back to article Veteran climate scientist says 'lock up the oil men'

Veteran climate scientist James Hansen is marking the twentieth anniversary of his seminal speech to the US Congress on global warming by calling for oil company execs to be locked up for denying global warming. Hansen, who heads up Nasa’s Goodard Instritute for Space Studies, is credited with putting climate change squarely …

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  1. Wade Burchette
    Black Helicopters

    Oh no, not Dr. Hansen

    This is the guy who claimed Bush was silencing him. In fact, the Bush administration just told him to do his job after one of his hundreds of opinion speeches on company time. And he never told you that he was a huge John Kerry supporter so he a political motivation to make Bush look bad. If my life depended on Dr. Hansen telling the truth, I'd be dead by lunch.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    That is it - Kill the debate by removing the opposition.

    This is exactly what I expect from the harbingers of doom.

    I am still yet to be convinced one way or the other about the issue, but I am never impressed with the all to common approach that seems to, "If you don't agree with me you are an idiot and should be locked up."

    Am I to loose my right to not believe that carbon dioxide, that stuff I breath out minute by minute, is making the earth warmer.

  3. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    A warning to the Denialist Apes.

    Hanson is quite correct - and a growing body of scientists hold the same opinion as he does. Those who fund Public Relations and other Propaganda firms for the purpose of deceiving the public - particularly on a matter so grave and pressing as Global Warming - Or smoking - are guilty of crmes against humanity, and I would add, crimes against nature.

    I place no limit on the punishment for such crimes, and hold that those who engage in them wilfully and knowingly - particularly for profit - should be arrested, tried, and executed where warranted.

    When it becomes obvious to even the lower forms of human intelligence that a crime has been committed. I will be there... Holding the rope, and pointing to the nearest tree limb.

  4. Andy Pryke

    First they came for the Tobacco Industry

    Whatever happened to the prosecutions against the Tobacco Industry? They had a similar set up of fake lobby groups and paid off consultants who delayed action against smoking for decades?

    I think the Oil Industry needs to invest in some heavy duty paper shredders!

    1999 Summary - http://www.tobacco.org/Misc/980531Douglas.html

    The "Green vs..." case http://www.americantobacco.net/

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Right thing to do

    of course, but for quite the wrong reason.

    I look forward to NASA announcing they have opened an office for the Church of $cientology and are searching for Xenu.

    BTW, please don't talk up the oil price - it only encourages the speculators.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    I'm Sparticus

    I'm Sparticus!

  7. David Pollard

    Deliberate mistakes?

    James Hansen may well be right in some of what he says. But isn't locking people up for their beliefs just another form of totalitarianism?

    He's right too, to point out that that, joking aside, it's a sin deliberately to mislead children and youngsters. But to bemoan the “natural skepticism and debates embedded in the scientific process" is to miss the point. It's precisely through this scepticism that we will be able to spot mistakes that we haven't previously noticed.

    Rather like some religions, science without doubt tends to be rather imprecise.

  8. Arnold Lieberman
    Thumb Down

    Resignation letter

    "He also bemoaned the “natural skepticism and debates embedded in the scientific process”"

    I trust this quote is the beginning of his letter of resignation from The Enlightenment and rational thought in general. He certainly has put himself up with Mad Bob Mugabe in league of open minded thinkers...

  9. John Bayly
    Coat

    Let me guess ...

    He made these comments while at a conference in Bali, Maldives, Barbados (or some other tropical paradise). I'll stop being sceptical about these people when they start practising what the preach.

    Environmentalism is a big industry (admittedly not as big as the fuel industry). A lot of money can be made from advising philanthropists where they should invest their money to save the planet.

    That said, I'm all for reducing wasteful power consumption, walking when possible, using public transport when possible, not flying halfway around the world just to sit on a beach. It just makes sense.

    Mines the one with the map of Lake District in the pocket.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Hear, hear!

    Well, guess what, Hansen was right in 1988. And your greatest criticism of him is that not enough people have paid attention? I completely agree, and I think his modest proposal has a great deal of merit. If nothing else, in another twenty years' time I'll still be sighing smugly and saying "Yes, I know, weren't you paying attention back in 2008?" just like I am now as the Arctic sea-ice looks set for another record-breakingly dreadful season. ( http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html )

    Glad to see the Reg have broken the habit of not having comments on these climate-change flamebait/troll posts, though.

    Getting my coat as I know this rationalist evidence-based PoV on AGW is unpopular over here.

  11. oxo

    I remember the saying...

    "There's no fool like an old fool"

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Nice extreme views there

    So, let's sum this up. You want to lock up people for opposing undecided science. And before I see a mass of people opining that the "consensus" is for climate change you need to understand the basics of science. Science is about putting forward theories which we try and prove or disprove. Very very rarely do we successfully prove a theory, usually we get a balance of evidence which shows it to be reasonable, until it becomes unreasonable. Science history is littered with occasions when the consensus was just plain wrong. When Copernicus and Galileo argued about a sun-centric view of the solar system, they were persecuted, but right. Newton's laws of motion were considered right by the consensus until Einstein came along. Quantum mechanics was laughed at for a long time. The consensus in medicine for a long time was that leeches could cure diseases. Anthropogenic climate change has plenty of supposed evidence both supporting and denying it, but its current position in popular culture is more about politics than science.

    Funnily enough, in screaming for people to be locked up for their views he is contributing only to the political part of the debate, not the scientific part, despite his credentials. If people start believing that people should be locked up for their scientific views, then we are heading straight back to the middle ages. Or to modern day Britain - whichever authoritarian society you think is closest.

  13. Sumner R Andrews Jr

    Good Insurance

    Let's say for the sake of argument that Dr. Hansen is absolutely correct about the remaining time left. If so, the solution will be to terminate the irresolvable give and take between the do nothings (substitute energy CEOs) and the concerned as quickly as possible with a new approach.

    The new American president should be persuaded to initiate a global NASA style rapid response to the Climate Change and Energy dependence problem. The challenge of course will be to encourage the US president to include his global counterparts and the supporting research community as equal partners. The underlying principles are covered in the article, "Ten Components" at http://sandrewsjr.net/gosi/proposal/ .

    A rapid response alternative is just good insurance. By undertaking such an effort, the world effectively spreads its risk across the board from top down comprehensive legislative answers to a crash program which has the potential of directly involving the world in a major paradigm shift equivalent to stepping onto alien soil. At the end of David Sington's film, "In The Shadow of the Moon", astronauts on a world tour recounted that they heard from many non technical peoples the quote, "We did it". They didn't say, "You (the United States) did it." Isn't it time we start inspiring people as we clean up our problems?

    Sumner R. Andrews Jr.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I say

    I say we lock up the green fags and government for not providing (fighting against) continual investment and research into Nuclear making us ever more dependent on oil and gas instead of having our own efficent nuclear program.

    But hey, you gotta love French power stations >.>

  15. Mark

    Re: Deliberate mistakes?

    Please ask why Abu Hamsa is being deported. Why he was arrested in the first place.

    Please ask why the people in Gitmo are there. Or why extraordinary rendition is taken out.

    All because of their beliefs.

    You need better than that to say this is wrong.

    I do suspect there ARE arguments why, but nobody has them to hand.

