"But Global Warming is a HOAX!!!"

I may give in and strangle the next person who says 'but 1976 was worse!' whenever Britain experiences record breaking hot weather. Oh and then of course we get a couple of unseasonably wet days at the start of July so clearly climate change isn't a thing.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
I think it's a legal requirement if the workplace has more than X number of employees. I know it definitely is for workplaces that regularly receive deliveries as part of their requirement to provide rest facilities for hauliers.
Click to expand...

At my last place of work, we had a single shower on every floor (in the handicapped toilet) and a full set of male and female showers on the first floor, each with an associated locker room. Bicycle parking was in the ground floor parking area within the building with enough racks for 200 bicycles.

The most bikes I ever saw, in the parking area were just over 100, so the building planners had catered very well. Most of the racks were wall mounted, and each rack allowed two bikes to hang from the frame, side by side, with the tyres resting on the wall. The racks were a very simple design, a small triangular frame with one side mounted to the wall, holding a pair of off set horizontal pegs (so that the handlebars of the two bikes don't clash). To get my bike onto the peg, I'd wheel it up on the back wheel, then lift the bike a couple of inches to hook the front of the frame over the peg.

There were also a lot of racks that were for horizontal parking, where the cyclists could just wheel their bikes into the rack without lifting it at all (great for heavier bikes and older riders).

As a general rule of thumb, most of us that used the hanging racks had road bikes, and the people that used the floor racks rode mountain bikes or hybrids.

From that parking area, there was a single flight of stairs to the showers/locker rooms and toilets.

Building design is definitely important for encouraging people to ride to work.
 
dann said:
30 years ago, ABATE actually argued that helmets caused fatalities by breaking the necks of motorcyclists in accidents. I don't know if statistics just weren't very good back then, but according to this Wikipedia article they appear to have given up on that argument in favor of the "dubious premise that they violate individual rights or invade privacy."

The argument is very similar to the current MAGA argument for gas stoves - except that fractured skulls don't cause much CO2 emission ...
Click to expand...

Helmets saved my brother and sister-in-law's lives. Riding in Montana, a big ass mule deer came out of the woods. They hit it square on the side. Flipped them and their Harley Trike head over heels.

My other brother was behind them and witnessed it. He was not wearing a helmet. He has since vowed to never ride without a helmet again.

Edit to add: My apologies. I hope this doesn't start a derail.
 
Last edited:
ZiprHead said:
Helmets saved my brother and sister-in-law's lives. Riding in Montana, a big ass mule deer came out of the woods. They hit it square on the side. Flipped them and their Harley Trike head over heels.

My other brother was behind them and witnessed it. He was not wearing a helmet. He has since vowed to never ride without a helmet again.

Edit to add: My apologies. I hope this doesn't start a derail.
Click to expand...
Ever so slight addition to derail because...I can walk and talk today owing to a bicycle helmet. Hit by a car, flight, hard landing, coma....as it was I broke my neck and shoulder and some nerves and maybe a little bitty bit of skull, had road rash where the helmet rubbed my head as I bounced down the pavement. But my brains stayed inside. Wear your helmet. End of derail.
 
The Radical Fringe of Society

I have started reading David Lipsky's book mentioned in post 128:
dann said:
On a serious note: Has anybody read this book?
Author David Lipsky joins Morning Joe to discuss his new book 'The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial.' Lipsky traces the origins of climate denial.
'The Parrot and the Igloo' traces the history of climate denialism (MSNBC on YouTube, July 12, 2023)
Click to expand...

The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial (GoodReads)
Click to expand...


I was looking up one of David Lipsky's references when I stumbled on this 11-year-old article:
Billboards popping up in the Chicago area compare climate change scientists and advocates with Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, murderer Charles Manson and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
The billboards, paid for [by] the Heartland Institute, are designed to promote the organization's International Congress on Climate Change in Chicago later this month. The Heartland Institute describes itself as a nonprofit devoted to promoting free-market solutions for social and economic problems.
(...)
"The point is that believing in global warming is not 'mainstream,' smart, or sophisticated," the organization wrote. "In fact, it is just the opposite of those things." [ The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted ]
(...)
Nevertheless, Heartland has sought to portray itself as on the defensive. In its most recent statement, the organization writes that the leaked memo scandal "revealed that the leaders of the global warming movement are willing to break the law and the rules of ethics to shut down scientific debate and implement their left-wing agendas."
"The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society," the statement reads. "This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen."
Billboards tie climate experts to 'madmen' (NBC News, May 4, 2023)
Click to expand...


