Movie Recommendation (and a Great Debate on Global Warming)

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tex
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Post by tex »

Hi Tessa,

I'm not Polly, (obviously), but the movie will be released in Spain on Novermber 10th. Here is a site with release dates for various countries:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497116/releaseinfo

Love,
Tex
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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Post by Polly »

Whoa, tex! Gotta call you on this one. It's just plain inaccurate. You said:

"Al Gore has always been an opportunist, and he reinvents himself every few years, to take advantage of the latest fad, so it's no surprise that he would attempt to reincarnate himself again, this time as a poster child for 'global warming'."

This could not be farther from the truth! Read on, please.

Gore has been intimately involved with global warming for almost 40 years. In 1968 he had a professor and mentor at Harvard named Roger Revelle, who was the very first scientist to begin measuring CO2 levels. As a student, Gore was fascinated by this new research from his Professor showing rising CO2 levels in the air. (Back then Revelle even hypothesized that the oceans would become more acidic from the added CO2 from burning fossil fuels, and it has only been recently that studies have confirmed this). Anyway, Gore kept abreast of Revelle's continuing research until he died in 1991 and studied everything he could about the subject.

I'm sure you know that Gore wrote his environmental book, "Earth in the Balance" 13 years ago in 1993. Also, when he was first elected as a Tennesee congressman, he organized the first congressional hearing on global warming with Revelle as the lead-off witness. As a senator he organized and chaired numerous hearings and scirntific roundtables on the subject. He supported legislation to cap CO2 emissions. As Vice President he tried to persuade Congress to pass bold measures to solve the climate crisis, and he tried to get the U.S. Senate to ratify the Kyoto Treaty that he helped to write.

In the past 40 years there has not been a time that Gore has not carried the global warming flag. Global warming is NOT a fad - I will say this for the last time: it is REAL, increasing, and due to man's burning of fossil fuels.......there is no lack of consensus on this fact from thousands of the world's top climate scientists. In fact, Donald Kennedy, the Editor in Chief of Science Magazine, has said "Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science".

Love,

Polly
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Post by tex »

Hi Polly,

I will assume that your information on Al Gore's fascination with CO2 gas is correct, since production of CO2 gas is one of the things that most politicians excel at. To be honest, though, try as I might, I don't recall hearing about any of those earlier "scientific" efforts that are attributed to him, back when they were happening.

Actually, I don't recall hearing much at all about his "global worming" theories until just the last few years. In fact, I think all this began to reach prominence after he invented the internet. Didn't it? LOL. (Okay, that was a low blow--I realize he didn't actually mean what his detractors claimed he said, but it certainly made him famous, didn't it. We all remember that. Right? What we don't remember is him promoting global warming, prior to the last few years. Suddenly, he has shifted gears, and it's now full steam ahead as a pseudo-scientist, and savior of the planet. That was the basis of my description of him reinventing himself as a "poster child" for "global warming". Perhaps I'm the only one who didn't notice all his prior scientific endeavors along these lines. Shame on me for not paying attention.

You, (and a lot of the other promotors of this "cause"), keep using this line:
there is no lack of consensus on this fact from thousands of the world's top climate scientists
That makes it seem as if there is almost unanimous agreement among all the top climate scientists of the world. In reality, that is far from being the actual case. The promoters of "global warming" have managed to enlist the support of the media, (who are always looking for a good, sensational story, to allow them to sell more ad time), so they are now able to "out-shout" the scientists who are skeptics, (those who do not support "the cause").

Here is an article that appeared in the Washington Post in May of this year, where some of those skeptics are interviewed. Their credentials are impressive. Bill Gray, for example, is often called the World's Most Famous Hurricane Expert. He's the guy who, every year, predicts the number of hurricanes that will form during the coming hurricane season. His title is professor emeritus, where he works in the atmospheric science department of Colorado State University. His opinion of the "global warming" promotion is pretty much summed up by this statement that he made during the interview for the article:

"I am of the opinion that this is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people." Think about this--he is THE individual who makes the hurricane predictions for this country each year, prior to the hurricane season. If that doesn't give his voice in this matter some credence, I'm a monkey's uncle, (as my uncle used to say). More of his insight, and comments from many other prominent "skeptics" can be read in the article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 05_pf.html

Concensus? Hardly. It's a consensus of "selected" scientists and well-meaning individuals, who have been sold a bill of goods, based on faulty logic. Their predictions are based on computer models that can't even predict next winter's weather. We all recognize that little problem, since their long-range predictions always sound good when they are issued, but they never pan out. They are almost always wrong. So why would anyone in their right mind believe that these faulty models can predict the weather a hundred years from now?

Love,
Tex
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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Post by Polly »

Mornin' Tex!

Sure, there will always be skeptics, but we have to look at the big picture. The skeptics are few and far between. And don't forget that 48 Prize-winning Nobel scientists have gone on record that they are actually alarmed that more is not being done about the global warming problem.

