannot now see what is plainly in front of you. It’s odder than hell how you can only see “science” and “facts” in crackpots like Monckton, and not in Nobel laureates who actually do the science. You’ll find nothing of use on this site, I’m sure.”
Well Ed my vision is 20/20 and because there is no global warming it is clear and uninhibited. Your vision on the other hand is diseased obviously beyond repair. There is nothing odd about the truth Ed except that it conflicts with your perception of reality.
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The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam
By John Coleman
The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have led to a rise in public awareness that there is no runaway global warming. The public is now becoming skeptical of the claim that our carbon footprints from the use of fossil fuels is going to lead to climatic calamities.
How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government to punish the citizens for living the good life that fossil fuels provide for us?
The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. He served with the Navy in World War II. After the war he became the Director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle saw the opportunity to obtain major funding from the Navy for doing measurements and research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was conducting atomic bomb tests. He greatly expanded the Institute’s areas of interest and among others hired Hans Suess, a noted Chemist from the University of Chicago, who was very interested in the traces of carbon in the environment from the burning of fossil fuels.
Revelle tagged on to Suess studies and co-authored a paper with him in 1957. The paper raises the possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming. It seems to be a plea for funding for more studies. Funding, frankly, is where Revelle’s mind was most of the time.
Next Revelle hired a Geochemist named David Keeling to devise a way to measure the atmospheric content of Carbon dioxide. In 1960 Keeling published his first paper showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the increase to the burning of fossil fuels.
These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, could have any significant impact on temperatures.
Now let me take you back to the1950s when this was going on. Our cities were entrapped in a pall of pollution from the crude internal combustion engines that powered cars and trucks back then and from the uncontrolled emissions from power plants and factories. Cars and factories and power plants were filling the air with all sorts of pollutants.
There was a valid and serious concern about the health consequences of this pollution and a strong environmental movement was developing to demand action. Government accepted this challenge and new environmental standards were set. Scientists and engineers came to the rescue. New reformulated fuels were developed for cars, as were new high tech, computer controlled engines and catalytic converters. By the mid seventies cars were no longer big time polluters, emitting only some carbon dioxide and water vapor from their tail pipes. Likewise, new fuel processing and smoke stack scrubbers were added to industrial and power plants and their emissions were greatly reduced, as well.
But an environmental movement had been established and its funding and very existence depended on having a continuing crisis issue. So the research papers from Scripps came at just the right moment. And, with them came the birth of an issue; man-made global warming from the carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
Revelle and Keeling used this new alarmism to keep their funding growing. Other researchers with environmental motivations and a hunger for funding saw this developing and climbed aboard as well. The research grants began to flow and alarming hypothesis began to show up everywhere.
The Keeling curve showed a steady rise in CO2 in atmosphere during the period since oil and coal were discovered and used by man. As of today, carbon dioxide has increased from 215 to 385 parts per million. But, despite the increases, it is still only a trace gas in the atmosphere. While the increase is real, the percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 remains tiny, about 41 hundredths of one percent.
Several hypothesis emerged in the 70s and 80s about how this tiny atmospheric component of CO2 might cause a significant warming. But they remained unproven. Years have passed and the scientists kept reaching out for evidence of the warming and proof of their theories. And, the money and environmental claims kept on building up.
Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation’s bureaucrat named Maurice Strong. He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government. Strong organized a World Earth Day event in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. From this he developed a committee of scientists, environmentalists and political operatives from the UN to continue a series of meeting.
Strong developed the concept that the UN could demand payments from the advanced nations for the climatic damage from their burning of fossil fuels to benefit the underdeveloped nations, a sort of CO2 tax that would be the funding for his one-world government. But, he needed more scientific evidence to support his primary thesis.
So Strong championed the establishment of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This was not a pure climate study scientific organization, as we have been led to believe. It was an organization of one-world government UN bureaucrats, environmental activists and environmentalist scientists who craved the UN funding so they could produce the science they needed to stop the burning of fossil fuels. Over the last 25 years they have been very effective. Hundreds of scientific papers, four major international meetings and reams of news stories about climatic Armageddon later, the UN IPCC has made its points to the satisfaction of most and even shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
At the same time, that Maurice Strong was busy at the UN, things were getting a bit out of hand for the man who is now called the grandfather of global warming, Roger Revelle. He had been very politically active in the late 1950’s as he worked to have the University of California locate a San Diego campus adjacent to Scripps Institute in La Jolla. He won that major war, but lost an all important battle afterward when he was passed over in the selection of the first Chancellor of the new campus.
He left Scripps finally in 1963 and moved to Harvard University to establish a Center for Population Studies. It was there that Revelle inspired one of his students to become a major global warming activist. This student would say later, “It felt like such a privilege to be able to hear about the readouts from some of those measurements in a group of no more than a dozen undergraduates. Here was this teacher presenting something not years old but fresh out of the lab, with profound implications for our future!” The student described him as “a wonderful, visionary professor” who was “one of the first people in the academic community to sound the alarm on global warming,” That student was Al Gore. He thought of Dr. Revelle as his mentor and referred to him frequently, relaying his experiences as a student in his book Earth in the Balance, published in 1992.
So there it is, Roger Revelle was indeed the grandfather of global warming. His work had laid the foundation for the UN IPCC, provided the anti-fossil fuel ammunition to the environmental movement and sent Al Gore on his road to his books, his move, his Nobel Peace Prize and a hundred million dollars from the carbon credits business. What happened next is amazing.
The global warming frenzy was becoming the cause celeb of the media. After all the media is mostly liberal, loves Al Gore, loves to warn us of impending disasters and tell us “the sky is falling, the sky is falling”. The politicians and the environmentalist loved it, too.
But the tide was turning with Roger Revelle. He was forced out at Harvard at 65 and returned to California and a semi retirement position at UCSD. There he had time to rethink Carbon Dioxide and the greenhouse effect. The man who had inspired Al Gore and given the UN the basic research it needed to launch its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was having second thoughts.
In 1988 he wrote two cautionary letters to members of Congress. He wrote, “My own personal belief is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse effect is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways.” He added, “…we should be careful not to arouse too much alarm until the rate and amount of warming becomes clearer.”
And in 1991 Revelle teamed up with Chauncey Starr, founding director of the Electric Power Research Institute and Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, to write an article for Cosmos magazine. They urged more research and begged scientists and governments not to move too fast to curb greenhouse CO2 emissions because the true impact of carbon dioxide was not at all certain and curbing the use of fossil fuels could have a huge negative impact on the economy and jobs and our standard of living. I have discussed this collaboration with Dr. Singer. He assures me that Revelle was considerably more certain than he was at the time that carbon dioxide was not a problem.
Did Roger Revelle attend the Summer enclave at the Bohemian Grove in Northern California in the Summer of 1990 while working on that article? Did he deliver a lakeside speech there to the assembled movers and shakers from Washington and Wall Street in which he apologized for sending the UN IPCC and Al Gore onto this wild goose chase about global warming? Did he say that the key scientific conjecture of his lifetime had turned out wrong? The answer to those questions is, “I think so, but I do not know it for certain”. I have not managed to get it confirmed as of this moment. It’s a little like Las Vegas; what is said at the Bohemian Grove stays at the Bohemian Grove. There are no transcripts or recordings and people who attend are encouraged not to talk. Yet, the topic is so important, that some people have shared with me on an informal basis.
Roger Revelle died of a heart attack three months after the Cosmos story was printed. Oh, how I wish he were still alive today. He might be able to stop this scientific silliness and end the global warming scam.
Al Gore has dismissed Roger Revelle’s Mea culpa as the actions of senile old man. And, the next year, while running for Vice President, he said the science behind global warming is settled and there will be no more debate, From 1992 until today, he and his cohorts have refused to debate global warming and when ask about we skeptics they simply insult us and call us names.
