Kyoto and Spin 35

[zdas04]

Recently I was talking to a group of engineers in Indonesia and someone said "we can't do that because, unlike the U.S., we have obligations to protect the environment".

That rocked me, and I asked what the heck he was talking about (we were in Jakarta and the air is so nasty that you can't see the next sky scraper). His response was that since the U.S. didn't sign the Kyoto protocols we must just be raping and pillaging the environment.

A Canadian collegue pointed out that the U.S. has been a leader in controlling air emissions for decades and that our air-quality restrictions are far more stringent than the Indonesian restrictions. This shocked the Indonesians.

What I'm wondering is how the international media has gotten to the point where its agenda is just taken on faith with no regard to facts?

David

 

[electricpete]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11

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[Zapster]

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=069cb5b2-7d81-4a8e-825d-56e0f112aeb5&k=0

 

[tgmcg]

There won't be a final word on the global climate change debate or causes thereof for several decades to come. It will...and should...remain an open debate with arguments pro and con. Science in general suffers badly when activists get involved and start promoting their agendas.

As some have said, an ethical scientist is supposed to focus his or her efforts on explaining why a hypothesis WRONG. Yet here we are with activists claiming unanimity among scientists.

There are cases of climatologists who started out supporting global warming, but then became skeptics. Are there any who started out as skeptics and became supporters?

As a mechanical engineer, I'm probably best served by leaving the science of this debate to professional climatologists. However, I am capable of judging for myself who can be trusted and who cannot by their totalitarian actions during the debate.

IMHO, it's pretty clear who cannot be trusted.

 

[controlnovice]

What is funny and scary in the same breath is that those claiming that there will be more fury from mother nature in the upcoming years do to global warming can use any new weather catastrophe to say, "look, we told you so!", even though weather has been causing these catastrophes for years.

Best example is the 2005 North American hurricanes. Haven't seen any in 2006, but, hey, there's more to come!!

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This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

 

[LCruiser]

Once again, Realclimate was borne to defend the MBH98 Hockey Stick. It's not the result that's in question so much as the flawed science that went into it. Defense of it puts one's credibility on the line.

 

[2dye4]

Have a look in the behavior of the business community. These folks usually do their homework before risking their companies money. The claims of wild weather seem to be worrying the insurance industry. My friend with house of the Florida coast tells me that insurance companies are trying to bail out of covering these areas. Not just raise rates, they want to pick up and leave. Now if the fine actuaries at these companies are doing their job and analyse the situation and conclude as many do here that the whold thing is a farce why shouldn't the market just price in GW premium and therefore a profit boom to the insurance companies because this is all just a hoax. No it seems they are genuinely worried about providing coverage to these locations. They are walking away and leaving money on the table. Now why would they do that??

 

[zdas04]

I don't know of anyone who says that climate is not changing. It always changes and it always has. The intense disagreement is about the impact of man on the current changes. Are our actions accelerating and intensifying the current change? Can future actions decelerate and lessen the impact to the current change? That is the heart of the discussion.

I started this thread to discuss the manipulation of public opinion by the popular media. Now I believe that this manipulation has been so successful that emotions are so intense on this topic that it is impossible to have an intellectual discussion about it.

We have beat this horse to death. Let's move on.

David

 

[David]

zdas04, the originator of this thread, has requested the thread be closed. Thank you for not posting in this thread.

Dave