Re: Al Gore effect!

On Feb 5, 9:43 pm, h...@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:28:26 -0500, Mark Goldberg



<msgoldb...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
h...@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

sheesh, here you condemn, and comdemn, and you think Gore did the
science?  A very brilliant man won the Nobel Prize for his work on
this project.  I suggest you look it up and learn something.  Either
that or shut the *** up.

Hal... you talk like a guy who was about to look stupid.

It's all past tense.  Gore made an argument that was fallacious, vain,
and he's actually got an enormous conflict of interest, and stands to
make millions of dollars off his erroneous thesis

Mark

Sellout Scientists:
Industry-funded Skeptics Undermine Global Warming Consensus

yeah well this is the snowiest and coldest winter in decades, and it
just snowed in the UAE.
That means way more than what some sciencetists say, maybe it shouldnt
but it does.its that im freezing my ass off every damn day that makes
me not care...or rather WANT global warming.
yup i want the globe warmer, maybe itll kill all those at the equator,
but lets face it, thats where the people we could do without are
mostly at anyways.
by Ross Gelbspan

Even as global warming intensifies, the evidence is being denied with
a ferocious disinformation campaign. This campaign is waged on many
fronts: in the media, where public opinion is formed; in the halls of
Congress, where laws are made; and in international climate
negotiations. In their most important accomplishment, global warming
critics have successfully created the general perception that
scientists are sharply divided over whether it is taking place at all.

Key to this success has been the effective use of a tiny band of
scientists -- principally Drs. Patrick Michaels, Sherwood Idso, Robert
Balling, and S. Fred Singer -- who have proven extraordinarily adept
at draining the issue of all sense of crisis. Deep-pocketed industry
public relations specialists have promoted their opinions through
every channel of communication they can reach. They have demanded
access to the press for these scientists' views, as a right of
journalistic fairness.

Unfortunately, most editors are too uninformed about climate science
to resist. They would not accord to tobacco company scientists who
dismiss the dangers of smoking the same weight that they accord to
world-class lung specialists. But in the area of climate research, few
major news stories fail to feature prominently one of these handful of
industry-sponsored scientific "greenhouse skeptics."

If the public has been lulled into a state of disinterest, the effect
on decision makers has been even more effective. Testimony by
industry-sponsored skeptics contributed to the defeat of proposals to
increase the cost of fossil-fuel generated power, to cut the climate
research budget, and to discredit the scientific findings of the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which represents the
consensus of 2,500 scientists.

The rise to prominence of most of these greenhouse skeptics is spelled
out in several reports of the Western Fuels Association, a Washington,
DC-based nonprofit consortium of coal utilities and suppliers. In its
1994 annual report, Western Fuels declared that "there has been a
close to universal impulse in the [fossil fuel] trade association
community here in Washington to concede the scientific premise of
global warming... We have disagreed, and do disagree, with this
strategy."

To counter it, the group said it would support the work of those who
challenged the findings of the world's leading scientists. Among them:
Dr. Pat Michaels, associate professor of climatology at the University
of Virginia; Dr. S. Fred Singer, also of UVA; and Dr. Robert Balling,
director of the climatology program at Arizona State University.

Dr. Pat Michaels calls his industry-funded publications serious
journals of climate science. However, he ignores the fact that all
research sponsored by the federal government is subjected to the
exacting requirements of scientific proof through a system of review
by other experts. By contrast, Michaels' research is frequently
published in industry journals without undergoing this kind of
rigorous scientific scrutiny. Michaels has even referenced articles by
E. Keith Idso, son of greenhouse skeptic Dr. Sherwood Idso, which were
later published in the New American, the newsletter of the John Birch
Society. (World Climate Review, Volume 1, Number 4.)

Witness this passage by Michaels in the Fall 1994 issue of World
Climate Review: "The fact is that the artifice of
climate-change-apocalypse is crumbling faster than Cuba... There is
genuine fear in the environmental community about this one, for the
decline and fall of such a prominent issue is sure to horribly maim
the credibility of the green movement that espoused it so cheerily."

