Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

[billvon 2,407]

>70 billion in AGW research since 2008. Give us the 'big energy' numbers since 2008
>so we can compare.

Exxon. 40 billion a year. For one company. So that's 160 billion in profit, for one company, in one sector of the fossil fuel market, since 2008. That's a lot of money pushing denial.

[lawrocket 3]

It's not all spent in denial. However, you have raised the point.

It's about winners and losers. Exxon has good reason to be worried about what is said about fossil fuels and climate. They stand to lose a fortune.

And that money will go to someone else. Which is the other side - there are businesses that stand to gain a fortune by eliminating Exxon and its ilk from the market and moving in with their own replacements.

Now, for that kind of money, one can see frauds coming on all sides. It's a HUGE amount of money, and AGW became a political fact years ago. Want to take that money from Exxon? Easy - put forth doomsday scenarios.

It's both sides. From public funding standpoint, however, the alarmists have gotten much more attention and money than the deniers with regard to research funding.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[mnealtx 0]

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>70 billion in AGW research since 2008. Give us the 'big energy' numbers since 2008
>so we can compare.

Exxon. 40 billion a year. For one company. So that's 160 billion in profit, for one company, in one sector of the fossil fuel market, since 2008. That's a lot of money pushing denial.

Wow...Exxon gave 40 billion a year to skeptic researchers? Which money like that, Gleik didn't need to fake up 'evidence' about Heartland at all!!!

Try again - you know, something like mentioning the 23 million that Exxon donated over a 10 year period to skeptics. Of course, then we'd have to get into Exxon and other companies bankrolling the Stanford Global Climate and Energy Project.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[billvon 2,407]

>From public funding standpoint, however, the alarmists have gotten much more
>attention and money than the deniers with regard to research funding.

I'd say the alarmists have gotten far more attention - but have not gotten much funding. Most climate change/atmospheric chemistry/oceanography papers are really pretty boring. For example, let's take a recent paper in Science:

============
Temperature-Dependent Alterations in Host Use Drive Rapid Range Expansion in a Butterfly

Responses of species to climate change are extremely variable, perhaps because of climate-related changes to interactions among species. We show that temperature-related changes in the dependence of the butterfly Aricia agestis on different larval host plants have facilitated rapid range expansion. Historically, the butterfly was largely restricted to a single plant species, Helianthemum nummularium, but recent warmer conditions have enabled the butterfly to increasingly use the more widespread plant species Geranium molle. This has resulted in a substantial increase in available habitat and rapid range expansion by the butterfly (79 kilometers northward in Britain in 20 years). Interactions among species are often seen as constraints on species’ responses to climate change, but we show that temperature-dependent changes to interspecific interactions can also facilitate change.
=============


Booooooring. Neither FOX News nor CNN is going to get any click-throughs from that. Now, if you title it "Climate alarmists rebuffed by flourishing pretty butterfly" or "climate change spells doom for popular flower" - that sells papers.

[winsor 187]

The biggest issue I see is one of perspective.

For example, though AIDS is a real problem, even at the height of the epidemic diarrhea was killing many more people worldwide than was AIDS.

This is not to say that one should take comfort in the statistics if diagnosed with HIV, or that pumping obscene amounts of CO2 or Freon or whatever into tha atmosphere is okay, but that, from the standpoint of triage, there are other, more immediate issues.

Making Global Warming a religion has the guaranteed effect of blinding people to anything they did not consider in the first place.


BSBD,

Winsor

[kelpdiver 2]

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For example, though AIDS is a real problem, even at the height of the epidemic diarrhea was killing many more people worldwide than was AIDS.

but diarrhea is curable and preventable. HIV is devastating Africa in its own way, and once you have infested people, they can spread it for the rest of their days. If you put in a clean well, the entire town benefits immediately and the dangers of the past are wiped clean.

[winsor 187]

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For example, though AIDS is a real problem, even at the height of the epidemic diarrhea was killing many more people worldwide than was AIDS.

but diarrhea is curable and preventable. HIV is devastating Africa in its own way, and once you have infested people, they can spread it for the rest of their days. If you put in a clean well, the entire town benefits immediately and the dangers of the past are wiped clean.

All this is true, but dead is dead.

[kelpdiver 2]

dead is dead, but you have to look at the longer picture. Poverty driven deaths tend to have an equilibrium with the occasional spike due to a natural event (drought caused famine, or tsunami damage). But causes of death that spread exponentially can decimate the population.

if HIV were as common as Hep B, where would we be? It would be one of those scifi movies where we are looking for aliens to mate with and replenish the earth. (or escape to). Fortunately, with a vaccine now 30 years old, HPV will decline dramatically from its current 30% global infection rate. In the US, the generation after mine was required to get the shot for schools, so now HCV is the one of concern and its not nearly as easily transmitted.

As it is, 9 counties in Africa have HIV infection rates (among the sexually active 15-49yo) of 10-26%. At that level, it's not a stretch to say that they should be executed for the greater good, humanity aside. All the subsidized or stolen drugs in the world won't make that problem go away for decades, and likely centuries.

[billvon 2,407]

>All this is true, but dead is dead.

True. But that's a poor argument to not go to the doctor when you have a serious case of diarrhea. We as a people try to mitigate the risks to both ourselves and others from disease and environmental risks. Which, to me, is in general a better approach than accepting an early death because it's too much trouble to do X.