Deltoid

But, but....ZOMG AL GORE IS A FAT SOCIALIST NAZI ARRRGGGH!!

Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | April 6, 2008 1:22 PM

Gore's Law: As an online climate change debate grows more intense, the probability that warmers will descend into calling skeptics ,deniers, = 1.

PS. Another great post about science.

A happy denier Peter Bickle

Posted by: Peter Bickle | April 6, 2008 7:24 PM

A "skeptic" who denies solid science is a denier, duh. A "skeptic" who repeats oft-debunked BS as part of his "skepticism" is a denier. Duh again. And that's what global warming deniers do. They aren't skeptics, not in any sane definition of the word, they're deniers.

Posted by: QrazyQat | April 6, 2008 7:38 PM

Let's see Al recently garnered world attention for winning the Nobel as the alarmist in chief for the global warming cause and he is unleashing a 300 million dollar propaganda campaign to convince the world that we face a "climate crisis".

Don't you think that maybe he might be a legitimate target of criticism since he is at the epicenter of the global warming discussion?

Posted by: Lance | April 6, 2008 8:54 PM

I claim firsties

"'But the more I've listened to these speakers, the more I've realized that for most of them, it's not about the science. Panels don't go five minutes without attacking Al Gore or comparing climate activists to socialists who want to destroy capitalism.' http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/3/4/155110/4814
I propose an extension of Gresham's Law."
Posted by: z | March 6, 2008 8:03 PM http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/03/monckton_reckons_gore_is_the_s.php

Posted by: z | April 6, 2008 9:18 PM

9 socialists attacking capitalism

What's really weird about this is that many of the people who do this (claim that AGW believers are attacking capitalism)

a) Have rarely, or never worked for an actual profit-making company that builds useful products or provides useful services.

b)A few work for PR/lobbying organziations that claim to speak for free-market capitalism. But, actually they generally lobby for that tiny subset of companies (of rich family foundations that own them) that make more money by imposing costs (negative externalities in economics) on their customers, employees, the public, or government. No company wants more bureaucracy than necessary, or to pay more taxes, but.... - fighting for cigarette companies - for CFCs - against pollution controls on acid rain - against recognition of AGW

c) Consider the George Marshall Insititute "trio", now finally deceased. Once-great scientists, most of whose useful careers were paid for by taxpayers, they founded a K-Street lobbying outfit, disguised first as science, and second as free-market capitalist defense.

What they were doing had nothing to do with free market capitalism in general, which in fact contains many responsible companies who actually welcome reasonable regulations. Rather, it was for a small set of companies to pollute, or even sell deadly products. [Recall that the business plans of cigarette companies depend on hooking kids while their brains are forming, so they can wire-in lifelong addiction. Hence, candy-flavored cigarettes like "Twista Lime".]

d) Over in Rabett Run, similar discussions caused some idiot to accuse me of being communist, or a fellow traveler, or something like that, working to cause the downfall of market capitalism.

That was truly funny.

Anyway, I'd guess that most who think AGW-recognizers are attacking free market capitalism ... haven't often actuallyparticipated in the latter, at least not in the (mostly) responsible part thereof.

Posted by: John Mashey | April 6, 2008 9:59 PM

z,

Drat! There really is nothing new on the internet. In my defence I would argue that Gore's Law (my version) is based on Goodwin, not Gresham. Perhaps a 60:40 split of any royalties?

Posted by: terence | April 6, 2008 11:05 PM

Lance:

Al [...] is unleashing a [...] propaganda campaign

The denialists just did it again.

Posted by: bi | April 7, 2008 12:08 AM

Tim Curtin's ghost is hale and hearty, it seems.

Kent is displaying his mastery of Curtin's Eternal Carbon Uptake Law which overturned Henry's Law of gaseous dissolution in water. For an ordinary economist, Curtin has been one the great physicists and applied mathematicians of our time. He prefers to be modest about his achievements and one of the ways he does this is by the use of various aliases. See if you can guess what his latest one is.

