LETTERS: Students urge action on global warming

[Ted Closson]

Rick Moss wrote:

That would be useful advice -- if this was actually about solutions.
However, this is about political power -- and getting it in the time-honoured method of scaring the crap out of the plebes.

Oh, I absolutely believe that! Has anyone been watching this administration for the last eight years? I don't even watch regular news because of the garbage they pull. The only reason I'm even in your forum right now is one of your members was stupid enough to use my press release in support of his own argument. Just here to make it clear to you whose really been manipulated. It's easy to say someone is ignorant when you don't have them right there to contradict you. I generally try to give folks the benefit of the doubt, but none of you are helping my impression of the Midwest right at the moment.

[Ted Closson]

Anonymous wrote:

c02 did not cause the late 20th century warming. We were on a downward trend until the El Nino. But now in the 21st century, there has been no warming at all. Stasis. Hmm...I wonder what people are going to say when the temperature starts going down?
my sources:
http://www.youtube.com/watch...

Yes, youtube is such a great resource! Or at least no worse than any other link anyone here has handed me. So I offer you this in counterpoint:

http://www.youtube.com/watch...

[Anonymous]

Ted Closson:

In shakesperes time there was malaria in london. Malaria in london? Impossible! It would have to be warmer then today! We didn't have c02 factories! How could it be warmer then today?!

And the romans grew grapes in england. There's your global warming based on your own logic. EPIC FAIL

[Kitten]

Heres to you "JRS"..... FUCK YOU! and I can almost bet that your a fat ugly balding man in his 30s who still lives in his mother's basement and believes what the dust bunnies tell him. ooh ya, and about that brain washing of students, you probably never got into any colleges so your just jealous of those of us that succeded and actually have a life, so to make yourself feel better you say we college students are brainwashed when really we are soo much smarter than you..clearly from your comments, a dead dog is smarter than you!

[JFR22]

I don't think it's so much brainwashing students as scaring them half to death by a one-sided presentation of the science, and likely teaching them that global warming caused by humans is a "fact."

If I were terrified that the world was ending I'd write letters too.

[JRS]

Kitten wrote:

Heres to you "JRS"..... FUCK YOU! and I can almost bet that your a fat ugly balding man in his 30s who still lives in his mother's basement and believes what the dust bunnies tell him. ooh ya, and about that brain washing of students, you probably never got into any colleges so your just jealous of those of us that succeded and actually have a life, so to make yourself feel better you say we college students are brainwashed when really we are soo much smarter than you..clearly from your comments, a dead dog is smarter than you!

Thank you for the table pounding demonstration of the AGW crisis peddler shtick.(and funny)
Many say the sky is blue. Enough said.
The AGW crisis peddler type people say the sky is falling and then spend the rest of their lives keeping themselves convinced of it lest any should actually make an observation.
An observation that would conclude that it is not falling.
It is kind of like trying to read a book in a crowded noisy room, introduce enough distraction and people can not concentrate.
It is a brainwashing technique.

"there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition.

The concept of "scientific consensus" is popular among laymen because it allows them to avoid learning any actual scientific facts"
http://www.mwilliams.info/archive/2006/07/sci...

"If you have a good case, pound the case; if you have a bad case, pound the table." If you hear that people are pounding the table, it indicates they don’t have very good arguments."

Interview with Bjorn Lomborg: Science versus name-calling
http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2001dec...

[Ted Closson]

Wouldn't be this Bjorn Lomborg would it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lombo...

If you'd like to be reasonable, rather than doing simply what you've accused us of doing (i.e., name calling), I'd be happy to hear a technical take or a book list from someone here. Convince me. I'll listen, but I want you to understand something right now. If I'm going to entertain your possibilities you have to entertain mine. All that means is that you reason through logically. Consider that something from the other side might be right as I am offering to do for you now.

