I don’t think anyone claimed that they are exactly the same but I would say they are quite analogous. And, in fact, in the person of Roy Spencer, we have the example of someone (who I think almost anyone would rank among the top most reputable AGW “skeptics” on the planet in terms of his publication record in the field) who argues both against the AGW hypothesis and against evolution.
Lobohan, thanks for your reply. However, it doesn’t appear to have much to do with what I said:
lobohan, I have read the form. I also read your ad hominem argument against the guy circulating the petition, which like all ad hominem arguments, has nothing at all to do with the question. I’m left in mystery about why you think I support the Oregon petition, obviously you didn’t read what I said. If you can’t be bothered to read what I say before parroting utter rubbish, why should anyone here take what you are saying with any gravity at all?
31,000 scientists (IIRC) have signed the Oregon petition, which states inter alia:
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate”
In addition, the Bray and Von Storch study found that of 530 climate scientists, 7% of them said they “strongly disagreed” that “climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes?”. That’s 54 scientists, more than said they “strongly agree”. And on a scale of 1 to 7, with 4 being neutral, 1 being “strongly agree”, and 7 being “strongly disagree”, another 60 scientists put their view of the question at 6 …
Now, I made no claim about the objectivity or validity of the Oregon Petition, nor about the von Storch and Bray studies. What I said was, among the signers of the Oregon Petition and the 114 climate scientists who came down against the AGW hypothesis in the vS/B study, I would be amazed if there were not two dozen degreed, tenured climate scientists. I hold to that. I would be amazed if that were the case. But heck, you could prove it’s not true …
Is it really your claim that there are not two dozen amongst them who are in that category?
w.
There’s nothing ad-hoc about it - the point is that they’re not currently doing climate science.
But not 41 climate scientists, as you claimed.
I said nothing about “gone stupid” - but they haven’t necessarily stayed current, and that’s important.
Firstly - I’ve not posted in all-caps at any point, so why you characterise my points as “screaming”, I have no idea. And secondly, you’d do well to confine your ad hominems to the Pit, as they add nothing to scientific debate.
I never said there weren’t, I just said that that wasn’t the cite to prove it.
So you now admit your citation didn’t, in fact, say what you originally said it did.
I don’t know, since you’ve utterly failed to provide the cites I asked for i.e cites to articles in refereed journals that were in the field of climate science. I’m not going to do your work for you, but I can tell you there are several articles out there where a few minutes use of google scholar searches prove the opposite for the Oregon petition, so you can check their methodology.
You are the one asserting there are “dozens” of climate scientists, you do the backing up. I’ve already said that a couple from that Wiki link seemed OK. Hell, even the geologist has some relevant papers on google scholar. But the legwork should be up to you - you made the claim.
There are those like Duckster and a whole bunch of other posters in GD that buy into conspiracy theories and Bush is ‘BAD’ as in
Rather than a conspiracy to withhold information the White House removed these types of documents from the general public domain of the Internet so as to prevent Propaganda out of the Washington Post and other tabloid media.
The government pays big dollars for analysis of ‘what if’ scenarios as that is the mission of the federal government, to provide for the common defense. The reports are all available through the freedom of information act just for the asking. The ‘what if’ with this report is: “what-if climate changed like the IPCC says what would be the effect on the US land, water, agriculture, and biodiversity infrastructure”.
So as to the conspiracy of the Bush White House to make it “go away”.
Both jshore and intention have lurched into the truth and I think would be in agreement with me that the cited article is pure unadulterated propaganda. The Washington Post and the Environmental Defense Action Fund have economic interest to keep the controversy going and to further the controversy they confuse the issue by talking about climate change human caused or natural and assign an emotive term of “new territory” and intention read between the lines and assigned a more emotive term of “horrible” to the future changes.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9847470&postcount=18
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9847901&postcount=23
And now jshore and intention and mrdibble are locked in an uncharacteristic emotional struggle all brought on by the emotive nature of the propaganda.
