Global warming Hoax

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Nice to see the billionaires of this world (and their spokesmen) agreeing with one or two comrades who post here:


In addition to illustrating the mechanism for how capitalism continues to avoid stagnation -- with the support of an extremely wealthy class investing surplus capital into financial markets -- the Forbes special issue gives its readers a special dose of capitalist ideology. Editor-in-chief Steve Forbes explains why capitalists need not worry about climate change: it's all hoax! He states that although much of the media treats this idea of climate change as catastrophic fact, it's merely another unproved theory comparable to witchcraft. He reassures the readers in the last paragraph to not fear this new form of green socialism, and offers these sentiments:


Thankfully, despite all the widespread misconceptions about weather, we are not going to submit to Gore-ite socialist global government regulations. In fact, some good may come out of this: a major push for nuclear power.

It is hard to believe that such a sham of an argument could be printed in the most widely read business magazine, especially in light of current IPCC reports issued by the world's leading 200 climate scientists. However, when the stakes are high for a fossil fuel-dependent economy, illusionists like Forbes will come to the rescue (temporarily) to convince investors that nothing can rattle the system. The ideology of continually increasing affluence in spite of ecological limits must be constantly reinforced.

More details here:

http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/clausen110407.html

[gilhyle]

Hmmmmmm...gotta say I paid attention to the Global Warming Hoax documentary recently broadcast on British TV and my attenna are up when the only reply I heard is the condescending 'this is the consensus, its always healthy to have critics like this at the margins'.

I want someone to explain to me precisely why Im beign told the historical record shows carbon level change lagging BEHIND climate change over the last 600 million years. I dont want to be told how reactionary I am for asking or any other vitriol, I just want clear facts......or to know there are none.

Point me in the right direction; Im happy to learn.....and if it means nuclear power, well so be it.

One thing Im not happy with is any idea that the imperialised world should bear the price. Africa should be exempt from all emission targets.

[Jitsu]

Global warming does not fully describe the complexities of Climate Shift. Some areas may get warmer, and others cooler. Storms will increase in intensity, and some areas may become perpetually overcast and cold, while other areas turn into dessert.

Also, pollution and radioactive waste are issues that have been put on the back burner. We are poisoning our world is so many different ways.

Only damned fool will deny the negative impact we are having our our environment, or say this has no impact on our global climate.

[piet11111]

i still see global warming as a natural event because so far there are too many theory's going around with conflicting information.

but i do recognise that the netherlands havent had a real winter for a very long time.
(real winter meaning the winters pre-1950's)

[Vanguard1917]

Some environmentalists like to think that they are somehow rebelling against the status quo. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Far from being an insurgent movement, environmentalism plays a prominent role in mainstream ruling politics in the West.

It is only testimony to the lack of any progressive dynamism on the left today that it is only some people on the old right who have anything to say against environmentalism. It is also quite ironic: environmentalist ideas were, before fairly recently, mainly associated with the right - not the left. At a time when the left represented progress, it was those on the right who adopted environmentalist concerns (anti-industrialisation, anti-urbanisation, romanticisation of rural life, suspicions of technological progress, etc). It's only with the collapse of the progressive left (a consequence of the collapse of the working class movement throughout the West) that environmentalism was able to present itself as being radical.

Today, environmentalism has taken the form of a radical movement, while being as conservative as ever in content. In the past, environmentalism was conservative in form and in content.

[chimx]

In the past, environmentalism was conservative in form and in content.

What is your time frame for "past"?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil, that Channel 4 programme was bogus from beginning to end.

I pinned some links that exposed its lies and distortions here:

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=64565

Near the bottom of the page.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

VG1917:


Some environmentalists like to think that they are somehow rebelling against the status quo. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Far from being an insurgent movement, environmentalism plays a prominent role in mainstream ruling politics in the West.

And some leftists think that by agreeing with billionaires (and oil compasnies) they are advancing the cause of the working class.

[gilhyle]

Rosa

OK, read Monbiot...answers some of the questions, establishes that the sun spots theory doesnt work, fine - I can go with that. But on my core concern, which, if any, of the many links you post actually deals with the issue of whether the link between carbon emissions in the historical record and tempreture levels is a leading or lagging effect ?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Yes they deal with that; can't recall which one, so I will check them for you.

Ok, this one, among others:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...007/03/swindled (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled)

More fully, here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...2-in-ice-cores/ (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/)

I said to a friend a week or so ago, I bet Durkin is an ex-RCP-er (the RCP were an abstract propagandist set of nutters in the UK back in the 1970 - early 1990's, who self-destructed and then re-surfaced as right wing libertarians); and I was right:


"The writer and presenter of the programme was Martin Durkin who is closely affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party which has a strong ideological opposition to environmental science. In 1997 Channel Four was forced to issue its first ever broadcast apology over extreme editing distortions in a similar series knocking environmentalism. It is a great shame that Carl Wunsch and the other legitimate scientists in the programme did not do a quick web search on Durkin before agreeing to contribute..."

