The History of Climate Denial Funding

Follow the money : take a peek behind the Climate Change Denier-Sceptic propaganda theatre stage curtain and you will find large Fossil Fuel interests offering financial resources to unseat the Climate Change Science.

Ross Gelbspan calls this a “manufactured campaign”, and lays some of the obligations for rooting it out on those who work in the Media.

“We may already be witnessing…runaway Climate Change” is his conclusion on the consequences of 20 years of delay in setting effective policy.

Virtually no group in society escapes Gelbspan’s probing gaze. He invites comments :-

http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/27/watch-ross-gelbspans-video-on-climate-change-and-the-fossil-fuel-industry-fossil-fuel-funded-disinformation-campaign-launched/

Deep Pockets : Carbon Sinks News

Possibly some good news from the world of Carbon Sink science : the Earth may be soaking up progressively more Carbon Dioxide as time goes by instead of refusing to do so :-

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040613.shtml

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Superfreakonomics Flunks Climate Science

Now even friends break ranks with Levitt and Dubner over their new tome Superfreakonomics – a clear throw-back to the 1980s.

Is it time to ask for a reprint with all the errors corrected ?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aVKXZg_Z.vMY

Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) — Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner are so good at tweaking conventional wisdom that their first book, “Freakonomics,” sold 4 million copies. So when Dubner, an old friend, told me their new book would take on climate change, I was rooting for a breakthrough idea.

No such luck. In “SuperFreakonomics,” their brave new climate thinking turns out to be the same pile of misinformation the skeptic crowd has been peddling for years.

“Obviously, provocation is not last on the list of things we’re trying to do,” Dubner told me the other day. This time, the urge to provoke has driven him and Levitt off the rails and into a contrarian ditch.

…Having downplayed the problem, they try to solve it with a set of silver-bullet technologies known as geoengineering. One would shoot millions of tons of sulfur dioxide 18 miles into the air to artificially cool the planet. This could work; it also could have dire unintended consequences.

Caldeira, who is researching the idea, argues that it can succeed only if we first reduce emissions. Otherwise, he says, geoengineering can’t begin to cope with the collateral damage, such as acidic oceans killing off shellfish.

Levitt and Dubner ignore his view and champion his work as a permanent substitute for emissions cuts. When I told Dubner that Caldeira doesn’t believe geoengineering can work without cutting emissions, he was baffled. “I don’t understand how that could be,” he said. In other words, the Freakonomics guys just flunked climate science.”

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/superfreakonimics-climate-change-controversy.php

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/features/view/feature/SuperFreakonomics-on-Global-Warming-220

“It all started with climate activist Joe Romm accusing the authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner of global warming denial and misrepresenting the research of a key climate scientist. They pushed back, and fellow New York Times blogger and celebrated columnist Paul Krugman jumped in the fray…”

All Shook Up

Image Credit : A Sound of Thunder Movie

Students of Chaos Theory well know what is known as the Butterfly Effect – apparently small changes in system forcings result in major outcomes.

We’ve heard repeatedly about rising sea levels resulting from Global Warming, but there are more bugs crawling out of the woodwork now.

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Everybody Dance Now !

Dancing with Bicycles

Whenever you hear government ministers or public figures telling the people that technology will save us, remember this : the word “technology” is synonymous with the word “business”.

“Technology” is Big Engineering, and this is what is done by large companies and corporations. Large organisations that make profit by selling manufactured products and Energy always have a surplus set aside for their communications budgets, and that includes persuading government people that their business is invaluable and needs promoting.

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Bjørn Lomborg : Climate Joker

In his own, special, blond, way, I feel Bjørn Lomborg is as dangerous as Martin Durkin. They both act like incarnations of The Climate Joker in my view, showing different capricious sides to the destructive force of mankind’s inhumanity to man (and beast and tree).

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Cloud Ships. Yes, But…

Geoengineering. Sounds great. Treat the Earth like one big motoring machine, get under the hood (bonnet) and tinker with it.

But what if actually this is the equivalent of putting the Planet on a life support system ventilator, and the plug could be pulled at any time ?

How sustainable are some of the Geoengineering proposals ? Are they guaranteed to work ? Won’t they have knock-on side-effects ? Are they reversible if they prove unhelpful ? And how much will they cost ?

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