  16. Unkle Al
    Coat

    Just an ape here

    "...executed where warranted."

    Hey, Vendicar, Let's round up all the extremists and herd them off cliffs.

    IGMC

  17. goggyturk
    Black Helicopters

    Contradictions

    Nothing illustrates the dangerously conflicted mindset of this group better than this soundbite. He manages to mention locking people up for their beliefs and democracy in the same breath. All those guilty of thoughtcrime are out of step with the rational concensous and should be prosecuted.

    As for Hansen being right, did he successfully predict the global cooling of the last decade?

    Nobody can deny anymore that climate change is being contributed to by man's activities, but it doesn't mean that we need to subscribe to the doomsday scenarios painted by this neo-apocalyptic doomsday cult.

    Mine's the black, electric powered surveillance chopper that will be monitoring our compliance to the commandments of the death Goddess Gaia.

  18. Len Goddard

    Missing the point

    Surely the issue here is not that he is calling for oil execs to be locked up for believing that there is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming, but rather for knowing that there is a link and spreading disinformation to prevent action against global warming which might impact the oil company bottom line.

    The former stance may be stupid but it is not criminal. The latter is definitely a crime against humanity (and is akin to the tobacco industry case).

  19. Paul Smith

    nay-sayers

    1) I think you will find that he was bemoaning the way that the natural scepktism and debate was exploited by the nay-sayers.

    2) This is not a religious debate - what you believe does not matter. The scientific evidence suggests strong probability of global warming caused, or at least significantly influenced, by human action. That is not belief, opinion or interpretation. It is simple statistics.

    3) To say that there is no change in the environment is ignoring the facts.

    To say that man has had no effect on the environment is being hopelessly optimistic. To refuse to take steps to protect the environment, when its failure will directly put our childrens lives at risk, just so we can make a profit today is plain stupid.

  20. Garth
    Coat

    Hmm...

    I find it amusing that several of those commenting seem to accept the article authors adjective out of hand in regards to the quote, “natural skepticism and debates embedded in the scientific process". As the quote itself seems to demonstrate at least some insight and appreciation of the nature of science. Perhaps more to the point he was bemoaning the exploitation of good faith inherent in the functioning of proper science by propagandists on doll to the lobbyists. Such exploitation is well known to occur in the Evolution vs ID and the issue of Tobacco. Both being rather close politically with the oil industry. Perhaps some natural skepticism should be applied to examining the context of such quotes.

    Oh, did I say I find it amusing? I meant I find it depression and indicative of the intellectual shortcomings of this whole farce of taking on the mantle of rationality when it is anything but.

  21. Flocke Kroes Silver badge
    Linux

    Noddy's guide to science

    You have the right to believe in Farther Christmas. You could connect an infra-red camera to your VCR on Christmas Eve and find out who is really responsible for presents appearing in your stocking. Once you have done your experiment, faking photographs of Farther Christmas and trying to pass them off as real in childrens' text books is naughty and you really should halt in the name of Plod.

    Skepticism alone is not constructive. You could follow it up with an experiment that tests the predictions of the theory you are skeptical about, or you could run around shouting "I'm a skeptic! !'m a skeptic! Aren't I cool? Believe in me because I'm a skeptic!"

  22. jonathan keith
    Unhappy

    I'm with the deniers

    ... but for a different reason.

    Burn the fossil fuels! Dredge up every last drop that we can from the tar pits and oil wells. Burn it all! The faster the better.

    Then perhaps, when the sea levels have risen and the majority of the population has been wiped off the planet (with the pols and the CEOs as the first against the walls when the riots start), there'll be a bit of peace and quiet.

    Rest assured, by the time that there's any political will to do anything about climate change, it will be far, far too late to avert the global catastrophe that we've brought on ourselves.

    We've poisoned our own well, let's give another species a go. In the meantime, I can fish and sail my yacht. I'm all right, Jack (just like all those interested parties with their conflicts of interest).

  23. Timothy Chase
    Alert

    James Hansen Actually Said...

    Arnold Lieberman wrote:

    <blockquote>"He also bemoaned the “natural skepticism and debates embedded in the scientific process”"

    I trust this quote is the beginning of his letter of resignation from The Enlightenment and rational thought in general. He certainly has put himself up with Mad Bob Mugabe in league of open minded thinkers...</blockquote>

    Jim Hansen stated:

    <blockquote>My testimony two decades ago was greeted with skepticism. But while skepticism is the lifeblood of science, it can confuse the public. As scientists examine a topic from all perspectives, it may appear that nothing is known with confidence. But from such broad open-minded study of all data, valid conclusions can be drawn.

    My conclusions in 1988 were built on a wide range of inputs from basic physics, planetary studies, observations of ongoing changes, and climate models. The evidence was strong enough that I could say it was time to "stop waffling." I was sure that time would bring the scientific community to a similar consensus, as it has.

    Guest Opinion: Global Warming Twenty Years Later

    by James Hansen on June 23, 2008

    Tipping Points Near

    http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5798</blockquote>

    He was not bemoaning the natural skepticism inherent in the scientific process. He considers it critical to that process. However, such scientific skepticism should not be confused with Cartesian doubt -- as the climate "skeptics" would seem to have it.

  24. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
    Gates Horns

    Please, Please listen to Hansen.....

    "one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation ... that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime,... such (people) should be put on trial for high crimes against humanity.."

    Please enact this! Oh, please do!

    Then look at ClimateAudit.org. They are currently looking at some of Hansen's GISS 'corrections'. Misinformation isn't the word for it, straight lying is more accurate.

    I would love to see Hansen strung up for what he has done to scientific independence and integrity, and it looks like he can be persuaded to lobby for the very law that will sink him!

    Gates, as Hansen performs the same function for the climate world....

  25. Adam Williamson
    Thumb Down

    Thanks, Tim

    My initial thought on reading that "He also bemoaned the “natural skepticism and debates embedded in the scientific process”" was "I bet that's a journalistic misrepresentation that's going to cause chaos in the comment thread". Right on both counts.

    Other commenters - let this be a lesson: *please* always go and read the entire original quotation, in context, before you pile on based on a sketchy misrepresentation in a press report.

    Oh, and also note that Dr. Hansen is not advocating imprisoning people based on their beliefs. He is advocating imprisoning people for deliberately and maliciously spreading misinformation (or to put it more bluntly, 'lies') to support the product they happen to be selling. Often in a misleading way - i.e. through front organisations designed to give the impression that there is no connection between themselves and the industry lobby they represent. This is exactly on the model, as other commenters have noted, of the successful prosecutions of tobacco companies for suppressing what they knew to be true - that tobacco is extremely damaging to human health. The vital point is that they did not genuinely believe that tobacco was safe; they knew it wasn't, yet - in order to protect their profits - tried to tell the public that it was. Dr. Hansen believes that the oil lobby knows that they are contributing to pollution and global warming on a massive scale, but are attempting to tell the public that they aren't: this is not about their private beliefs.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    World was warmer 20 years ago when he made his last speech

    According to NASA satellites, the world was warmer 20 years ago. How about jailing NASA scientists for spreading misinformation about global warming?

    http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSEN_AND_CONGRESS.jpg

  27. Robinson
    Stop

    Idiotic

    There isn't a shred of evidence for man-made global warming. What we have are a lot of very dodgy models predicting doom and gloom (which, I might add, all failed to predict the current static/cooling period) and a lot of very dodgy surface station temperatures, which have been "adjusted" by people like Hansen, almost always in ways that magically show a huge amount of warming. Scientists can't even agree on the validity of the various Proxies they use to reconstruct past temperatures (see the Wegman Report, climateaudit.com and wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com for further references).

