Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Climate Monday or Tuesday: The Focus is on Denial for Dollars




Yeah, I know I'm linking to a comedian, but the funny thing here in the US is--our comedians are often seriously more open to slinging out truth, of course--people are willing to take that truth with a grain of sugar.

Sigh. Yeah. Well, this guy is actually part of the denial for dollars trip I want to talk about at the moment. There are some serious examples of his particular pay-for-politically-convenient-studies fraud going on. Sadly, Viscount Matt Ridley seems to swept up in just this sort of fossil-fuel-funded fraudulence (so humbling--Yastreblansky--I'll see your Lord Monckton of Brenchley and raise you a bleeding peer who went to Maudlin and all that--genuine posh. And I liked his stuff on biology 'cause I studied in it for a minute. But writing about science made-to-order by industry is awfully grubby, innit?)

But LGM has a nice piece from Loomis about how anyone flashing dollars might convince someone to write up a little thing or so about how climate change isn't for real.

All this is why, when people talk about how the climate scientists have gone in for a hoax to get hold of that mad government grant money I just stand in admiration for people so blinded they don't understand that there is a heavily-subsidized fossil fuel industry here in the US (and world-wide) that takes their profits and sinks it into funding for "skeptical" research projects and think tanks. Also known as propaganda. I'm not even sure who doesn't know this much is true.

So when a denialist media contributor mentions his fossil-fuels-funding source--let's not discount it. Although anyone working for FOX media at all should be considered possibly a pay for denialism stooge.

1 comment:

Formerly Amherst said...

Hi Vixen, I hope you are anticipating a great Christmas.

You may have put your finger on the problem. There is a significant amount of corruption on both sides.

Regrettably, science has become politicized. And politicization is just another word for corruption. Step one, you have politics. Step 2 you have small-c corruption. Step 3 you have large-C Corruption. It's inevitable, like water running downhill.

There was a time when science was not politicized, but those days are over.

Naturally, the more you learn about corruption on your side and the other side, the more the data stream is unreliable and the less confidence one can have in somebody's assertion. Cui bono?

If you follow the money, the assertions on both sides diminish in credibility.

The job forecast for India for 2015 and 2016 were 7.5% and 7.7% growth in GDP. In China it's 6.8% for 2015 and 6.3% for 2016.

The United States is only 2.5% and 2.8% respectively. Japan, 0.9% and 1.4% respectively. The UK 2.5% and 2.5%.

I could go on with this, but you should see that china and India have much better job possibilities and expectations than the rest of the world. This in part is because of industrialization in two emerging nations. As a consequence they are generating most of the pollution, and while they have problems with their economies, on the dimension of growth, industrialization, and pollution they are at the head of the pack.

When they are asked to reduce pollution and industrialization, they say that this is Western imperialism trying to assert authority and control over their people, and they refuse to cooperate.

If we were not $20 trillion in debt we might be able to do something, but the US is close to being impotent. Emerging nations do not take kindly to countries who have already benefited their people thru industrialization insisting that somehow they should forego this advance.

There's nothing, really, anybody can do about this. Outrage should be directed at China and India, not the rest of the world.

On the other hand, you may have seen that NASA recently discovered that more pollutants cause local cooling. This once again shows you how ephemeral all these contentions are and how corrupt both sides become when the corruption of politicization enters the fray.

Thank God I have only one foot in this world and my other foot squarely placed in the transcendent as a matter of actual personal experience. I wouldn't have it any other way.

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