ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

There was quite a nice one hour special on Fox tonight on Global Warming.

Vlad Drkulec

[Tom O'Donnell]

Re: ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

Driving a car more years helps to solve the problem, I would think.

To be clear: I am certainly not suggesting that people junk their cars and buy something new. I consider the whole "Cash for Clunkers" idea to be a continuing scam to impoverish the middleclass by conning them into spending money they don't have for stuff they don't need. I am suggesting that if Greens think that people are willingly going to sacrifice their present lifestyle in order to possibly - or even definitely! - save the planet some 50+ years down the road then I think they are seriously misjudging how much short-term thinking dominates human decisions.

On a slightly related note:

Here in Alice Springs, Australia my wife and I tried camel, emu and kangaroo for lunch. The kangaroo was quite reasonable; not as tasty as beef but evidently kangaroos don't produce methane so this is a "greener" meat. Figuratively speaking, of course. Meanwhile the camel was just okay, but the emu was fantastic.

[Tom O'Donnell]

Re: ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

[QUOTE=Carl Bilodeau;17631]

Why would you think that? People smoke tobacco knowing that there is a decent chance it will kill them. They eat too much and don't exercise enough knowing that they are shortening their lifespan on average. People drive polluting cars and populate the world with too many progeny which only exacerbates the problems for everyone.

...
QUOTE]

Problems? What problems are you talking about? If you talk of bilions of death I think you should at least show us the first million death if you want me to beleive it.

We live longer. Our kids no more die on their first year.

Our cars are safers, cleaners and have no impact on climate. CO2 is not a pollution.

Everyday we create new technology.

No problem at all, I can not see billions of deaths in the future.

Carl

Carl:

We live on a finite planet. We have finite resources. Space for humans to live is limited. Politicians speak of "sustainable" growth. Growth in a finite environment can *never* be sustainable!

Fifty years ago scientists were telling us the future would have no hunger, that robots would do all menial tasks. Humans would have ample free time to do whatever they liked and that we could even travel to the moon for vacations.

Instead of giving us robots to do the menial work, we have guys in Third World countries doing the work, and people in North America are in debt up to their eyeballs as their employers turn them into indentured servants. Let's just say that your faith in technology, though sweet, just doesn't seem to me to have any basis in reality. ;-)

In any event, my original point is this. Let's say the Greens are right, or let's say they are even pessimistic, and that pollution is going to warm the planet and with 100% certainty kill every single person living on it (I know they aren't saying that, but this is just a thought experiment to prove a point).

Even if the average person knew this, as long as the problem happens say 100 years from now, they are either going to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that nothing is going to happen or they are going to remain willfully ignorant or they will be like you and think technology or God or whatever is going to save them. Why? Because getting people to think about a big picture that lasts decades is just too much for them to handle.

This inability to plan for the very long term explains a great deal. It explains why people poison themselves, why they go bankrupt and why they drive SUVs. Oh ya, and why they insist on having a bunch of sprogs ... er, kids. ;-)

To sum up: whether Global Warming is real or not, it doesn't matter. Very few individuals and probably no country will be willing to make the sorts of sacrifices necessary to improve things. The problem is too big and the results are too distant.

[Benoit St-Pierre]

Nils-Axel Mörner

The Doctor is not skeptical regarding everything:

http://www.randi.org/hotline/1998/0012.html

More on the Doctor:

http://www.desmogblog.com/nils-axel-morner
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/per...et.php?id=1114

To start on sea-rise level:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise

[Ed Seedhouse]

Re: ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

"I have been the expert reviewer for the IPCC, both in 2000..."

And a true believer in Dowsing, who will not submit it, however, to a proper scientific test.

But of course he said something on a web site, so Vlad believes it must be true! Well of course it must be true because it supports what Vlad believes!

Thing is, of course, that real practicing scientists work very hard to prove that what they and other scientists believe is false, and only when they fail many times to do so do they accept that it's true after all.

[Carl Bilodeau]

Re: ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

[QUOTE=Tom O'Donnell;17740]

Carl:

We live on a finite planet. We have finite resources. Space for humans to live is limited. Politicians speak of "sustainable" growth. Growth in a finite environment can *never* be sustainable!

Fifty years ago scientists were telling us the future would have no hunger, that robots would do all menial tasks. Humans would have ample free time to do whatever they liked and that we could even travel to the moon for vacations.