    Meanwhile, the media continues to pump out the most ridiculous hyperbole ("if it bleeds, it leads") about the coming catastophe. People like Al Gore feed this giant propaganda machine with ridiculous films and presentations that not only misrepresent the actual science but make claims that are basically untrue (yes, lies).

    All the while the politicians, blinded by the non-science, are busy playing with the law of unintended consequences (bio-fuels) that will have no effect whatsoever on the temperature of the planet, but that may result in mass starvation in many countries of the world.

    "Global Warming" wouldn't even be in the top ten items on any agenda for solving mankinds problems. Why does it get so much airspace, so much money and so much political traction? This whole debate is completely idiotic.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Sigh....

    And if Hansen is wrong, let's please lock him up along with Al Gore and the rest of the Doomsday whiners.

    All the people crying about the artic ice seem to forget or not know, that while it is true, the artic ice sheets are receding, the Antartic ice sheets are actually growing. . In the last 10 years the temperatures have actually cooled. In the 70's they were crying Ice Age. SUnspot activity is at an all time low. Could there be a correlation between sunspot activity and temperatures?

    The doomsayers are not usually right.....the earth if flat, you will fall over the edge if you sail too far.

  29. Old Man - Grey Fleece
    Thumb Up

    RE:Missing the point - Len Goddard

    Spot on - science works through scepticism - to knowingly exploit that for personal gain against global damage - that is exactly the crime that has been commited

  30. Kevin Kitts
    Unhappy

    Either way...

    over here in the US, global warming doesn't matter. The urban/suburban layout of our country resembles a poorly-made city in the video game "SimCity", where all the commercial and industrial zones are in one central location, and all the housing is elsewhere. That is, most of us live out in the sticks and suburban areas because we can't afford to live in the cities where the jobs are. So, we commute. And commute. And commute.

    I don't *want* to drive over an hour for a job. I have a life to live, you know. But where I live, jobs are extraordinarily scarce. I've had a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science since 1997, and for the past 6 years, I've not been able to get an IT job within an hour's drive from home - they're just not enough jobs here. And by the way, I live out where *buses don't run*. There is no mass transit here, and it's 10 miles to the nearest civilization.

    My point is that you'll have to change a lot more than vehicles if you truly want to change the climate. You *will* have to change the entire civil infrastructure layout of the entire country. You *will* have to make adequate jobs within close distance of all residential areas to cut down on commuting times. You *will* have to create mass transit everywhere. This is *very* expensive, and will take a long time. It will also involve a lot of eminent domain usage, and this will be seen as forced relocation in a lot of cases. In short, this will be *hard*, and our government doesn't want to do anything hard - after all, that would require our congresspeople to actually WORK for a change (instead of having 3-day workweeks).

    And that's just America. Just try this kind of thinking on the Chinese.

  31. Scott Holland
    Dead Vulture

    Food for (rational) thought.

    I have just a few points to make here.

    Those who were around 30 or so years ago, may remember the "inevitable climate catastrophe" that awaited us then. It was the impending ICE AGE. Why did they think an ice age was coming? Mainly, because from 1940-1970, global temperatures dropped steadily, and the fear was runaway global cooling. Who was one big backer of the "coming ice age" theory? None other than James Hansen. Last time I checked, Ontario had not been erased by a glacier.

    I personally find it odd that the global temperature dropped during this period. This was WW2 and a post-industrial West. CO2 levels were skyrocketing during this time, yet the temperature continued to fall. This would seem to fly in the face of the (high CO2) => (global warming) equation.

    Anyone ever wonder what happened to the "hockey stick" graph that Al Gore, Hansen, and others flapped around so wildly claiming it was "definitive proof"? Well, it got thoroughly smacked about, and was proven to show the exact opposite of what it had been claimed to show. Yes, the chart did indeed show a link between high CO2 levels and global temps. But, the relationship showed that the temperature change came FIRST, then the CO2 levels would rise. Hansen and Co. would have us believe that the effect preceded the cause. This is the caliber of scientist you have in James Hansen.

    People seem to often confuse two separate issues. There is climate change, and then there is human-induced climate change. There isn't much we can do about the first. So, there are no careers or fortunes to be made pursuing it. Few would argue that climate change is not happening. It is happening, and has always happened. The climate is not a steady state machine. The climate has always swung back and forth between extremes, ice ages to global jungles. The human race has just been damned lucky that we popped up when we did, in the middle of a relatively temperate period. One which has lasted long enough for us to develop technologies that would allow us to survive much of what the planet could throw at us.

    Computer models are often cited as good evidence for human-induced climate change. One way (really, the only way) to test if a model is accurate, is to have it predict the weather for a period of time that we already have reliable records for. Say, 1970-1980. If the model's predictions match up with the recorded data, the model can be claimed to be sound. However, no one has yet produced a model that can reliably pass this test. As any programmer could tell you, garbage in = garbage out.

    The doomsayers often make a point of the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on record. Which it was. But, if we are in a warming period, should that record not have been consecutively broken in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, etc? Well, it wasn't. Indeed, global temps have done nothing but go down since then. So, where's the warming?

    Back in the 70's, similarly drastic, economy killing "solutions" were proposed. Careers and fortunes were made, and then the whole furor died down. I see the cycle of history repeating itself here (at much greater expense). The Greens tell us the opposition can't be trusted because they have a vested financial interest in the status quo. Well, the Greens have just as much of a vested financial interest in this game. No one is going to pay Hansen to give a speech on global warming if there's no apocalypse around the corner.

    Is climate change happening? Yes. Are humans responsible for it, even in part? To me at least, and to quite a few meteorologists (a title Hansen can not claim btw), the evidence to date would seem to say no. One last thing, some might say "Of course it's us, what else could it possibly be?". These people seem to forget about this big bright thing that occupies the daytime sky. This thing which is a runaway nuclear fusion reactor 800,000 miles across, and is anything but stable and unchanging. The Sun drives ALL of our weather. If the Sun changes, the weather changes.

    The dead vulture, because its bloated, rotting corpse will release methane and CO2, bringing us all that much closer to the end.

  32. Luther Blissett

    @Timothy Chase

    > scientific skepticism should not be confused with Cartesian doubt -- as the climate "skeptics" would seem to have it.

    A false dichotomy, a straw man, and an invitation to feed the troll all rolled up in one.

    The irony in your throwaway line is precisely that in 1975 a clique comprising Margaret Mead and her followers in the AAAS specifically instigated a program to abandon scientific skepticism. Not, as in Descartes case, as a methodological convenience in pursuit of the philosophical justification of truth, but to promote and diffuse a preconceived prejudice as both a "reality" and a political agenda.

    Everyone can decide for themselves whether an organized effort to promote one particular theory makes it more or less likely to be true:

    http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-23/pdf/50-55_723.pdf

    Perhaps you can't bring yourself to say "eugenics", but eugenics does not seem so far away from some of the views expressed above about how "climate "skeptics"" should be treated in practice.

