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Maybe watch the British documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.

"My oldest son (4th grader) is involved in his school's science club/robotics club. It's cool stuff, and teaches very good logic ..."

"An Inconvenient Truth" and logic?

posted by jr on May 28, 2008 at 01:35:17 pm     #

Hillsdale College- MI website has great info on global warning falsehoods in their newsletter Imprimis.

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

The A-Hole

posted by TheAssHoleLawyer on May 28, 2008 at 02:13:14 pm     #

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2007&month=08

posted by TheAssHoleLawyer on May 28, 2008 at 02:35:10 pm     #

How large of a group?

posted by prime3end on May 28, 2008 at 03:13:59 pm     #

I just heard on the radio, that there are about 38,000 scientists from all over the world, that have declared global warming a huge hoax, to fatten wallets of a few. There's been more & more in the news that suggests that this is true.

posted by starling02 on May 28, 2008 at 10:16:23 pm     #

I seem to remember someone saying that one of the main NASA scientists, that is backing global warming was in the 70's, saying that we were headed for another ice age. I would be more inclined to believe these scientists if they were dependant on grants for a living. While I do agree the world is warming, I dont agree that there is much we can do about it.

If they are saying the cause is man made then why are the other planets warming and they dont have humans living there. Also the sun itself is warming, while they argue that the other planets are warming because of the sun somehow when it comes to the Earth its our fault.

While I agree we should reduce polution and stop cutting down rain forest are good ideas, going green crazy is just going a little far. Anything that helps reduce energy consumption is a good idea not just for the enviroment but for lowering energy costs.

Getting the cooperation from industries and consumers has to be easier with a carrot and not a stick. Rewarding the good people volunteering to change rather than punish those who wont seems to have worked in the past, why not now.

posted by Linecrosser on May 28, 2008 at 11:58:05 pm     #

Prime3End: The group is about 15 or so fourth through 6th graders (more or less).

Thanks to all for the pointers and help already! The British documentary looked good.

My wife said she recalls reading or hearing in the 1970s that the earth is getting cooler. Even if it is now getting warmer, I don't believe mankind can have a significant impact. If it's going to happen, it'll happen.

That said, I'm all for conservation, teaching kids to not be wasteful, recycling, etc. All those have more than just earth-friendly benefits. (As long as those green efforts are not to the detriment of people, businesses, etc.)

-Mike

posted by miked918 on May 29, 2008 at 07:40:55 am     #

You mean they could give out a Nobel prize for a power point that was a HOAX??

And as far as global cooling in the 70's, check this out:

http://newsbusters.org/node/9473

posted by billy on May 29, 2008 at 08:56:01 am     #

So there was ONE article about global cooling in the 70's???

posted by pink_slip on May 29, 2008 at 09:11:53 am     #

Whether you believe it or not there is no reason not to be as “green” as possible. It can only help the environment in general. Laziness is what most people would rather support.

posted by Ryan on May 29, 2008 at 09:21:04 am     #

May 2007 Toledo Talk posting titled Global Cooling that pointed to articles from Time and Newsweek, which contain some humorous wording.

• Excerpts from a June 24, 1974 Time article titled Another Ice Age?

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. 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.

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.

Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world.

Sunspot Cycle. The changing weather is apparently connected with differences in the amount of energy that the earth's surface receives from the sun. Changes in the earth's tilt and distance from the sun could, for instance, significantly increase or decrease the amount of solar radiation falling on either hemisphere—thereby altering the earth's climate. Some observers have tried to connect the eleven-year sunspot cycle with climate patterns, but have so far been unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how the cycle might be involved.

Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.

Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.

Some scientists like Donald Oilman, chief of the National Weather Service's long-range-prediction group, think that the cooling trend may be only temporary. But all agree that vastly more information is needed about the major influences on the earth's climate.

• Excerpts from an April 28, 1975 Newsweek article titled The Cooling World

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.

