For my regular visitors, if you find that this blog hasn't been updating much lately, chances are pretty good I've been spending my writing energy on my companion blog. Feel free to pop over to Home is Where the Central Cardio-pulmonary Organ Is, and see what else has been going on.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Back to topic

Finally sitting down to respond to various points brought up in the climate change conversations. Here's one quote that had information that made me go, "huh?"

Just for the record. In Al Gore's Movie - An Inconvenient Truth, his take on this is:

They had a research team look at something like 1000 articles on Global Warming from the Scientific articals printed in the literature in recent years and could find ZERO percent of serious scientists in conflict with the idea that Global Warming is a serious issue we need to address now. And on the contrary there has been increasing concern over the years. No real debate among them at all. In other words there is no conflict coming from the leading scientists in the world.

My initial reaction to this was how can it be possible that they found 100% consensus, when I knew there was no such thing? Then I caught the language used...

...ZERO percent of serious scientists...

Ah, but of course - they only looked at "serious" scientists. All those other scientists are dismissed as not being serious scientists (just who is it that gets to define what a "serious" scientist is, anyways?). Or worse, being in the pockets of industry...

Industry and its prostituted servants, whatever their training have a much bigger reason to lie. They seem to get increasingly more clever at covering their tracks.

I have to admit, I'm getting really tired of the knee jerk reactions towards big, bad industry. Yes, some industries could be better. Yes, some companies are unethical. Yes, there are problems that need to be fix, but this blanket demonizing of all "industry," like there's some vast, industrial conspiracy, is not only getting old, but it's highly inaccurate. It's industry, after all, that's leading the way in research and innovation - the very things we need to be able to solve an awful lot of problems in the world, including environmental ones. The list of innovative companies includes those that are the most vilified. Who do you think is designing cleaner burning engines, solar panels, wind turbines, clean burning incinerators, finding better, more efficient ways to use our resources, etc.? It sure as heck isn't the environmentalists.

People are quick to blame "industry" for all sorts of things, when in fact, they turned out not to be the cause (as an example, e. coli and fecal coloform in Lk. Wpg was blamed on the burgeoning hog industry in the Interlake, with loud cries to shut the industry down. It turned out the outbreak was caused by birds feces that, due to unusually high lake levels caused by equally unusually high amounts of rain, that normally remained on the beaches was getting into the lake). There are definite problems within industry that needs to be dealt with, but that's no reason to start blaming them for every evil on the planet, which seems to be quite popular right now.

Another thing to remember when it comes to industry and "big business" is that that's exactly what environmentalism has, unfortunately, become. In the late 1990's, the top 12 US environmental groups alone commanded well over $500 million dollars. In the same time period, Canada had 1800 of these groups - far less than there are in the US. Some groups, like the Sierra Club, have offshoots that do nothing but litigate (and how's this for irony - in the US, if someone sues the government, the government pays their legal fees. That's right; the US government pays people to sue them!).

Make no mistake about it. Many of these "environmental" groups are just as much in it for the money as "big business," and are far less ethical. They are not above fabrications, manipulating data, staging "incidents," violence, terrorism, and more.

Another thing had me shaking my head. I'd mentioned before that I haven't seen all of AIT yet, (I'll borrow it for free from the library when it's available) but I did go online to see what was available there. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the quote above was taken almost verbatim from a portion of the movie. This brings up one of the biggest problems I have with how people are responding to AIT. It's being taken as gospel truth. Al Gore said it in the movie, it must be true. Now that he's won the Oscar and there's hints at the Nobel Peace Prize (heaven forbid!), people will accept anything Saint Gore says without questions. I wish I could say I was making it up, but I've seen quite a few people referring to Gore as both saint and prophet. What a frightening notion!

AIT is, plain and simple, a propaganda movie. So is TGGWS. I know that. The reason why I take TGGWS more seriously is because almost nothing in that movie was new to me - I'd seen pretty much everything pointed out in the movie from other sources. On the other hand, of the clips I've seen of AIT so far, pretty much everything has me going "wait a minute, that doesn't make sense; what about..." and usually at least a couple of examples would come to mind that contradicted what I'd seen in the clip. Perhaps when I see the whole thing, I'll find different. I certainly hope so!

I know I'm missing a lot of things, but it's time to get off the computer and go to bed.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous3:16 PM

    Kunoichi, you asked "Who is it that gets to decide who are serious scientist and who are not"?

    Likely the same people who quote Carl Wunsch as being misrepresented in the GGWS and then discount ALL other scientists that were represented.

    Not to mention that if you go to Wunsch's website you'll see it matches what he said in the film.

    His objection was to the title of the documentary using the word 'swindle' indicating that he thought people were intentionally being deceitful while he thinks all the confusion was innocently started. ie. With no intended malice.

    Pam feels that AGW supporters having been censored too so that proves AGW. Huh? How do two wrongs prove AGW?

    And there is a big difference between being censored in your job and the entire skeptic side being totally shut out of the media. It may be that those scientists didn't have anything substantial but were simply "hunting for government funds." If I want extra money for groceries I can tell my husband that I believe steak is much more nutritious than previously thought and get the extra cash. But that wouldn't actually make steak any more nutritious. Many scientists have played this same game only they have the pressure of proving they are right or their future funding stops. (Come to think of it if I can't continue to prove the worth of steaks my funding will stop too.)

    Two wrongs don't make a right and the 'AGW' side can attach people and procedures all the want. But there's nothing they can do to erase the science that proves they ARE being deceived by big businesses called... environmental organizations.

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