Please look at what the car sales do at the end of the past years, after November and December there is indeed a drop, but it is clearly seasonal because every year after December there is a usual drop.
When one looks at the sales per year, as one looks at 2013 the sales for the year were 97,507, in 2014 the sales were 123,049.
When one looks at the typical low months of January, and February the 2015 numbers show that the numbers are higher that those of January and February of 2014.
The overall picture is that just by a quick estimation, the 2015 total sales are in pace of to get close to 150,000. in comparison to the 123,049 of 2014.
The bottom line: what you did was really what climate change deniers like to do with data, the numbers actually show that they are higher than the pace they had in the same months of 2014, and 2013, and 2012. And the numbers of sales are indeed increasing every year, what you did gives a very misleading result.
So your link (which is not to the study itself, just a summary) shows 900 million in total funding without specifying how much of the money goes into denying climate change and/or raping polar bears. Most of those guys are big on others stuff like Obamacare, foreign policy, economic policy, killing puppies, etc. If he doesn’t say how much of the total funding is actually spent of climate change the number is meaningless.
Even a very positive article on Scientific Americansays “The study’s author, Robert Brulle, a sociology and environmental science professor at Drexel University, takes a systematic look at what he calls the climate change counter-movement (CCCM), made up of groups that Brulle says have an average annual income of just above $900 million, although much of that money is not even spent on climate change-related activities and is used for other issues.”
(my bolding)
So, please, do bring actual CCCW numbers and then we multiply by ten.
AEI and Heritage say that much less than 10% of the Budget is spent on CC.
AEI and Hoover support a carbon tax.
Wiki says Greenpeace has a 240 million euro budget and The Nature Conservanct close to 1bn bucks, WWF 525m euro. That’s way more money, in three organizations that go directly into the stuff.
That was discussed in the past, suffice to say is that it is true that the contrarian and denier groups use the money they get for other causes too, but this is not the whole history, the same can be said for many other groups that support the control of emissions, they also use a lot of money in other causes. The political reality is that all that money and other causes deniers support do open doors to power, and while one can make the point that the denial of the human influence with climate is not the whole reason why those groups exist, it is also the case that other very conservative causes does give them more opportunities to influence and guide policy.
Just the effort to derail the early comprehensive climate change bills of 10 years ago has meant several hundred billions in profit against the relative small amount of money they invested in propping up those political organizations that have in their portfolios an agenda to undermine regulations and emission controls. What it looks to me is that many of the fossil fuel men also care about not having regulations in any of their other business too.
As pointed before, there are costs that the tobacco companies in the past fought decades to avoid, the same groups that are involved in human influenced climate change denial are also ready for the next phase, to minimize the clear liability the ones giving the money are bound to face.
It appears that you didn’t read the summary I linked. It never even mentions the $900 million gross annual budget (that’s just in the SciAm article). And if you had made any effort to read it, you would have seen a link to the full paper at the bottom. You also appear to have missed the fact that right in my quote is a reference to “140 foundations making 5,299 grants totaling $558 million to 91 political advocacy organizations from 2003 to 2010”. Those are the numbers we’re talking about, not the $900 million you’ve inexplicably chosen to focus on. The paper is quite thorough in describing how expenditures were analyzed, nor is it the only source of such information. A great deal has been written about the PR expenditures of the Koch brothers, Exxon Mobil, and the oil, coal and energy industries in general. Not long ago New Scientist devoted a whole issue to the problem of public misconceptions about climate change. The main value of the paper is pulling it all together into a comprehensive picture.
Are you trying to claim that those budgets are money spent on climate change advocacy? Why yes, you even explicitly said so. Funny thing, I went to the Nature Conservancy website and didn’t see a single thing about climate change on their home page. I went to the “Vision and Mission” section and there’s nothing there, either. It seems that the Nature Conservancy is about conserving nature. Ditto for WWF, which has 13 global initiatives, only one of which is “climate and energy”, and none of which, as far as I know, involve advocacy advertising, let alone lying about climate issues. In fact WWF has been accused of being “too close to business” because of the corporate donations they accept. Greenpeace? Wikipedia states that it’s likewise concerned with a broad array of issues – “climate change, deforestation, overfishing, commercial whaling, genetic engineering, and anti-nuclear issues. It uses direct action, lobbying, and research to achieve its goals.”
