Sonic Youth Gossip - global warming: a myth?

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global warming: a myth?

no. whoa i love polls:D thx crypto

It is definitely warming up, but there are a lot of factors determining the longterm effects, and it is sort of unpredictable.

The following link will take you to the Article if you have access to WSJ.com. Thanks to the Wall Street Journal for a great article.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116597688558448529-search.html?KEYWORDS=Global+Warming&COLLECTION=wsj ie/6month
Senators' 'Chill Out' Letter to Exxon Creates a Heated Reaction
December 13, 2006; Page A19
In regard to your Dec. 4 editorial "Global Warming Gag Order":
Sens. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D., W.Va.) are threatening Exxon Mobil with congressional censure if it keeps encouraging the scientific skeptics who doubt that humans caused the earth's recent warming trend.

But more than 70% of the warming observed since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850 occurred before 1940, and thus before much human-emitted CO2. The senators are apparently unaware of the broad and impressive evidence from hundreds of recent scientific studies that document a better explanation for the modern warming -- a moderate, natural 1,500-year global climate cycle.
The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming had already been created when researchers retrieved the first long ice cores from Greenland and Antarctic in the 1980s. The ice cores revealed 400,000 years of the planet's temperature history -- and a 1,500-year cycle that was too long and moderate to be discerned by Celtic tribes or Viking seamen. Physical evidence of the 1,500-year climate cycle has also been found by more than 100 recent peer-reviewed studies by leading research institutes -- in the bottom sediments of six oceans and hundreds of lakes, in ancient relict tree rings from around the northern hemisphere, and in the cave stalagmites and glacier movements of every continent plus New Zealand. The North American Pollen Data Base shows nine complete reorganizations of our trees and plants in the past 14,000 years, or one every 1,650 years.
Science outranks senators. Galileo was a consensus of one.
Dennis T. Avery
S. Fred Singer
Arlington, Va.
(Messrs. Avery and Singer co-authored "Unstoppable Global Warming -- Every 1,500 Years," Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.)
Sens. Rockefeller and Snowe defied every tenet of democracy when they suggested in an open letter to Exxon Mobil that it should refrain from exercising its right of free speech in supporting scientists who dare to question how much the increase in atmospheric CO2 may warm the world. The disastrous duo should withdraw their letter and apologize to Exxon Mobil. The senators say climate change is "a matter of urgency for all mankind." It is not. The U.N. is about to cut its high-end estimate of sea-level rise ino 2100 from three feet to just 17 inches. The panic is over. The senators are jumping on the climate-change bandwagon just as the wheels are falling off.
The U.K. foreign secretary recently said climate skeptics were like supporters of Islamic terror and should be denied access to the media. After a decade of socialism, freedom of speech does not figure in the U.K. constitution. But let me cite the First Amendment to yours:
"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
I call upon the two senators to live by those noble words.
Christopher Monckton
London
(Lord Monckton was science and technical adviser to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.)
Your attack on Sens. Snowe and Rockefeller for their letter calling on ExxonMobil to stop supporting groups that obfuscate climate change science is misconceived on some essential points. It is not "bullying," "over-the-top" or "intimidating" to call attention to how this enormously powerful company has, over the past eight years, spent millions of dollars to fund dozens of organizations in order to carry out a disinformation campaign on the global warming problem. The actions of Exxon Mobil in this regard can reasonably be seen as an insult to the climate science community, which has been making a heroic effort to communicate the nature of the problem in the face of extraordinary impediments thrown up by industry-funded operatives. A White House official who formerly was an oil industry lobbyist edited climate science program reports to play down global warming. After being exposed, he left his position and was promptly hired to work for Exxon Mobil.
The senators are not alone in believing it is time for Exxon Mobil to stop warring against the leading climate scientists. Instead, it should be acknowledging the conclusions of the leading scientific assessments and helping to lead the way in translating this understanding into a societal response strategy. As yet we have not seen this. But perhaps CEO Rex Tillerson, in a recent speech to the Chief Executives Club of Boston, signaled a shift when he said of climate change: "The potential risks to society could prove to be significant. . . . We should take steps now to reduce emissions in effective and meaningful ways." We shall see what, if anything, follows from this. But did Mr. Tillerson say that because he feels intimidated and bullied by Olympia Snowe? I hardly think so.
Rick Piltz
Director
Climate Science Watch
Washington
Regarding your lead editorial about the letter to Exxon Mobil regarding global warming's "obvious" consequences, I suggest citing the article by Kenneth Green on page 94 in the November/December 2006 issue of The American magazine. It addresses our current knowledge about the 12 significant phenonmena identified by the U.N. Climate Panel in 2000. Of the 12 we have significant knowledge on only one. We have little or no scientific knowledge on the other 11. But on that basis we are expected to subscribe to half-baked global warming "solutions" such as the Kyoto Protocol, which promises a fraction of a degree atmospheric temperature reduction half a century in the future at the cost of perhaps a 30% reduction in current national GNP.
While we should continue to define the problem, if it exists, solutions are still sometime in the future, if they are ever needed.
Bill Allen Sr.
Placentia, Calif.
Yes, there is a chance that some aspect of our understanding of global warming is wrong. There is even a slight chance it is all wrong. But the preponderance of environmental data, theory, intuition, and direct sensory evidence suggest that it is as most of us think it is. The scientific marketplace of ideas has so ruled.
The consequences of not responding to the "prevailing wisdom" (there is anthropogenic global warming) are much worse than those of overresponding to the "null hypothesis" (there is no anthropogenic global warming).
Given the above reasoning, on balance I'm much more distressed by the allegation against Exxon Mobil that it funds numerous pseudo-scientific climate change denial front groups than by the allegation against Sens. Rockefeller and Snowe that they threatened Exxon Mobil to stop doing so "or else."
Robert Bookstein, M.D.
San Diego

By demanding that Exxon Mobil cease funding and denounce organizations that do not adhere to the senators' views on global warming because they are "deniers" engaged in an "obfuscation agenda" that undermines America's "moral clarity," Sens. Rockefeller and Snowe have taken a virtual theocratic position.
No effort is made to address the validity of the science. Instead, it is assumed that global warming theory, as envisioned by two representatives of government, is not merely viable, but is established science. Such an overt assault upon the very foundations of free scientific inquiry is chilling in its implications.
William E. Fleischmann
Seven Valleys, Pa.

