Comments on: Wanted: Scientists To Undermine UN Report On Global Warming

By: Jim Satterfield

Jim Satterfield — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:29:01 +0000

The “scientists” that AEI and CEI recruit don’t do any original research of their own. They make criticisms of the work of others that don’t go through peer review and are only meant to be referred to by people like IM and make their way into the media.

IM tries to create a false equivalency between researchers who will never become wealthy from their work and energy companies who see their profits as being threatened by conservation and other possible solutions to the AGW issues. Somehow I just don’t see the motivations as being the same for a researcher maybe making in the upper 5 figures and an Exxon-Mobil who just announced annual profits of $39.5 billion. Then he claims it is the scientists and others who agree on the existence of AGW who are vilifying people.

It was just the other day on NPR that Marlowe Lewis, a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute when asked if Bush should shift course on warming said “If the country believed in voodoo should Bush become a witch doctor?”. Quit pretending that this class of “skeptic” is interested in what the science really says, please.

By: Rudi

Rudi — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 00:00:07 +0000

Iconic – When has the Sierra Club payed out a $10,000 bounty for pro-enviroment articles. Maybe Armstrong Williams will junp at the offer.

By: Radio Left

Radio Left — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:12:42 +0000

Is it getting hot in here?…

Crooks and Liars

Global Warming is back in the news today. Mike posted about it in the Round Up already. (Mike tends to get to stories pretty quickly if you read through the round ups regularly.)
Isn’t it sickening that Big Oil&n…

By: Iconic Midwest

Iconic Midwest — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 22:52:29 +0000

I never understood how if some think tank gets some money from an oil company everything they say can be discounted without even bothering to see if their work stands up to scrutiny. But if, for example, the Sierra club produces or sponsers work it is treated as if it was the gospel brought down from heaven itself.

Research stands on the quality of the work itself and motiations dont enter into it in the slightest. Denying that makes you UNscientific.

If you can demolish someones work from the stanpoint of science more power to you. But villifying people isn’t scientific.

It IS slightly fascistic.

By: Jim Satterfield

Jim Satterfield — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 20:13:53 +0000

The AEI and the CEI might as well be clones. Neither organization is interested in honest debate on either the scientific or policy issues concerning AGW. If you want to know something about the history of it that you certainly won't hear from those groups Naomi Oreskes, a science historian has an article on it in the Washington Post that I wrote a brief post about here.

By: Rudi

Rudi — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 19:26:48 +0000

This is a false story, George Soros paid someone to plant this story. Go to AEI and look at their statements on Iraq, they are always Right.

By: Ryan S.

Ryan S. — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 19:02:44 +0000

Did anyone catch the show 2057 on the Science channel a few days ago? That show is a must watch! It seem that solar technology will be the way to go check this truely awesome discovery out. If this pans out it will most likely solve our energy need for the indefinite future. Here's the money quote.

The Carnot limit on the conversion of sunlight to electricity is 95% as opposed to the theoretical upper limit of 33% for a standard solar cell.

The 2057 show said that they where expecting around an 80% efficientcy with the nanocrystal photovoltaics. With that efficentcy the averave surface area of a homes roof could not only generate enough energy to fill that house's need but also four additional homes.

By: mikkel

mikkel — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:23:17 +0000

Thanks for filling in some more detail angliss. In my opinion the problem on both sides is the focusing on a silver bullet to take care of all our ills. There actually is one, fusion power, but who knows when we’ll get that. In the short term, we need to focus on using alternatives like solar, geothermic and wind to help reduce energy needs instead of pretending like they can answer them all.

If we had custom tailored solutions to get energy from the environment “passively” then nuclear power plants (which like you pointed out on your blog could potentially be great if they were breeder reactors) could fill in the demand for quite a long time. I’m confident that biofuels could be used to power most transportation and some genetic engineering is the key to making plants that are optimal for that.