Also, the emotional tone of AGW was set by Al Gore, “He betrayed this country! He played on our fears!” and now Al Gore has “strong economic interests” that can finance more propaganda. http://www.postchronicle.com/commentary/opinion/article_21218120.shtml
**brazil84 **has it dead on!
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9851900&postcount=59
And it should be added that
The Sulzberger family have controlled New York Times for four generations.
The Graham family have controlled Washington Post for three generations
If nothing else the families know how to sale ‘tabloid’ newspapers and make maximum use of propaganda afforded by the Internet debate forums.
These newspapers have been reporting in a fashion which is Terrorism, those acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal , is a form of psychological warfare. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism
Psychological warfare, "The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior. Also known as infowars. The press is one of the most commonly used weapons for spreading propaganda. Psychological warfare - Wikipedia
This report “The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States” is pure speculation to inform government as to preparation if any is possible for the ‘what if’
The report, in the hands of the general public, is really no more useful than that movie last night “The Andromida Strain”. The last half of the movie was not in either the original 1971 screen play or the book of 1969. The whole last half 2008 miniseries included every political issue, conspiracy theory and agenda of this election cycle allof which was again pure unadulterated propaganda.
The whole OP is Propaganda and the cited article of the OP is **Propaganda **
Propaganda is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of large numbers of people. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience to **further a political agenda. **
This thread **U.S. Dept. of Ag report: Climate change is damaging America . . . now ** is an attempt to reinforce our perception that climate change is BAD, “Damaging” and to give it an emotional imperative, “Now” to further a political agenda.
The cited Washington Post article is lying by omitting a link to the cited government report “The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States”
The cited Washington Post article has a sidebar advertising the “Tell Senators Bond and McCaskill to vote yes on the Climate Security Act” which are concerted set of messages
The Washington Post stole my private data “my browser cookies” to determine that I might live in Missouri to personalize the ad to produce an emotional sense of identity. Delete your cookies and you can see how the sidebar ad changes.
Quoting from the article:
The Washington Post article is** lying** by providing a link labeled “the Agriculture Department” when in fact, the link went here http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/U.S.+Department+of+Agriculture?tid=informline which is not the Agriculture Department and then this page had a sidebar advertising the “Environmental Defense Action Fund” and list of Washington Posts articles which are more loaded messages.
No where can I find in the report that the government consultants agree or disagree with the IPCC. And nowhere do the government consultants attribute weather variability with an overall climate change of AGW. The Washington Post article does not impartially provide information and is distorting the report.
Now BrainGlutton may be either complicit in the brainwashing or he may just wish to believe in AGW or is victim of being duped. I don’t know which. The Washington Post article is Propaganda and is certainly not evidence for AGW.
I refuse to allow myself an emotional rather than rational response to the question of AGW. The whole point of this thread without it being stated is the ‘old way is bad and the new way is good’, which on its face is Propaganda, a concerted set of loaded messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of large numbers of people by evoking an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda.
In answer to the OP questions:
- As long as it takes to purge propaganda from our information stream.
- Elect John McCain!
- Live economically as we have done for generations.
focus on Z
Here’s the story behind this survey:
In other words, it was hopelessly compromised (which may be why Science rejected it for publication). Despite the strong evidence that climate skeptics may have stuffed the ballot box, “the same survey indicates a 72% to 20% endorsement of the IPCC reports as accurate, and a 15% to 80% rejection of the thesis that ‘there is enough uncertainty about the phenomenon of global warming that there is no need for immediate policy decisions.’”
Well, that’s good. I can only imagine the kind of abuse you would subject me to if I trotted out stuff of this quality to make my case!
Let me remind you of your original claim:
So, why don’t we start a list then? I’ll give you the first four names:
(1) Richard Lindzen
(2) Roy Spencer
(3) John Christy
(4) Roger Pielke Sr. (His views may be more iconoclastic than completely skeptical on AGW, but we can’t afford to be too picky.)