So you swung three times with three examples and struck out. I’d love to see what examples you can offer of any of these institutions lying about climate change. There no evidence that any of these guys have spent a cent to lie about or “exaggerate” anything. Whereas the Drexel/Stanford study provides $558 million worth of examples of industrial interests intentionally engaging in deception, for the express purpose of trying to downplay public concern and the risk to them of increased regulation, carbon taxes, and the costs of emissions controls.
Besides, why would any of these environmental organizations have to lie or “exaggerate AGW”? The science speaks for itself. As the paper points out,
As 2012 ended, a series of increasingly dire predictions regarding the impacts of anthropogenic climate change were issued (International Energy Agency 2012; World Bank 2012). These warnings were amplified when the National Research Council (2012) and the National Intelligence Council (2012), both issued reports warning of the adverse political and security impacts that such levels of warming would foster. Even as the consequences of the “settled facts” (NRC 2011: [22]) of anthropogenic climate change were amplified, the level of understanding of this issue in the U.S. remained low. In response to a survey question in the fall of 2012:[1] Do scientists believe that earth is getting warmer because of human activity? 43 % replied no, and another 12 % didn’t know. Only 45 % of the U.S. public accurately reported the near unanimity of the scientific community about anthropogenic climate change. This result reflects a broad misunderstanding of climate science by the general public.
So, I’m still waiting for that authoritative site about all the lying and exaggerating about AGW that’s supposedly going on. The reality is that climate change denial has become major big business – so big that it’s actually unprecedented in the history of PR and lobbying, far bigger than the tobacco lobby every was, bigger than the health care lobby. It’s not just the Drexel/Stanford study that incriminates it; there have been numerous books written about it and documentaries made – I mentioned a couple here. To believe that climate change denial isn’t a huge and insidious enterprise of unprecedented magnitude requires extraordinary blindness, and to believe that there’s actually more money being spent on “exaggerating” the problem is just outright delusional.
WTF does that even have to do with this discussion? This is the kind of completely illogical leap that leads to your delusional conclusions – that the hundreds of millions being spent on PR and lobbyists specifically to downplay and lie about climate change is somehow comparable to money spent by government on scientific research, technology development, and climate adaptation.
The truth is not all politicians speech or topics they said are their beliefs too. Sometimes their speech are for the sake of popularity issue. They talked what is the trending issue or topic that most people talk.
This is the first time I’ve been accused of citing a primary source in favour of a seocondary one. Ima take it as a compliment.
The 900 million figure appears, on the actual paper, on pages 1 (the abstract) and 5.
On your link, however, the 558 appears, and again, without any inkling as to what percentage goes into actual CCCW.
I’ll quote
Even though he starts with the ominous “orchestrating climate change denial” his actual money shot is “promote ultra-free-market ideas in many realms”. No info on how much goes to actual polar-bear raping. FAIL
Of course not, but if YOU use total funding as a measure, I can too. Furthermore, it’s a guess, I’d imagine they are less focued on non-environmental stuff than CCCM.
No, it doesn’t show a single firgure showing how the budget was spent on CC, not a single one. FAIL
Well, that’s the whole point of the gazillion AGW threads here, no: that’s it isn’t settled. But I won’t debate AGW here, this ain’t the thread for that.
Keep waiting or search the SDMB, I won’t do your homework nor will I discuss AGW because it’s not what the thread is about. If you want to discuss AGW you can: a) start a thread or b) join the one on the Pit.
Lying? I don’t think they’re lying. Well, some are, cuz someone is always lying in any group.
Exaggerating? Plenty You get “record low maximum arctic ice”, which is true, but not the whole picture, when, at the same time, antactic ice hits record highs.
Sorry for believing that funding was funding.
Of course it’s not comparable, it’s much, much less.
You may think that they are morally different, and thart’s your prerrogative, but on the money part, warmists rule, sceptics drool.
It is clear that **wolfpup **point was also that he will love to see what examples you can offer of any of those institutions working for environmental causes and climate change mitigation or adaptation as lying about climate change.
As I pointed before, the same can be said about leftists organizations, they do not use all their funds 100% for climate change causes.
