Confirmed: Fossil fuel company funded climate change denial

[Leonhard]

First of all thank you for chosing to abide by the rules Mountain Man, while link blasting is easy and quick, it makes for a rather onerous kind of discussion on a forum. I've been in discussion where its taken my an hour to write and edit a post, only to be blasted with fourteen links, and little more, by people arguing the opposite.

So first of all in these discussions I've been very careful to say that the great majority of climatologists (and by that I've always meant active climatologists), agree with the consensus view of global warming, driven by human carbon emissions. This means that the Heartland paper and Forbes article you cite completely misses the point. The survey of Dolan and Zimmerman sent out an online survey to a lot of earth scientists, and as I pointed out the majority of those agreed with the consensus view. The interesting point then is what would experts in the field say.

For they got a response 79, which is statistically significant when you're dealing with as strong a response as that they got, namely 98% agreeing with the consensus opinion. Global warming being real, driven by humans. The rest of the article tries to obfuscate, by citing further specific issues as to how big a problem it will be etc...

I'll have to look into the National Review article, but I'm on my way to St. John the Baptist feast day celebration (its celebrated every year in Denmark). I'll try to write something on that by tomorrow.

But so far nothing here really disputes the fact that the vast majority 95% of climatologists fully endorse the consensus view, which is exactly what we expect to see when the theories are well supported by evidence.

[demi-conservative]

Al Gore was over the top, and he didn't accurately report the conservative view of scientists (that means the view they find most likely to be true). While I think Al Gore raised a lot of much needed awareness of this problem, I think he could have done it in a more sensible way.

Where was this '98% scientist consensus' when Al Gore and many many others were crying wolf, misusing their data and work??

The kind of change I'm advocating is only amounts to something like removing government money being paid to the fossil fuel industry, removing a few of their priviledges and subsidies, in turn turn for moving those subsidies to the renewable energy sector. Its more a matter of leaning in a certain direction.

And what will this do?? Have heard so many times 'if we dont' take drastic steps NOW we all dead!!!' Your 'leaning in' precisely solves what?

What sort of 'drastic change' did you imagine?

eg. CO2 hard limits.

A lower estimate of sea level rise during this century is somewhere between 6-9 feet. That's a lot of coastal areas that will vanish. Beyond that there's a lot of effects this will have on the climate. A greater temperature means more moisture will be absorbed by the atmosphere, leading to greater downpour. There's an increased chance of forest fires, as we saw in Russia when they had their heatwave recently. Famine and disease are a severe risk in many third world countries owing to crop fields becoming unusable.

More evidence needed to convince especially given chaotic nature and negative feedback systems!! And then even more still to show that this is a big big problem!!! And how big impact your leaning in will have, hmm?

[Leonhard]

Where was this '98% scientist consensus' when Al Gore and many many others were crying wolf, misusing their data and work??

Climatologists went from being relatively obscure people working away on understanding global climate changes, to suddenly with Mann et. al. being thrust into the daylight. I don't think they did a proper job of communicating what they believed to the public. They were too slow to do so, and spoke invariable not the same things. It was something that could have been done better I agree.

And what will this do?? Have heard so many times 'if we dont' take drastic steps NOW we all dead!!!' Your 'leaning in' precisely solves what?

There are various models of human carbon emission depending on how quickly we transition to using renewable energy sources: A combination of wind, solar and batteries. How quickly we do this depend on the policies we adopt. For instance recently in California it was agreed that it was okay for powerplants to charge high tariffs for solar panel users, because they weren't consuming the same amount of electricity as before (which the powerplants expected them to). This law is kinda ridiculous, and only really in the end benefits the fossil fuel industry, if that law had been different then it might be more affordable to put up solar panels on your own roof without the local power utility punishing you for doing so.

eg. CO2 hard limits.

I'm not sure what a CO2 hard limit is. I prefer to think in terms of goals, and the specific changes in laws, and subsidies that should be applied. Ultimately the industry will be the ones to accomplish this change, as the price of solar panels and batteries continue to drop, and the price of oil gradually rices... at some point the invisible hand of the market will accomplish this change. Whether that starts to happen in five years, or fifty, and how long it'll take, depends on the policies we adopt.

At the current rate Denmark will close its last coal and natural gas powerplant in 2050.

More evidence needed to convince especially given chaotic nature and negative feedback systems!! And then even more still to show that this is a big big problem!!! And how big impact your leaning in will have, hmm?

Oh I agree, and I'm considering writing something on that, with good references to the simulations that have been done. There are good reasons to think that it would be problematic, and also good reasons to think that we might be able to keep the increase around two to three degrees centigrade. That's definitely not good depending on where you live. Denmark might be fine, though some of our coasts will be eaten up. We'd lose our pine forests as a result, but we might actually be able to grow wine.

The worst case scenario, without any intervention, and with China, India and Africa doing nothing but full coal, results in the CO2 content of the atmosphere going from the present 400ppm to 1400ppm, with the temperature rising a full six degrees centigrade during this century. That would be quite catastrophic.

But I'll write a post about that when I get home.

While there are some negative feedback mechanisms, they're all dwarfed by the enormous positive feedback mechanism: The warmer it gets, the more water vapour gets into the atmosphere. Water vapour is by far the most powerful greenhouse gas, simple because of how there is. However its reactive. So if CO2 raises the temperature a little bit, the vapour-vapour feedback effect quadruples the results.

[Terraceth]

The kind of change I'm advocating is only amounts to something like removing government money being paid to the fossil fuel industry, removing a few of their priviledges and subsidies, in turn turn for moving those subsidies to the renewable energy sector. Its more a matter of leaning in a certain direction.

Well, I agree with half of that. I'd be be happy seeing all government-granted privileges and subsidies for the energy sector (renewable or otherwise) disappear.