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Your Medals Are Showing

    No danger of a "fair and balanced" article on climate change issues on the Reg. You deliberately distort Hansens statement about scientific skepticism (as ably explained by Timothy Chase above) and equate his position on the culpability of Oil Executives with modern day witch burning, when in fact Hansen is the target of your own witch burning exercise.

    It's ironic that you'd post this on the same day that you publicly charge Network Solutions with hypocrisy!

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Two words: PEAK OIL

    Go google it. You can debate global warming all you like, but running out of oil is a much bigger threat to society and a solid reason for cutting consumption NOW.

  35. Snert Lee

    But what about Neptune?

    If you want to convince me about global warming, you'll have to explain away similar amounts of warming that have been recorded in observations of Neptune.

    Unless you can find a couple hundred million SUVs toodling about the surface Neptune, I'll continue to believe that the planets are currently a bit warmer because of a cyclic increase in output from the Sun.

    Occam's Razor, and all that jazz, don'chya know.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    GISS

    So let me see - 20 years ago GISS (the global "thermometer" fiddled, sorry run, by Hansen) shows the temperature to be 0.50 degrees C above his baseline (chosen, conveniently, to be during the coldest period of this century).

    20 years after "runaway man-made global warming" his "thermometer" (which, have I mentioned, is constantly fiddled to ensure that it shows up warming and, as such, is consistently far hotter than the satellite measurements) shows the temperature to be 0.35 degrees C above his baseline.

    So in 20 years it has got 0.15 degrees cooler.

    How's that for manmade global warming!

    Flames as obviously the world is currently burning!

  37. Rab S
    Flame

    Hanson should be first...

    Or has he relased his actual mentodalgy behinf his revisions?

    Oh But he is wanting it for thoses that hold the other view point...so would he halpply go to jail if this turnsout to be the same as his global coolong idea?

  38. moffatt

    sigh

    What I find interesting about all this is that although the IPCC reports that we are 'most likely' causing climate change, the numbers they give in the report show the opposite.

    They say that they have concluded that the net effect of human activities since 1750 is an increase of radiative forcing of 1.6 (-0.6 +2.4) W/sq m. However what they don't mention anywhere is that the normal radiation is between 200 and 400 W/sq m - ie the total effect of man since 1750 is less than 1% of the solar radiation - and this small amount is somehow supposed to be significant!

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Funny, I was just venting on this subject earlier in the evening

    Although I'm not sure that climate change denial on its own is worthy of capital punishment, it is only the latest in a long list of crimes perpetrated by Big Oil. While it may be unfashionable to say so, carrying out business in an unethical manner should be considered a Crime Against Humanity, for the simple reason that rampant capitalism (not capitalism, just rampant capitalism) is a major cause of death and suffering in parts of the world too poor to fight back.

    So, how do you go about encouraging the others? Imprisonment or execution, making their families destitute and using their personal fortunes to repair the damage. We should demand nothing less.

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    +sceptics@wade=

    Wade, Bush doesnt need anyone to make him look bad, he does a great job of appearing to be a corrupt moron without help.

    I see the usual suspects with their usual denial of climate change cropping up again, I for one am tired of the pathetic whining of the Climate change sceptics, and as usual they are self appointed experts, with no training in the climate field at all, all they can do is to try and selectively quote a small number of stats out of context

    I for one believe the experts, not the profit driven deniers and their pathetic attempts at discrediting the worlds climate scientists. Get a brain and dont 'try to deny the bleedin obvious children. Why is it that otherwise smart people(In thier own field)feel qualified to make judgenents totally outside their field? Surely they arent thick enough to believe the "Great global warming swindle rubbish?

  41. Kanhef
    Boffin

    re GISS and others

    It's easy to find two years where the earlier one is warmer, but that has no significance. Just about anything can be 'proven' when you start cherry-picking evidence. Colorful graphs are also easy to abuse, especially when you have an agenda.

    @ moffatt

    A change of less than 1% can be quite significant. By your figures, the average solar radiation is 39 petawatts (3.9e+16). An increase of 1.6% gives an additional 625 terawatts - over 40 times the entire human energy usage of the world (~15 TW - wikipedia).

    You need to use statistical analysis to properly interpret the raw data. For example, the graphs of x^2, x^10, and e^x look fairly similar, especially if you have a bunch of data points with some random error in them. Trying to determine which equation it is by 'eyeballing' it can give you dramatically wrong results.

    If you want to criticize the scientists' findings, first examine what they did and how they arrived at their conclusions. Then you can say where you think they made a mistake. And remember to cite your sources, as 97% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

  42. Johnnyboy
    Unhappy

    its not just the Oil Barons, its the whole economic model

    When we drill for Oil (a finite-resource)... as fast as we can....to make plastic bottles, then using more oil-energy fill it full of 3rd world spring water ( and transport the same bottle to E.U./US just (so that we can avoid pollution or taste a few chemicals that could easily have been added/removed to our tap-water). While those people still have unsafe water to drink!

    This is considered "good for business", "economic growth" etc..as long as the great profit-margin is worshipped with his pennies per bottle.

    Irrespective of the global warming (I agree with Dave...many clever people than I believe in)

    IS a penny profit today REALLY worth all the irreplaceable energy that is used (look at recent oil price rises), as well as the damage to the environments (local and national)?

  43. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Dave ...

    I am a trained scientist and the facts as I see them is that the world is cooler slightly than it was even ten years ago. I am also trained in statistics and how to interpret them and the stats are looking increasingly dodgy by the day. They have been since day one of this debacle.

    We know nothing about how climate changes (and can't even predict weather 2 days in advance with any accuracy) but we do know there is plenty of historical precedent for great, long climate cycles and that it has always been going on.

    Hansen is a quack. He's destined to go down as the Lysenko of the 21st century. I am sick of being told I'm not qualified to criticise bad science and weak statistical models.

    This ruthless adherence to a model of global warming that merely shouts every other view down while not being able to produce a shred of proof is merely totalitarian garbage.

    It has nothing to do with empirical science.

  44. Adam Williamson
    Paris Hilton

    Keep the tune, boys

    Good to see the same old nicknames that never comment on anything but global warming stories, but - we have one guy saying that global warming is baloney because Earth's only warmed up as much as Neptune (fine argument, that - they make really comparable experimental subjects!) and some others saying it's baloney because Earth's actually cooling down.

    So, er, which is it, guys? Come on, can't you at least all buy the same edition of Dr. Pangloss' Hymns For The Eternal Optimist?

  45. dervheid
    Stop

    Earth warms up...

    earth cools down...earth warms up...earth cools down...earth warms up...earth cools down.

    Earth's climate CHANGES! It's been happening cyclically for BILLIONS of years people. Just try to get your tiny minds around the concept, then find yourself another nouveau religion to latch on to!

  46. Robinson
    Go

    Actually....

    "mprisoning people for deliberately and maliciously spreading misinformation"

    Good, then lets start with Hansen himself and then we can follow up with the people who write the IPCC summary for policy makers.

  47. Nick Galloway
    Pirate

    Freedom of speech & evidence

    Since when has expression of an opinion been a criminal offence?