The groups that are working to prevent any big efforts from government and regulations also fund media and politicians that they know will make a case for the bottom line of the fossil fuel people.
But the fact is, they don’t work (wind and solar). Germany has spent a fortune on windmills and solar-and now concludes that because of variable output and high cost, lignite fueled thermal plants are the answer. Offshore wind is worse-both Denmark and Germany have abandoned large scale projects, because of high maintenance costs and output at the wrong time. Solar (Germany) is particularly bad-from November to February, German solar arrays produce almost no electricity-moreover, it comes at the wrong times (the hours around noon). Building more arrays doesn’t solve the fundamental problem-peak power demand comes when the arrays produce very little or no power. So in Germany “Brown” (lignite coal) is the new “green”. Which is sad, because the new generation of nuclear power reactors are much more relaible and safer than the ones now in use (and they do not shut down when the wind stops., or the sun isn’t out.
Which leads to the question: if you are serious about reducing fossil fuel use, what power source can you use?
There it is again. This belief that somehow denial of climate change/global warming equates to “fossil fuel people” somehow making even more money. How does that work?
How does any restriction, or no restrictions, on the US fossil fuel industry change the bottom like for the global fuel market? Does it reduce profits and use in China if the US reduces consumption of coal? Natural gas? (both things I would like to happen)
But how does that equate to less money for the global producers of essential products?
Simple, any regulation and an eventual tax or cap-n-trade system translates into loss profits for the fossil fuel industry. It is no coincidence that the industry people send money to politicians that have the seemingly unrelated fondness for hating any government regulations or taxes. (Yet another issue many on the right thinks that it is not related when adding dollars to see who is spending more)
Just as the Tobacco industry also did by stalling regulations against tobacco products, you may have noticed how people smokes less tobacco nowadays? That means billions lost to the industry, but all society benefited for that inconvenience to the bottom line of a few tobacco products manufacturers.
And then one should ponder about all the industry that shoveled all that s*** that protested how unfair for them to be affected by the change to get clean water and a sewage system.
I think all people ending appreciating the change.
The “primary source” that you couldn’t even find, and accused me of not providing a link to it?
Ah, so you’ve looked at the paper now that I showed you where to find it.
If you read the paper, there’s lot of analysis as to how much has been spent on AGW denial. If you follow my other links, there’s lots of other corroborating data. Entire books have been written about it. Why do you think there’s such an extraordinary divergence between what scientists know and what the average American believes? Is it because the average American understands the science better?
Thank you for demonstrating your lack of subject knowledge. The Antarctic is geographically almost the exact opposite of the Arctic – land surrounded by ocean vs. mostly ocean surrounded by land. In the Arctic, most of the multi-year ice is landlocked sea ice, but in the Antarctic, the multi-year ice is land-based ice sheets; sea ice is almost entirely seasonal and its winter growth is actually exacerbated by fresh water outflows from the melting ice sheets – which lost some 160 billion tonnes between 2010 and 2013. The entire West Antarctic ice sheet is collapsing. You are clearly in no position to interpret science or to judge its accuracy.
Perhaps you regard that as clever sarcasm, but clearly funding the development of scientific research and clean energy technology isn’t the same as funding the lying lobbyists at the Heartland Institute, AEI, CEI, Heritage, George C. Marshall, Friends of Science, Science & Environment Policy Foundation, CO2 Science, and all the others who have managed to get the public to believe that there’s no problem whatsoever. I’ve occasionally read some of their pronouncements and the intentional deception and scientific mendacity is just stunning. This is not a case of “he says, she says, and who knows where the truth is”. To anyone who understands the science, what comes out of these groups is just outright, scheming deception.
But you see, profits are at record levels. Half a trillion for the latest numbers. Tobacco makes even more money now than when it wasn’t forced to put a warming label on cigs, and lost the ability to advertise on TV.
More people smoke now than then. They are making even more money than ever. That’s why I asked why regulations would hurt fossil fuel sales. Why would making electricity or fuel more expensive reduce profits? It’s not like there will be a reduce demand, just more taxes or higher cost to the consumer.
How will one country making energy much more expensive slow global warming at all?
And not logical, why do you think they funded people like Dr, Seitz to produce studies that showed that tobacco smoke was not harmful?