And The Heartland Institute is still at it:
Our Mission
To discover, develop, and promote free-market solutionsto social and economic problems."
Click to expand...

VIDEO: CLINTEL Exposes The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC – Climate Change Roundtable #71
They even use the 'frozen-Al-Gore' photo newyorkguy used in post 131.

It has become pretty obvious who is "on the radical fringe of society", hasn't it?!


ETA: Recently, the main concern of The Heartland Institute seems to have been the alleged ruinous effects of minimum wage proposals.
 
Last edited:
The "left wing agendas" comment is revealing. In my experience climate change deniers are mostly the sort of people who resent any attempt to stop them doing whatever they want to maximise their own personal wealth, regardless of how much suffering it causes anybody else. "Left wing agendas" reduced the amount of profit they could make by insisting toxic waste from factories was safely disposed of instead of just flushed straight into the nearest river, faulty machinery is replaced before it kills the workers, children should not be put up chimneys ....

Of course they're going to see the discovery that burning fossil fuel is damaging the environment as another attempt by those who are foolish enough to care about the welfare of others to stop them making as much money as possible.
 
Bjørn Lomborg, anthropogenic-global-warming denialist and minimizer

I think it pays well to set yourself up as a global-warming denialist or minimizer. If you pretend to be an expert and have any kind of university degree, for instance in political science, conservative 'think tanks' will line up to support you:
Bjørn Lomborg (Wikipedia)
Copenhagen Consensus Center (Wikipedia)
Hoover Institution: Bjorn Lomborg (Hoover Institution)

Rolling Stone got it very wrong: "Lomborg pulls off the remarkable feat of welding the techno-optimism of the Internet age with a lefty's concern for the fate of the planet." (Wikipedia)
So did Penn & Teller BS!: "The U.S. Showtime television programme featured an episode entitled "Environmental Hysteria" in which Lomborg criticised what he claimed was environmentalists' refusal to accept a cost-benefit analysis of environmental questions, and stressed the need to prioritise some issues above others." (Wikipedia)
But they were always pretty consistent in their praise to any kind of libertarian BS.

Rational Wiki praises most of P&T's BS! series*, but mentions that:
Unfortunately a number of episodes are BS themselves and veer off into pseudoscepticism and denialism, making the show as a whole a bit of a paradoxical combination of stopped clock and inverse stopped clock. Generally speaking, the show's coverage of woo and general crankery is pretty good, while episodes that deal with social trends, politics, environmentalism, and economics vary in quality — in no small part due to the then pretty strong libertarian beliefs of Penn & Teller.
Click to expand...


About the episode Environmental Hysteria, Rational Wiki writes:
By far the biggest BS in this BS! episode is the FUD surrounding global warming; Penn shouts: "WE'RE NOT SURE YET" at the top of his voice. To help them with this is Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute, who trots out the ice age fallacy. In 2003, when this episode aired, there was already abundant data available on global warming to be reasonably sure that it's real, and caused by human activity. At the same time, Taylor handwaves any potential harmful impact on the basis that we're doing fine so far.
(...)
A refutation is offered in the form of Bjørn Lomborg, also not a scientist, whose work has been excoriated by numerous actual scientists such as E.O. Wilson and Stephen Schneider[citation needed] and not just hippies and eco-nuts, and a 20-something old spokesperson at an environmentalist rally who's asked critical questions (but doesn't really have an answer ready at any of them). Patrick Moore,Wikipedia the Greenpeace-founder-turned-critic, provides commentary on most issues throughout the episode.
In the episodes that focus on woo, Penn often points out people's lack of credentials and counters woomeisters' nonsense with actual scientists, but here, only non-scientists represent the environmentalist view. There is very little actual content.
Click to expand...


That Lomborg still appears as an 'expert' of Fox News says it all:
Fox News “expert”
In line with Lomborg’s other work, or rather appearances, he was also trotted out on Fox News when they decided to blame the February 2021 Texas blackouts following extreme cold weather, not on climate changes or an insufficiently prepared energy grid but on wind turbines and using it to scaremonger about the Green New Deal. And of course, this was hardly Lomborg’s first gig as a Fox “expert”, as, among other things, he took to the network to defend Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement (Wikipedia) in 2017.
Bjørn Lomborg: Fox News “expert” (Rational Wiki)
Click to expand...