Until last year, our government actively sought to create doubt in the minds of Americans about the existing science. In 2001 the President hired Philip Cooney to be in Chief of Staff of environmental policy in the White House. Cooney is a lawyer/lobbyist with no scientific training, who, for the previous 6 years had worked at the Petroleum Institute and was the person principally in charge of the oil/coal companies' campaign to confuse the American people about this issue. In 2005, a White House memo authorized by Cooney was leaked to the press by an insider whistleblower. In the memo, Cooney had edited out the scientists' mention of the dangers of global warming to the American people. You may recall that Cooney resigned in embarrassment almost immediately. (The next day he went to work for Exxon Mobil).

Dr. Naomi Oreskes , a U.C. scientist, published a massive study in the highly credible Science magazine. She looked at every peer-reviewed science journal article on global warming for the past 10 years. Of these, 10 % of the total (928 articles) were randomly selected and analyzed as to whether they agreed or disagreed with the prevailing census view. Of the 3/4 of the articles they found that discussed elements of the consensus, guess how many disagreed with the consensus? ZERO. Striking!

Here is why I think global warming is a moral, ethical issue. Although the U.S. population represents only a very small % of the world's population, we put 30% of the pollution (CO2) into the air. Of course we are more industrialized, but shouldn't that make us more responsible to the rest of the planet?

Love,

Polly
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Post by tex »

Hi Polly,

Well, as I pointed out in a previous post in this thread, Republican politicians are usually crucified by the media for doing what they think is best for the country, (whether it actually is or not is obviously open to debate), and apparently Cooney was one of the crucifees, (to coin a word).

Regarding this overwhelming concensus of scientists that you continue to parade before us, remember that in the real world, the majority is usually wrong, in cases of this type. Whether they are scientists, investors, doctors, entrepreneurs, or ordinary, everyday citizens, the majority concensus is usually wrong when it comes to complex issues.

The fallacious idea that the majority opinion is correct, is known as "argumentum ad populum", which in Latin means "appeal to the people". Logically, however, it's a fallacious argument that concludes a proposition to be true, simply because many or all people believe it. IOW, it infers that "If many believe so, it is so." In ethics, this argument is stated, "if many find it acceptable, then it is acceptable".

Remember 1929, when the majority thought the stock market "bonanza" would go on forever, and that a "new age" had been discovered? Some of the majority jumped out of windows, sold apples for a nickel, and manned soup lines, a couple of years later. This "majority included stock brokers, bankers, investment advisors, and various other prominent financial "experts", and of course, it incluced all the inocent private citizens who followed their lead, and/or fell for their "expert" advice.

Remember when the "dot com" stocks were all the rage, and the majority thought that another "new age" had been discovered, and they promoted the idea that 'information' would save the world, and make everyone rich beyond their wildest dreams?

Remember back in the 1940s, after the average temperatures had been rising for a number of decades, (following the "little ice age" of the previous century), and there were stories circulating about global warming? But then it got cooler for several decades, and by the mid-1970s the story had changed, and scientists were warning of ... you guessed it ... an Ice Age! Go back and look at some of the lead articles in magazines published during the mid-1970s, (like We're Changing the Weather by Accident, Science Digest, December 1973; and The Cooling World - Global Cooling, Newsweek, April 28, 1975 , or how about Another Ice Age?, Newsweek, June 24, 1974. You can read this last one, for example, at this link--it's very interesting reading:

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:KaH ... =clnk&cd=8

Note that the article includes the familiar phrase, (except that back then, (a mere three decades ago), they were talking about cooler, rather than warmer): However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Is that scarey, or what?

Note also, the last line in the article, where a prominent climatatilogist is qouted as saying, "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."

So what else is new? LOL.

Love,
Tex

P S And oh yes, I almost forgot. Remember how the "overwhelming" concensus of opinion in the medical profession maintains that diet has no place in the treatment of MC?
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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Post by Polly »

LOL about medicine and diet. If only researchers would DO the diet research - and get the word out!

On the other side of the coin, remember there is still a Flat Earth Society in existence whose members by nature are confirmed "non-adopters" of proven scientific fact.

I guess you and I will just have to agree that "time will tell". And I'll bet we experience much more serious consequences of global warming in our lifetime - perhaps much sooner. Wanna make a bet? (This is one bet I'd love to lose!).

Love,

Polly
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Post by harvest_table »

Matthew wrote:Polly and Wayne
A tip of my hat to you both. It is rare to find such an intelligent , informed and sane debate on any subject, let alone the environment. I thrive on this kind of give and take. You have both provided me with new and stimulating ideas on both sides of the question.

Ditto that again Matthew! I'm following this thread with an open mind. Aside from the content of this discussion, it's intriguing that the topic (movie reccomendation) of the thread makes no mention of Global Warming and look at the number of views this thread has!