Where do we go after that? I see a rather big gap to anyone who I can think of beyond that who I can make out as being a well-respected climate scientist with decades of experience, and hundreds (or even tens) of scientific publications, at least if you require a reasonable number of them to be relevant to the subject at hand. But, presumably we can find a few more. Don’t know if we will get up to dozens though, at least without lowering our standards quite a bit! (And, then we have to start asking what belongs in the denominator…i.e., if we lower our standards enough, we may find a few dozen but by those standards, it would still probably be a very tiny fraction of the total number of scientists who fit in that category but are not necessarily skeptics on AGW.)
By the way, not to damn people too much by the friends that they keep, but I find it rather curious that the Uncommon Descent blog “The intelligent design weblog of William Dembski, Denyse O’Leary, and Friends” has quite a lot of posts on the subject of global warming (note that that first page is just those posts over the last ~3 and 1/2 months…click on “previous entries” to go further back). The intelligent design movement and AGW skeptics movement seems to actually be becoming increasingly intertwined.
[A part of me has even wondered if Spencer’s endorsement of intelligent design was even some sort of tit-for-tat arrangement, as it has always seemed strange to me that he did this, given that I can hardly imagine something more self-destructive for a scientist’s credibility. Maybe this is too conspiratorial and his views on intelligent design are really very sincere, and governed by his religious beliefs, but I do wonder what sort of calculations went into his decision to publicly endorse such a fringe scientific view when surely it would be in his own best interests and those of the AGW skeptics movement in general to try to maintain as much scientific credibility as possible.]
focusonz, what makes you say this is just a “what-if” scenario, rather than a report on the current status of things with some forecasting, as it seems to me?
It looks to me as though the “intelligent design” folks (at least some of them) have cleverly decided to capitalize on the CAGW fiasco to show that credentialed scientists can be wrong.
I predict that as the whole CAGW juggernaut comes crashing down, you will see the free energy wackjobs; the crystal gurus; and the like jumping on the anti-CAGW bandwagon.
The what-if comes in by the extrapolation of “current status of things” to the IPCC prognostications of the future.
Civil servants most always craft reports of information in such a fashion that policies are not espoused. It is not their job to make policy. It is the congress and the president that make policy. The department of Agriculture was not tasked to prepare a policy paper.
“The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States” is a report and is a discussion of a what-if scenario. The policy of Clinton and Bush administrations was to pay lip service only to climate change AKA Kyoto protocol. So the current policy is not at all unclear.
The excerpt below from the report are phrased such that clearly they are ‘what-if’ questions. The last question actually casts some doubt on human caused global warming as there could be other causes for what is observed in the environment.
I want to congratulate McCain and Gingrich for taking the fight to the radical environmentalist and alarmist AGW crowds, forcing them to stop wringing their hands and come up with some constructive real world policies.
But alas those people don’t live in the real world. They have to debate the morality of slapping a mosquito or allowing it to suck their blood. Democratic POTUS candidates of 2008 and the radical and alarmist crowds that support them are FUBAR as evidenced by the piece of unadulterated propaganda cite in the OP.
The only one of those that even approaches a “what-if” scenario is the second question. The others are completely scenario-independent questions, relevant to the immediate, current situation…
And what about the rest of the report? You were alleging that it is just a what-if scenario, whereas it looks to me (didn’t download the bigger files, but did read the exec summ) like most of it is a catalogue of current effects, just like the OP said.
Why would the Environmental Defense Action Fund want to keep the controversy going? They are the ones arguing that there is no real scientific controversy regarding the reality of AGW but rather a strong scientific consensus, a view that is echoed in the Executive summary of this report (p. 2):
This is what is called “targetted advertising”. The advertisers are paying the Washington Post. I don’t particularly like targetted advertising either but that doesn’t make it a vast conspiracy complete with nearly everything but the black helicopters. By the way, when I went to the article, I got an ad for ExxonMobil “Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges”. So, should I then conclude that the Post is in bed with the oil giant who has historically been doing the most to try to muddle the waters on the scientific consensus on climate change (although even they now publicly accept the basic science)? Or, should I just conclude that ExxonMobil is paying the Washington Post money to place ads on pages with relevant articles?