So today we have the acceptance of carbon dioxide as the culprit of global warming. It is concluded that when we burn fossil fuels we are leaving a dastardly carbon footprint which we must pay Al Gore or the environmentalists to offset. Our governments on all levels are considering taxing the use of fossil fuels. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of naming CO2 as a pollutant and strictly regulating its use to protect our climate. The new President and the US congress are on board. Many state governments are moving on the same course.
We are already suffering from this CO2 silliness in many ways. Our energy policy has been strictly hobbled by no drilling and no new refineries for decades. We pay for the shortage this has created every time we buy gas. On top of that the whole thing about corn based ethanol costs us millions of tax dollars in subsidies. That also has driven up food prices. And, all of this is a long way from over.
And, I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it.
Global Warming. It is the hoax. It is bad science. It is a highjacking of public policy. It is no joke. It is the greatest scam in history.
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Ed said: “I fear for your violation of copyright. It’s an issue of attribution solely — John Coleman is just as wrong in his own words as if you claim them for your own. I didn’t think you’d give up the point so easily.”
Ed there is no copyright violation just your fears creeping in again. I know his truth doesn’t fit your mental model Ed, but that is a fitting attribution to your methodology. I’m surprised you couldn’t do better.
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Hexmate, you suffer from an odd form of blindness. I suspect global warming has so damaged your vision that you cannot now see what is plainly in front of you. It’s odder than hell how you can only see “science” and “facts” in crackpots like Monckton, and not in Nobel laureates who actually do the science.
You’ll find nothing of use on this site, I’m sure.
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Ed said: Hexmate, take a look at serious analyses of the alleged errors in Gore’s Academy Award-winning movie
Ed – There is nothing there other than a bunch of words and people voting for Gore, and against the judge’s critique. No data or facts just words. Hardly conclusive information.
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Hexmate, take a look at serious analyses of the alleged errors in Gore’s Academy Award-winning movie:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/10/update_on_the_nine_alleged_err.php
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Not in the standards. Yes, I’ve been asked about them and we discuss them.
You’re aware, of course, that the IPCC reports have been paying attention to long-term processes such as Milankovitch cycles, since the inception, no?
Despite these longterm cycles, human-caused warming presents a problem. We’re overdue for a cooling cycle way beyond what we’ve seen in the last 200 years.
Here, you can learn about the cycles yourself from the group that tracks them for IPCC.
Every Boy Scout knows about stars and precession.
No, Milankovitch cycles don’t suggest that our current warm trend is normal, nor due to end soon. Alas. Read up on this stuff. See the link above.
Standard 9th grade geography in Texas.
No, the presence of old reefs does not negate global warming. Have you read the IPCC report?
More critically, have you ever heard of the Burgess Shales? Ancient reefs in odd places don’t mean we can poor garbage into our air and get away with it.
I’ve taught the science, not idle and misplaced speculation. It’s not my current assignment, but you could do well to get up to speed on what we know about the atmosphere, and how humans can and have changed the cycles. It’s pretty frightening when you think of it: Milankovitch cycles, 400,000-year and 100,000 year cycles driven by the eccentricities of the orbit of the Earth — and human pollution appears to be cancelling them out.
To paraphrase the old coffee-room sign, “Your Mother Nature doesn’t live here; clean up after yourself.”
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I live and teach in Texas. Nationally, there is no “active agenda of subverting education” and even if there were, it wouldn’t be operative in Texas.
On the other hand, there IS an active agenda of subverting public discussion on issues like air pollution, to frighten the public and scare people away from actions that would protect the environment — Exxon’s admitted it.
You have a lot of gall to voice the viewpoint of the subversion, but claim that scientists work to spread falsehoods.
Take it up with the Texas legislature and sane people. Our system of government depends on citizens doing their job, voting, serving in office, voicing opinions, standing for the Pledge of Allegiance and saluting the flag when it passes in a parade.
On second thought, take it up with the next active-duty Marine you see — tell him you think he’s a punk and a dupe, and tell him you disagree with kids being taught to salute his nation’s flag. Let us know what the guy says, will you?
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I can’t wait to see this movie. Finally a different point of view. I don’t want to see more censorship, free speech and democracy were earned by those brave enough to risk their lives and fight for our freedom. I am sick of the liberal media and their attempt to brainwash everyone. I don’t believe that someone who is concerned about global warming would live in am enormous house and fly on a Private jet. Let us all believe the scientists who said it was going to be nice and sunny today, it is snowing. I understand the need for science but I don’t blindly accept all they say. I work with them everyday.
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Interesting twist on my point. You know very well there is an active agenda of subverting education to create social engineering with a liberal if not socialist persuasion. As far teaching students to be politically active, this is exactly what I mean by a breach in ethical standards. I would suggest teaching the basics, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, especially since Texas ranks pretty low nationally.
Well then I have great news for you, the Planet has been cooling since 1998. The Planet has not been warming for over 10 years.
I agree, have you taught about Milankovitch cycles?
There are many interesting points in the natural movement of the Earth. Did you know that Polaris is not always the North Star? In 12,000 the star Vega in the constellation Lyra will be the North Star. This very same Earth precession also moves the polar ice caps. It is absolutely normal for the ice to change on Earth’s poles. It is interesting that Milankovitch cycles are used to calibrate ice core samples, yet they are ignored when it comes to determining the natural glacial periods of the Earth.
Do you teach about the Great Barrier Reef?
Did you know that 200 feet below the surface of the ocean is another barrier reef. The ocean used to be 200 feet lower and today’s reef was covered in vegetation. Clearly the sea level changes without human involvement.
More to the point, Have you taught any form of science that counters APGW? If so what was the subject matter?
Again, the Earth has been cooling for over 10 years.
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There are strict ethical and moral codes, plus licensing authorities, and other codes I subscribe to just for the sake of ethics.
Divulging a political party is not an indication of subversive intent. Most patriotic Americans should have political views, and should be politically active.
The questions around climate change are questions of facts, most of them science questions. They are not skewable for the most part. The fact is the planet is warming (it would be great news that the planet is cooling, were it so — but there’s no evidence of a trend that way at all).
One should teach the facts and the theories that explain the facts.
I no longer teach air pollution nor the biology and chemistry involved. I teach students according to the laws and regulations of the state of Texas. That code hopes to convince students to learn the facts and be politically active.
If the science supported a cooling planet, it would be great. It’s not likely. That’s not the trend over the past 50 years. There is no grand conspiracy to convince people, falsely, of warming. That’s just what the data show.
The question is, will we deal with it, or will we try to stick our heads in the sand?
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Ed:
Originally I stated that I thought you were an idiot due to your myopic viewpoint. Now that I see you are a teacher, I would like to change my mind about that.
I think you are down right dangerous!
Since this blog is meant to educate students, and so far the majority of your posts clearly side with APGW. I must assume you forward this same myopic agenda in the classroom.
These days there is no longer an ethical or moral code for teachers. My High School Civics teacher refused to divulge his political party because he wanted us to form our own opinions, not follow his.
Today teachers, like Ed, espouse APGW as truth based in science when in fact there is no proven scientific basis that CO2 or anything else Man does can change the Earth’s climate. In fact, there are much stronger parallels in Solar variations via cosmic rain, Milankovitch cycles and the Earth’s precipitation system. I will bet these are not ready topics in the classroom.
Maybe more of us should study the fall of the Roman Empire in more detail. Admittedly issues like APGW did not exist in Roman times. Still the decay of our society based on over powering agenda driven special interests lacking in ethical and moral standards most certainly predict an analogous fall of our society.
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Specify which points are beyond your ken, I’ll get you links to a reputable site to explain the facts to you.
But please be specific. When I’m specific, you ignore it. I made few general points.
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The gods take one’s sense of humor first, then one’s sense of honor, on the road to destruction.
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I fear for your violation of copyright. It’s an issue of attribution solely — John Coleman is just as wrong in his own words as if you claim them for your own.
I didn’t think you’d give up the point so easily.
