Any Suspicious Observers members here?

Mmmmmmm, you say that like it’s a bad thing.

I could go for that…

I spell poorly. Math was my high point :smiley:

I still could go for randomly-forming desserts.

Lemme go burn some coal to get started…

Thats funny. You always are good for something. :wink:

I really can’t wrap my head around the logic in thinking that human-caused climate change is being exaggerated/falsified for economic reasons, while the price of oil being absolutely essential to the US Dollar - and therefore a huge portion of the world’s economic activity - is completely ignored. That seems like a much larger incentive than the pittance of research grants, etc. that is spent on climate change.

We all know how newspapers like to make big titles even with biaised and flawed studies.

Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the ’70’s? No

I don’t believe there are any climate scientists who claim that 100% of climate change is due only to human causes.

I also think that people with money most often don’t want to waste it. I think it is more difficult to get funding for research testing a hypothesis with no data behind it, as opposed to getting funding for research for testing a hypothesis that has a grounding in existing evidence, because people would rather not spend their money on attempts to prove things not based on facts, or attempts to disprove what is already proven repeatedly, and with a lot of evidence.

For example, would you expect a proposed study attempting to prove that nicotine is not addictive to get funded easily? Or a study trying to prove that cancer can be caused by thoughts that one might get cancer?

It isn’t true that good research proposals based on facts cannot get funding if not proposed by people with connections. Certainly, as in any endeavor, getting funding is easier if one has connections to people with money. But I hear often of research proposals from children’s experiments at science fairs getting funding from people with money who know a good idea when they see one. Similarly, grant proposals are often evaluated in a formal way, with strict protocols intended to weed out bias. The evaluators are not allowed to know where the proposals come from.

I think there is some bias in some environmental/earth science research funding, with regard to which projects get funding and which do not, but the bias has to do with which experiments have a faster and easier payoff for the researchers and for the field scientists who would apply the research. Similarly, in medical research, the funding tends to go to research with a faster and easier payoff. The other diseases get left behind in funding. What follows is predictable, in environmental research and in medical research: if you can see the problem or disease in a microscope and see easily whether your proposed treatment works, it is more likely to get funded. In contrast, if we don’t yet have the technology to see the specific environmental problem or disease, and/or if seeing and quantifying the effects of the tested treatment is more difficult, it is less likely to get funded. In addition, it follows that it is easier to get funding for an experiment of a quick fix of a problem than to get funding for an experiment that is only one of a long, time-consuming series of experiments that would be needed to some day, in the distant future, lead to a fix or cure.

Control.

“Carbon credits”, “carbon-based taxes”, you name it. Whole industries will be put under a big bureaucratic thumb, which can selectively punish or reward even individual companies if they don’t bend over on demand.

People can store huge amounts of gasoline in 55gal drums if need be, but if everyone has electric cars, they can turn off the juice to whole areas just like they’re doing to California because of wildfire threats, and those cars will have limited miles of travel before they just sit dead.

And I just loooooooove genius ideas like “sequestering” CO2 to inject underground under high pressure. Like it won’t fizz up somewhere else, or aquifers won’t end up supplying seltzer instead of water. Ummm, how much energy will it take to do something like that? What’s going to power the pumps to collect and pressurise it?, the transportation from one site to another, making the containers (CO2 tanker-trucks??) and/or pipelines to move it, etc.? :person_facepalming:

It’s lots and lots of makebusy work for one as-yet-uncreated sector while putting other sectors out of business, and the only ones to profit are the bureaucrats “administering” those schemes.

This is already accomplished through unequitable taxation and funding of different industries and power sources, denial/approval of new projects, etc. No fake “boogeyman” of climate change is needed for corporate and government bodies to exert their influence, they have been and are doing that right now.

Look at what has happened to one of the most practical energy sources - nuclear. Was the target of insanely well funded campaigns to limit its development and sway public opinion during the last few decades of the 20th century.

[quote=Lightbringer]

[quote=BurningPlayd0h]

‘And I just loooooooove genius ideas like “sequestering” CO2 to inject underground under high pressure. Like it won’t fizz up somewhere else, or aquifers won’t end up supplying seltzer instead of water. Ummm, how much energy will it take to do something like that? What’s going to power the pumps to collect and pressurise it?, the transportation from one site to another’

Sequestering fracking mixture into the ground is already being done. I agree we should not be pumping crap into our aquifer.