Lastly, there is some promising research coming out on superconductors. Since superconductors don’t have any electrical resistance they could be used to transport power over vast distances without energy loss. It’d be expensive to make, but there are some remote areas in the country that could produce massive amounts of electricity, and with superconducting wire they could power cities hundreds or thousands of miles away.

By: angliss

angliss — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:06:09 +0000

Ethanol is loony the way its done these days (using corn kernals), and without serious government commitment, celluosic ethanol (using corn stalks, wood chips, switchgrass, etc.) won't be come economically viable for a while, if ever (apparently it's a chemistry problem). Ethanol is king because Iowa has political clout that is WAY out of proportion to its economic and demographic power. Hydrogen is great, if you can make it using something other than coal or natural gas, and if you can distribute it, and if you can store it. And even then, it's still probably wrong for the transportation sector (see Questions About a Hydrogen Economy, Scientific American, May 2004). I've discussed this in far greater detail at my own blog and at the 5th Estate

By: George Sorwell

George Sorwell — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 16:56:52 +0000

Wow! Did everyone read that comment by the Daily Pundit? Everything that happens is just further proof of how right he is, and how anyone who disagrees is just acting in bad faith.

By: Paul Silver

Paul Silver — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 16:19:38 +0000

It seems to me that even if there were legitimate doubt about the human contribution to global warming it is still good policy to accelerate the reduction of emissions, of any kind, into the environment.

By: Lynx

Lynx — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 15:57:10 +0000

I have to agree that the only place that mankinds role in climate change is in any state of real doubt is the US, much like the only place where evolution is considered “debatable” is rural Kansas (at least within the US). Industry sponsored scientists are already suspect, much like a greenpeace funded scientist might be. Still though, science is science. If a scientist finds reasonable evidence that global warming is NOT due largely to mankind, and such evidence holds it’s own under review by peers, then OK. That’s what the Fox news people don’t want to get; that acceptance by the larger scientific community is essential to good science. It’s not a popularity issue, nor is it purely political, the fact is that if your experiment is not falsifiable, reproductible etc. it’s not good science.
What the Faux News folks never explain is why all the scientists in the damn world want to gang up on humanity. The say the ominous “liberal agenda” as if scientists somehow had an “L” branded on our back upon graduation and sweared loyalty to the “liberal agenda” (which includes lowering polution for no good reason, aparently).

By: Michael van der Galien

Michael van der Galien — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 14:36:23 +0000

They will get great play on Fox News, Sean and Rushâ€™s show but most likely not impact the views of the vast majority of Americans or many citizens throughout the world.

Trust me, the only place where the “human activity doesn’t cause global warming”-crowd has any impact at all is in America. The rest of the world knows better.

To put it more blunty: Europeans have the tendency to laugh at America when certain Americans / American organizations say that human activity doesn’t cause / increase global warming significantly.

Whatever other scientists say, funded by this type of people, it will be ignored in Europe or Europeans will laugh at it in utter amazement.

By: mikkel

mikkel — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 14:33:35 +0000

I think it’s comically tragic that the issue still has a industry/environmentalism tag when Walmart and the insurance industry have embraced the idea that we should try to do something about global warming. Even the Secretary of the Treasury thinks we should join Kyoto and that it would greatly increase future economic growth.

It’s so stupid to let the energy companies frame the debate the way they do. Most of the proposed alternatives could (theoretically) be made much more cheaply than gas, so after a decade or two of marginally slower growth our economy would explode.

Even worse is the fact that politicians seem to be putting most of our hopes on hydrogen fuel cells without recognizing that they are just batteries, not energy producers. A enviro-economic report a couple years ago projected that it’d make better sense from both standpoints to forget about the “hydrogen” economy and rapidly adopt hybrids while furthering research on biofuels (where currently corn, one of the most energy consuming crops is being used for stupid political reasons), solar, nuclear, geothermic, wind and potentially fusion.