It appears we truly appreciate a solid debate between respected peers and this conversation is choak full of spunk, spirit and tempting dialogue but also accompanied with some very solid educational articles & netlinks on global warming issues. Thank you, it's been very enlightening for me, as well as many others.



:idea:
Love,
Joanna
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Post by Polly »

Joanna!

Point well taken. I changed the original title of this thread, as you will notice, to "Movie Recommendation (and a Great Debate on Global Warming)" so that it will be easier to track it down in the future (if anyone is interested).

Thanks for the kind words. Wayne and I have been emailing each other during this thread, and we are thrilled that so many people have enjoyed our debate. Both of us have received so many positive emails from our members here, and we have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It IS possible to have a thoughtful, respectful debate within our family here without resorting to name-calling or mean spiritedness. OK, who is next? HAHAHAHA! And what will the topic be?

Love,

Polly
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Post by tex »

Polly,

Thanks for the reminder about the Flat Earth Society. I've been over on a FE discussion board reading posts for a couple of hours. I initially considered joining, but decided against it when I discovered that the FEers were outnumbered by about 1,000 to one by those know-it-all REers. That's even worse than the situation with "global warming" activists, and skeptics, so I decided to just leave well enough alone. LOL.

Concerning that bet: I'll go you one better than that -- I'll bet that within the next 30 or 40 years, (gee I hope we both live long enough that one of us can say "See, I told you so". LOL), we will once again see the "activists" warning about global cooling, and the coming ice age. (Considering recent history, this should be about as close as I can possibly get, to a sure thing).

Love,
Tex
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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Post by Polly »

Good Morning All!

For anyone interested in keeping up with the latest about the "disinformation" campaign (the campaign sponsored by the petroleum industry with the goal of creating doubt in the minds of Americans about the facts of global warming), here is a good website:

http://www.heatisonline.org/disinformation.cfm

Two of the articles listed there were especially interesting to me: the 4th one and the 7th one. The 4th one is about the Rev. Pat Robertson, who recently changed his previous position that global warming was not real and now is claiming the opposite. Check out what he is now saying!

The 7th article is from some recent research by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) showing that "global warming accounted for approximately half of the extra hurricane-fueling warmth in the waters of the tropical N. Atlantic in 2005 while natural cycles were only a minor factor". (This should be of interest to Luce).


One of the major tactics of the disinformation campaign (which is based upon the successful campaign used by the tobacco industry to create doubt in our minds about the science showing that smoking causes cancer) is to pay a few scientists big bucks to serve as "skeptics".

Recently some VERY interesting information came to light. It was found that Dr. Frederick Seitz, former president of the Nat'l. Academy of Sciences and an oft-quoted global warming skeptic, had been previously paid more than a half-million dollars by the TOBACCO INDUSTRY to spread doubt about the relationship between smoking and cancer. SIGH. I guess everyone (even a scientist) has his price. But it is disheartening.

Love,

Polly
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Post by tex »

Hi Polly,

You've mentioned the word "disinformation" several times in this topic, as if to infer that the "skeptics" are distributing disinformation. In reality, the disinformation is obviously coming from the opposite side, from those promoting this cruel hoax. Here is a perfect example of that:
Polly wrote:Mornin' Tex!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dr. Naomi Oreskes , a U.C. scientist, published a massive study in the highly credible Science magazine. She looked at every peer-reviewed science journal article on global warming for the past 10 years. Of these, 10 % of the total (928 articles) were randomly selected and analyzed as to whether they agreed or disagreed with the prevailing census view. Of the 3/4 of the articles they found that discussed elements of the consensus, guess how many disagreed with the consensus? ZERO. Striking!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Love,

Polly
Yep, that's striking, all right, and it's also a big fat distortion of the truth. Apparently this is how the "activists" get their "concensus", by intentionally misrepresenting the truth. The ugly truth about that compendium of mendacity is revealed in this paragraph:


More recently, a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words "global climate change" produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.

13 out of 913 is a consensus? Is it really? Apparently, the word consensus has been completely redefined, and I was asleep when that change was officially made. The above quote in blue is from an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, on July 2, 2006, written by the climate scientist Richard S. Lindzen, who is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT

Here is the full article, titled Don't Believe the Hype, and it contains some good insight into the situation:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597

Polly, I'm shocked that you would allow yourself to be suckered in by such outrageous, (to say nothing of untruthful), claims, without checking them out first. This whole propaganda campaign is based on a few half-truths, which are further distorted into outright lies, and then expanded upon. The theory being that if you repeat a big lie often enough, eventually people will begin to believe it

Love,
Tex
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Post by Polly »

Tex,

You have proved my point beautifully! Thanks!

