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I certainly can't vouch for all environmental groups but I read alot of natural science books and keep up with a number of conservation and/or environmental orgs and they all agree 100% that man has changed the earth in dramatic ways.
That's not the same as saying:
1) mankind is the sole cause of climate change or,
2) climate change would not be as dramatic or threatening to the way things are if man didn't contribute to it.
I don't think there's a consensus, among climate change alarmists (whether appropriate or not), on which of the above two it is.
That's not the same as saying:
1) mankind is the sole cause of climate change or,
2) climate change would not be as dramatic or threatening to the way things are if man didn't contribute to it.
I don't think there's a consensus, among climate change alarmists (whether appropriate or not), on which of the above two it is.
No one says the first. And the 2nd is so poorly worded that I doubt anyone would say that either.
Yofie, this forum is mainly inhabited by the partially educated, liberal types who think they know it all and have already made up their minds. Facts can be ignored once their minds have been made up.
Ask them why every single prediction made in the late 80s/early 90s by the Warming Crowd has turned up wrong these 30 yrs later. A theory is only as good as its ability to predict. How good is their theory?
In religion, a mind set is determined and then proof is sought selectively. In science, every conclusion is viewed with skepticism and further testing is demanded. It's never settled in science, by definition.
There are no credible scientists who dispute Anthropogenic Climate Change. Science is never "settled" but you will not find a scientist who believes the sun rotates around the earth any more.
The charge that the IPCC's position on climate change was "politicized" has already been debunked. There is no legitimate "other side of the debate." The only debate that remains among scientists is what to do about it. And the 97% consensus is not "bogus." The Heartland Institute is an organization infamously funded and driven by industry interests; it's therefore rather odd that you reference it in a post which purports to be concerned about politicization.
Saying that there is no legitimate "other side of the debate" is a sign that those who believe in man-made causes as the predominant agent of present-day climate change is a sign that climate-change alarmism is a "religion" and not so much a science that changes its position in response to new data coming in, the way that the scientific method works.
Regarding the 97% consensus, it is bogus more than it is not, because it represents only a subset of the climate-change-related paper abstracts that John Cook et al. evaluated in 2013. In other words, in that study, a full two-thirds of these abstracts expressed no position on climate change; it's 97% of the one-third of such papers that did express a position on climate change that endorsed the IPCC position on climate change. However, it gets more interesting: Of that 97%, it's only 1.6% that not only explicitly endorses the IPCC position but quantifies it as more than 50% of all present-day observed climate change; the rest either explicitly endorses it but does not quantify or minimize it, or it implicitly endorses it without minimizing it. See here and here for more details.
With regard to funding for the Heartland Institute and similar organizations in terms of funding, such organizations get a very small fraction of the money that groups like Sierra Club and Greenpeace get. And the Heartland Institute and kindred groups do not get most of their funding from industry interests, not any more than the environmentalist groups are funded by government and certain industry interests. Take a look here. Here's one example from that page:
"As Dr. Richard Lindzen, MIT atmospheric sciences professor emeritus and one of Grijalva’s targets, has pointed out: “Billions of dollars have been poured into studies supporting climate alarm, and trillions of dollars have been involved in overthrowing the energy economy†– and replacing it with expensive, inefficient, insufficient, job-killing, environmentally harmful wind, solar and biofuel sources.
"Their 1090 forms reveal that, during the 2010-2012 period, six environmentalist groups received a whopping $332 million from six federal agencies! That is 270 times what Dr. Willie Soon and Harvard-Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics received from fossil fuel companies in a decade – the funding that supposedly triggered the lawmakers’ letters, mere days after Greenpeace launched its attack on Dr. Soon."
Given man-made deforestation, CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gas emissions etc. starting at the industrial revolution and up to the present day it is simply impossible for there not to have been a human effect on climate. It wasn't all magically teleported out into space.
The question is the extent of the effect, not whether it exists. Its like "debating" the overall deleterious impact of modern man on wild animal species. There is no debate that it did happen, the debate is about the extent etc. Or about whether we should just ignore it.
Thank God various industries and political parties have no agenda when it comes to entomology, geology, and astrophysics otherwise they'd got bogged down in specious "debates" also.
Given man-made deforestation, CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gas emissions etc. starting at the industrial revolution and up to the present day it is simply impossible for there not to have been a human effect on climate. It wasn't all magically teleported out into space.
You are right that there is some human effect on climate from GHGs, but it's relatively minimal and generally positive. For example, CO2 is plant food - if in the distant geological past with very high amounts of CO2 (e.g. Age of Dinosaurs) plants thrived like crazy, why would we say that plant growth would be negatively impacted by ever-increasing GHG emissions???!!!
Having worked in natural resources for 40 years most environmental groups are scientifically illiterate wasting taxpayers and donors monies.
