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Science, like any other career, does not preclude humor.

Every email cited as "proof" that global warming is a giant hoax perpetrated by scientists was either out of context, contained terminology that no layman could possibly understand, or was a joke between colleagues - or a combination of all three.

And the majority of the emails were dry, boring science, discussing facts (again in terminology that no layman could hope to understand) and not talking about "Haha we sure fooled the muggles with our imaginary human initiated climate change! Oh boy, they'll HAVE to fund my research for the next 20 years now!"

No, the majority of emails which discussed the data were much more sober, and along the lines of "If my data set is right, and the simulations and projections go as they seem to be, we're totally ******* I hate my job and I'm sorry I've got to be the one to document this."

Not nearly as much as maintaining the status quo benefits the current oil industry. Not even close.

Generally speaking, in any functioning large scale conspiracy, the majority are not complicit, just 'following orders' or believing incorrect information.

Not that this is the case in this example.

Anna's such a dirty, dirty hippy.

I don't know. I fear he's swaying too far left these days. At this pace, he'll make Smash look like Mussolini.

Do you not mean delusional?

I should have known better. Leave it to the French to get it wrong.

Edited, Nov 26th 2009 9:04am by Uglysasquatch

Andrew Bolt? He cited Andrew Bolt?!

ANDREW BOLT?!

!!!



Never mind that Ian Plimer is director of no less than three Australian mining companies and heavily invested in the mining industry, which would stand to lose profits as a consequence of the emissions trading scheme.

Edited, Nov 26th 2009 2:03pm by zepoodle

That's Usain Bolt, who is a machine and not a man. Andrew Bolt is a columnist and pundit who writes for the Herald Sun. He's the journalistic equivalent of a forum troll.

That blogger may as well have cited Varus.

Edited, Nov 26th 2009 2:09pm by zepoodle

A few out of context snippets are certainly damning though.

Edited, Nov 26th 2009 9:09am by Xsarus

Regulation of poisons does not have to take the form of more government and less private industry. What makes a poison is the dosage. Water is vital for us, but you can actually die of water poisoning if you drink too much of it, pushing your cells too far apart to communicate with each other via electrolytes.

We now think that there's a dosage amount that turns vital CO2 into a poison for the homeostatis of the Earth's climate.

When we found out Asbestos we banned it. Private industry got over the shock, learned to make items without it, and chugged along just fine in the long run. The same with DDT. The old Asbestos and DDT industries lost jobs, but new jobs came along with the new alternatives.

We don't want to ban the output of CO2, just put it into a working balance, that lessens the human input into climate change. Emissions Trading Schemes are designed to share around CO2 rights, given that we are now restricting ourselves to a smaller CO2 pie. That might seem like socialism, making companies share in a resource. But it's actually the more freeing compromise.

Given this year's science, Governments would have an ethically sound choice to simply ban the output of CO2 outright, the same way that they did Asbestos, DDT, and a host of other harmful substances. Banning a harmful substance doesn't put more control of funds and infrastructure into government hands, or take them away from shareholders. It simply stops people from being poisoned. In the case of CO2, the poison might not be direct, but if this decade and a half long drought in Australia, with it's accompanying extreme weather, wild-fires and crop failures is a result of climate change that is 50% anthropomorphic, and not just co-incidentally the worst drought we've ever had, then the suffering it's causing Australian's is no less deadly.

300 dead in wild-fires, when we have hardly had any people die that way for decades. Farmers shooting themselves all over the place. Building insurance that just keeps sky-rocketing. Hundreds of thousands of people whose town water supplies have simply run out, and have to buy drinking water from the supermarkets, and wash themselves with cloths and bottled water. Water-tank manufacturers cannot keep up with the demand. Everyone wants an independent water supply, because no rain is falling into the dam catchments. Towns buy in truck loads of water, which they pump at the local sporting ground change room facilities, and everyone in town lines up for a fortnightly or weekly shower. Thank god it hasn't come to that in the major cities, but it might.

Yeah, when they said that the Tropical zone might move further south, everyone thought it might get as far as Sydney in 100 years.

Tropical weather turning up in Melbourne on 4 or 5 occasions the last three years is like 4 or 5 ice-burgs occasionally sailing past Florida the last few years. The weirdness is... weird. Melbourne used to do cold and wet, or hot and dry, with extensive Springs and Autumns in between. This year Spring lasted 3 days, then the weather went all over the place, before settling on HOT and WET today. I'm sure there's a billion people on the planet who are used to warm rain pouring on them, but I'm not one of them. Melbourne is like New York or London. It's just not in the Monsoon area.

Oh man, something terrible is happening just outside the boundaries of Ari's avater. Something terribly hot.