If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

posted by jr on May 29, 2008 at 09:56:53 am     #

Well it was called global warming but the trends are so unpredictable they now take to calling it global weather change instead.

posted by Linecrosser on May 29, 2008 at 09:59:58 am     #

Yes jr, that is indeed humorous language. That explains why the 70's global cooling myth has been debunked again and again.

posted by pink_slip on May 29, 2008 at 10:19:15 am     #

So the 1970's global cooling theory has been debunked, eh? Looks like Team Hindsight wins another. Bastards are undefeated.

How many years do we have to wait until the current climate change scare is debunked?

From a May 2007 The Timaru Herald article :

Climate change will be considered a joke in five years time, meteorologist Augie Auer told the annual meeting of Mid Canterbury Federated Farmers in Ashburton this week. Man's contribution to the greenhouse gases was so small we couldn't change the climate if we tried, he maintained. "We're all going to survive this. It's all going to be a joke in five years," he said.

A combination of misinterpreted and misguided science, media hype, and political spin had created the current hysteria and it was time to put a stop to it. "It is time to attack the myth of global warming," he said.

Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained. "If we didn't have the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time."

The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFCs, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.

However, carbon dioxide as a result of man's activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.

"That ought to be the end of the argument, there and then," he said. "We couldn't do it (change the climate) even if we wanted to because water vapour dominates."

posted by jr on May 29, 2008 at 10:37:20 am     #

What you're suggesting jr, would allow people in 2020 to cite articles by global warming deniers like Tim Ball, Patrick Michaels, and Bjorn Lumborg and say "see, people back in 2008 were saying global warming isn't a problem".

posted by pink_slip on May 29, 2008 at 10:54:18 am     #

The bottomline is that the body of data and time frames involved are so inconceivably large that we are nowhere near close enough to answers that would justify policy changes. Despite this, activists latch on to these ideas and desperately want the propositions to be true because it provides a vehicle to use the government to attack free markets. That's the real motivation.

posted by babbleman on May 29, 2008 at 12:08:35 pm     #

Also people like Al Gore smell money in the water.

posted by Linecrosser on May 29, 2008 at 12:43:43 pm     #

I would suggest you contact the Socialist Workers Party which, if you attended one of the looney lefts global warming teach-ins, the communists and socialists seem highly represented.

Global warming is going to go the same way the population bomb of the 60's the global cooling fad did in the 70's, the the great depression of 1992, the Y2K end of the world fad and now it's just global warming. "But it's real I tell you, this time it is real!" the looney left screams.

posted by Extoledoan on May 30, 2008 at 07:25:38 pm     #

You forgot the "smoking causes lung cancer" craze. Oh, wait--that was real

posted by pink_slip on May 30, 2008 at 07:55:41 pm     #

"You forgot the "smoking causes lung cancer" craze. Oh, wait--that was real"

What's your point?

We had the earth is flat club and don't forget about the global cooling craze.

posted by Extoledoan on May 31, 2008 at 09:03:45 am     #

My point was that special interest groups funded by the smoking industry also tried to distort science, in order to muddy the issue. The same thing is happening with the climate change issue. And there were still more scientific papers in the 70's that dealt with global warming than with global cooling. That hardly constitutes a "craze".

posted by pink_slip on May 31, 2008 at 11:00:31 am     #

Preach BabbleMan preach!!!

Conservation - good idea. Reduced oil consumption - good for our wallet. Geopolitical pressure to destroy and limit capitalism for socialist gains - true goal of Al Gore, climate change alarmists, and the Kyoto protocols - bad idea.

The A-Hole.

posted by TheAssHoleLawyer on Jun 02, 2008 at 04:22:03 pm     #

Pink - no one denies smoking can cause cancer. The myth and "scare" is the second hand smoke, evil parent, cancer link propaganda that has been used to destroy private property rights through the anti-smoking campaigns which are analogous to climate change adopting the same methodology.

posted by TheAssHoleLawyer on Jun 02, 2008 at 04:25:39 pm     #

Pink - no one denies smoking can cause cancer

So then the tobacco companies didn't deny the link between smoking and lung cancer for years and years?

posted by pink_slip on Jun 03, 2008 at 08:06:05 am     #

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