    Similarly there is not enough evidence to support global warming and although climate change is manifesting itself, the root cause cannot be scientifically proven. I suspect Dr Hansen might well be trying to revive his reputation by being outspoken and contrversial, rather than being scientific. Just pat him on the head and send him along to see that other marvellous alarmist, the Nobel prize winning Al Gore. They can sit around and scare each other with doomsday scenarios which man has no control (nor influence) over.

  48. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Believe what you like...

    "Am I to loose my right to not believe that carbon dioxide, that stuff I breath out minute by minute, is making the earth warmer"

    Just because you have the right to believe what you want doesn't make it true. And if your understanding of the subject is accurately reflected by that comment, then you're not qualified to express an opinion: go read some science and think about what you're saying.

    The problem with the oil men is not that they argue against the science. Science relishes argument. The problem is that they spend fucking obscene amounts of money, *paying* congresscritters to flat out lie to the folk who thought that Congress was there to serve the American people. Hopelessly naieve, I know, but while the House and Senate are stuffed with venal, self-serving plutocrats, money will be able to speak with a volume far out of proportion to its actual worth.

  49. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Climate change deniers go to the same parties as Creationidiots

    Hilarious - they Denial idiots claim to be mystefied by the post-war global cooling this planet experienced...and in the same breath pretend this cooling somehow disproves the global warming we are now being warned about.

    Guys, go and look up *why* we had cooling post-war......

    .......see? Man-made climate change, just like what is happening now.

    Wasn't *that* hard, looking up some facts, was it?

    These crazies are just like creationidiots.

  50. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Global Warming

    I've just realised how much like believing in God, Global Warming is.

    Climate changes, something had to do it, you locate a culprit that with a bit of statistical tomfoolery fits the model you've dreamt up, create a belief structure around it and then embark on a crusade to convince that that is how it all works denying all claims to the contrary. Anything that occurs that kind of fits your belief becomes proof of your model, any thing that does not fit is ignored.

    Alot like God.

    Man exists and is just too complicated to have come about by chance, there must be a divine being that created us! Create a belief structure around your new God and go on a crusade to convince the world you're right deny all claims to the contrary. Anything that happens to support your belief is an act of God, anything that does not support your belief is promptly destroyed.

    Try and have a contrary view on either subject to those devout to their faiths is a bit like talking to a parrot.

    Just thought it was funny.

  51. Mark

    "Climate changes, something had to do it"

    Yes. And this time it isn't Solar output (it's going down at the mo). It isn't orbital position (it's set to get cooler). It isn't cosmic rays (where's the model).

    So, rather than thing "hang, on CO2 is a GG and we're putting out billions of tons each day" (note: you can work this out by assuming the oil companies sales figures of crude are right and assume that it is 100% carbon), you're thinking "It can't be us".

    Why?

    Denial seems much more like the belief in God.

  52. Mark

    Re: Freedom of speech & evidence

    Since someone wrote a threatening letter, telling them that they were going to kill them and their family unless they paid up.

    Actually, a lot earlier than that.

    Try walking up to a policeman and yelling "I'm going to fucking KILL you, you facist pig!" and see how legal an expression is.

  53. Mark

    RE: Earth warms up...

    "earth cools down...earth warms up...earth cools down...earth warms up...earth cools down."

    Earth warms up. Earth warms up.

    Now, see that the CYCLE is broken?

    No, of course you don't. The colon is getting in the way.

  54. Mark

    @Greg Fleming

    OK, how about 15 years ago?

    10 years takes us to a VERY STRONG El Nino event (which we KNOW by those same models you denigrate when showing AGW causes warming in the short term).

    Convenient Lie.

  55. Mark

    FOAD

    "Those who were around 30 or so years ago, may remember the "inevitable climate catastrophe" that awaited us then. It was the impending ICE AGE."

    Oh for fucking jesus pickfucking knobgobbling sake.

    ONE PAPER in a scientific journal said that. Time or Newsweek or whatever picked up THAT ONE PAPER and shilled it to sell papers. Have you READ the FRIGGING PAPER??? No, I don't think you have. It's still out there.

    The end of it was something along the lines of

    We don't know whether the continuing particulate emissions will cause more cooling than the carbon emissions and it is too early yet to say.

    Now what do you think happened in the late 60's and 70's?

    CLEAN AIR ACT.

    What do you think that does?

  56. Trevor Pott Gold badge
    Joke

    Conclusive proof of climate change

    Climate change is happening. Climate change is a myth. Climate change is supported by evidence. The evidence is unproven.

    The only real way human-caused climate change can be proven is by actually experiencing the effects of it, right? If the world doesn't end, and humanity isn't destroyed, then humans CAN'T have an impact on the earth, right? Isn't this the argument here?

    So hey, HERE'S AN IDEA: let's burn every fossil fuel we can, let's put every kind of horrible chemical we can think of into the air, and breed more and more domesticated farm animals to raise the methane content. Let's ramp this up as fast and hard as we can, and if we all die (of climate-change related disasters), then hey, that proves that humans can have an impact on the earth!

    What do you mean that's a terrible idea?

    It's the the only way to be certain, and thus it's the only true SCIENCE.

    Ask any oil baron.

  57. Eric Worrall
    Pirate

    Climate NAZIs

    Vendicar Decarian, if you would kill someone for holding a different belief to yourself, you are a NAZI.

  58. dervheid
    Happy

    @ Mark

    "Earth warms up. Earth warms up.

    Now, see that the CYCLE is broken?

    No, of course you don't. The colon is getting in the way."

    Sorry, which colon would that be then?

    Oh, right. That'd be YOUR colon. Which you should have irrigated. You'll feel way less tense than you clearly are. And less full of s...

    <Comment courtesy of Twat-O-Tron, edited for the sensitive soul>

  59. Robert Harrison
    Joke

    @Trevor Pott

    I propose that I oversee this experiment from a control point, let's put it on the Moon so that it's independant of the Earth's environment where the experiment is taking place.

    Although I will require a certain amount of terraforming for the Moon to be habitable. And a palace.. sorry I mean observatory constructed so I can laugh evilly.. sorry monitor the experiment.

  60. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Mark (again)

    Mark, we entered a cooling cycle around 20 years ago. We're still in it. It seems set to continue.

    Overall, the Earth's temperature is almost 0.5 degrees cooler now than it was 20 years ago.

  61. Robinson
    Stop

    A philosophical point

    "Although I will require a certain amount of terraforming for the Moon to be habitable. And a palace.. sorry I mean observatory constructed so I can laugh evilly.. sorry monitor the experiment."

    If you want to move the experiment to the moon, I have no objection, as long as you go with it. But more to the point, where in this hypothetical "experiment" are we at the moment? Did the experiment begin with the first use of fossil fuels? Or perhaps it began when man first gave up his nomadic lifestyle and started cultivating crops, irrigating land, clearing forests and making beer?

    Perhaps in your experiment you'd like to even things up a little. Say, remove all technology and create an experiment where most adult humans die in their mid 20's, usually from their dentition or some other infection (or if female, during the act of childbirth). I say adult humans, because of course in this experiment a large number of children die before they become adults. If you are really ambitious, you could start before the approximately 100 octillion (10^29) cynobacteria appeared, generating 1/5 of the oxygen we currently breath and inhaling a lot of the CO2 in the carbon cycle.

