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| Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Are humans causing the climate to change?
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| Are humans causing the climate to change? |
98% of total global greenhouse gas emissions are natural (mostly water vapor); only 2% are from man-made sources.
By most accounts, man-made emissions have had no more than a minuscule impact on the climate. Although the climate has warmed slightly in the last 100 years, 70% percent of that warming occurred prior to 1940, before the upsurge in greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes.
A Gallup survey indicated that only 17% of the members of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society thought the warming of the 20th century was the result of an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. |
posted by Nelson @ 3:24 PM  |
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| 1 Comments: |
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Sorry, but the Gallop poll you cite is disinformation.
First of all, there's not even such a thing as the "American Geophysical Society," which is the first tip-off the data is dubious. It's actually called the "American Geophysical UNION."
The second tip-off is that there's no year given when the poll was done, and no link or reference to any supporting evidence.
Years ago, someone forwarded this same blurb about the 17% Gallop poll number, and I researched it out to find the source of the information.
It was hard to track it down, as those who started this rumor saw to it that the facts would always get scrambled up a bit to make it very hard to do any fact-checking. For example, they
would sometimes quote the poll being from 1990, and sometimes say it was from 1992 (the real poll was in 1991). The quotes don't even always say 17%, but will sometimes say it was 19% and 20% of scientists (the real number was 66%!) And, as we've seen, they screw up the names of the organizations -- all to make it harder to Google your way to the truth. If they throw out the wrong year here and a slightly wrong percentage number there, and say "Society" instead of "Union," it makes it much harder to search out the actual Gallop poll, thus harder to catch their LIE. It's very deliberately used to keep people confused and misinformed. Very calculated.
So wherever you get your information, I suggest you take a very hard look at what else they tell you because this 17% poll thing is pure lie/propaganda. These are NOT people you should be trusting, no matter WHAT they tell you.
Of course, lots of people like you are innocently quoting the bogus poll data, believing it's true -- and being totally taken advantage of.
The 17% number has been floating around for almost two decades now, seemingly gaining credibility simply by virtue of being repeated so many times, by folks like Limbaugh and Easterbrook. But it all dates back to a totally baldfaced lie made by George Will in his 9/3/1992 column.
In that column, he refers to an actual Gallop poll, and writes that the poll showed only 17% of climate scientists thinking humans are causing global warming. BUT THE ACTUAL FINDING WAS NOT 17% OF THEM BELIEVING THAT. IT WAS 66%!! Unless you can convince me that George Will is THAT stupid or absent-minded to honestly mistake 66% for 17%, then this was a DELIBERATE LIE.
And now, George Will was just recently caught again creating a bogus climate factoid when he wrote that some major University has concluded the polar ice caps are just as big as they were in 1979 -- another totally made-up lie. This guy needs to be kicked off the airwaves and stripped of his column.
But the fact that the 17% poll quote is still even CIRCULATING after all these years is a wonder of modern propaganda! It also really makes one wonder how confident the climate change deniers are with whatever ACTUAL facts they might have on their side that they would have to resort to FAKE poll results from ALMOST 20 YEARS AGO.
The plain fact is that both the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union (the climate science organizations whose membership Gallop polled in 1991) have official statements on climate change, statements that their members have endorsed and that you can easily find on their websites, that clearly state that they, the expert climate scientists, believe that human-induced global climate change is real, and that if we don't change our energy habits very quickly, the future will likely be very very unpleasant. THE SCIENTISTS ARE ON RECORD. THEY ARE ON AL GORE'S SIDE. JUST ACCEPT THE FACTS AND LET'S GET BUSY DEALING WITH OUR RIDICULOUS PETROLEUM ADDICTION ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Of course, if you don't believe any of what I've said here, feel free to track it all down yourself. But below are some source materials to help you confirm what I've said.
SOURCE MATERIAL:
* AMS CLIMATE STATEMENT: http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html
* AGU CLIMATE STATEMENT:
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/positions/climate_change2008.shtml
* INFO ON BOGUS GALLOP POLL NUMBER:
--USA TODAY article (1/6/99): "Global warming debate generates much heat" http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/wclis28c.htm
--Page 4 of http://www.edf.org/documents/2246_AMomentofTruth_PartOne.pdf
-- http://www.bestofmaui.com/rush.html
-- The original Gallop poll may be hard to get hold of, but here's how I've seen it cited:
The Gallup Organization, A Gallup Study of Scientists' Opinions and Understanding of Global Climate Change, November 1991, pp. 5, 8. Available from the Center for Science, Technology and Media, 6900 Wisconsin Ave., Suite 700, Chevy Chase, MD 20815
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Sorry, but the Gallop poll you cite is disinformation.