You are accusing us of being brainwashed by a single viewpoint, yet how much of the opposition have you allowed to speak? How many positions with which you disagree have you listened to? The only reason I am here pestering any of you right now is because I uncovered your use of my hard work. I go to school full time, I work a forty hour work week, and I maintain a 3.98 cumulative grade point average. I work very hard, and so it angers me somewhat when others take my hard work and use it for their own ends without my knowledge or permission. Now I understand that this is in part representational of the larger world and that things such as this must happen often enough, but I'm also sure its rare that you are caught and confronted for doing this. I didn't ask to be included in this discussion, but since I am and you seem to want your side of the story to be heard I'll let you in on a little lesson from the leadership course I'm taking right now:

You don't win followers to your cause by finding those who agree with you. You win them by convincing those who do not agree to join you. If you want your opinion to be heard, you have to find common points. You have to be reasonable. You have to be the better person. Utilizing someone's press release to make a point with "facts" about that article you can't back up doesn't prove a thing. It just angers people. While you may be correct about a bunch of grade school children from your own area, you lied about me. You don't know me. Each set of circumstances are unique, the understanding of this fact implies a higher order of reasoning.

I've linked this forum to hundreds of other people by this point. How many of them do you think you've convinced with your arguing?(don't confuse argument- legal/deconstructive, with arguing- what children do with their siblings) I agree some changes may be more costly than others (I'm not talking entirely about money, you shouldn't be either, it isn't the only thing that matters here), but if you're fighting from the less popular position you have a longer and more carefully chosen road to go. Think.

If yours is the correct path, convince me. But remember, its a complex issue. It won't be obvious to anyone who doesn't immediately agree with you. I haven't read what you've read, or seen what you've seen. I've seen and done the things that convinced me otherwise. I can no more alter your experiences before now than you can mine. If you want me to believe as you believe and see as you see, you have to start changing those experiences now.

[Ted Closson]

Press Flatular wrote:

We have record cold temperatures all over the globe, including many deaths as a result. Scientists coming forward calling it a hoax. Judges curbing the propaganda in public schools. Changing the the call to arms from "Global warming" to "Climate change".

I'm sorry. I believe I asked for literature to read in order to educate myself further on the matter. Not the personal opinion of an internet "expert".

[Avatar of Truth]

Ted, you're being very arrogant. Nevertheless, here:

http://www.iceagenow.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch...

http://www.youtube.com/watch...

http://www.youtube.com/watch...

[Ted Closson]

Avatar of Truth wrote:

Ted, you're being very arrogant. Nevertheless, here:
http://www.iceagenow.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch...
http://www.youtube.com/watch...
http://www.youtube.com/watch...

Thank you very much for these.

I apologize for what may come off as arrogance, but I thought it was pretty arrogant of JRS to use things that they/he/she/it didn't have the whole story regarding and then act high and mighty when somebody called them on it. It doesn't help the case for opposing views when someone is running around lying about the particulars.

[The Truth Matters]

Ted Closson wrote:

<quoted text>
Thank you very much for these.
I apologize for what may come off as arrogance, but I thought it was pretty arrogant of JRS to use things that they/he/she/it didn't have the whole story regarding and then act high and mighty when somebody called them on it. It doesn't help the case for opposing views when someone is running around lying about the particulars.

Ted, here are a few more for your perusal. Most are blogs with links to relevant research. Have fun.

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/
http://www.climateaudit.org/
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/12/2006-probab...
http://www.climatepolice.com/
http://www.climatescience.org.nz/
http://globalwarming.org/research
http://www.john-daly.com/
http://www.warwickhughes.com/climate/

[JRS]

Ted Closson wrote:

<quoted text>
Thank you very much for these.
I apologize for what may come off as arrogance, but I thought it was pretty arrogant of JRS to use things that they/he/she/it didn't have the whole story regarding and then act high and mighty when somebody called them on it. It doesn't help the case for opposing views when someone is running around lying about the particulars.

JRS is here for one reason. People all over the world search the internet for “global warming” Many will end up on this forum. JRS will counter the AGW crisis peddlers shtick with quotes from all those imaginary people that don’t exist. You know the: "Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis.” GAG!
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html...

If you don’t like it you have 3 choices.
1) Fight me by posting the standard issue AGW crisis shtick and then look foolish. Not hard to do at all. Everything the peddlers claim is easily shown to be fabricated and hardly believed by no such “consensus."
2) Don’t post lies and fabrications in which case I leave you alone.
3) Toughen up to the real world or go home.

The phony AGW crisis deserves grass roots revealing of the fraud that it is. I do not want to sit by while my family, friends, countrymen and the rest of the world are lied too.
"The reality is that Gore is the biggest con artist of the century, enabled by a politically biased and uncritical media promoting this pseudoscience "
http://www.thevillagenews.com/story.php...