Here is the Article on the Global Warming Gag order:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116518745569439462-search.html?KEYWORDS=Global+Warming&COLLECTION=wsj ie/6month

Thanks to Crypto for swallowing Talk Radio's blatherings hook, line and sinker, and for perpetuating the head-in-the-sand mentality of a few wingnuts far outside the scientific mainstream...

p.s. im just posting something a friend sent me

i took the 3rd choice.
i dont know much about the subject

Ah.
Clarification.
Thanks for that.

no problem.

im just interested in hearing what everyone else has to say about the subject.

It's no myth. Nice poll by the way :)

global warming is a sad reality of what we have done and continue to do to the planet we live on.

No, and people that say it is should be put out of their ignorance. It's the sad truth, and ignoring it only makes it worse.

There's certainly some mythologizing that goes with any global phenomena, but all myth is based on reality, and the reality in this case is scary enough on it's own.

It's been warm as hell for the past years.
I believe it.

It is real and it will be a key factor in the downfall of mankind.

Why is this even in question, usually Stateside?

The ignorance...never ceases to amaze me. Ajwlqdbw!

Here's a good article/review written by a good friend of mine:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lucy Audley's Movie Journal

Global Warning, or Do You Know Shit?

Watching An Inconvenient Truth was a depressing experience for me. Not because of its subject matter (though God knows the prospect of climate change is hardly a cheering one), but because the entire movie is an hour and a half of Gore trying desperately to convince America of a truth that is about as controversial in the scientific community as the belief that the Pope is based in Rome.

The most telling statistic on global warming is this. In December 2004, a paper published in the December 2004 edition of Science, reviewed 928 articles on climate change published in peer reviewed scientific journals (i.e. reputable, academic journals without political or religious bias). Not one of these articles disagreed that climate change is happening and that human activities are contributing to it. In other words, there's a clear scientific consensus on this subject.

Here in Europe that comes as no surprise. Few peopel here genuinely think that climate change is not happening, and those that do are given little air-time and less credit. We know that our summers are getting warmer because we can feel it when there's a heatwave. We see it in record temperatures, registered year after year in the south. We see it in droughts. We know winters are coming later because plants that would have been killed off by frost in early October now bloom until the end of the month, and harvests can be gathered later. And we've known for some time: I can remember watching TV shows on it as a kid nearly fifteen years ago. For some time in Britain, it's been the government's chief scientists who have been speaking out and demanding change.

So why are so many Americans convinced that climate change is one big hoax, against the evidence of science and the evidence of their own senses? The obvious answer would be that they have been subjected to a level of political spin on the issue that we in Europe have not experienced, and that this created confusion. Yet when you think about it, this raises more questions that it answers. Europe is also wealthy and Western. We share many economic interests with the States. Governments and corporations here in Europe have just as much of an interest in discrediting the scientific consensus as those in America. Yet very few have actually attempted to do so. Why?

I believe that the reason, in part, lies in the very different ways in which we educate our kids to assess and evaluate evidence. Since the early nineteenth century our highly secular, English society has placed a great deal of emphasis on teaching kids to discriminate between different kinds of evidence, to question all testimony, to examine potential sources of bias, to distinguish between expert and non-expert views. Unlike America, we are not plagued with partisan news networks like Fox: instead we have a serious culture of news-gathering, independent of corporate imperatives, that is probing to the point of invasiveness. Any infraction of journalistic rules in presenting evidence in the broadsheets or on any TV station is treated as a highly serious matter. If a government knows that it can't get away with dissemminating untrue and biased material to the people, because they are used to sifting through evidence, and sorting truth from falsehood, and they are protected by strong and independent journalism, then they are far less likely to attempt to deceive or deliberately confuse their people.

In America, however, it appears that too many people are unable to tell the difference between political speeches on global warming and serious, independent scientific studies. Time and time again on the internet I hear the say-so of a politician, or a body sponsored by the oil trade, quoted as a serious riposte to independent, unbiased research. All too many of the Americans who deny climate change are making important judgements based on purely on faith, without even realizing how flimsy their case is. They have faith in utterances of a particular celebrity, they have faith in their easy-on-the-eye politicians, they have faith in their religious leaders. They get their opinions, in digest form, from others, instantly on 24 hour TV or the internet. And there is little secondary-level filtering to prevent them from drawing the wrong conclusions, since dumbed down or partisan news outlets do not provide the necessary level of evidentiary analysis.

Yet this faith in politicians and non-experts is not the faith of the humble. This is not the faith of people who don't trust their own ability to look at the issue for themselves. This is the faith of the blind and the ignorant. Because the vast majority of those who deny climate change do so in an incredibly arrogant way. Instead of listening to the scientific experts who have spent years gaining the knowledge and the experience, and performing the research which qualifies them to speak about climate change with more authority than anyone else, these people put their trust in the opinions of people who are the tools of an incredibly mendacious government, and then run around loudly proclaiming their opinion as undeniable fact. It really is like watching these people run around trying to convince the rest of us that the earth is flat.