    Of course, to make your experiment truly unique, you could also create a few other moons, as controls you understand, where there are no effects from the Sun, or Cosmic Rays, or combinations of the latter. You might also try an experiment without an ocean, or with a different atmospheric composition; perhaps a planet with less or more water, or maybe a planet where plate tectonics has long ceased (or perhaps where it is more vigorous than on Earth).

    The possibilities for your experiment are endless, as the possible unintended consequences of any of our technologies are also endless. If you really want to live in balance with nature, you have to throw away almost every miniscule technological advance man has ever made, unless you are certain that it won't have an affect on the environment. Of course if it's useful for survival, it will by definition have an effect on the environment, because there will be more of you using it and you'll require more resources to survive, because all technology uses a resource of one kind or another.

    Now in all seriousness, if you want to view Human Progress as an experiment, that's all good. But don't assume that you or your ancestors would ever have existed if it weren't for technology. Don't impose your value system on the rest of us, if that value system pegs the "ideal world temperature" at the value for 1979, or 1989, or 1939, because you have no logical, experimental or theoretical basis for assuming any one temperature is "better" than any other.

    Finally, look at the "evidence" yourself. I don't mean read the summary for policymakers, I mean actually download the raw data and chart it yourself. See what happens when you start a linear regression of global surface temperature at 1906 instead of 1900. Does it make a difference to your conclusions?

  62. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @ Mark

    5 Posts in a row? I can totally picture you frothing at the mouth, spitting at your screen as you type.

  63. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    the Holocaust never happened

    "James Hansen may well be right in some of what he says. But isn't locking people up for their beliefs just another form of totalitarianism?" - David Pollard

    No one has suggested that people be locked up for their beliefs. It is being suggested that criminals who yell "there is no fire" in a burning theater, be arrested, tried and convicted for their crimes.

    "He's right too, to point out that that, joking aside, it's a sin deliberately to mislead children and youngsters. But to bemoan the “natural skepticism and debates embedded in the scientific process" is to miss the point. It's precisely through this scepticism that we will be able to spot mistakes that we haven't previously noticed." - Davud Pollard.

    Correct. and that is why he refres to th the Denialism Industry and not to legitimate scientific variance on the subject - of which there is very little.

  64. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    Foofa

    "I look forward to NASA announcing they have opened an office for the Church of $cientology and are searching for Xenu." - Coward

    Wha? You planning to privatize NASA?

  65. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    All Modern Science is wrong - says Denialist

    "So, let's sum this up. You want to lock up people for opposing undecided science." - Coward

    No I intend to see the trial and exeuction of those who are responsible for creating and paying for the campaign of lies denying the scientific - measured - reality of global warming,

    Didn't I make myself clear earlier?

    "Science is about putting forward theories which we try and prove or disprove." - Coward

    WRONG. Outside of pure mathematics, there is no such thing as proof. Hence science tries to prove nothing. Any attempt to do so is futile.

    "Very very rarely do we successfully prove a theory, usually we get a balance of evidence which shows it to be reasonable, until it becomes unreasonable. " - Coward.

    Science never "proves" theories. Never has... Never will.

    "Science history is littered with occasions when the consensus was just plain wrong. When Copernicus and Galileo argued about a sun-centric view of the solar system, they were persecuted, but right. Newton's laws of motion were considered right by the consensus until Einstein came along. Quantum mechanics was laughed at for a long time." - Coward

    Each of your examples are examples of model refinements. To you they may seem revolutionary, but in fact each predicts pretty much the same effect as the other.

    Consider the earth centered model of the solar system. Totally wrong. But in fact it was the computational model used to get the original Apollo missions to the moon. It was far easier to compute a series of circular epicycles, than solve a long, complex integral for the sun centered model. The computers at the time were not up to the task. And certainly not the calculator powered computers available to Apollo.

    No in order for CO2 created warming NOT to occurr, virtually <ALL> of the physics developed from the 1400's to today would have to be wrong. So wrong that none of modern science would be consistant.

    Basically those who claim that CO2 doesn't cause the globe to warm are claiming that all of science is wrong since the science of CO2 enhaned warming is a direct application of the laws of radiative physics to the atmosphere.

  66. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    Suffer. and die.

    "I say lock up the green fags and government for not providing (fighting against) continual investment and research into Nuclear making us ever more dependent on oil and gas instead of having our own efficent nuclear program." - Coward

    Well, Environmentalists have for decades, been sounding the warning bell that this day would come.

    You chose to ignore the warnings.

    Now suffer.

  67. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    Children should be encouraged to smoke.

    "Hey, Vendicar, Let's round up all the extremists and herd them off cliffs." - Cliff

    You know. Smoking is good for you. It promotes a healthy exchange of oxygen in your lungs.

    All children should be taught to smoke at an early age so that the health benefits can be best recognized.

    We have programs to help children start the habit. Enrolment is free.

    Joint now, for a healthier you and a healthier family.

  68. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    "The world is cooling" claims the moron.

    "did he successfully predict the global cooling of the last decade?" - Gokkyturk

    What cooling?

    Here are the global average temperatures since 1958. "o" = trend line.

    Look at all those "o"'s lined up there. The trend is up, Up, UP.

    And most recently the rate of increase is about 2'C per century.

    View with mono spaced font.

    1958 14.08 *******o***************

    1959 14.06 ********o************

    1960 13.99 *********o******

    1961 14.08 **********o************

    1962 14.04 ***********o********

    1963 14.08 ************o**********

    1964 13.79 **===========o

    1965 13.89 *********====o

    1966 13.97 **************o

    1967 14.00 ***************o*

    1968 13.96 **************==o

    1969 14.08 *****************o*****

    1970 14.03 ******************o

    1971 13.90 **********=========o

    1972 14.00 *****************===o

    1973 14.14 ********************o******

    1974 13.92 ***********==========o

    1975 13.95 *************=========o

    1976 13.84 ******=================o

    1977 14.13 ************************o*

    1978 14.02 ******************=======o

    1979 14.09 ***********************===o

    1980 14.18 ***************************o**

    1981 14.27 ****************************o*******

    1982 14.05 ********************========o

    1983 14.26 *****************************o*****

    1984 14.09 ***********************=======o

    1985 14.06 *********************==========o

    1986 14.13 **************************======o

    1987 14.27 *********************************o**

    1988 14.31 **********************************o****

    1989 14.19 ******************************=====o

    1990 14.38 ************************************o*******

    1991 14.35 ************************************o****

    1992 14.12 *************************============o

    1993 14.14 ****************************===========o

    1994 14.24 **********************************=====o

    1995 14.38 ****************************************o***

    1996 14.30 **************************************===o

    1997 14.40 ******************************************o**

    1998 14.57 *******************************************o*************

    1999 14.33 ****************************************===o

    2000 14.33 ****************************************====o

    2001 14.48 *********************************************o*****

    2002 14.56 **********************************************o*********

    2003 14.55 ***********************************************o*******

    2004 14.49 ************************************************o**

    2005 14.62 *************************************************o**********

    2006 14.54 **************************************************o****

    2007 14.57 ***************************************************o*****

    -------------------------------------------> Temperature

    Correlation Coefficient .8529209

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VMu14mBXAs

  69. Vendicar Decarian

    "I love the taste of snake oil in the morning. Tastes like Stupidity". - Denialist

    "Then look at ClimateAudit.org. They are currently looking at some of Hansen's GISS 'corrections'. Misinformation isn't the word for it, straight lying is more accurate." - Moron

    ClimatAudit.org = Exxon.