However, the groups that do benefit the environment have ONE thing in common. They BUY land and turn if over to public agencies to provide habitat for all sorts of species. It doesn't matter which group you support, if they buy land, give them money.
I personally support Ducks Unlimited. They buy swamps and fund projects to create more wetlands.
The Nature Conservancy has already been mentioned. One that we worked with a lot in the public sector was the Trust for Public Lands. The American Rivers Conservancy is another.
There are many others....find what you find special in natural landscapes and find a group that buys those lands to move into public ownership.
The arrogance is in thinking that man can't affect the environment. Look at the rivers, look at the extinct species due to man. Look at the recovery of the bald eagle after we reformed our practices. We are changing the climate and aspects of that change will not be to our liking. Time to stop being stupid.
Lots of species have come and gone and man had nothing to do with it. After we stopped pouring sludge in the rivers they, within a short time were back to normal.
The problem with in believing that we can have any effect on the climate is in the scale of it and the fact that climate like the planet is constantly changing. The sun could flare at any moment and cook us. It has probably happened in the past. A single fart from a volcano puts more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in an instant than we humans can do in a decade. There are thousands of underwater volcanoes constantly spewing both heat and gasses into the oceans which end up in the atmosphere that we dont even know about.
the whole consept of global warming is that we are putting gasses into the atmosphere that are trapping heat that would normally radiate to space thru the atmosphere. Just think how much area our atmosphere encompasses.
When I was in school, global cooling was the rage. The universities got all sorts of grants to study it and came to the conclusion that the planet was indeed cooling. If you didnt believe them you were a heretic.
Then it was the Ozone layer was evaporating. Lots more money into universities to study the Ozone depletion. It was determined that yo would need 5000 SPA sunblock by the year 2000 if something wasent done. So the refrigerant ban and invention of new refrigerants. (not really new, they still depleted the ozone layer) Just patented now and could only be made by certain companies. But now the patents are running out again and so the new (sort of) refrigerants are again being fazed out and new refrigerants are being put out which of course are incompatible with existing equipment and oils so you got to buy new equipment when your machine breaks.
But ask yourself, what do you think happened to the mega tons of refrigerants that were already in existing equipment? Vented into the atmosphere of course. So why arent we all wearing 5000 SPA sunblock today? Or at least 1000 SPA?
Because all this is is scare tactics designed to get you to part with your money and give it to someone else no questions asked.
THen it as global warming. But that didnt work because it never really warmed much if at all.
Since it became ineffective at getting the desired results which was their hands on your money it has now been changed to climate change. Climate change can be wha ever you want so they can say whatever they want and because they are Doctors and PHD's and you are a simple underling you cannot possibly understand it.
Lots of species have come and gone and man had nothing to do with it. After we stopped pouring sludge in the rivers they, within a short time were back to normal.
The problem with in believing that we can have any effect on the climate is in the scale of it and the fact that climate like the planet is constantly changing. The sun could flare at any moment and cook us. It has probably happened in the past. A single fart from a volcano puts more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in an instant than we humans can do in a decade. There are thousands of underwater volcanoes constantly spewing both heat and gasses into the oceans which end up in the atmosphere that we dont even know about.
the whole consept of global warming is that we are putting gasses into the atmosphere that are trapping heat that would normally radiate to space thru the atmosphere. Just think how much area our atmosphere encompasses.
When I was in school, global cooling was the rage. The universities got all sorts of grants to study it and came to the conclusion that the planet was indeed cooling. If you didnt believe them you were a heretic.
Then it was the Ozone layer was evaporating. Lots more money into universities to study the Ozone depletion. It was determined that yo would need 5000 SPA sunblock by the year 2000 if something wasent done. So the refrigerant ban and invention of new refrigerants. (not really new, they still depleted the ozone layer) Just patented now and could only be made by certain companies. But now the patents are running out again and so the new (sort of) refrigerants are again being fazed out and new refrigerants are being put out which of course are incompatible with existing equipment and oils so you got to buy new equipment when your machine breaks.
But ask yourself, what do you think happened to the mega tons of refrigerants that were already in existing equipment? Vented into the atmosphere of course. So why arent we all wearing 5000 SPA sunblock today? Or at least 1000 SPA?
Because all this is is scare tactics designed to get you to part with your money and give it to someone else no questions asked.
THen it as global warming. But that didnt work because it never really warmed much if at all.
Since it became ineffective at getting the desired results which was their hands on your money it has now been changed to climate change. Climate change can be wha ever you want so they can say whatever they want and because they are Doctors and PHD's and you are a simple underling you cannot possibly understand it.
Joe you need to stop with the silly fiction. Global cooling was never the "rage." That's just what the climate change denier web sites tell gullible people like you today.
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