*ETA: As always, ISF's autocorrect ruins any attempt to write the word for which BS is an acronym. This also makes it impossible to link the Rational Wiki's article about the TV series Penn & Teller's ********!

ETA: Penn Gillette has changed his mind since the BS! episode, but it's a bit contrived to blame Al Gore for his mistake back the:
 
Last edited:
A sad history of oil companies putting corporate health above human survival. From the Greenpeace website:

  • 1982 Exxon’s Environmental Affairs Programs manager M.B. Glaser sends Exxon management a primer on climate change. The primer is “restricted to Exxon personnel and not distributed externally.” It describes “potentially catastrophic events” if fossil fuel use is not reduced.
  • By 1992 Exxon has become a member of American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which actively undermines action on climate change at the federal and state levels.
  • January 2004 ExxonMobil puts out a new ad titled, “Directions for climate research.” The ad argues for “uncertainties that limit our current ability to know the extent to which humans are affecting climate and to predict future changes caused by both human and natural forces.” The same month, Exxon’s “Weather and climate” ad takes a similar tack, arguing that “scientific uncertainties continue to limit our ability to make objective, quantitative determinations regarding the human role in recent climate change
  • 2023 19 Senate Democrats use the chamber floor to highlight the fossil fuel industry’s–including ExxonMobil’s–“web of denial” around climate change. The same day Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) introduce a resolution arguing that fossil fuel companies created a “misinformation campaign to mislead the public and cast doubt in order to protect their financial interest.”
Greenpeace link
Click to expand...

CO2 levels in atmosphere
1982 341ppm
2022 419 ppm
2023 421 ppm

[IMGW=400]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1474&pictureid=13621[/IMGW]
 
Exxon has stated what is always the fallback position of climate change denial. "Scientific uncertainties continue to limit our ability to make objective, quantitative determinations regarding the human role in recent climate change."

If you read science journals you discover that's true. Only it doesn't mean what the denial crowd want you to believe. The two major uncertainties are:
  • Uncertainties about future human actions, especially those that affect the sources and sinks [removal] of greenhouse gases;
  • Uncertainties about how the climate system will respond to mitigation actions.
 
Yes, claiming "scientific uncertainties" when everything is crystal clear appears to be the best way to go ahead with anything that kills people, be it selling cigarettes, ignoring pandemics or ruining the climate. I have only read the first third of David Lipsky's The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial (GoodReads) and have not yet begun reading Part Three: Deniers, but the book is full of examples of the strategy of oil companies, their lobbyists and thus their politicians.

For instance:
The council chairman told the Times, "The report is an extremely important, perhaps historic statement." He expected it to become "very influential in government decision making." (He was in a sense correct. After assuming office, President Ronald Reagan would quickly try to shut down the Council on Environmental Quality.)
The White House, presented with these reports - the Jasons' especially - followed the course charted by the Los Angeles oil companies: It asked for a second opinion.
So in the summer of 1979, the National Academy of Sciences formed an additional, follow-up panel. It was headed by Dr. Jule Charney - a professor at MIT, and a climate change skeptic. "I don't think we can predict climate now and I wouldn't trust anyone who said he could," Dr. Charney told a Times reporter n 1974. "Anyone who says he can tell you more than a few days ahead of time what the weather is going to is practicing necromancy." (p. 125)
Click to expand...


Apparently, the case of the 'Havana syndrome' was not the first time that the National Academy of Sciences has been used politically. However, the irony in this case is that the NAS climate-study group didn't come up with the results that the White House had hoped for:

"If carbon dioxide continues to increase, the study group finds no reason to doubt that climate changes will result and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible."
They understood - it's the undertone to their conclusion - just what sort of results the White House might have preferred. "We have tried," the panel reported, "but have been unable to find any overlooked or underestimated physical effects that could reduce the currently estimated global warmings." (p. 126)
Click to expand...


And then the report was ignored, of course, like all the previous and subsequent reports.
 
the newest feint of Big Oil is "everyone needs to do their part to reduce/recycle etc." (even though the contribution to global warming is comes mostly from a handful of companies), and Greenwashing, usually by investing in tech that could reduce carbon emissions at some unspecified time in the future and bragging about it.

The REAL game is to pump as much oil as quickly as possible before the world gets its act together.

They all need to be nationalised and their assets liquidated.
 
Last edited:
The Great Zaganza said:
They all need to be nationalised and their assets liquidated.
Click to expand...


You sound like a communist! :thumbsup:


A parallel to global warming also mentioned in The Parrot and the Eagle: The depletion of the ozone layer by Freon and other CFCs.