  70. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    All Science is bogus.

    "There isn't a shred of evidence for man-made global warming."- Robinson

    Then you must throw out all of science from the 1400's to today.

    CO2 abosrbs Infared Radiation and reflects some of it back to the earth's surface.

    Hence the surface must warm. Increasing the amount of CO2 increases the backscatter and hence increases the observed warming.

    The basic science is childishly simple. Most of it is taught in grade 6.

    What's your escuse?

  71. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    lies, lies, lies, lies.

    "Those who were around 30 or so years ago, may remember the "inevitable climate catastrophe" that awaited us then. It was the impending ICE AGE. " - Scott Holland

    Scott Holland remembers something that never occurred.

    Perhaps Mr. Holland can provide references to the peer reviewed scientific literature of the period in which warnings on an imminent onset of an ice age were given?

    I find it quite telling that after 18 years of asking for these references, not a single reference has ever been provided by any warming denialist, and none have ever been provided in print.

    Here is your shot Scott. Provide the requested references/

    Or were you just lying in your accusation?

  72. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    Guilty as charged. Penalty - Death by hanging

    "And if Hansen is wrong, let's please lock him up along with Al Gore and the rest of the Doomsday whiners." - coward

    And since he is correct, are you going to do the world a favour and slit your throat? Or is some one going to have to do it for you, after your conviction?

  73. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    Correctamundo...

    "My point is that you'll have to change a lot more than vehicles if you truly want to change the climate. You *will* have to change the entire civil infrastructure layout of the entire country. You *will* have to make adequate jobs within close distance of all residential areas to cut down on commuting times. You *will* have to create mass transit everywhere. This is *very* expensive, and will take a long time. It will also involve a lot of eminent domain usage, and this will be seen as forced relocation in a lot of cases. In short, this will be *hard*, and our government doesn't want to do anything hard - after all, that would require our congresspeople to actually WORK for a change (instead of having 3-day workweeks)."

    - AmeriKKKan

    You are qutie right. And it is going to be hard work because you were too foolish to heed the earelier warnings.

    Now you will either get to work - motivated by enlightenment and intelligence, or we will starve your nation into submission.

    Your choice.

  74. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    Uer-an-anus Snert.

    "If you want to convince me about global warming, you'll have to explain away similar amounts of warming that have been recorded in observations of Neptune." - Snert

    So why do you discount the cooling of the planet Uranus that has been observed?

    Must be the sun cooling it.... right?

  75. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    Warming Denial similar to Holocaust Denial

    "Vendicar Decarian, if you would kill someone for holding a different belief to yourself, you are a NAZI." - Eric Worall

    You are corrrect Eric. Global Warming denial is very similar to Holocaust denial.

    And as we all know, it's primarily NAZI sympathizers who engage in Holocaust denial.

    So what's your excuse?

  76. Vendicar Decarian
    Boffin

    I have faith that all of the science since 1400 is not wrong.

    "I've just realised how much like believing in God, Global Warming is." - Coward

    Faith is belief in the unseen - and unmeasured.

    Global warming has been measured directly, by bore hole, by satellite, in the record of tree rings, shell fish, recorded by ground based thermometers, measured by historic records, recorded by events recording the first freeze and last that, first snowfall and last melt, first planting, and last harvest, etc. etc. etc.

    Warming denial = denial of practically all science since the 1400's

  77. Brad Arnold
    Pirate

    Ecosystem collapse

    "Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them." --Dr James Lovelock's lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. '07

    "Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change. Their study finds that five percent of all ecosystems cannot adapt more quickly than 0.1 C per decade over time. Forests will be among the ecosystems to experience problems first because their ability to migrate to stay within the climate zone they are adapted to is limited. If the rate is 0.3 C per decade, 15 percent of ecosystems will not be able to adapt.

    If the rate should exceed 0.4 C per decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed, opportunistic species will dominate, and the breakdown of biological material will lead to even greater emissions of CO2. This will in turn increase the rate of warming" --Leemans and Eickhout (2004), "Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change," Global Environmental Change 14, 219–228

  78. Jock
    Pirate

    Bring on the lawyers...

    We actually need a court case over this. Let us sort out these lying scumbags once and for all. Get a set of the top criminal attorneys.

    The charges?

    Mislabelling, and the subsequent deliberate demonization of, CO2 as A) anything but the most vital part of the carbon cycle (without which none of us would be here to debate this loonies’ theories) and B) a "pollutant" that has been present in far, far greater concentrations than at present (and mankind would only benefit from getting even halfway toward those levels once more).

    Withholding of taxpayer funded research methodology.

    Falsification of taxpayer funded research results.

    Misappropriation of taxpayer funded resources.

    Obfuscation and deception.

    Continuous, and malefic, extreme alarmism leading to "children having sleepless nights" worrying about mythological threats. There are many more of course.

    Some questions:

    Why is Hanson always described as a climate scientist? For that matter, why are any of the leading proponents of MMGW described as climate scientists?

    James Hansen, B.A. Physics and Mathematics, M.S. Astronomy, Ph.D. Physics

    Gavin Schmidt, Ph.D. Applied Mathematics

    Michael Mann, Ph.D. Geology & Geophysics

    Lonnie Thompson, Ph.D. Geological Sciences

    Michael Oppenheimer, S.B. Chemistry, Ph.D. Chemical Physics

    Steven Schneider, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering and Plasma Physics

    Alfred Gore, Duh. Refuses debate and questions

    What’s this! The scientists crying shrilly that AGW is real and we must pay to stop it do not have degrees in climatology? Or even climate related sciences? Surely not?

    Yet a publication like this [ http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/AGW_hypothesis_disproved.pdf ] from Richard Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a climate and atmospheric science consultant is ignored by the “free” press?

    Why is NASA (historical)temperature data always being "reviewed" and "adjusted", mostly upward?

    Why is NASA (current)temperature data nearly always double the other three standard datasets (Had/CRU, RSS and UAH)?

    The world’s largest desert, Antarctica has the lowest level of water vapour on the planet, bar none. If CO2 caused warming it would have a proportionately greater effect in areas where there is little, or zero, water vapour[ http://brneurosci.org/co2.html ]surely we would have a large temperature anomaly right there? Continuously? Rather than record levels of ice?

    If the oil companies, having spent soooo much money, have failed as miserably as the grant seekers and Malthusians to produce "evidence" about AGW is it not about time to drop the entire issue?

    Why is the general population so dumb as to be unable to read between the lines and see the twin lie of peak oil/climate change for the spiteful, political tax exercise and control system that it most assuredly is.

    The skull because hanson is toxic and working, or playing near it will damage your health.

  79. dervheid
    Happy

    Ah, Mr. Scott Nudds

    Drop anchor and cease trolling, you fuckwit.

  80. Mark

    Re: @ Mark

    Uh, no.

    All that requires is that there are five comments requiring or even ASKING for a reply and nobody responding.

    Say, for example, I'm away one evening and come back from the pub and (because it's a good idea to calm down after a drinking sesh) reading a little bit of El Reg.

    Nobody else is reading or writing to the comments.

    For hours.

    So getting five in a row just means that there was a long haitus of responses from others.

    Now, why do you deem and MUST REPORT that this is proof of "foaming"?

    Because you're an ignorant twat who is trying to rubbish people who don't believe what you want them to.

  81. dervheid
    Happy

    @ Mark

    "Because you're an ignorant twat who is trying to rubbish people who don't believe what you want them to."

    the words "Pot", "Kettle" and "Black" spring to mind here.

  82. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @Mark

    I didn't post to prove anything, just to point out that you sure do act like a raving lunatic and that I could picture, with great humor, you frothing at the mouth and spitting on your screen as you spout obscenities.

    BTW I don't even side with anyone on the topic of global warming, I just come here to read and be educated. Or be, in many cases, de-educated when I foolishly read posts like yours.

    Did you notice that this isn't slashdot?

  83. Mark

    PS, for the elucidation of the mentally disadvantaged

    Saying "but you are too" isn't really considered a defence of the accusation.

  84. Mark

    Raving lunatic?

    Well have a look at how JonB started. See if you can divine any "sanity" within.

    Me: So just turn your TV off at the switch

    JonB: So you're telling me to throw away my remote? NO WAY!

    Go back and see for yourself whether this is a reasonable short version of how it started.

    Now, with that reply, either YOU tell me where the dots join, OR I will remain with the idea that JonB isn't remotely thinking about listening to arguments or having a discussion. JonB seems to feel that if he EVER says "Sorry, my mistake" or "Oh, OK, I was wrong" his withered little lamb-prodder will fall off. Have a look at his posting history.

    Now check mine.

    When I've been proven wrong, I SAY "OK, my mistake".

    And YOU (the coward with no name) call ME a raving lunatic???? You can point that accusation elsewhere with FAR more validity.

    That you pointed it this way and that you have nothing to say apart from aspersions to cast upon me (despite much better fitted people here) means you're an ignorant twat and why the fuck should I bother to think anything other of you than I'm making perfectly clear I do?

    The point of this isn't for you (you don't care, except to defend your misguided brainsickly ideas) and neither does that ignorant twat JonB.

    However, because I don't hide and I don't pretend I'm being reasonable by not swearing at people who most assuredly deserve it, there may be some people thinking JonB has something.

    Well, to those people who are willing to SEE what they think rather than have it spoon-fed to them, I say: go back and see.

    And THAT is why I don't bother to argue a point with JonB and why I don't bother arguing a point with you. It's a waste of time. Your mind is made up because thinking would have the risk of finding out you're wrong.

  85. Robinson
    Stop

    Vendicar Decarian

    Judging by Vendicar's responses, he's probably Hansen in disguise. Here's a list of subject headings from Hansens web site (below). Just in case you're wondering, he does use the word Creation in the first title!

    Notwithstanding his obvious "kookery", he seems to have a political agenda, having convinced himself a long time ago that catastophic warming was happening and then disregarding (err, sorry, I mean "adjusting") the data ever since to fit the hypothesis. I have little confidence in him as a scientist given his obvious bias, as evidenced by the appalling debacle over his "hockey stick" that wasn't.

    --Re-Energize Iowa: An Opportunity to Lead the Nation in Stewardship of the Earth and Creation

    --How Can We Avert Dangerous Climate Change?

    --Global Warming: The Threat to the Planet

    --Dangerous Human-Made Interference with Climate (370 kB PDF).

    --"Political Interference with Science: Global Warming", Part II"

    --Special interests are the one big obstacle Global Warming: Connecting the Dots from Causes to Solutions

    --Communicating Dangers and Opportunities in Global Warming

    --The Threat to the Planet: How Can We Avoid Dangerous Human-Made Climate

    --Change? Swiftboating, Stealth Budgeting, and Unitary Executives.

    --The Threat to the Planet: Actions Required to Avert Dangerous Climate Change

    --The Case for Action by the State of California to Mitigate Climate Change

    --Global Warming: Is There Still Time to Avoid Disastrous Human-Made Climate Change?

    --Statement of Political Inclinations

    --Can We Still Avoid Dangerous Human-Made Climate Change? A Presentation at the New School's Social Research Conference

    --Is There Still Time to Avoid "Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference" with Global Climate? A Tribute to Charles David Keeling

    --On the Road to Climate Stability: The Parable of the Secretary

    --Global Temperatures in 2005

    --Michael Crichton's "Scientific Method"

    --Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference: A Discussion of Humanity's Faustian Climate Bargain and the Payments Coming Due

    --Defusing the Global Warming Time Bomb

  86. Robinson
    Jobs Horns

    Hansens predictions

    Here's a great article comparing Hansen's predictions of 20 years ago against what actually happened.

    http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2008/06/gret-moments-in.html

    I think that just says it all.

  87. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hansen you insensitive clod

    some of us are gambling on the extinction of the human race due to global warming, and want to go out driving our gas guzzling monsters, whilst getting a nice tan.

  88. Anonymous Coward
    Heart

    The Earth is cooling AND warming.

    Let's all come together and understand that reduced sunlight from pollution particles (not gases) is causing the Earth to cool. At the same time, Greenhouse gases, also from pollution, are causing the Earth to warm. Yes, the Earth goes through hot and cold cycles, but if we're in a cold cycle right now, we had better hope it lasts for a looong time. Because even if it's cooling, it's HOT, and getting hotter...

  89. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    How really depressing

    This is really, really depressing.

    I would hope that readers of El Reg might have some technical competance, the ability to understand science or just native intelligence.... but this thread demonstrates that was too optimistic.

    The standard of thought on the comments here is on a par with "my gran smoked for years and she lived to 80, so cigarrettes cannot cause cancer"

    Some posters don't seem to realise that climate change refers to *climate* ie long-term trends over years or decades. The fact that one year was hot or cold does not been that trend is not happening, any more than one granny does not mean cigarrettes are safe.

    The models are to try to predict how hot the planet gets: they are a measure *not* the logic itself, and criticisms of those models doesn't change the underlying reality. (Not to mention a lot of the criticisms are misinformed themselves. eg th"hockey stick" was not discreditted...)

    The fundamental logic of global warming is simple physics: you can show it in a school lab: CO2 is transparent to visible light (~1um) but absorbs infrared (~10um). So if there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, then more heat is absorbed and the planet gets hotter. This has nothing to do with hockey sticks, or Hansen or anyone else - it is simple physics. The C02 convcentration has gone up from 250ppm to 380 pmm so the heat "caused" from CO2 has gone up 50%.

    And it is not new or a "media creation" or "invented by Al Gore": it was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824 and first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896 - who gave some warnings at the time.

    Over the last 112 years we have done more and more measurements, more & more modelling. And it just confirms the simple fact: more CO2 = more heat absorbed = the temperature rises.

    Anyone who does not agree with global warming, or who blames solar cycles, or the media, or politicians needs to explain why that physics is not actually true. Which will be interesting...

    If we are going to have a discussion, it helps if people have a clue.

    Unforunately, you could add up a dozen contributors to this thread and you wouldn't get a clue between them...

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