From the links above, and:

http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1855

[That page is not easy to read, unfortunately.]

They campaigned on things like 'AIDS is not caused by HIV', and the like back in the 1990's, in a rag call LM (earlier 'Living Marxism' -- but more like 'Lying Marxists').

They also run the 'Spiked' website, VG1917 keeps quoting!

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=124

Makes you wonder what 'he' is up to, doesn't it?

More on this (as we once used to think on the left, but it gets more obvious by the week) CIA front here:

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=78

And follow the links.

Durkin is listed as an ex-member.

They were also responsible for the 'Nazis were environmntalists' program on Ch 4 as few years back, an idea VG 1917 has tried to air here.

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=64316



In the late 1990's LM's 'most spectacular coup', according to The Weekly Worker, 'was the three hours of prime-time television, in the form of Channel Four's anti-green Against Nature. Frank Furedi was the star of the show.' Against Nature targeted environmentalists, presenting them as 'the new enemy of science' and comparable to the Nazis. They were responsible, the programmes argued, for the deprivation and death of millions in the Third World. (Crimes against Nature, The Revolution Has Been Televised)

Channel Four had to broadcast a prime-time apology after Against Nature drew the wrath of the Independent Television Commission which ruled, 'Comparison of the unedited and edited transcripts confirmed that the editing of the interviews with [the environmentalists who contributed] had indeed distorted or misrepresented their known views. It was also found that the production company had misled them... as to the format, subject matter and purpose of these programs.' (See CHANNEL 4 SAVAGED BY TELEVISION WATCHDOG )

Against Nature provided a platform not only for LM columnists like Furedi, John Gillott (aka John Gibson) and Juliet Tizzard, all of whom were billed by the programme makers as independent experts, but for a whole string of contributors from the far Right. Extreme advocates of free-market capitalism were also increasingly to be found expounding their views in the pages of LM. The magazine published pieces, for instance, by the Executive Vice President of the Centre for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Ron Arnold. Arnold's mission was their mission, 'This is a war zone. Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement'. (Far Left or Far Right? Living Marxism's interesting allegiances).

According to Frank Furedi, such alliances are all part of LM's regrouping of 'all those who believe human beings should play for high stakes' (LM 100). LM loyalist Adam Hibbert admits that working with the far Right, 'might appear duplicitous and fraught with the danger of assimilation', but asserts that as long as the activist is alert to these dangers, 'much more progress is possible: and that is our overriding duty, if we're serious.' (Re: For Hibbert: LM and Russia)

Against Nature's director Martin Durkin and his production team went on to make an almost equally controversial TV programme about GM for Channel Four, in which GM proponents like CS Prakash played a starring role. (see Getting your science from charlatans)

Curioser and curioser.....

Another link to Spiked on organic food by VG1917, here:

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=60876

Is he a spokeman, I wonder, for this right wing group??

They pretend to be friends of the 3rd world poor, too, while pushing a pro-Capitalist (and big Capitalist) line.

[Janus]

This is the Science & Environment forum not the Politics forum. Although I do agree that it is quite a "coincidence" that much of the skeptics are backed by big business, let's keep the political strawmen to a minimum and discuss this matter scientifically please?

[Luís Henrique]

It seems that fossile combustibles are made of atmospheric carbon fixed by plants in a distant past. So, in burning this carbon, we are sending it back into atmosphere - and - recreating the atmospheric composition of that distant past. The questions are - what was that atmospheric composition? and, at what rate are we recreating it?

As far as I know, the planet was, in the past, a greenhouse. So we are turning it back into a greenhouse. At what rate? I would dare say the process has only started - but the rate is an increasing rate. In other words, by insisting in the road we have followed up to now, we are certainly running to disaster. The only doubt is what disaster comes first - ecological and metheorological crisis due to global warming, or economic crash due to the increasing costs of extracting fossile fuel.

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Much as I agree with you, Janus, I find it difficult as a Marxist to separate the two.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 17, 2007 06:56 am
Much as I agree with you, Janus, I find it difficult as a Marxist to separate the two.
I agree; lets keep the politics focused on the politics of science, but lets not avoid those politics.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 16, 2007 08:35 pm
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...2-in-ice-cores/ line.
this a great reference; I ve read it with much interest - thank you very much.....however, it seems less than conclusive.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

You are right; but few things in science are conclusive -- except banalities.