As far as picking winners and losers, harnessing the sun and wind is not going to be condensed into a few mega companies such as our energy industry is now. Not when joe blow can mount an array on their roof or back yard.

Let’s disregard the climate change angle and look at the pollution generated by burning coal, which BTW is how I heat my home. I am suggesting there is no real downside to switching to sustainable energy sources and it might even create jobs so why not? Error on the side of caution. I’m sure ExxonMobil will spin off just fine.

Absolutely. I still remember the “No nukes!” chants waaaaaaaay back when. They™ whipped that up into a cultural phenomenon. But it was still a private effort.

What we’re talking about as far as schemes like “carbon credits” is to allow some industries keep “polluting” (even if it’s necessary, like having leftover eggshells after cracking some eggs) but having to be held hostage and paying up, as far as buying “credits” from industries that by their nature are low-pollution.

And those schemes are administered by government bureaucracies (or idiocracies) who have actual force of law behind them.

Funding? Just raise taxes on those who can’t refuse to “contribute”, vs businesses which have that taken out of gross profits.

Just saw the above post while on my 30 minute lunch break, and as someone who has been a public servant for almost 30 years, I feel compelled to say the following. Nobody in government work for more than ten minutes is under the delusion that they can control industries or even individual companies.

And the assumption that a so-called bureaucrat (now a pejorative smear, like “fascist”) is motivated by a desire to control anything or anybody is laughable to those of us in government. We are controlled by many others, including the industries mentioned above; we control nothing. Our power is very limited, and everything we do is under constant scrutiny, as it should be. The accusation of government employees profiting off of regulations is 100% ridiculous. Political appointees can benefit from changes they impose when they go back into the private sector, but the career people in government can’t (it’s explicitly against the law), and I’ve never met any who would want to do that.

But it’s liquid. Leakage is constrained by “porousness” of the material that contains it, and capillary action.

CO2 is a gas, and can seep through plenty of materials that would hold fracking fluid like a steel tank.

Unless it’s actually taxed, as it is in some jurisdictions to protect conventional powercos.

Wellp, unless you happen to live in a coal-mining town…

You are losing me. I don’t feel there is a cabal behind the curtain. Just plain old environmentalists.

Coal is on the way out because of market pressure from natural gas. All the cheering for it won’t bring back mining. Solar is being taxed only if you want to hook to the grid and sell back to the power companies in states such as Florida to protect the power companies that pump lobby dollars to politicians. Agreed this is bad for solar in a sunny state but I can see the power companies side also. As more and more go solar their reign is fading.

There are no guarantees fracking solutions will not pollute the water table. Natural gas is a cleaner alternative to coal but it should be considered a transition energy source.

In that MIT article I referenced, nuclear is mentioned as a fuel for the next ice age when fossil fuels are exhausted.

Does ocean absorb a lot of the CO2? I am sure not enough.

These crazy forest fires are dumping so much CO2 and other particles that will show up in permanent ice core records

Simply read the very first sentence of this CIA assessment of 1974. It was real, I don’t think we need to whitewash history and pretend it never happened or that all those reporters just were making things up. Reporters back then made up a lot less stuff than the common lies we see in CNN or the NY Times these days (I’m not saying that they didn’t or that they were perfect). http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf

If you start looking into those links (a few for you below) you will see that reporters have quoted noted scientists extensively. I don’t disagree that Co2 is causing the planet to warm faster than if there was less co2. However, I will suggest that humans ability to predict what will occur in 50 years from now appears to be still evolving, and let’s keep an open mind. For myself, it’s obvious to me that there are large cycles at play which involve the sun and solar flares which do have a mini 11 year cycle that scientists have been tracking only since the 1800s. Given our position in the solar system and what is occurring out beyond in the far distance of space, it could be a lot of differing things at play none of which we know anything about currently. Regardless, while we study these phenomenons and crazy things like ocean acidifaction, it would certainly behoove us to be as careful with our emissions as possible.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ASRHAAAAIBAJ&sjid=u_MMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1081,1308250&hl=en

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=QAFJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=5oIMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1282,407671&hl=en

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=SGYRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OeADAAAAIBAJ&pg=6529,7703615&dq=allintitle:+ice+age&hl=en

https://www.google.com/search?q=causes+of+climate+change+attribution

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0096340210392966

This topic isn’t doing anything to help the peace and enjoyment of BLF for users, and it also won’t change anything related to the overarching topic being discussed. Thread closed.