In the winter 1993 issue, he wrote of government-sponsored climate
research scientists: "The fact is that virtually every successful
academic scientist is a ward of the federal government. One cannot do
the research necessary to publish enough to be awarded tenure without
appealing to one or another agency for considerable financial
support... Yet these and other agencies have their own political
agendas."

By attacking these scientists as politically motivated, Michaels
succeeded in having his testimony judged as credible by the House
Science Committee, and was able to help secure funding cuts for
programs to study the global climate.

In May 1995 testimony under oath to the Minnesota Public Utilities
Commission, Michaels revealed under oath that he had received more
than $165,000 in industry and private funding over the previous five
years. Not only did Western Fuels fund two journals that he edited --
his World Climate Review and its successor newsletter World Climate
Report -- but it provided a $63,000 grant for his research. Another
$49,000 came to Michaels from the German Coal Mining Association and
$15,000 from the Edison Electric Institute. Michaels also listed a
grant of $40,000 from the western mining company Cyprus Minerals, the
largest single funder of the anti-environmental Wise Use movement.

It is quite extraordinary that with such ties, Michael's testimony at
congressional hearings chaired by Rep. Robert Walker (R-Pa.) and Rep.
Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) was accorded more weight than that of four
internationally renowned climate scientists.

The case of Dr. Robert Balling is equally intriguing. A geographer by
training, much of Balling's research focused on hydrology,
precipitation, water runoff and other Southwestern water and
soil-related issues until he was solicited by Western Fuels. Balling
has since emerged as one of the most visible and prolific of the
climate-change skeptics.

Since 1991, Balling has received, either alone or with colleagues,
nearly $300,000 from coal and oil interests in research funding, which
he also disclosed for the first time at the Minnesota hearing. In his
collaborations with Sherwood Idso, Balling has received about $50,000
from Cyprus, $80,000 from German Coal and $75,000 from British Coal
Corp. Two Kuwaiti government foundations have given him a $48,000
grant and unspecified consulting fees and have published his 1992
book, "The Heated Debate," in Arabic. The book was originally
published by a conservative think tank, the Pacific Research
Institute, one of whose goals is the repeal of environmental
regulations.

Among the skeptics, Professor S. Fred Singer stands out for being
consistently forthcoming about his funding by large oil interests and
conservative groups. Singer is director of the Science and Energy
Policy Project at the University of Virginia. During a 1994 appearance
on ABC's "Nightline," Singer did not deny having received funding from
the Rev. Sun Myung Moon (to whose newspaper, the Washington Times, he
is a regular contributor and whose organization has published three of
his books). Nor has he apologized for his funding from Exxon, Shell,
ARCO, Unocal and Sun Oil. Singer's defense is that his scientific
position on global atmospheric issues predates that funding and has
not changed because of it.

And it is true that Singer held firm to a similar position on another
environmental controversy -- despite overwhelming evidence against his
position. Singer once warned the oil companies that they face the same
threat as the chemical firms that produced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs),
a class of chemicals that was found to be depleting the earth's
protective ozone layer. "It took only five years to go from...
mandating a simple freeze of production [of CFCs] at 1985 levels, to
the 1992 decision of a complete production phase-out -- all on the
basis of quite insubstantial science," Singer wrote.

Contrary to his assertion virtually all relevant researchers say the
link between CFCs and ozone depletion rests on unassailable scientific
evidence. As if to underscore the point, the three scientists who
discovered the CFC-ozone link were awarded the Nobel Prize for
chemistry. But that did not faze Singer, who proceeded to attack the
Nobel committee in the Washington Times. Singer's tantrum against the
Nobel committee would be laughable -- except that his views are
influential, especially with conservative politicians. Based in part
on Singer's work, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Rep. John
Doolittle (R-Calif.) are making an effort to withdraw U.S.
participation in the Montreal Protocol, the international compact that
mandates an end to production of the chemicals that destroy the ozone
layer. Despite the remarkable international consensus on the Montreal
Protocol, DeLay used Singer's pronouncements to attribute it merely to
"a media scare."

[Excerpted with permission from The Heat is On, by Ross Gelbspan,
published by Addison Wesley Longman, May 1997.]

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