Ted Closson is this what you refer to?
"pretty arrogant of JRS to use things that they/he/she/it didn't have the whole story regarding and then act high and mighty when somebody called them on it."
Heres to you "JRS"..... FUCK YOU! and I can almost bet that your a fat ugly balding man in his 30s who still lives in his mother's basement and believes what the dust bunnies tell him. ooh ya, and about that brain washing of students, you probably never got into any colleges so your just jealous of those of us that succeded and actually have a life, so to make yourself feel better you say we college students are brainwashed when really we are soo much smarter than you..clearly from your comments, a dead dog is smarter than you!

[JRS]

Ted Closson wrote:

<quoted text>
Oh, I absolutely believe that! Has anyone been watching this administration for the last eight years? I don't even watch regular news because of the garbage they pull. The only reason I'm even in your forum right now is one of your members was stupid enough to use my press release in support of his own argument. Just here to make it clear to you whose really been manipulated. It's easy to say someone is ignorant when you don't have them right there to contradict you. I generally try to give folks the benefit of the doubt, but none of you are helping my impression of the Midwest right at the moment.

What press release?

[JRS]

You must mean By Kennebec Journal Staff report Global warming subject for art students http://news.mainetoday.com/updates/020720.htm...

[Cthulhu]

here's some more blogs

http://www.realclimate.org/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/
http://rabett.blogspot.com/

[Cthulhu]

oh and http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/

[The Truth Matters]

Oh, and don't forget this one:
http://climatesci.org/

It would seem that there is a robust debate going on over man's contribution to our current warming - contrary to anyone's protestations.

[Nathan Grant]

I want to understand what JRS and friends' actual points of view are first of all.

Are you saying that the United Nations is essentially incorrect about global climate change? If so, in what ways is the U.N. wrong?(cite your sources)

Do you believe that global climate change is not cause by humans in any way? OR that humans contribute but are not the only factor in climate change?

[Lie Detective]

Ted Closson wrote:

Yeah, this is the student whose press release you decided to use to make your point about brainwashing. I am not a child, nor am I a fool (which is why I'm not falling for anything you just wrote above).I have a father who taught earth science for 30 years who made certain his children understood certain things. He is an intelligent, educated and thoughtful man. I was raised very much to think about the world around myself in an empirical way. To question the things that I encountered. That is what the scientific method is all about. Science doesn't prove things (though people who don't understand it often think that it does), it only fails to disprove them. How is it that there is a consensus in the scientific community and yet it remains a debate amongst the press (not scientists), politicians (also not scientists) and the public (not known in general for their expertise in climatology). These are the same groups from which those who claim falseness regarding the astronauts landing on the moon, the roundness of the earth and the ideas of a Copernican system.
Fifty people just died in those tornadoes across the South. There are snow and typhoons in places in where there haven't been in all of recorded weather history. People are dying- in our own country- right now- because of climate change. I'm not talking about ocean levels, or migratory changes of some species on its way out of extinction. I'm talking about human beings killed in catastrophic storms the likes of which we haven't seen. Diseases spread by insects like the Asian Tiger mosquito (already in Maryland) and viruses normally attributed to warmer climates the likes of which you think only exist in third world countries. Now we can probably survive all of those things (I live in Maine you live in Wisconsin, we might be okay for a while), but we are not invincible. You can't run from this, or hide from it. Sticking your fingers in your ears or shoving your head in the sand will not alter the truth of this and thankfully decisions are not left in the hands of people like you.
But the fact remains that you have ill used my efforts and should answer for it. To that I say this: You embarrass me. And you embarrass yourself.

Are you trying to say that AGW is causing tornadoes?
Can you explain how AGW is causing tornadoes?

AGW is not the answer to every environmental disaster that has occured recently. Tornadoes have been occuring for a long, long, time.

[Rick Moss]

Lie Detective wrote:

<quoted text>
AGW is not the answer to every environmental disaster that has occured recently. Tornadoes have been occuring for a long, long, time.

Au contraire -- Al Gore has provided irrefutable evidence that weather didn't even exist before George Bush took office in 2001

Never deny the Goreacle -- blasphemer!