Instead of giving us robots to do the menial work, we have guys in Third World countries doing the work, and people in North America are in debt up to their eyeballs as their employers turn them into indentured servants. Let's just say that your faith in technology, though sweet, just doesn't seem to me to have any basis in reality. ;-)

In any event, my original point is this. Let's say the Greens are right, or let's say they are even pessimistic, and that pollution is going to warm the planet and with 100% certainty kill every single person living on it (I know they aren't saying that, but this is just a thought experiment to prove a point).

Even if the average person knew this, as long as the problem happens say 100 years from now, they are either going to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that nothing is going to happen or they are going to remain willfully ignorant or they will be like you and think technology or God or whatever is going to save them. Why? Because getting people to think about a big picture that lasts decades is just too much for them to handle.

This inability to plan for the very long term explains a great deal. It explains why people poison themselves, why they go bankrupt and why they drive SUVs. Oh ya, and why they insist on having a bunch of sprogs ... er, kids. ;-)

To sum up: whether Global Warming is real or not, it doesn't matter. Very few individuals and probably no country will be willing to make the sorts of sacrifices necessary to improve things. The problem is too big and the results are too distant.

Tom,

Doing nothing directly to fix a problem for you is not a solution. Many socialist think simply: Let help the poors, save the climate, and fix all the problems in the next decade.

But in fact we have to let the time for things to evoluate by itself and give it the best tools possibles. Doing the best you can in your job here is most of the time the best way you can help the world. It seems a short view for you, but not for me.

Simply having more and more democratics country in the world every decade shows us that things improve very rapidly. Less wars all around the world.

I am deeply convince that the more we devellop our people, our technology and the more indirect result we will see all around the world.

China DECIDED to have capitalism. No need for us to push them since our technology, our computers, our science and all that is available for them to take and to master it. And we want to do business with them since their salary are very low. They get low salary but they build road and railway to transport our product. They spend their salary and buy phone, computers, cars and they pay better school for their children. It is not the level they would get here, but on the long run they will evoluate in 50 years what took us 300 years.

If China had not wanted to have capitalism, we could send food to the population but then the army would use the money saved from it to build more nuclear bombs.

You feel we abuse them? I don't share this opinion because when we try to go faster then it means government intervention, billions of dollars. And most of the time we will see in 10 years that sending money or food simply destroyed their economy or help them to keep control over the population that was about to get rid of a bad regime.

In probably 15 years americans will invent a technology so that our cars will produce a CO2 disk that we will dispose at the gas station. See how we found solutions for the ozone problem, and how we stop the "real" polution on our cars with the catalyzers.

So please, stop saying that a different solution means "You don't care about the future, you have a short term view, you think only of the present time". This is not true. Life, business, and human nature is so complex that it is 100 times more difficult to manipulate by artificial goverment mesures and socialism than it is to manipulate the climate.

Let the evolution continue like it did in the last 100 years. But for sure we have to keep both eyes wide open. If a new Hitler comes, a meteorite or a climate menace comes suddently, then for sure catastrophic governmental mesures will be necessary. But if we take these catastrophic mesure, then it will slow our evolutions and technology and so it will slow the whole world evolution.

Carl

[Carl Bilodeau]

Re: ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

In the page Paul linked to, referenced a whole pile of new research, all with urls. Which one is Carl calling "the report"?

Or is he calling Paul a fraud?

Does he think that kind of name calling carries any weight?

What degrees in Science does Carl have? Paul claims a Masters degree in Physics. Is Carl calling Paul's degree a fraud?

Let's see, assuming Paul's claim of a degree is correct, who is more likely to be right about what the science says, Paul or some random chessplayer?

Oh yeah, and any web site that starts playing audio or video at me without first asking my opinion is one I leave immediately. The apparent fact that Carl linked to this site suggests a lack of concern about his fellow beings. I was already listening to something else, something worthwhile thankyou. Or no thankyou.

Ed,

I have a bachelor in science.

I read about 4 hours of science magasine per week. I know this does not give me credibility but I say that to show my point. With my 4 years study in ingeneering, every week I read the results of studies and I believe what I read without seeing the data or veryfying the sources. I presume that any scientist does the same when he read on a general scientific subject. Many articles I read shows in the last pages the opinion of other specialists on the same subject or on the study. One article out of ten I don't agree with the conclusion but I know I am not an expert on the specific subject, but I don't dig so I can not say for sure.