Precisely to avoid the current state of affairs, what it should make one really upset is all the millions tobacco (and now fossil fuel interests) spent to prevent regulations and fines only to find that it was not as bad as the scare mongers among the tobacco people claimed when they decided to fund denial think thanks, scientists and politicians.
Incidentally, the fight is still ongoing to stop any further efforts to control the use of Tobacco, and a few times in the past I remember making the point that fossil fuel companies will not end at all, there is still a lot of profits to be many in many industries that do not require that we burn the fossil fuels, or to capture emissions to use for the coming diamond and graphene age.
Remember, it is not the energy, it is the emissions. Just as the tobacco people find ways to continue regardless of the increased taxes and regulations, what is important to consider is that a lot of the regulations and funding will go to the deployment of new energy sources that are less polluting and it is more clear to me that the fossil fuel industry confronted with the change will come with more efficient ways to capture emissions and decades from now we will wonder what the naysayers were smoking.
Hey guys, we’ve covered “people do not understand the scientific basis for AGW, nor the degree to which we understand the need for action” pretty extensively now (in fact, we’ve fairly extensively covered most of the “steps of denial”; all that’s missing is for FXMastermind to claim that the earth isn’t actually warming and we’ll have the full package). There are other threads where you folks can go be wrong in. This one is why nobody cares about it. You know, the real problem that we know is happening and that we know we should do something about.
You linked the interview which had the primary source as a reference, not a link to the primary source.
Can you show where I accused you of not providing a link to the primary source?
Can you show where you provided a direct link to the primary source?
Even if that were true, so what?
You said that 900 only appeared on SA and I showed that appeared on the primary source “It appears that you didn’t read the summary I linked. It never even mentions the $900 million gross annual budget (that’s just in the SciAm article).”. It’s true that in doesn’t mention 900, but it’s not a number pull out of the blue, innit?
No, it doesn’t. It mentions funding to conservative stuff, never a specific link or number to specific ice-melting stuff.
That’s not relevant for this thread.
Thank you for demonstrating your lack of subject knowledge. My point wasn’t a scientific one. It was that the headline “record low” is misleading because it doesn’t include “record high”, regardless of the causes.
You mentioned funding, I answered funding.
Your guys have more funding, you wanted to show that 558 or 900 was a lot, when it is dwarfed by your guys’ funds.
You haven’t shown a single number that shows how much of the budget of these institutions goes to CCCM. Not once.
LOL! Yeah, I agree, but the answer to that question has already been given. The view that many people have about the science, and about what scientists know and what there is consensus on, is dramatically different from the reality, especially in the US. And this is so because hundreds of millions are spent by energy companies and industrial interests to lie about it. The end.
In no other area that I can think of has there been in modern times such a spectacular disconnect between scientific reality and popular belief, with the possible exception of evolution denial among a small core of the deeply religious.
I doubt that, as I pointed before there are other issues that are working at the same time that end up also stopping or opposing regulations and taxes that will deal with the issue.
But even if what you claim is true, the bottom line is that it is in the end you are demanding a false equivalency, that was false when they claimed that controlling acid rain was going to ruin our economy, or when tobacco companies claimed they would not be able to do business, and it is false when one looks at the studies and the science.
The point here is that I would think a lot before thinking that defending the merchants of doubt is really a worthy thing to do, even if they end up spending slightly less than the groups that we would expect to be more reasonable, like government organizations like NASA.
Really, it is really normal to expect that the groups that do not have support of the science and the facts to be at a disadvantage, or would we prefer to have people like the creationists with that monetary support as the fossil fuel people is using?*
*Or wasting. Yes, wasting, when one considers how little the tobacco companies lost before they could kill more people. In reality they like the fossil fuel people should really relax.
Ditto for WWF, which has 13 global initiatives, only one of which is “climate and energy”, and none of which, as far as I know, involve advocacy advertising, let alone lying about climate issues. In fact WWF has been accused of being “too close to business” because of the corporate donations they accept. Greenpeace? Wikipedia states that it’s likewise concerned with a broad array of issues – “climate change, deforestation, overfishing, commercial whaling, genetic engineering, and anti-nuclear issues. It uses direct action, lobbying, and research to achieve its goals.”