Like many websites (The New York Times, Wikipedia), the Post uses hyperlinks to direct people to other stories regarding various topics, organizations, or what have you that appear in the article. Note that the same sort of thing happens if you click on the “World Wildlife Fund” link or the “United Nations” link.
I don’t see that at all…and I provided you with a quotation above that makes it clear that the report accepts the strong scientific consensus on AGW and goes from there. There is absolutely no indication that the report is a “what if” scenario. That is just a figment of your clearly very active imagination.
The OP didn’t say that by citing the article, and he did not copy the **most distorting statement **
and the report nowhere uses the term “ Global warming” Paraphrasing the report did say that if the ‘very likely’ prognostications is true and if the affects seen are a result of climate change then there would be serious consequences. But the authors were not sure because the questions need be answered.
Distorting the report to make a headline is lying and is propaganda and manipulates to convince the reader to donate to a cause in that targeted ad. It is **coercion **of the worst kind. Giving the reader an impending sense of doom and playing on the readers fears. And that is terrorism and Psychological warfare.
You answered that, they have strong idealogical beliefs.
Your cookies are different than mine I guess.
When my private data is used to target my emotions. Then no thank you very much. I want reporting of information not propaganda. And I will not accept this propaganda (an article from a news outlet) as any proof for AGW.
And when the news article does not give me a link to the cite and mislead me in believing that they are backing up their report with the facts (“World Wildlife Fund” link or the “United Nations” link) then I will always assume the news is reporting fiction and are lying when they try to foist their fiction on me as truth!!!
and why I trust news media to be wrong, and to cling to it’s mistakes.
:rolleyes: Do you have even the slightest idea how fatuous that sounds? Whatever you might think (and most think highly) of the journalistic standards of the Washington Post, it is beyond the pale of the ridiculous to accuse it of “terrorism” or “psychological warfare.”
The statement you seem to believe is so distorting seems to me like a reasonably accurate summary of some of the “overarching conclusions” given in the report. For example, the report says:
Climate changes – temperature increases, increasing CO2 levels, and altered patterns of precipitation – are already affecting U.S. water resources, agriculture, land resources, and biodiversity (very likely).
and
Climate change will continue to have significant effects on these resources over the next few decades and beyond (very likely). Warming is very likely to continue in the United States during the next 25 to 50 years, regardless of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, due to emissions that have already occurred. U.S. ecosystems and natural resources are already being affected by climate system changes and variability. It is very likely that the magnitude and frequency of ecosystem changes will continue to increase during this period, and it is possible that they will accelerate. As temperature rises, crops will increasingly experience temperatures above the optimum for their reproductive development, and animal production of meat or dairy products will be impacted by temperature extremes. Management of Western reservoir systems is very likely to become more challenging as runoff patterns continue to change. Arid areas are very likely to experience increases erosion and fire risk. In arid ecosystems that have not coevolved with a fire cycle, the probability of loss of iconic, charismatic megaflora such as Saguaro cacti and Joshua trees will greatly increase.
and so on…
The fact that the report didn’t use the term “global warming” is not particularly relevant. It did use “warming”; furthermore “climate change” is a word that many scientists think is more technically correct because it encompasses more effects than simply a warming of the climate…but in practice, the terms “climate change” and “global warming” are often used pretty synonymously. It makes sense that the Post would choose to use the term that is more common in public lexicon.
Your other complaint seems to be that the Post reported the conclusions but not specifically the likelihood that the authors assigned to the conclusions being correct. However, since that likelihood (“very likely”) was high, this is a pretty minor quibble…and is a common simplification of scientific statements by the media. I.e., no scientific study is ever absolutely definitive…Scientists deal all the term with varying degrees of uncertainty and careful scientists will almost always qualify their statements and the media tends not to be too big on reporting ever single qualification. I agree that it would have been more accurate to insert the words “very likely” into what they said in those leading sentences of the article…but I would hardly say that omission amounts to propaganda. It amounts to pretty standard media reporting practices on science. Furthermore, it is worth noting that even the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s own press release on the report does not include the “very likely” qualification, stating simply:
The report finds that climate change is already affecting U.S. water resources, agriculture, land resources, and biodiversity, and will continue to do so.