First of all, there's not even such a thing as the "American Geophysical Society," which is the first tip-off the data is dubious. It's actually called the "American Geophysical UNION."
The second tip-off is that there's no year given when the poll was done, and no link or reference to any supporting evidence.
Years ago, someone forwarded this same blurb about the 17% Gallop poll number, and I researched it out to find the source of the information.
It was hard to track it down, as those who started this rumor saw to it that the facts would always get scrambled up a bit to make it very hard to do any fact-checking. For example, they
would sometimes quote the poll being from 1990, and sometimes say it was from 1992 (the real poll was in 1991). The quotes don't even always say 17%, but will sometimes say it was 19% and 20% of scientists (the real number was 66%!) And, as we've seen, they screw up the names of the organizations -- all to make it harder to Google your way to the truth. If they throw out the wrong year here and a slightly wrong percentage number there, and say "Society" instead of "Union," it makes it much harder to search out the actual Gallop poll, thus harder to catch their LIE. It's very deliberately used to keep people confused and misinformed. Very calculated.
So wherever you get your information, I suggest you take a very hard look at what else they tell you because this 17% poll thing is pure lie/propaganda. These are NOT people you should be trusting, no matter WHAT they tell you.
Of course, lots of people like you are innocently quoting the bogus poll data, believing it's true -- and being totally taken advantage of.
The 17% number has been floating around for almost two decades now, seemingly gaining credibility simply by virtue of being repeated so many times, by folks like Limbaugh and Easterbrook. But it all dates back to a totally baldfaced lie made by George Will in his 9/3/1992 column.
In that column, he refers to an actual Gallop poll, and writes that the poll showed only 17% of climate scientists thinking humans are causing global warming. BUT THE ACTUAL FINDING WAS NOT 17% OF THEM BELIEVING THAT. IT WAS 66%!! Unless you can convince me that George Will is THAT stupid or absent-minded to honestly mistake 66% for 17%, then this was a DELIBERATE LIE.
And now, George Will was just recently caught again creating a bogus climate factoid when he wrote that some major University has concluded the polar ice caps are just as big as they were in 1979 -- another totally made-up lie. This guy needs to be kicked off the airwaves and stripped of his column.
But the fact that the 17% poll quote is still even CIRCULATING after all these years is a wonder of modern propaganda! It also really makes one wonder how confident the climate change deniers are with whatever ACTUAL facts they might have on their side that they would have to resort to FAKE poll results from ALMOST 20 YEARS AGO.
The plain fact is that both the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union (the climate science organizations whose membership Gallop polled in 1991) have official statements on climate change, statements that their members have endorsed and that you can easily find on their websites, that clearly state that they, the expert climate scientists, believe that human-induced global climate change is real, and that if we don't change our energy habits very quickly, the future will likely be very very unpleasant. THE SCIENTISTS ARE ON RECORD. THEY ARE ON AL GORE'S SIDE. JUST ACCEPT THE FACTS AND LET'S GET BUSY DEALING WITH OUR RIDICULOUS PETROLEUM ADDICTION ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Of course, if you don't believe any of what I've said here, feel free to track it all down yourself. But below are some source materials to help you confirm what I've said.
SOURCE MATERIAL:
* AMS CLIMATE STATEMENT: http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html
* AGU CLIMATE STATEMENT:
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/positions/climate_change2008.shtml
* INFO ON BOGUS GALLOP POLL NUMBER:
--USA TODAY article (1/6/99): "Global warming debate generates much heat" http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/wclis28c.htm
--Page 4 of http://www.edf.org/documents/2246_AMomentofTruth_PartOne.pdf
-- http://www.bestofmaui.com/rush.html
-- The original Gallop poll may be hard to get hold of, but here's how I've seen it cited:
The Gallup Organization, A Gallup Study of Scientists' Opinions and Understanding of Global Climate Change, November 1991, pp. 5, 8. Available from the Center for Science, Technology and Media, 6900 Wisconsin Ave., Suite 700, Chevy Chase, MD 20815