So bachelor, master, this is not useful in determining if some scientist is lying and modifying the data when we don't take the time to dig on a subject. I would need to spend many days to make my mind on something like a judge would do on an important case.

Paul has a master this is great and for sure his eye is able to understand rapidly a scientific article. But here what did he do? Did he simply read an article he thought was done by honest science people or did he dig, went to read more on the subject, validate the sources, read about the climategate, the credibility of the people behind the article? Does he has the time to do it? This I don't know. He did not tell me.

But we see these days many scientist with diplomas that are simply upset with what they read about the climategate and that show us that in fact the data was false and climate is not changing. And they do that with the data that was used in the fraud studies.

We see also another category of eco-extremist scientists that simply try to hide the climategate because they want to save the warming cause.

Carl

[Ed Seedhouse]

Re: ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

Ed,
We see also another category of eco-extremist scientists that simply try to hide the climategate because they want to save the warming cause.

We see that Carl, unable to reason or cite actual evidence, resorts once again to name calling.

[Carl Bilodeau]

Re: ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

...

Thing is, of course, that real practicing scientists work very hard to prove that what they and other scientists believe is false, and only when they fail many times to do so do they accept that it's true after all.

But when you are a scientist, you see data showing there is not warming and that the ice did recover. And it has been proved that the studys that were talking about warming were done with false data. Then I think there is not much thing a scientist can do.

What steps a scientist has to do to prove that something that did not happen did not happen. It is like trying to prove scientifically that no god exist, you take sensors to detect the god, but everytime you want to conclude your article about the nonexistence of god someone tells you that god will come the next year or the next decade.

We have had very good scientists who tried to show warming and they found none so they had to create false data and false articles. What do we need? We have the data and it is clear.

Carl

[Carl Bilodeau]

Re: ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

We see that Carl, unable to reason or cite actual evidence, resorts once again to name calling.

Ed,

I did previouly and I gave the evidence, and I even put some comments on some graphs. Please see my previous links. What evidence do you want me to show again?

Carl

[Gary Ruben]

Re: ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

To be clear: I am certainly not suggesting that people junk their cars and buy something new. I consider the whole "Cash for Clunkers" idea to be a continuing scam to impoverish the middleclass by conning them into spending money they don't have for stuff they don't need. I am suggesting that if Greens think that people are willingly going to sacrifice their present lifestyle in order to possibly - or even definitely! - save the planet some 50+ years down the road then I think they are seriously misjudging how much short-term thinking dominates human decisions.

On a slightly related note:

Here in Alice Springs, Australia my wife and I tried camel, emu and kangaroo for lunch. The kangaroo was quite reasonable; not as tasty as beef but evidently kangaroos don't produce methane so this is a "greener" meat. Figuratively speaking, of course. Meanwhile the camel was just okay, but the emu was fantastic.

I was reading the Cash for Clunkers, which was in the U.S., turned out to be questionable. Some people who wanted an auto were said to have bought a clunker for a couple hundred dollars and turned it in on a new one. I don't think the Canadian government gave enough to even pay the taxes on a new car. Why we bailed out foreign auto companies is another question.

My car is long term. I thought of trading it when it was 3 years old but the trade in value was practically nothing. I've had it 5 years but it's only got 40,000 kms or slightly over. It's OK for my wife and I to get around in. No car is out of the question for me. Walking is a problem so I only go places where I can park close.

I've never eaten any of the more exotic foods you mention. I like a boring diet of home made things. I have a lot of different ways to make Kraft dinner. :)

I also don't think people will make sacrifices and governments which try to force them will change quickly in the following elections.

I hope you folks are having a nice time. I'd love to see Australia someday.

[Carl Bilodeau]

Re: ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

....

Carl, the whole climategate issue is clearly overblown. The scientific community (most of it) continues to warn us of the dangers of climate change. In my opinion, the evidence is overwhelming.

People want to believe there is no problem, so they embrace the whole conspiracy theory, so they can continue driving their hummers and ignore the problem.:( Doing nothing is easier.

Ok, show me one article from any of these scientist and let see on what study he refers. So far everything I have read in the last month only refer to the studies that have been proved to be fraud. Even the articles presented at the opening of the Kopennag event and that I have read were referring to the studies of 2007 that have been proved to be taken from the hockey stick and from people involved in the climategate.

Please show me one.