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Yes CO2 driven GW is junk science. 31000 scientists have a real consensus, better than the fake 5000 scientist UN consensus. Fossil fuel burning does not follow temp changes, heating releases co2, not the other way around, the earth was warmer a few hundred years ago when vineyards covered the English landscape. The good news is CO2 is making the earth greener. The bad news is the Earth is now cooling. Warm is good. Cooling causes early frosts and destroys crops.
The 31000 scientist study can be found online easy. Sunspot activity is responsible for temp changes. Mars climate follows ours also. Hope we don’t have to put Gore on suicide watch when this is finally excepted.
I know GW is a religion for some.
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Sounds like an interesting film; but, no, I probably won’t see it: I don’t _need_ to be convinced of just how stupid and fanatical the environmentalists are. I pretty much already know everything they have to say in the film. Hopefully, lots of ordinary folks will see the film and realize just how stupid the environmentalists are; but I doubt it. First of all, the theaters are all in the hands of the very people this film is aimed at, especially the small, independent art houses, which can usually be counted on to run this kind of documentary; and they certainly will not admit heretics into their house. This means that people will have to actively seek the film out. And who’s going to do that? Only the people who already know what’s what. Thus, I seriously doubt the film will have any kind of substantial effect on public opinion. And even if millions of people saw it and were convinced, it wouldn’t stop Congress and the state legislatures from continuing to pass silly “green” laws to strangle our economy and reduce our freedom. It’s been clear for a long time that Congress pays no attention to public opinion. They don’t have to: each member’s re-election is virtually assured unless he gets caught with a mistress or an adolescent male lover.
And, by the way, mea sententia, the film should be titled “Not Merely Wrong, But Truly Evil.”
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Ed-Click on the blue hotlinks, Hexmate. Read what they say.
Ed the blue hot links either lead to a site without any connection to your comment or to other commentary that is an oversimplification of a complex problem. By artificially creating a scenario that fits your mental model and applying it you can create any outcome that is consistent with your theory.
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Ed said: “Walter Cunningham? He’s rather famous for leading lynch mobs, you know.”
Ed – you know a couple of people said that about you. It takes one to know one.
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Uh no Ed. The scientific expert – that would be you along with the other people who posted. I understand your fear of being challenged so take it down, but it is readily available to anyone who wants to read it.
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Walter Cunningham? He’s rather famous for leading lynch mobs, you know. Be careful: Confronted with the facts, he’s liable to turn on the mob he leads.
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Hexmate, that’s John Coleman’s work, mostly, and it’s copyrighted. Resubmit it with proper attribution, and clear marks as to what are Coleman’s words and which words are yours. I’ll take that post down shortly, but leave it up for a while so you can get a copy to edit.
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Click on the blue hotlinks, Hexmate. Read what they say.
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[Editor’s note: Post taken down for copyright reasons. Hexmate refuses to tell us what is quoted material and what is original. Hexmate tried to pass off much of John Coleman’s work as his own. You can see Coleman’s version here.]
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Another fraud exposed.
Greenpeace leader Gerd Leipold has been forced to admit that his organization issued misleading and exaggerated information when it claimed that Arctic ice would disappear completely by 2030, in a crushing blow for the man-made global warming movement.
In an interview with the BBC’s Stephen Sackur on the “Hardtalk” program, Leipold initially attempted to evade the question but was ultimately forced to admit that Greenpeace had made a “mistake” when it said Arctic ice would disappear completely in 20 years.
The claim stems from a July 15 Greenpeace press release entitled “Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts,” in which it is stated that global warming will lead to an ice-free Arctic by 2030.
Sackur accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing “misleading information” based on “exaggeration and alarmism,” pointing out that it was “preposterous” to claim that the Greenland ice sheet, a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle that has survived much warmer periods in history, would completely melt when it had stood firm for hundreds of thousands of years.
“There is no way that ice sheet is going to disappear,” said Sackur.
“I don’t think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake,” Leipold was eventually forced to admit.
However, Leipold made no apologies for Greenpeace’s tactic of “emotionalizing issues” as a means of trying to get the public to accept its stance on global warming.
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This is very interesting. I have three or four hits on my comment and the post that included Walter Cunningham’s view of global warming from what I assume are the renowned scientific experts in the world on global warming, but I don’t see any data, proof, facts, etc., to support their commentary. They are simply critical of the comments Cunningham made and want to discredit him and the hundreds of other scientists who have debunked the theory of global warming. These individuals want to cherry pick elements and hypothesize their opinions as conclusive proof that humans are responsible for global warming without presenting any proof. In God we trust all others please bring data – conclusive and indisputable proof please.
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Someone wrote:
Carbon dioxide is a nonpolluting gas, essential for plant photosynthesis.
• Higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere produce bigger harvests
And yet, if you were put in a room full of too much CO2 you would die due to asphyxiation. And higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, little one, can also kill off plant life.
This claim that it’s a “natural” gas so that somehow makes it not dangerous or potentially dangerous is stupid to the point of insanity.
As for Walter Cunningham his only scientific training is as a physicist. That hardly gives him any scientific expertise when it comes to climate change. And I’m willing to bet that quite a lot of those claimed “400 scientists” are either not actual scientists or scientists with training in unrelated fields.
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Hexmate said or quoted:
Heat reflecting by clouds and other vapor is well known, and at least some of the better atmospheric models do account for this difference. See “global dimming,” for example.
To claim that climate change modelers don’t know that is a bit on the absurd side.
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Hexmate, were you quoting an article?
Any gas is a pollutant if it’s in a dangerous concentration and/or out of place. CO2 can be deadly. It kills a few people annually; CO2 caused a mass killing catastrophe in Camaroon recently enough that people should know better than to claim it’s not a pollutant, let alone not dangerous.
(Too little CO2 is a problem, too, for humans — but these yahoos probably couldn’t understand that. Or maybe this astronaut Hex is quoting or citing (which?), remembered that part of his training, and forgot the other part.)
Higher CO2 creates a greater harvest of some plants, but not all plants. Troublingly, higher CO2 levels tend to promote the growth of weeds at the expense of food crops. We don’t need more Canadian thistle, or Russian thistle, or cheat grass, or kudzu in America, nor poison ivy anywhere. These plants tend to do better than food crops in higher CO2 concentrations.
Hexmate, have you ever studied the chemistry, physics and biology of air pollution? What you cite seems to be unaware of much of this science.
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And yet, Hex, none of that is credible evidence. None of it is actual science. Until you and your side actually comes up with the science to prove your conclusion…you have nothing.
So it’s time for you and yours to put up or shut up.
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This would be the truth based on facts versus the emotional and selfserving innuendo being purveyed by this website.
Subject: Global Warming View from Astronaut Walter Cunningham
Subject: Important info about the Global Warming hoax.
As author of LAUNCH Magazine’s Viewpoint column, former Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham is known for straight talk—a trait sorely missing in today’s world of political correctness. Cunningham’s unquestioned credibility on matters involving space, science, the military, finance and corporate management stems from 45 years of experience accumulated during separate careers in the United States Marine Corps, NASA and private industry.
In Science, Ignorance Is Not Bliss Walter Cunningham
NASA has played a key role in one of the greatest periods of scientific progress in history. It is uniquely positioned to collect the most comprehensive data on our biosphere. For example, recently generated NASA data enabled scientists to finally understand the Gulf Stream warming mechanism and its effect on European weather. Such data will allow us to improve our models, resulting in better seasonal forecasts.
NASA’s Aqua satellite is showing that water vapor, the dominant greenhouse gas, works to offset the effect of carbon dioxide (CO2). This information, contrary to the assumption used in all the warming models, is ignored by global warming alarmists.. Climate understanding and critical decision-making require comprehensive data about our planet’s land, sea, and atmosphere.
Without an adequate satellite system to provide such data, policy efforts and monitoring international environmental agreements are doomed to failure. Our satellite monitoring capability is being crippled by interagency wrangling and federal bud get issues. As much as a third of our satellites need replacing in the next couple of years.
NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused, or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Unfortunately, it is becoming just another agency caught up in the politics of global warming, or worse, politicized science. Advocacy is replacing objective evaluation of data, while scientific data is being ignored in favor of emotions and politics.
There are excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the Sun and the Earth’s temperature, while scientists cannot find a relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption, and global temperatures. But global warming is an issue no longer being decided in the scientific arena.
Saying the Earth is warming is to state the obvious. Since the end of the Ice Age, the earth’s temperature has increased approximately 16 degrees Fahrenheit and sea levels have risen a total of 300 feet. That is certain and measurable evidence of warming, but it is not evidence of AGW—human-caused warming. We can track the temperature of the Earth back for millennia. Knowing the temperature of the Earth, past or present, is a matter of collecting data, analyzing it, and coming up with the best answer to account for the data. Collecting such data on a global basis is a NASA forte.
I believe in global climate change, but there is no way that humans, can influence the temperature of our planet to any measurable degree with the tools currently at their disposal. Any human contribution to global temperature change is lost in the noise of terrestrial and cosmic factors.
Our beautiful home planet has been warming and cooling for the last 4.8 billion years. Most recently, it has been warming—be it ever so slightly—but there is nothing unusual about it! The changes and rates of change in the Earth’s temperature, just since the Industrial Revolution, have occurred many times in our climatic history. While climate scientists generally agree that the Earth’s temperature is always changing but not many of them would say that humans are responsible for those changes.
None of this is to say there are not legitimate reasons to restrict emissions of any number of chemicals into the atmosphere. We should just not fool ourselves into thinking we will change the temperature of the Earth by doing so.
In a December 2007 Senate report, 400 prominent scientists signed a letter pointing out that climate change was a well-known natural phenomenon, and that adapting to it is far more sensible than attempting to prevent it. Their ranks included experts in climatology, geology, oceanography, biology, glaciology, biogeography, meteorology, economics, chemistry, mathematics, environmental sciences, engineering, physics, and paleo-climatology. Their message: When changes are gradual, man has an almost infinite ability to adapt and evolve.
The fear mongers of global warming base their case on the correlation between CO2 and global temperature, even though we cannot be sure which is “cause” and which is “effect”. Historically, temperature increases have preceded high CO2 levels, and there have been periods when atmospheric CO2 levels were as much as 16 times what they are now, periods characterized not by warming but by glaciation. You might have to go back half a million years to match our current level of atmospheric CO2, but you only have to go back to the Medieval Warming Period, from the 10th to the 14th Century, to find an intense global warming episode, followed immediately by the drastic cooling of the Little Ice Age. Neither of these events were caused by variations in CO2 levels.
Even though CO2 is a relatively minor constituent of “greenhouse gases,” alarmists have made it the whipping boy for global warming (probably because they know how fruitless it would be to propose controlling other principal constituents, H2O, CH4 and N2O). Since human activity does contribute a tiny portion of atmospheric CO2, they blame us for global warming.
Other inconvenient facts ignored by the activists:
• Carbon dioxide is a nonpolluting gas, essential for plant photosynthesis.
• Higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere produce bigger harvests
In spite of warnings of severe consequences from rising seas, droughts, severe weather, species extinction, and other disasters, the U.S. has not been stampeded into going along with the recommendations of the UN Panel on Climate Change—so far. Even though evidence supports the American position, we have begun to show signs of caving in to the alarmists.
With scientific evidence going out of style, emotional arguments and anecdotal data are ruling the day. The media subjects us to one frightening image of environmental nightmares after another, linking each to global warming. Journalists and activist scientists use hurricanes, wildfire s, and starving polar bears to appeal to our emotions, not to our reason. They are far more concerned with anecdotal observations, such as the frozen sea ice inside the Arctic Circle, than they are with understanding why it is happening and how frequently it has occurred in the past.
After warnings that 2007 would be the hottest year on record and a record year for hurricanes, what we experienced was the coolest year since 2001 and, by some measures, the most benign hurricane season in the Northern Hemisphere in three decades. Even though recent changes in our atmosphere are all within the bounds of the Earth’s natural variability, a growing number of people are willing to throw away trillions of dollars on fruitless solutions.
Why do we allow emotional appeals and anecdotal data to shape our conclusions and influence our expenditures with the science and technology we have available at our fingertips?
The situation is complex, but the sad state of scientific literacy in America, today, is partially to blame for belief in AGW. When a 2006 National Science Foundation survey found 25 percent of Americans not knowing the Earth goes around the Sun, you know that science education is at a new low and society is vulnerable to the emotional appeal of AGW. And don’t underestimate the role of politics and political correctness.
The public debate should focus on the real cause of global temperature change and whether we can do anything about it. Is global warming a natural inevitability, or is it AGW—human caused?
The conflict over AGW has deteriorated into a religious war; a war between true believers in human-caused global warming and non-believers; between those who accept AGW on faith and those who consider themselves more sensible and better informed. “True believers” are past being interested in evidence; it is impossible to reason a person out of positions they have not been reasoned into.
It doesn’t help that one of the early alarmists claiming humans caused global warming was NASA scientist James Hansen. Hansen is a political activist who spreads fear even when NASA’s own data contradict him.
Warming in the upper atmosphere should occur before any surface warming effect, but NASA’s own data show that has not been happening. Global temperature readings—accurate to 0.1 degree Centigrade—are gathered by orbiting satellites. Interestingly, in the 18 years those satellites have been recording global temperatures they have actually shown a slight decrease in average temperatures.
Hansen is currently calling for a reduction of atmospheric CO2 by 10 percent and a moratorium on coal-fired power plants, while claiming the Bush administration is censoring him. Other so-called scientists are saying the world must bring carbon emissions to near zero to keep temperatures from rising. In today’s politically correct environment, many are reluctant to dispute the popular wisdom; when they do, they are frequently ignored. When NASA administrator Michael Griffin, Hansen’s boss and a distinguished scientist in his own right, attempted to draw a distinction between Hansen’s personal and political views and the science conducted by his agency, he was soon forced to back off.
It is the true believers who, when they have no facts on their side, try to silence their critics. When former NASA mathematician Ferenc Miskolczi pointed out that “greenhouse warming” may be mathematically impossible, they would not allow him to publish his work. Miskolczi dared to question the simplifying assumption in the warming model that the atmosphere is infinitely thick. He pointed out that when you use the correct thickness— about 65 miles—the greenhouse effect disappears! Ergo: no AGW, Miskolczi resigned in disgust and published his proof in the peer-reviewed Hungarian journal “Weather”.
For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric CO2 has continued to accumulate—up about 4 percent in the last 10 years—the global mean temperature has remained flat. That should raise obvious questions about CO2 being the cause of climate change. Instead, AGW enthusiasts are embracing more regulation, greater government spending, and higher taxes in a futile attempt to control what is beyond our control—the Earth’s temperature. One of their political objectives, unstated of course, is the transfer of wealth from rich nations to poor nations or, as the social engineers put it, from the North to the South, which may be their real agenda.
At the Bali Conference on Climate Change in December 2007, the poor Nations insisted that the costs of technology to limit emissions and other impacts of climate change on their countries be paid by the rich nations. Most anticipated a windfall of money flowing into their countries to develop technology or purchase carbon credits. In this scenario, selling allotments for CO2 emissions would provide a temporary boost to their own cash flow, while severely limiting the economic development of those countries purchasing the carbon credits.
In the face of overwhelming evidence for natural temperature variation, proponents of AGW are resorting to a precautionary argument:
“We must do something just in case we are responsible, because the consequences are too terrible if we are to blame and do nothing.”
They hope to stampede government entities into committing huge amounts of money before their fraud is completely exposed—before science and truth save the day..
Politicians think they can reverse global warming by stabilizing CO2 emissions with a cocka-mamie scheme of “cap and trade.”A government entity would sell CO2 allocations to those industries producing it. The trillions of dollars in new taxes and devastation to the economy would be justified by claiming it will lower the temperature of the Earth. This rationalization is dependent on two assumptions:
(1) CO2 is responsible for the cause of changes in the Earth’s temperature
(2) a warmer Earth would be bad for humanity.