Posted by: Chris O'Neill | April 7, 2008 4:04 AM

"Uh-oh. Google seems to have it that Al Gore is replacing Michael Moore as the new Fat."

They just don't know how to spell "phat"! ;)

Posted by: Ian | April 7, 2008 8:01 AM

The denialists on this list - including Lance, Climatepatrol, Harold Pierce Jnr, Tim Curtin and his doppelganger kent, amongst others - who are a bit peeved at Al Gore and the extent to which he apparently pollutes the global conversation commons with his uncriticised ideas, might like to participate in a serious conversation over at Real Climate about the merits and otherwise of various forms of peer review.

In the process I think that it would be instructive if they detailed the conspiracy, that must surely exist, that sees so little of their denialist proofs, and their rebuttals of AGW ideas, published in credible media. Forsooth, if they do have incontrovertible evidence that the whole idea of AGW is just a scam, there must be at least one respectable peer-reviewed medium that will bravely enlighten the world and bring all the poor deluded scientists to their senses...

Or is the rumour that denialists are just irrevelant these days really more than just a rumour?

Posted by: Bernard J. | April 7, 2008 9:43 AM

Bernard, you hit the nail on the proverbial head. When you write, "If they do have incontrovertible evidence that the whole idea of AGW is just a scam, there must be at least one respectable peer-reviewed medium that will bravely enlighten the world and bring all the poor deluded scientists to their senses".

But of course there aren't any rigidly peer-reviewed journals that publish much of the nonsense constantly spewed out by the contrarians. The anti-AGW brigade - in reality, the anti-science brigade - especially, the fossil-fuel lobby and the think tanks they fund, are doing everything to distort and mangle the science that they hate. This is being done to promte a pre-determined world view and a brazenly political (= neoliberal) and economic agenda. The key word is regulation, or should I say, de-regulation. Effectively, powerful, vested interests that think and act solely in terms of the fiscal year or even less are aiming to eviscerate public constraints in the pursuit of private profit.

The bottom line is that these well-funded munchkins know that they cannot win the scientific argument, but that is not their aim. All they need to do is to sow enough doubt amongst the public and policy makers in order to undermine policies aimed at dealing with the problem. They have effectively taken the acknowledged uncertaintly over the outcome of AGW and applied this to the process of AGW itself. It's a classic example of public relations genius. That's why the anti-AGW mob has used information warriors, perception managers, and other tricks of the public relations industry to spread their gospel of doubt.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | April 7, 2008 10:28 AM

Hi Jeff,

I don't think that the science surrounding AGW is a scam. Some of it is quite good. Some of it makes conclusions not supported by its evidence and some of it is quite poor, both in the quality of its data and methods and the validity of its conclusions (Mann's hockey stick comes to mind).

The spin machine that uses this science is the problem, especially when abetted by such unabashed alarmist activist as James Hansen and Lonnie Thompson. Despite the hype of these vocal doomsayers the planet doesn't need to be "saved" and there are very large uncertainties involved that preclude irrational calls to disassemble the world's energy economy.

Posted by: Lance | April 7, 2008 12:01 PM

Also, wrt the hockey stick. When was the last time that a supporter of AGW used MBH98 as a reason to be concerned about climate change? The way the denialists prattle on you'd think it was the prime evidence.

It's okay, we look forward to hearing about it for the next ten years.

Posted by: Boris | April 7, 2008 12:13 PM

Bernard Thanks for including me in such an learned group of heavy hitters. Peer review is overrated. Drunks in a beer parlour are peers as well. CO2 at Mona Loa is behind the average and may actually drop this year for the first time in decades.

Here in Canada we are at least three weeks behind spring. Everything points to yet another cold year and all y;ou guys have is CO2 is a greenhouse. Regardless of what any of us believe, if we have another poor grain harvest world wide things are going to get very rough for many of the world's poorest. Three billion eat rice as their staple and the price of rice has risen close to 50% since the begining of 2008. Many of the worlds exporters of rice have banned the export of this staple, can food riots be far behind.Corn is up 300% and the list goes on. By focusing all your attention on CO2 you are missing the big events in the world. Who do you think is going to be blamed when the world realizes they have been distracted by warmists to the extent that millions have starved to death? It is not going to be your sceptics who take the blame.