The petroleum industry has relied on a small band of well-paid scientist skeptics to counter the facts about global warming. Whenever you see these names (Drs. Pat Michaels, Robert Balling, Sherwood Idso, Fred Singer, and yes, Richard Lindzen, the one who wrote the opinion article you just referred to) think "big oil"! I have to run right now, but I can provide literally hundreds of references to prove that they are in the back pocket of the petroleum industry.

Love,

Polly
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Post by Sally »

This whole thread should be preserved somewhere (I will do it) so that when you two get tired of thinking so hard, it can be viewed for millenia to come. Maybe even made into a book. It is not the content so much, but the manner in which this discussion has been carried on that is so amazing. Kindness, respect, love, and HUMOR are present throughout. It is a blueprint for how to conduct oneself in a debate where both people feel passionately about their opposing points of view.

Hail to Polly and Wayne!!

Love,

Sally

There, it's saved. All 14 pages of it. Pretty thin book.:-)
Mitakuye oyasin
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Post by Lucy »

Polly,

Has an actual money trail been discovered to prove this author is in "big oil's back pocket." I don't doubt that things like this go on in every aspect of society, but it's almost like I'm from Missouri -- want the proof.

Having actually studied under a UC environmentalist, from the prospective of time, I would tend to trust MIT's scientists in general, and not trust UC's, primarily because I've never had personal experience with anyone from MIT.

My UC professor told us that we definitely would be starving BEFORE 1976. He wanted to appear a little smarter than the authors of "The Population Bomb," which in my opinion, wouldn't be too difficult.

Polly, did you ever read that book?

On the other hand, this article appears to be more of an editorial.
I would love to see one of WSJ's more indepth investigatory articles that doesn't appear a little one-sided, as when I've happened to have a little knowledge of whatever a subject is that is being discussed,
I've found their more indepth articles to be quiet accurate. It would help if the author were someone not listed as "suspect" by the other side.

In terms of the tobacco argument, let's put it like this -- I wouldn't fly with an airlines if 10 percent of their planes crash. It was years after the establishment of a statistical correlation between cigarette smoking and lung cancer and the actual proof that cigarette smoking was the cause. I wouldn't have wanted to wait on proof to stop.

In my opinion, there are many, many reasons to become more diversified in terms of energy sources.

By the way, Wayne, I heard the other day a financial advisor say that corn futures might actually hold some promise for investors.

Can you believe THAT I'm hoping that the soy industry will shift to producing fuel, so that soy will be too expensive to put in our food.
I'm having a hard time avoiding it, but a family member has just been diagnosed allergic to it, so I probably am as well, just as I suspected.

Anyway, I think that it's a matter of national security for this, and for that matter, any other country to not depend on any one source of fuel, in the event of any sort of catastrophy, even a large scale terrorist attack on that energy source, Each local area is best able to determine which energy source makes the most sense where they are, such as windmills in Texas and California, and a lot of other places.

Biggest hurdle here is that gasoline is so cheap compared to other fuels.
Oil companies are very diversified, and I'm sure they think of themselves as energy companies as opposed to oil companies, so you can bet they're preparing to make switches as they become profitable or otherwise make sense, economically, like public demand for instance.

This is a good thing as they are in a much better position on the distribution end than the small start-up companies that will provide little pockets of production and sales here and there to small segments of society.

Right now, in Houston, we have a guy with a single tank on the other side of town where people can purchase the fuel derived from plants that we've been hearing about on the news.

Gotta go. Mom's calling. Luce
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Post by tex »

Polly,

You're most welcome. You seem to be becoming quite adept at utilizing the tactics of the"global warming activists", whom you have chosen to emulate. LOL.

Incidentally, you forgot to include Dr. Bill Gray, (the Colorado State University prof who predicts the number of hurricanes expected each year), in your list of skeptics who are in the back pocket of "big oil'. I'm not aware that he is, but you might as well include him, since the whole idea is to lump all dissenters together, and classify them as pawns of "big oil", (whether they actually are or not).

The sad fact is, before this "inquisition" is over, virtually all climate scientists with any remaining shred of integrity, who have a family to support, will have little choice but to work for "big oil", since their research funding is being yanked out from under them as fast as they can say "My research doesn't agree with the claims being made about global warming".

If you don't think that the absence of a paycheck won't affect the way you think, speak, and behave, you've had it waaaaaaaaaay too easy all your life. This article shows how the true facts are being ignored, and how they're being replaced by twisted logic, based on invalid models, (of course it was written by that notorious "Big Oil" pawn, Richard Lindzen, so keep that in mind).

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220

This sad state of affairs is kind of reminescent of the type of world described in George Orwell's novel, 1984, and somewhat like the world described in Ray Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451, isn't it? I don't think anyone has resorted to any bookburning yet, but a lot of information is being selectively ignored, and a lot is being twisted to promote the "cause".

Love,
Wayne
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It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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