The reality is that atmospheric CO2 has a minimal impact on greenhouse gases and world temperature. Water vapor is responsible for 95 percent of the greenhouse effect. CO2 contributes just 3.6 percent, with human activity responsible for only 3.2 percent of that. That is why some studies claim CO2 levels are largely irrelevant to global warming.
Without the greenhouse effect to keep our world warm, the planet would have an average temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius. Because we do have it, the temperature is a comfortable plus 15 degrees Celsius. Based on the seasonal and geographic distribution of any projected warming, a good case can be made that a warmer average temperature would be even more beneficial for humans. For a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars a cap-and-trade system would eventually cost the United States, we could pay for development of clean coal and oil-shale recovery systems, nuclear power, and have enough left over to pay for exploration of our solar system.
By law, NASA cannot involve itself in politics, but it can surely champion the role of science to inform politicians. With so many uninformed and misguided politicians ignoring the available science, NASA should fill the void. NASA is synonymous with science. Allowing our priorities to drift away from hard science is tantamount to embracing decadence and NASA will surely suffer. , and politicizing science is killing it.
I do see hopeful signs that some true believers are beginning to harbor doubts about AGW. Let’s hope that NASA can focus the global warming discussion back on scientific evidence before we perpetrate an economic disaster on ourselves.
A former Marine Corps fighter pilot and Apollo 7 astronaut, Walter Cunningham is the author of The All-American Boys. Described by the Chicago Sun-Times as “the most realistic look yet at astronaut life,” the book is available at waltercunningham.com or amazon.com.
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Paul, define statism please.
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Paul Says:
October 13, 2009 at 11:34 pm
We live in a Republic made up of States. We should pick a free market state, and a statist state. The other 48 will be the control group and we’ll figure out whose ideas work the best.
I.E. Free market state: A state in which it lets companies do what they please in all manners of pollution. If a company wants to dump mercury in your back yard it can go right ahead.
Because somehow 99% of the world’s scientific experts on this subject are all somehow involved in a worldwide conspiracy.
Oh please.
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And if you’re wrong, Mikael? What then? You don’t think 6 billion people could affect the environment in a major way? Tell me…visited the former Soviet Union lately? Specifically to see how they “treated” the environment.
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The official inconvenient truth website says “Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide” and that “The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050”
http://www.climatecrisis.net/thescience/index.html
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Why and how science goes over the head of climate change deniers:
This blog is aimed to assist students and teachers, and so must choose language that is both accurate and suitable for a family audience, in order to avoid most school’s filters. Sometimes we use the scientific name instead of the colloquial. Deniers often mistake scientific accuracy for insult.
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Climate change or global warming is now a religion. I builds on the assumption that science can predict the temperature in 50-100 years, while it can’t normally predict it for more than 5 days. Climate is not weather, you say? Well, it is – climate is weather over time. Climate religion also builds on the ancient belief that human beings can change the weather by appeasing gods – only now the god is called Climate, and we don’t dance rain dances any more. Now, the means of appeasing the god is ascetisism – walk, bike, freeze, eat less, don’t buy anything. It is so sad to see a new religion spreading to plague humanity, built on pseudo-science. It is the old human story all over again, the priests, the punishment of the non-believers. Whew!
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[…] Ed Darrell: The film is both evil and wrong. Errors just in the […]
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Talk about stifling debate! So, instead of debating the facts or “non-facts” of this film, the author of this article goes into ad-hominums about various “anal” orifices and bovinic references? Well, that’s certainly a quest for truth. “They want to raise your taxes?” well, duh, yeah they do. If the “author” didn’t have his head up his ass, it would be clear to see what the “Cap and Trade” tax is all about. Pray that you don’t get your way, because once such a tax is implemented you’ll know what real bondage is and you won’t give a damn about the environment anymore; just scratching out your next green meal.
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We live in a Republic made up of States. We should pick a free market state, and a statist state. The other 48 will be the control group and we’ll figure out whose ideas work the best.
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So, Brett, since you claim to have science on your side, then what credible peer reviewed scientific journal has your evidence been published in?
And what happens if your position on climate change is wrong?
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Especially the film screed against Gore and Carson reads like a 9th grade essay.
I’m a teacher. I’m adding corrections. I can’t improve the product that was handed in. All I can do is show where improvements need to be made.
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Alright if you APGW believers are so smart, maybe you will be interested in the opinion of one of the most well known physicists and general scientist in current times, Freeman Dyson.
Here is a quote from a NY Times article,
IT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO that Dyson began publicly stating his doubts about climate change. Speaking at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, Dyson announced that “all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated.” Since then he has only heated up his misgivings, declaring in a 2007 interview with Salon.com that “the fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn’t scare me at all” and writing in an essay for The New York Review of Books, the left-leaning publication that is to gravitas what the Beagle was to Darwin, that climate change has become an “obsession” — the primary article of faith for “a worldwide secular religion” known as environmentalism. Among those he considers true believers, Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, whom Dyson calls climate change’s “chief propagandist,” and James Hansen, the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and an adviser to Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Dyson accuses them of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models that foresee a Grand Guignol of imminent world devastation as icecaps melt, oceans rise and storms and plagues sweep the earth, and he blames the pair’s “lousy science” for “distracting public attention” from “more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet.”
There are many so called scientists who favor APGW, I am sure non of them hold a candle to this man.
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also, with the whole deal with al gore not saying the water levels would rise, you need to re watch the movie. he did say that. its right there in the movie. he states it vaguely(“in the near future”), but its there. and your just saying the science is right. your just shouting out in the rudest form possible what you think without the argument to go with it.
as for the ice, i dont think they meant Hell heat. they didnt specify, so i dont think its fair to attack them until weve seen the whole context.
as for the factories, again you attack rudely with no stated facts. EDUCATE THE OPPOSITION! if they are wrong, change they way they look at it! you wont teach anyone a thing. and i have seen quite a few petitions and protests and reports urging the closing of factories around the world. thats just my experience, but my experience says there is substance to what they are saying.
the trailer did not say that industry cannot exist without it poisoning the planet. re watch it! research it more! they are saying it ISNT poisoning the planet, not that it IS. you are looking are this close mindedly. you are assuming you are correct before hearing their argument, and applying that logic.
as for the dark ages, you are using ad hominems again. illogical. you are not fighting the argument, you are fighting the people. fight what they say; they claim environmentalists what chlorine gone. argue against that, or argue against that it would be a bad thing and bacteria and viruses would not be a problem.
the rest is just opinion. and that voice that said that about al gore was african, probably someone who believes that the banning of DDT caused his people to become stricken with malaria. argue against that, not against the people.
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im sorry, but your points are both rude and non-inclusive. yes, many anti-global warming bills, in fact, most, would raise are taxes. im not saying im for or against this movie, and im not saying i dont believe in global warming, but they make some good points in speeches, and to say that is “evil” is absurd. you cant make a devil out of everyone that disagrees with you. thats not the way you raise awareness.
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This is a great movie. Open your eyes to the truth.
http://www.justwrongnotevil.org
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This is an excellent movie. Open your eyes to the truth! http://www.noteviljustwrong.org
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So far on the fella
Will research the other.
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Brett complained:
No, you made some rumblings about China, and you said you’d been there. Then you said you’d rather I not respond to you. Your having been to China proves nothing. Especially photos of plants built a decade ago don’t disprove China’s efforts to clean their emissions.
No, I was taking you at your word that you wouldn’t listen and didn’t care for the other story. You should know that I’ve worked in air pollution research and environmental policy for many years. You appear quite new to the topic yourself. If you’re genuinely interested in the issue, there are a lot of sources.
No, China is no paragon of air cleanliness. China is moving, however, and we should not let them get ahead of us in the technological wars.
You pretend as if the last decade didn’t happen, as if the Chinese Olympics and the embarrassment of the dirty air didn’t occur, and as if China has stood still. Come into the 21st century, will you?
Weeks before, not months. And it didn’t work. So they’ve come back with rules on scrubbers on the new plants. Retrofitting may be a different story. China can’t afford air pollution, just as no one else can, either. And they now know it.
If you want to spout off about air pollution, start with London in the 19th century, study London in 1948 and Donora in 1952, take a look at the history of the Clean Air Act, and come on up to the present.
You’re only about 100 years behind, and once you see what’s really going on, you’ll understand why Monckton is considered a crackpot.
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Go —- al’s —- you moron!
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Boy you certainly convinced me.
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[…] The best amateur rebuttal to the film I’ve seen is here: https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/new-junk-science-movie-not-evil-just-wrong/ […]
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Ed your myopic viewpoint is really very sad. Several people have stated valid scientific fact yet you just blow by without addressing those points. Anthropogenic Global Warming will be proven wrong, as well it should be since it is based on junk science.
I myself proved your point on China incorrect. I’m sure you thought you could just spout that out without anyone calling you on it. Well, you are wrong. The Chinese do not have scrubbers on their coal plants and they are dumping huge amounts of pollution into the air. In fact they had to shut down the coal plants months before the Olympics to try and let the air clear. Normal conditions there are visibility of less than 3 miles due to pollution.
If you really want to cite true science you should read about Milankovitch cycles, then read about Solar variations. Lord Monckton also has a lot of good information on Solar variations. There are also very good studies on the Earth’s precipitation systems and how they moderate atmospheric temperature.
Only then can you argue from a more informed point of view.
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I’m with Aldo. This website is trash. You claim to report accuracy, avoid any actual science, avoid citing real references, then refer people back to the Internet for real information. Why? You pick statements from the movie clips and give simple, meaningless retorts. It all reads like a 9th grade essay.
I’ve not seen the movie yet, of course, but look forward to hearing another side of a very one-sided story.
Finally, call Cap’n Trade a tax, a fee, a cost to pass along to end consumers, or anything else you wish, but in the end we will all pay more for American made goods. There is simply no way around it. Industry already has many cost drivers to leave the US, this will very simply be one more. Will China, India, Mexico, etc pollute less per unit product? Not an icecube’s chance in Al Gore’s oh-so-comfortable mansion.
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Ben writes:
If you are going to issue a rebuttle I suggest when posing counterpoints you actually cite facts and references instead of condescending remarks and badgering… People may actually take you seriously.
And yet you dont’ cite facts, references, truth or even valid science. You always such a rank hypocrite?
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If I were as bad at law and ignorant of science as John Coleman, I’d probably be angry, too.
Ben, you got a lot of gall to ask me to cite facts when these yahoos spout off fictional accounts at every turn.
But you may be as new to these issues as you appear. It’s possible you’re genuinely searching for information, and just missing the manners gene.
See that “search” function up in the upper right hand corner? Go there, type in “DDT” and you’ll find a load of citations demonstrating the film-makers don’t know beans about the issues there. You might find some stuff on global warming, or Al Gore, too.
Somehow I suspect your rant is because you like what the filmmakers say, and you hope they are right. You will have to learn to face disappointment, and you can’t start any younger.
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If you are going to issue a rebuttle I suggest when posing counterpoints you actually cite facts and references instead of condescending remarks and badgering… People may actually take you seriously.
If the skepticism towards global warming/man-made climate change is such “pseudoscience”, how come the founder of the Weather Channel, John Coleman (a meteorologist (btw, a position of which Al Gore is NOT), is attempting (along with 30,000 scientists, a position of which Al Gore is NOT), to sue Al Gore for FRAUD?
CITE YOUR FACTS YOU WINDBAG
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The asinine response, Brett, was yours.
For your position to be valid..there would have to be a worldwide conspiracy on epic scale involing hundreds of thousands of scientists.
Since that’s not likely you’re just an idiot.
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Brett said:
You’ll be pleased to know, perhaps, that my mother agrees with you, partly. She always warned me not to stir a big pot of crazy. I’ll take her advice on this one.
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Ed Darrell:
You are an idiot. Have you been to China? I have, twice. I’ve seen the coal fired plants pouring thick grey smoke into the air and over the fields of crops. They do not have stack scrubbing technology and I have photos to prove it!
As far as Al Gore, he is all about making money on the junk science idea that there is global warming. The Earth is an open system. No one can prove warming or cooling, “period”.
If I were to put my cards in any single place, it would by the scientifically verifiable equations of Milankovitch. By his measure we are heading into an ice age. Doesn’t matter what you feel, the northern and middle latitudes of the US will be under a mile of ice in about 3000 years.
By then we will be a space fairing race, we can live on the Moon or Mars to wait it out.
Don’t bother with some sort of asinine response, it won’t prove anything other then you are still an idiot.
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[…] — perhaps the most unintentionally ironic film title in history — which, as blogger Ed Darrell notes, has 9 errors just in the […]
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A very smart, caring, talented, hard-working idiot.
China is about even with us in coal-stack-cleaning technology now. If they surpass us, they will be able to corner the market and take more jobs from Americans.
I’d prefer that the U.S. take the lead in technolgoy there. Whose side are you on, anyway?
Gore made a simple statement of fact. The “implication” that it might happen soon is your reading into his statement something he did not say.
What makes people do that; guilt, perhaps?
Those who make the distortions are the film-makers in this case, who claim Gore made a gross error — when he told the truth. The film is quite explicit in saying we don’t need to worry about global warming. That’s exactly the opposite of what the judge said in the odd case in England — and it’s untrue.
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leave america alone,go to china and stop thier polution problem first. see how that one works out for you… idiot
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Al Gore is an idiot.
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Errors just in the trailer:
1. Claims that Al Gore said sea levels will rise catastrophically, “in the very near future.” Not in his movie, not in his writings or speeches. Not true. That’s a simple misstatement of what Gore said, and Gore had the science right.
Heres an excerpt from the transcript of Al Gores Inconvenient Truth:
West Antarctica Land Based Ice
Well, Al Gore isn’t saying that sea levels will rise in the very near future, but he sure is implying they might.
Anyway, I don’t think all of the name calling – anus of male bovines and the sort – will do anything as to supporting an argument. What we need in this discussion is facts and science. Global warming is not a religion!
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When is that ever not true?
Have you seen the movie you speak so glowingly about?
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The viewing for Not Evil Just Wrong is slated for Oct 18. World wide distribution to be seen in the privacy of your own home, with friends. I think its a cool idea. Skipping critics and reviewers. Its a documentary and not a hollywood movie. The makers of NEJW are concerned about profit or glory, just the message. Its not propaganda, just questioning the validity of Al Gore and the Alarmistas. The success of the film won’t be measured in dollars or public policy, but in allowing the public to become aware of a growing number concerns regarding the possible falsehood of the AGW agenda. Silence by force, forces the average man to fight back at any cost. I think the debate is over, its just a matter of time for the truth to come out and I personally think we are watching history in the making.
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Your web site is moronic.
That leads me to suspect that you are a moron.
Affectionately,
Aldo
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Jaime, here’s a quick and dirty glossary of relevant terms, from the National Academy of Sciences:
http://www.nationalacademies.org/evolution/Definitions.html
Here’s a longer, more detailed set of definitions, from the NAS’s book on education and evolution; notice how important it is not to confuse “theory” with “hypothesis”:
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CJ, if you read the judge’s decision in Britain, you’ll see that he agrees with Gore that sea level could rise by 20 feet or so, especially if the Greenland ice sheets melt and flow into the ocean. Gore was not in error on that.
The complaint is that Gore suggests that this is imminent, when it’s probably a century away (if we’re lucky). I watched the film and it was quite clear to me that it was going to be my grandchildren’s problem and not mine.
No one is disputing the amount of water in the ice sheets, nor the destruction were they to melt. We’re only quibbling about how soon it will happen.
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I’m not questioning your motives. I merely note that you’ve got the facts wrong. Wrong facts skew analysis of a problem, and in this case, produce a wrong answer.
You can’t claim that Rachel Carson was wrong when we now know that her methods work stupendously to reduce malaria, though it took “us” collectively 40 years to get around to applying those lessons. That is all.
I’ll get a reference for you on theory and law. In science, theory means a structure that explains how and why laws work. Laws are subsidiary.
BTW, NPR doesn’t aim to be a bastion of conservative thought — they aim to be fair, instead. If you tallied talking heads, right and left, you’d find they carry slightly more right-wing types than left wing. But they aim to be straight in their reporting, and they most often succeed. A person can be well-informed simply listening to only one of NPR’s stellar news programs — except about local sports and local weather. You can’t say the same about any other national news outlet, except perhaps the NY Times and Washington Post.
It’s no mystery why straight-up news outlets don’t have a conservative bias, you know: Reality is skewed to the liberal side.
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Hmm, NPR — not a bastion of conservative thought — reports Gore’s documentary claims “sea level rises by 20 feet.” A simple google search will find loads of news accounts, some quoting Gore exactly, regarding his claim of a 20 foot sea leave rise.
Link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9025302
It seems you are wrong.
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Jaime writes:
And I, on a personal level, place a great deal more weight on the life of a small child in Africa who might die from malaria than that of any species of bird. Anyone who wants to ’save Africa’ should also want DDT brought back.
And yet, Jaime, you’re willing to let African’s die due to DDT being used. Or did you somehow miss the fact that DDT is dangerous to humans as well?
And as for your statement about climate change I have a question for you. What if you’re wrong? What if the climate change deniers are wrong?
Or to put this another way. Do you build a fireescape on a building before a fire or after a fire?
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[…] — perhaps the most unintentionally ironic film title in history — which, as blogger Ed Darrell notes, has 9 errors just in the […]
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Let’s quickly review the steps of the scientific method (simplified):
Formulate a question
Conduct background research
Construct a hypothesis
Test the hypothesis through experimentation
Analyze data generated and draw conclusions based on data
Communicate methods and results for replication
Independent verification of results using identical methods allows the Hypothesis to be advanced further. A law is an observation and a theory is an attempt to explain an observation. Technically, by definition, neither can really be superior to the other. In what way is Einstein’s Theory of Relativity superior to Newton’s Laws of Physics? How about the Laws of Thermodynamics? Ohm’s Law? The true test of a theory or a law is, “Does it work?” Using the scientific method, it is extremely debatable as to whether sufficient testing of the hypothesis of man-made global warming has been done to call it a theory or pass it into ‘settled science’. Using invective to silence dissent on an unsettled matter is a poor method of proving an argument. I have enough experience with statistics that I never try to use them in an argument, they are far too easy to manipulate in order prove a false premise or advance an agenda. Likewise with computer models. As soon as the weatherman on channel 7 is right 100% of the time about the weather this weekend, I’ll stop questioning the ability to model climate and weather patterns decades in the future. I think that the global climate is too complex with far too many variables to be accurately modeled with any degree of certainty. If it is not then it should be possible to look back in time and predict the patterns that have been observed. The models that have been in use have not been able to accurately replicate observed climate patterns so why would anyone have faith in their predictions of future patterns? Junk science is as junk science does.
If you don’t want to have your motives questioned, make sure don’t question those of others. I have my reasons for believing what I believe whether you agree with me or not. As well intentioned as the green movement may be, the people that always suffer the most for the hasty implementation of poorly developed policies are always the people that can afford it the least. I wish you the best of luck and I hope we can all find our way to the truth that benefits all, whatever it may be.
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[…] — perhaps the most unintentionally ironic film title in history — which, as blogger Ed Darrell notes, has 9 errors just in the […]
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Actually, it works the other way. Theory is superior to law. No big deal, but I think maybe you’re garbling some of the other science, too.
Where could you get that understanding, when it’s not so? Differing results come from differing inputs. And, out of 10,000 or 20,000 simulations run, they all tend to agreement on disaster. We’re talking degrees of disaster, and the degree differs chiefly on the inputs.
All models have a range of potential error, but all that means is that other things can interfere. For the past five decades, the trend has been one way. Overall, the trend has been pretty constant for the past 180 years at least.
If you really cared about those children in Africa, you’d do the study required to see what could effectively help them out. And if you did that study, you’d discover that the programs of integrated pest management that have been adopted over the past decade produce the best results in preventing and curing malaria. Also, you’d know that’s what Rachel Carson suggested in 1962.
So we lost a lot of time between 1962 and 2002 when we could have been beating malaria and, perhaps, saving a few thousands of lives.
But we didn’t do that because people opposed Rachel Carson’s ideas, often without having bothered to study to find out what Carson had said.
And now you urge inaction based on your own misunderstanding of Carson’s position.
And then you have the gall to question my motives, and to condemn Carson, whose methods are saving children now?
We can’t poison Africa to health. Never could have. Do us all a favor and stay out of African health policy until you read Ms. Carson’s books, and perhaps those of Socrates Litsios, too.
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I would really like to see people put a little less emphasis on how many degrees people have and the institutions that grant them. Try to keep in mind that it was Harvard educated MBAs that brought us the wonderful “credit default swaps” that have led us into this recession/depression. Where you get a piece of paper doesn’t mean your going to go out and do things that help.
Just follow the scientific method. It’s worked for a very long time and the items that have passed from theory to natural law have remained such. Present the theory and evidence and have it independently verified. If the results are proven to be repeatable then no one can argue against them. I don’t think that’s been the case so far with ‘man-made’ global warming. My understanding is that the models being used have produced wildly differing results even when the same inputs are used.
A complete alteration of society and civilization should be based on something a little more proven, and provable, than what’s been presented. So far, I’m not convinced.
And I, on a personal level, place a great deal more weight on the life of a small child in Africa who might die from malaria than that of any species of bird. Anyone who wants to ‘save Africa’ should also want DDT brought back. If you’re not willing to do that, then please tell your story about compassion for the suffering in Africa to the wind, I have no further use for you. I’ve seen the suffering in many parts of the world brought on by mosquitos and I have no more patience for those of you who ‘care’ about the third world. I would give my own eyes for the DDT to effectively kill the mosquitos that are killing by the hundreds-of-thousands in under-developed, tropical parts of the world. Malaria is an awful way to die and through the banning of DDT millions of African and Asian children have been sentenced to death by that terrible disease. You and Rachel Carson should have to be there to comfort every dying child and their parents, that should be your punishment for true junk science. I question your motives and have begun to believe that these environmental measures are simply racists methods to eliminate portions of the world population you do not value.
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Remember, too, that this film is already known to have gross inaccuracies about Rachel Carson and DDT, stuff that high school kids could get right easily
Most high school kids could’nt even pass the citizenship test. Guess we know what they ARE learning.
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Kelly writes:
And if you’re wrong, Kelly? And what education/degrees do you hold that you’re an expert on questioning actual scientists?
Or do you really want to pretend that 6 billion people can’t affect the earth? What happens when all those micro-affects you say we can do adds up?
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Kelly, sometime you should look up Donora, Pennsylvania, and the killer fog of London.
Then you might want to study the decision in the U.S. to ban tetraethyl lead from gasoline. That action raised the collective I.Q. of the nation by several points.
Then take a look at the time-lapse photos of the destruction of Lake Chad and the Aral Sea.
Human actions have been changing our climate for hundreds of years. Now we do it on such a scale that we do indeed need to worry about. The sun in 93 million miles away, and our chief energy source — but it’s not our chief pollution source. While you’re studying our solar system, however, take a look at Venus and what a runaway greenhouse gas system looks like.
Scientists are not making up the changes.