Posted by: kent | April 7, 2008 5:49 PM

Here's my own version of Gore's law, and it's one that I actually follow:

If a global warming polemic contains an attack on Al Gore, the rest of it can be safely ignored without missing anything meaningful.

Posted by: Steve Reuland | April 7, 2008 6:52 PM

well, i confess that i owe the theoretical underpinnings of my derivation of the law to the fine experimental work of miles grant http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/3/4/155110/4814 so i declare any and all of my share of it public domain. proving what a commie i am.

Posted by: z | April 7, 2008 10:36 PM

Tim kentin.

Yes, there are serious concerns held for many of the global grains markets.

However, you have not explained how these emerging problems are related to the cataclysmic decrease in atmospheric CO₂ that you predict will result from addressing human CO₂ emissions.

If anything the fact that grain markets are beginning to wobble very worryingly in the face of continued atmospheric CO₂ increase indicates that the grain shortages are a result of factors other than emissions control.

I think that you may be trying to mate a turkey with a chicken.

Posted by: Bernard J. | April 8, 2008 12:13 AM

Let's see Al recently garnered world attention for winning the Nobel as the alarmist in chief for the global warming cause and he is unleashing a 300 million dollar propaganda campaign to convince the world that we face a "climate crisis".

Lance, my friend, the world as a whole has been convinced for a long time that we are in a climate crisis. Gore got his Nobel Prize for convincing Americans.

If you want to starve a few billion people all you need to do is reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, we should be trying to boost the level as fast as we can.

Ignorance speaks!

The only plants that directly respond to increased CO₂ with growth are the conifers. Flowering plants don't show such a simple reaction. Apparently they invest more in the vegetative parts and less in reproduction = seeds = grain when the CO₂ content of the atmosphere increases. Go spend a few hours in Google, and learn.

CO2 lagging temps in the ice core record

How often do you need to be told this?

Yes, in the ice core record, there is this lag. That's because ice ages are ended by astronomical causes. There is no cause for the increase of CO₂ at the end of ice ages except the warming itself which leads to degassing from the ocean and the permafrost.

However, this time, there is no increase in insolation going on. There are no causes for the present warming -- except the increase in CO₂, which is manmade (witness the lack of ¹⁴C and the lack of dramatically increased volcanic activity).

It is rare that the CO₂ content of the atmosphere increases for reasons other than a change in the global average temperature, but examples are known. One are the Deccan Traps, layers of basalt that cover about a third of India. The volcanic eruptions that produced them about 66 million years ago dumped huge amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere, et voilà, the temperature rose by 3 °C, and immediately dropped back to the status quo ante when the eruptions were over. Conversely, when the Tibetan Plateau was lifted above the treeline a few million years ago, it started weathering much faster than before, and when silicates weather, they take up CO₂ from the atmosphere. This well-documented decrease in CO₂ made the current series of ice ages possible.

Posted by: David Marjanović | April 8, 2008 9:35 AM

"KENT! This is Jesus, again. You remember Me from our little chats when you were at Pacific Tech?

Stop telling lies! That's a sin. And you're just not GOOD at it. You tell STUPID lies that no one will believe.

And stop touching yourself down there!"

Posted by: Jesus | April 8, 2008 12:45 PM

Hey #27

Last time MBH98 was used was in Gore's movide!!!

Posted by: iceman | April 8, 2008 5:45 PM

Last time MBH98 was used was in Gore's movide!!!

When Gore Gore Gore is the only person whom you denialists obsess over, it's easy to arrive at this conclusion.

Posted by: bi | April 8, 2008 9:07 PM

kent writes:

It turns out that the current level of CO2 is about the lowest it has been in hundreds of thousands of years( ok millions of years). Don't forget that the 270 ppmv they tell us was the level of CO2 pre-industrial isn't the real number it was closer to 335ppmv.