I am sorry, but you haven’t learned to read the bureaucratic language. The bolded portion is the conclusion of the IPCC while the unbolded text is the conclusion of the government report.
increasing CO2 levels, and altered patterns of precipitation – are already affecting U.S. water resources, agriculture, land resources, and biodiversity (very likely). The literature reviewed for this assessment documents many examples of changes in these resources that are the direct result of variability and changes in the climate system, even after accounting for other factors. The number and frequency of forest fires and insect outbreaks are increasing
The government report does not take a position supporting ‘global warming’ and preciseness is absolutely necessary because of the high degree of similarity between a non-fictional CAGW and a purely fictional mega-disaster like the movie “The Andromeda Strain”.
As to the press release
The report finds that climate change is already affecting U.S. water resources, agriculture, land resources, and biodiversity, and will continue to do so.
and anyone who has seen the painting of “Washington Crossing the Delaware” or pictures of the dust bowl knows that the statement is true without getting all emotional about it knowing that those that lived during those times took it in stride and survived!
http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/gw/el_gw_bigimage.htm
http://whyfiles.org/199_soil/images/dustbowl.jpg
Jshore, I respect you a whole lot having read your many many posts relative to AGW so lets not resort to emotion relative to this political aspect of the AGW debate! AGW is a matter of national security and politics and propaganda is not the appropriate tool to deal with it.
And it is imperative that the candidate who has a track record of keeping government spending low and has the age and maturity to deal with a national security issue such as AGW be elected in November. I, of course, refer to McCain. I honestly believe that the other candidates won’t give a rats ass about AGW until it becomes C they being more interested in social issues rather than technical issues.

:rolleyes: Do you have even the slightest idea how fatuous that sounds? Whatever you might think (and most think highly) of the journalistic standards of the Washington Post, it is beyond the pale of the ridiculous to accuse it of “terrorism” or “psychological warfare.”
There you go, using that fighting language. You just can’t help yourself because obviously you have not the least bit of mental discipline nor the mental largess or maybe you are just lazy and didn’t take the time to read the report before furthering your political agenda.
In the future don’t rely on some news article out of a very biased newspaper (See http://www.eyeonthepost.org/Welcome.html) to further your agenda using propaganda and don’t call me names because I will remind you of what you said over and over and over and over and over again.

People who accept negative stereotypes are poopyheads.
the well-documented fact that 90 percent of media journalists vote for Democrats in presidential elections and that four of the top five newspapers in circulation are solidly liberal in their editorials.
The newspapers with the five highest daily circulations are USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. The only conservative editorial page among them is that of the Wall Street Journal.
One of the incredible feats of media journalists is denying that there is media bias by equating it with conspiracy theories. When people share the same bias, they don’t need a conspiracy. The harm comes from the fact that most of the public gets to see only that part of reality which has been filtered through the same preconceptions shared by 90 percent of those in the media. http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2214
The Washington Post bias in the case of the national security issue of AGW is “terrorism" and is “psychological warfare.”

In the future don’t rely on some news article out of a very biased newspaper (See http://www.eyeonthepost.org/Welcome.html) . . .
See you and raise you.
When come back, bring credible cites.

. . . and don’t call me names because I will remind you of what you said over and over and over and over and over again.
When you’ve been here longer you’ll understand the rules draw a distinction between calling the post stupid and calling the poster stupid (the latter being reserved for the Pit).

The Washington Post bias in the case of the national security issue of AGW is “terrorism" and is “psychological warfare.”
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Not supported even by the unreliable cite preceding it.
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“National security issue”? It is a national security issue if and only if AGW is real.
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Reiterating a fatuous assertion only compounds the stupidity.