Dupont's answer:
1) Unproven theory! Maybe volcanoes cause it?
2) We need more research and development!
3) The threat to the ozone layer is "hypothetical," "assumption," "uncertain," "unwarranted." We need "evidence," "hard facts," "rational science."

And yet, it only took four years to ban CFCs in perfume sprays - but much longer in refrigerators etc.

Frank Luntz (Wikipedia) about global warming (which he successfully renamed climate change to make it sound better):
"Should the public come to believe that scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty an issue in the debate."


And there is always another ******* with a science degree out there eager to object to any scientific results that 'industry' doesn't approve of.
 
Last edited:
TurkeysGhost said:
Is it just more socially acceptable to arrive places all sweaty in these bike friendly cities? Riding a few miles is easy enough, but even shorter rides at anything but a snail's pace is going to result in me sweating a good bit. Riding home is no problem, but the idea of showing up to a full day of work with my shirt sticking to my skin from sweat is a bit of a turnoff. Do Euro offices and worksites just stink of sweaty ass in the warm months from all the cyclists?
Click to expand...
Showers.
TurkeysGhost said:
Ebikes address this a bit too, it's easy to attain commuter speeds on them without working hard.
Click to expand...
Now train the cyclists to obey traffic laws.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
the newest feint of Big Oil is "everyone needs to do their part to reduce/recycle etc." (even though the contribution to global warming is comes mostly from a handful of companies), and Greenwashing, usually by investing in tech that could reduce carbon emissions at some unspecified time in the future and bragging about it.

The REAL game is to pump as much oil as quickly as possible before the world gets its act together.

They all need to be nationalised and their assets liquidated.
Click to expand...

Is there reason to be concerned that if this infrastructure were to be nationalized, that the same incentives that lead the oil companies to deny global warming would lead the new government owners to do the same?
 
gnome said:
Is there reason to be concerned that if this infrastructure were to be nationalized, that the same incentives that lead the oil companies to deny global warming would lead the new government owners to do the same?
Click to expand...

nope.

simply, nope.

because the easiest thing for countries going forward to reach their commitments to reducing carbon is to shut down big carbon producers.
 
catsmate said:
Now train the cyclists to obey traffic laws.
Click to expand...

I give an amount of care about cyclist scofflaws proportional to the potential harm that cycling traffic accidents inflict upon the public, which compared to cars is practically negligible.

It's amusing that car drivers get so bent out of shape about scofflaw cyclists. Driving a 1.5 ton motorized vehicle carries a lot more scrutiny than riding down the street on a 20lb bike and it's totally unreasonable to expect otherwise. It's absolutely appropriate to heavily police car driving and not to give a **** about a cyclist blowing through a stop sign or pedestrians jay walking.
 
Last edited:
I think there are two reasons why Climate Change is being taught to the world in a less than intelligent way.

#1. We keep talking about how this is the hottest its been since 1880. Who cares about 1880? Its an arbitrary number, totally unrelated to science or climate. Yes, its when we started measuring temps, but that has nothing to do with the Earth itself. It would be MUCH better if we talked about how the recent warming relates to and compares to average Earth temps over the last 2,000 or 10,000 years. At least those time frames have some meaning, as opposed to the last 150 years.

#2. We keep on talking about average Earth temperature rising 1 degree Celsius. To the average person, this means nothing. It means less than nothing, as their small brains will be like "so its gonna be 76 degrees instead of 75? Summer temps will go up to 95 instead of 94??? why should anyone care???" They don't get that Average Earth temps going up 1 degrees Celsius means that locally, temperatures could fluctuate much more dramatically, and weather could also and will fluctuate much more dramatically. This needs to be explained much better to our average guy.

picture.php


picture.php
 
Last edited:
Another issue that deniers can grab on to is the various natural warming periods that have occurred over the last 3,000 years.

Minoan Warming Period, Roman Warming Period, Medeaval Warming Period. Deniers can point to these episodes and say "hey look!!!, temperatures were MUCH warmer centuries ago, caused by all natural processes, and the world didn't die!!!"

Of course CO2 levels were MUCH lower back then, so we have no idea how bad things will get THIS time.

picture.php
 
Whew, the high is only supposed to hit 99 (37C) in freedom units today here. Global warming is canceled! Right around July 5th was the last day it didn't hit 100.

Phoenix hit at least 110F for the 20th straight day yesterday, previous record was 18 straight days. 7 day forecast shows the high over 110 every day.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom