Unit2Sucks;842844629 said:
In the case of the Heartland Institute, it's literally the same CEO. He used to argue smoking was safe and then (I'm sure once the checks cleared) he stopped arguing the position. He was called on it a few years back and reluctantly had to confirm everything he had previously said.
The only thing that has changed is the people writing his checks. In addition to being a paid hack for the climate denial industry and tobacco, he's taken on other similar industry funded positions on fracking, healthcare and education among others. You might very well be on a first name basis with every credentialed climate change skeptic but that doesn't overwhelm the evidence of climate change.
In a few years when climate change denial is no longer a big enough business he will probably get paid to take the wrong side of some other environmental or health issue and my guess is you will coincidentally be on the same side as him. What's sad is that you don't seem to have a profit motive, you just always seem to take a contrarian position.
I came to my position on global warming through research, not by impulse or out of political belief. I was on the warmist side just a few years ago. I've done a lot of research on the subject because I have been working in the field of sustainable real estate as a developer, with a park of over one million trees on my properties.
I think that anyone with a decent scientific background and an open mind who goes through the effort of doing the research will come to the same conclusions. There are a lot of counter-intuitive aspects to this issue, and angles that have been distorted in the media and across many parts of the research community.
One of them is the portrayal of "deniers" as shills or dupes of the energy industry, or as narrow-minded right wing anti-science ideologues. The other myth is the "97% consensus", when in fact the proportion of scientists who don't agree with CAGW is more like 20-25% (granted still not the majority, but the picture is not that of "settled science" /97% consensus).
I've mentioned Edward Teller and Judith Curry as bright people and experts on the skeptical side, there are many others who like them aren't on the Heartland Institute payroll or part of any other astroturfed outfits.
Roger Revelle, who might arguably be the most influential alumnus in the history of our university as the father of the greenhouse gas global warming theory, would also qualify as a skeptic today (probably the reason his name has not become a household name). In his opinion, the impact of human-generated CO2 is not high enough to warrant the kind of huge and very costly voluntary sacrifices mandated by the Paris Agreement, I'll quote again
from his 1992 policy report (link ) urging prudence on the subject of CAGW:
"...Should the United States assume "leadership" in a hastily-conceived campaign that could cripple the global economy, or would it be more prudent to assure first, through scientific research, that the problem is both real and urgent?
We can sum up our conclusions in a simple message:
The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.... There is major uncertainty and disagreement about whether this increase [in observed CO2 levels] has caused a change in the climate during the last century. There is also disagreement in the scientific community about predicted future changes as a result of further increases in greenhouse gases.
The models used to calculate future climate are not yet good enough because the climate balancing processes are not sufficiently understood, nor are they likely to be good enough until we gain more understanding through observations and experiments.
As a consequence, we cannot be sure whether the next century will bring a warming that is negligible or a warming that is significant. Finally, even if there are a global warming and associated climate changes, it is debatable whether the consequences will be good or bad; likely some places on the planet would benefit, some would suffer.
...Has there been a climate effect caused by the increase of greenhouse gases in the last decades? The data are ambiguous to say the least. Advocates for immediate action profess to see a global warming of about 0.5 degrees C since 1880, and point to record global temperatures in the 1980s and the warmest year on record in 1990. Most atmospheric scientists tend to be cautious, however; they call attention to the fact that the greatest temperature increase occurred before the major rise in greenhouse gas concentration. It was followed by a quarter-century decrease between 1940 and 1965 when concern arose about an approaching ice age!
[U]Conclusion[/U]
Drastic, precipitous and, especially, unilateral steps to delay the putative greenhouse impacts can cost jobs and prosperity and increase the human costs of global poverty, without being effective. Stringent controls enacted now would be economically devastating particularly for developing countries for whom reduced energy consumption would mean slower rates of economic growth without being able to delay greatly the growth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Yale economist William Nordhaus, one of the few who have been trying to deal quantitatively with the economics of the greenhouse effect, has pointed out that ". . .those who argue for strong measures to slow greenhouse warming have reached their conclusion without any discernible analysis of the costs and benefits. . . ." It would be prudent to complete the ongoing and recently expanded research so that we will know what we are doing before we act. "Look before you leap" may still be good advice. "
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Since 1992, global temperatures have gone up for the rest of that decade, then leveled off in the last two decades, when close to 1/3 of all human-generated CO2 was added to the atmosphere. The observations from the last two decades vindicate Revelle's cautious skepticism.