No, it was closer to 280 ppmv. Where did you get your figure? And in any case, the level now is 385 ppmv, which is higher than 335, not lower.

Insolation had been increasing but is dropping now.

No it isn't. Sunlight has shown no trend either way in 50 years:

http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/LeanTSI.html

Posted by: Barton Paul Levenson | April 9, 2008 7:58 AM

I am probably older than you are Dano and you are right about the desperate, they/you will believe anything. Barton I went to the site you gave and I you should have noticed the data stopped at the year 2000. I know you guys are living in the past but come on ths is now 2008 we are living in keep up to date.

Jeff David is not correct when he wrote that Conifers are the only plants that are effected by CO2, besides conifers are also flowering plants. While I agree with you about limiting factors in plant growth, outside of greenhouse operations the only factor that we don't control is the level of CO2. I don't know what you mean when you talk about nutrients being "shunted out" because of high levels of CO2. They get shunted by osmotic pressure at the root hair nutrient interface. Your accademic snobery is showing when you ask how many journals I have been published in. They say those who can, do those who can't teach. I don't confuse publishing with the ability to figure things and you shouldn't either. Bit off topic Jeff So you play with bugs do you? OK lets play, you say that bugs need nitrogen so in nitrogen depleted plants they will eat more? Won't they breed less in these plants? Just asking. If they need nitrogen then the more nitrogen in the plants the more food they will have which usually means more reproduction. As for Canada's mild winter? Record/high snow falls all across central and eastern Canada not to mention many norther states does not make for a mild winter in my estimation. Yes, it is only one winter but it is outside the computer model's prediction. It was not supposed to happen, The model/s is/are wrong. How many times does a model have to be wrong before it's output is questioned. Almost everything the IPCC has put out has been proven to be incorrect. They tell us our CO2 production stays in the atmosphere from 50-200 years but the majority of the studies give a value of 5-10 years.

Posted by: kent | April 9, 2008 12:02 PM

P. Lewis, Colder winters mean less snow. You must be what is called the missing link. Hello??

Posted by: kent | April 9, 2008 3:29 PM

"Colder winters mean less snow. You must be what is called the missing link. Hello??"

kent kindly demonstrates the principle of ignorance squared. If he had ever lived somewhere cold he would have heard people say "too cold to snow" because very cold air
(< -40) is too cold to hold anything more than a trace of water vapor. Hence the well know (at least in Montana) phrase "too (Insert your favorite expletive) cold to snow"

Of course kent is too clueless to know that he is clueless, hence the entertainment.

Posted by: elspi | April 9, 2008 7:40 PM

Hmmm...

I'm guessing Betula pendula, the weeping birch, or perhaps Betula pubescens, the downy birch - because you're obviously very down about it all. Perhaps Betula hysterica var Troll?

Just stop and blow into a brown paper bag for a few minutes.

Ya know, I expected you to finish with "you must email this to at least 15 other people within the next 5 minutes, otherwise you will be cursed by the Agents of Gore so that you and 7 generations of your descendants will be afflicted with Suppurating Pustules, and Giants Heatwave Flies that will lay their eggs upon you so that their maggots may devour your livers, which will of course regrow every evening so that they may be consumed by maggots again the next day...".

Posted by: Bernard J. | April 10, 2008 12:02 AM

On a slightly less flippant note, I wonder if Betula would care to comment on the status of his/her "few examples of wasteful industries and events that are unecessary and destroying the earth", and of many of his other cherished pass-times, in about 50 years or so. Irrespective of whether there is any climate change.

Paint the picture for us - the world according to you, as you think it will unfold. One page or less will be fine.

Oh, and since you are obviously as sure as the troll (Un)real climate is that no species will become extinct with the climate change that even any but the most lalala-I-can't-hear-you flat-earther warming denialst concedes is happening, perhap you could inform the deluded scientists here exactly how they have it wrong. I'd love to see your evidence.