And now that I’ve got your skepticism of what I say running at fever pitch, look at the PBS report on global dimming. It turns out that contrails and other vapor releases have been cooling our planet for a couple of decades. Do you see the issue? But for our pollution that cools the planet, our pollution that warms the planet would be much more destructive.
Yes, they are only molecules, gases invisible to the naked eye. Yes, they can do those destructive things.
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I get it that chemicals can impact micro places on the planet. If you siht in a room is smells, but the planet dosen’t. It’s amazing that no one can disprove the fact the Sun’s cycle impacts the cycle of earth. 4 billion + years and I’ll bet the earth has gone from cold to hot, wet to dry many times. The fact that some people think that 6 billion people can do more than the sun is crazy.
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Thomas said:
I’ll wager you didn’t read it well. Name one claim Carson makes that is not true. Can you? Give us page numbers — I’ll bet you can’t name them, or if you name one, there is no science to support your claim.
First, WHO never banned DDT. They stopped using it in broadcast spraying when it became untenable. In 2005 they put out a press release saying they’d use more, but it has proven no panacea, and they have alternatives that are less destructive and more effective.
I didn’t say the debate is closed. I said there has been no rebuttal of her claims. In science, the debate is always open to anyone with data. Alas for those who wish to poison Africa, there are no data to support their claims that DDT is a miracle substance akin to pixie dust.
Did you say you had read her book? You skipped all the footnotes? Carson knew the scientists doing the work, and she knew their work. She was a scientist, too, remember. They gave her their best stuff, sometimes before publishing (but it’s all published so far as I’ve found).
She’s got the goods, and their in the book. No one has been able to contradict her claims, because chemistry and biology have not undergone radical changes in the way the work. The laws of the universe still hold. Poison is still poison.
Odd. You come in blazing with snark against a noble dead woman who has all empirical evidence, then claim that you’ve got evidence instead. Why then the snark? Where’s the evidence?
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T. J. Lovell said:
Or would be, if the absence of DDT were the cause of all the deaths in Africa for the past 50 years.
But that’s not the case. DDT use was stopped chiefly because WHO learned that abuse of DDT by agricultural interests made mosquitoes in Africa resistant to DDT. In short, the stuff stopped working.
So, Driessen would be right, had he picked a pesticide that worked well against African mosquitoes. But that’s not the case.
Plus, how do you explain the drop in malaria deaths after broadcast use of DDT was stopped?
Malaria is more complex than that. Malaria deaths rose, when the deaths rose in the last 40 years, when the pharmaceuticals used to treat the disease in humans ceased to work. Dramatic reductions in deaths have been achieved in the past five years with integrated pest management and campaigns based on expanding the use of bednets.
DDT was never, and is not now, a panacea treatment for malaria. Dreissen’s conclusions are not shared by any professional malaria fighting organization, nor by WHO, nor by any nation in Africa. I think it’s quite uppity of Driessen to suggest the logical conclusion of his claim, that Africans are too stupid to want to fight malaria.
Yes, about a million people a year die from malaria. No, there’s not much evidence that DDT would have saved even one of them.
Successes in reducing malaria death rates in the past decade have been achieved with integrated pest management — exactly what Rachel Carson urged in 1962. Had we listened to Carson then, how many million could we have saved? And how cheesy of Driessen to pretend Carson was opposed to it, while Driessen steals her ideas and takes credit for them.
Au contraire. Carson’s methods reduce deaths now — the 30 to 50 million deaths could have been prevented, had we listened to Carson. Perhaps your guilt drives you to try to misplace blame on her — but how crass, how craven, how evil and creepy! Here’s a woman who spelled out how to save 50 million Africans, and you didn’t bother to read her book!
Name the bastard. He deserves a stiff letter.
You played with poison and lived. That’s not exactly a great recommendation for the future. In Montana? You approve of poisoning Montana with DDT? Oh, those who don’t know history . . .
Santayana’s Ghost weeps.
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A noble dead woman? Nice appeal special pleading Darrell but I’ve read “Silent Spring” and it’s a hoax. Your beloved WHO lifted the ban on DDT because it saves lives. Ed you say that there was NO rebuttal of her book? That sends a CLEAR message of anti-scientific, faith-based literature. In science the debate is never closed. The debate is based solely on empirical evidence, not noble dead women.
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The death toll in Africa from the DDT ban is between 30 and 50 million people[see Paul Driessen’s book: ECO-IMPERIALISM: Green Policy Black Death]. If you think that 30-50 million deaths are OK, then Rachel Carson’s is a saint. If on the other hand you think 30-50 million avoidable deaths is not a good outcome then Carson is not a saint. My favorite Harvard public health official calls what Carson did “engaging in statistical murder” that is following a policy path that leaves more people dead than other choices would. I grew up on a farm in Montana and we sprayed DDT, 2-4-D Amine and a host of other great chemicals and they helped improve every part of our lives. I would love to see the Carson supporters on this blog go work on a farm or ranch MINUS DDT and the other miracle chemicals of the 20th century-good luck.
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Then, Kenny, follow the links. Check out the footnotes.
Carson’s book is astoundingly accurate. Of the studies she cited — and there are 53 pages of citations to peer-reviewed science and other studies — not a single one has been rebutted in science. Not one.
Discover magazine did a count two years ago and found about 1,200 studies on DDT in birds since Carson published. Each one of those studies supported Carson’s conclusions.
It’s not that it’s published at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub that makes it accurate. It’s that it is hard science, backed by hard research. Real data always trumps an argument from authority.
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Information approved by MTV, Greenpeace, Hollywood, the DNC, or espcially “Millard Filmore’s Bathtub” doesn’t strike me as meeting the the test of truth, having the ring of truth, or even remotely resembling the truth.
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Anybody who thinks the accurate labeling of “deniers” closes down debate is denying reality.
These people are inventing whole cloth lies about noble dead women. “Denier” is the most polite, non-obscene thing we can call them and still be accurate.
Read Carson’s book, will you?
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” that’s pure, uncomposted bovine excrement . . . more effluent from the anus of male bovines”
It is depressing to read the abuse that this ‘debate’ appears to generate. Does anyone really expect to be taken seriously if he or she simply hurls insults and declines to offer argument or evidence? To most impartial readers, the use of words like denier (holocaust denier?) and worse, looks simply like an attempt to close down debate. It certainly has the advantage of saving time, and of course it dispenses with the need actually to provide answers to awkward albeit legitimate questions. But it suggests that the doom-sayers (another emotive attack-word) regard their sincerely held opinions more as some kind of divinely revealed truth, not be challenged except by heretics.
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Perhaps Not could make some comments on how her friends at the AEI and Tobacco Institute have been maligning Rachel Carson for forty years in an effort to maintain profits.
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So the producers of the movie never fly on jets?
And gee…wonder what kind of jets the people at the American Enterprise Institute fly on.
Sorry, to the producers of the movie I say this..only idiots think that all the pollution we generate does nothing bad to the environment or to the health of the people. You’re frauds, liars and crackheads.
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Bless you, Ed.
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You would sorta think that if somebody actually WANTED to “go back to the Dark Ages and the Black Plague,” then that would make them “Evil” in addition to “Wrong.”
Oh, well. I guess the producers realized that this is one of the great things about denial: You don’t need to trouble yourself with that pesky consistency.
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Not Evil Just Wrong, we’d be happy to accept your offer to debate, on the condition that the debate happen on board Al Gore’s private jet.
— bi
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It is depressing how much disinformation is being spread for cynical purposes these days. Of course, rebuttals can also be made (as this post illustrates, thank you), but it takes more effort to dig up the actual facts and make logical arguments, and the results aren’t as catchy.
My technical solution (I’m a technologist): perfect the lie-detector via neurological studies, MRI’s, or whatever it takes. Not for everyday use, but so that the people on both sides of important, controversial issues can be put on the record as to what they know.
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The thread is open here, and at my previous post on your errors about Rachel Carson — feel free to come back any time.
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You’ll be glad to know that we’d be happy to debate you after the movie premiere on Oct 18, 2009. Hope to see you there.
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