Carl

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Communism

When I bought the Hummer H2 a few years ago, my kids were 1, 3, 4, and 6 years old and my wife was pregnant. I bought it for the safety of my so young kids because I love them so much. The previous other cars it replace were a Mercedes and the previous one a Volvo for security reasons but they don't have enough seat so we changed them.

Ok, well then, what about the people on the street who have to breathe the poisons your Hummer is putting out? I'm not talking about CO2, there are plenty of other poisons in car exhaust, and a Hummer is one of the worst offenders. Are these people on the street meaningless to you, in favour of your precious kids? If you're really wanting security for your kids, why not put them in a bus? Or an army tank?

I feel sorry to see this agressivity in your comments which look to be very similar to those people able to thow bottles of beers on a family car having so many scared young kids inside and a baby with glasses all over the body and in his eyes.

You keep saying I'm "aggressive", you are lying just as much as you claim the climate "extremists" are. I haven't threatened you in any way, I don't throw beer bottles at anyone. I call you a moron because you distort history and make non-logical arguments, such as saying the government should require car dealers to take back used cars for recycling, and calling that capitalism! But calling you a moron isn't being aggressive. You just use that to make me look like an "extremist". You are as much of a distorter of facts as you claim the climate people are.

I also notice you didn't make any reply to what my refutation of your argument about blaming socialism for the sins of fascism. I used your argument to claim we can blame the origins of America as a free society if it becomes a bankrupt 3rd world country. This is where your logic leads, and you have no answer for it. I guess you don't like it when your false logic is turned against you! If you weren't spouting all this garbage, I wouldn't be calling you a moron. Simple as that, and nothing aggressive about it.

The data show clearly that CO2 is not causing warming. Why would I care? If data was showing a problem, human with technologies will find solutions. But so far no problem at all. They lied about the data and they throw me beer bottle.... this is very ridiculous. To me it is like comdemning somebody that does not believe in Jesus when there is no proof that the guy was a god and when there is no law that force me to believe in stupid things like gods.

No, it is incorrect for you to say the data show CO2 in not causing warming, because climate scientists are disagreeing with you. This question needs settling by an international court. Would you agree to accept the decision of such a court if such a case were heard by it? No, because you WANT the data to not show CO2 is causing global warming. Your bias is extremely clear to everyone on this board. I am not biased, I can accept whatever decision such a court would make.

The people throwing the beer bottles are NOT the same people who produce the climate data. You see the climate data and you say "Not true" and you drive a polluting Hummer. They see the climate data and they say "True" and they throw beer bottles at your Hummer. YOU AND THEY ARE BOTH EQUALLY GUILTY. Do you understand this concept? I don't condone them throwing beer bottles at your Hummer. I have presented my idea for an international court case to decide the questions of climate change. Both sides must be willing to accept whatever decision would come out of such a court case.

In my case, the Hummer was planned for family transport and not to go to work. If you divide the number of average people inside it (6 or 7 persons) then everybody in my family spend less CO2 tons than the average hybrid driver. Each member spend less than the average Honda Civic single drive. Will I throw them rocks? No.

No, but you'll blow poisonous exhaust to people on the street, including bicyclists who are not producing any pollution. As long as your kids are safe and sound in an armoured shell, who cares about people on the street?

I think that when people listen to TV and believe anything they ear without putting some rational thinking then it leads to people agressivity and violence.

Who decides what is "rational thinking"? You? And anything that goes against your views is not rational thinking?

Here agressive people like you with your agressive comments or the ones that throw bottles of beers on my car are the same in my mind. You want to change the behavior of others and if violence is required, lets go.

Be careful. You can be sued for comments like this.

Why don't you write a book: "CO2 - The final solution" so that the goverment could start building gas chambers for people with "bad behaviors" that hurts.

I had never heard about Godwin's Law before this past summer, but here, you are guilty of it!

[Ed Seedhouse]

Re: ClimateGate - A Question for Ed Seedhouse and Paul Beckwith

Ok, show me one article from any of these scientist and let see on what study he refers.

He has already done this many times, but you won't look at any of them because you are not ready for truth.

So far everything I have read in the last month only refer to the studies that have been proved to be fraud.

Frankly, I don't believe you. I don't think you have read any of the references at all, for the reason given above.

Please show me one.

You claim to have a degree but your research skills are so slight that you can't even find one on your own?

[Benoit St-Pierre]

Now on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqi7f...layer_embedded