Or are you ultimately just parodying your own denialist stance through your misbegotten attempt to denigrate those whom you oppose?

Posted by: Bernard J. | April 10, 2008 12:36 AM

"Paint the picture for us - the world according to you, as you think it will unfold. One page or less will be fine"

Bernard....the picture has already been painted by fortune tellers and soothsayers such as yourself....yours is the final word. Lowly people such as myself don't have the ability to predict the coming doom and gloom the way you do.....we take your word for it. You seem upset by something I wrote.Which part of my suggetions for reducing AGW do you disagree with? I was merely repeating what I have read and applying logical, common sense solutions.Would you rather be a cannibal in 20 to 30 years? Now,in response to your self admitting flippancy.....perhaps I am Betula Nigra (Black Birch), because I see a black future unless we take drastic and immediate measures to control a dismal future only you can guarantee. Or perhaps I am Betula Papytifera (Paper Birch) because I see AGW as a Paper Tiger. Please let me know which one you want me to be so my agreeing with you doesn't disagree with you. Oh how I long for the day's of climate consistency when we didn't have to carry on with such discussions.

PS. In 50 years or so my pastime will most likely be decomposition....releasing my C02 contaminated body back into the soil.....if by some fate the C02 hasn't killed me, I'll be too old to catch someone to eat and to weak to avoid being eaten. As for my son, I'm having his incisors sharpened to give him an advantage.

Posted by: Betula | April 10, 2008 9:56 AM

Barton.....switching to renewable resource energy is a great idea, however, it can't exactly be done overnight. My understanding is that we have very little time and need to act now....in 30 years we will be cannibals. I am told I need to switch my lightbulbs and write on the back of a sheet of paper to save the Polar Bears.....wouldn't it be easier to just rid the world of unwarranted luxuries? I mean, if I switch my lightbulbs and then go to see the Broadway lights in New York,I feel a bit foolish. Why is it illogical to wonder why people watch Nascar races while scribbling on the back of a sheet of paper? You call it illogical, I call it being a realist.....if we are running out of time, then shut down the waste.I just read that the travels of the Olympic Torch used 5200 tons of CO2... So would you rather do without the Olympics or have your neighbor for dinner in 30 years? By the way, for every action there is a reaction....so what damage are we doing and what new problems are we creating with a quick switch to renewable resources....only because we panic about cosequences we aren't sure of. Strange, I don't remember saying someone is telling us to give up cars....in fact, I don't remember cars being on my list unless it was for recreation or sport.... If you are as serious as you claim....then fight for the banning of all motor SPORTS ie; cars,planes,boats,motorcyle racing/dirt bikes,snowmobiles,go-carts,jet skis, etc.C'mon guys, the seas are rising,the cute Polar Bears are dying (of course that means less Seals are being eaten).....but forget about the Seals....they aren't cuddly and don't sell well as stuffed animals. And let's face it, a poster of a Polar Bear sinking it's teeth into a Seal with all the blood spurting and the Seal crying out for it's mother, well...that wouldn't help sell the cause. Finally, if we asked the person on the street how many Polar Bears have drowned due to AGW, what would they say? Of course they would be shocked that only 4 Polar Bears have been spotted floating...and it was ASSUMED they drowned...it couldn't have possibly been from any other cause because we all know they live forever. Is this part of the straw man argument?........ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSlB1nW4S54

Posted by: Betula | April 10, 2008 9:34 PM

As lame as a response as that is, I can understand your reasoning for it. You see, if I were to list well known scientists who disagree with you, then you would dispute them. If I were to show data that disputes your theory, you would dismiss it and counter with other data that fits your theory.If I were to show weather patterns around the world that don't live up to your predictions, you would show me weather patterns that meet your criteria. If the world temperatures were to drop for the next 10 years it still wouldn't matter, you would show a 100,000 year graph and dispute it. The fact is, AGW is in your lifetime to stay and no matter what happens....the debate is over and all those who disagree with you will be dismissed as flat earthers.

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