On Mar 28, 4:00 pm, "Lloyd" wrote:
On Mar 28, 3:27 pm, "W. D. Allen" wrote:

CO2 is caused by the climate, not the other way around!

WDA

end

Simple pap from a simpleton.

(1) What is causing the warming?
(2) Where does all the human produced CO2 go?
(3) Why aren't the oceans losing CO2?

You are the duffus.
Warming fluctuations in a system as large as the earth are natural and
very well indicated in the geological record.
The natural cycle of carbon dioxide is upward 440 billion tons per
year recycled by vegetation.
Humans produce around 21 billion from fossil fuels and cement.
Humans produce around 7 billion annually from burning of tropical
forests to clear for agriculture.
This causes a cumulative reduction in the important recycling of
vegetation.
The oceans are in vapor equilibrium with CO2. This amounts to about 60
billion tons absorbed and released by the ocean annually. There is
also much old CO2 from decayed animals at greater depth.

http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/scq.CO2rise.html
http://www.agu.org/eos_elec/99148e.html

Notice the mention of 'unknown sinks'. This means that the
calculations of CO2 to human production are off. It probably means
that the effect of human input from fossil fuels would be entirely
taken up by nature if not for the reduction of vegetation by the
intensive deforestation. Since industrialization, 20% of the worlds
forests have been lost

From ice core data, it is clear that warming causes increase in CO2
levels. The increases in CO2 follow warming, and are not so closely
related to temperature drops.

http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Pre...ning/New_Data/

The changes in CO2 concentrations must be primarilly from the effect
of warmer air temperatures and ocean temperatures on the exchange and
release of CO2 from the oceans. The greater rate of evaporation at the
surface may increase the concentrations of CO2 at the surface and
cause a greater exchange to the atmosphere, and currents may increase
with warmer temperatures and bring more CO2 to the surface where it is
exchanged with the atmosphere.

Deatherage

On Mar 28, 3:50 pm, Rodney Blackall
wrote:
In article .com,
Roger Coppock wrote:

" . . . climate sensitivity [to 2X CO2] greater than 1.5 °C
has probably the Earth's climate system over the past
420 million years, regardless of temporal scaling."

The trouble with going back so far into the past is that the geography of
Earth's surface has changed an awful lot in that time. If you disregard the
colossal oceanographic changes caused by the linking of the Pacific and
Atlantic; Arctic and Pacific and Arctic and Atlantic, let alone the building
of the great mountain ranges you could get some very unreal answers.

That's funny how they claim the record holds for 420 million years but
during the Ordovician Period 460 million years ago CO2 concentrations
were 4400 ppm while temperatures then were about the same as they are
today.

Hmmmmm,, I guess the cutoff date of their correlation must be at 450
million years. You'd think at least they might sometime mention data
that doesnt't fit, (and therefore completely defeats) their end
conclusion.

Deatherage


--
Rodney Blackall (retired meteorologist)(BSc, FRMetS, MRI)
Buckingham, ENGLAND
Using Acorn SA-RPC, OS 4.02 with ANT INS and Pluto 3.03j

On Mar 31, 9:07 pm, wrote:

that doesnt't fit, (and therefore completely defeats) their end
conclusion.

Deatherage



A New Disinformation Campaign, April 30, 1998

http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...= swishe_rank

This website is posted by federal court order and contains nothing
that was not evidence used in trials. At the trials lawyers had
opportunity of due process of law to object and exclude evidence --
these are the ones that were not excluded.

TASSC "Global Warming"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Singer, F."
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Fred Singer"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Fred Seitz"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Seitz, F"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Lindzen, R"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Richard Lindzen"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC Milloy
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC Fumento
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Michael Fumento"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Michaels, P"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Patrick J. Michaels"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Patrick Michaels"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Science & Environmental Policy Project"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...=swishe_ra nk

A New Disinformation Campaign, April 30, 1998

http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/bulle...m?Issue_ID=521

#596 - A New Disinformation Campaign, April 30, 1998

A new study concludes that this has been the warmest century in 600
years, and that the hottest years during this century have been 1990,
1995, and 1997.[1,2] This is further evidence that global warming is
upon us, and that humans are contributing to it by burning coal and
oil. (See REHW #430, #466.) "Our conclusion was that the warming of
the past few decades appears to be closely tied to emission of
greenhouse gases by humans and not [by] any of the natural factors,"
say Michael E. Mann, principal author of the new study.[1]

The global temperature varies as time passes because of natural
changes in sunlight reaching the Earth, dust from volcanoes (which
reflects sunlight back into space), and changing amounts of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere.

So-called greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide [CO2], but also
methane and a few others that are less important) allow sunlight to
strike the Earth but don't allow heat to escape back into space as
readily, thus trapping heat near the surface, just as the glass roof
on a greenhouse does. Scientists have recognized the existence of this
"greenhouse effect" for about 100 years and they know that, sooner or
later, increasing the amount of "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere
must warm the planet. Thus scientists don't debate whether greenhouse
gases will cause global warming. They debate when it will be
noticeable, how big the warming will be, and what its consequences
might be.

During the past 100 years, humans burning coal and oil have increased
the atmosphere's concentration of carbon dioxide [CO2] --the main
greenhouse gas --by 25%, and the concentration is still rising.

Actual temperature measurements only go back about 150 years, so
temperatures earlier than that must be inferred from tree rings,
corals and fossils in the oceans, deposits left by glaciers, the
chemical composition of ancient ice at the poles, and fossilized
pollen found in lake sediments. The new study, published in the
British journal NATURE, uses many of these techniques to reconstruct
the Earth's temperature back to the year 1400 A.D.[2]

The new study bolsters the consensus reached in 1996 by an
overwhelming majority of the world's climatologists, that (a) global
warming is probably noticeable now; and (b) human activities are
probably contributing to the rise in the planet's average temperature.
That consensus conclusion was published in the second Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),[3]
which is an office of the United Nations Environment Programme and the
World Meteorological Organization.

For their part, the coal and oil corporations are not taking this
scientific consensus lying down. They are fighting back with a multi-
million dollar public relations plan that was recently leaked to the
NEW YORK TIMES.[4] These corporations stand to lose by the global
climate-change agreement reached last December 11 in Kyoto, Japan. The
Kyoto agreement binds the U.S. to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions
to 7% below 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012. For a country like
the U.S., which has steadily rising emissions, the Kyoto agreement
will require cuts as great as 30% to 35% below where emissions would
otherwise be by the year 2012. (See REHW #577.)

In an attempt to undermine the Kyoto agreement, the energy
corporations plan "to recruit a cadre of scientists who share the
industry's views of climate science and to train them in public
relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians, and the
public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify
controls on greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that trap the sun's
heat near Earth."[4] The plan is being spearheaded by Joe Walker, a
public relations representative of the American Petroleum Institute.

The scientific talent for the public relations campaign is being
recruited by Frederick Seitz, who is a physicist, not a climatologist,
but who has an impressive scientific resume as former president of the
American Physical Society, former president of the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS), and president emeritus of Rockefeller University. Dr.
Seitz is also distinguished by being one of the last remaining
scientists who insist that humans have not altered the stratospheric
ozone layer, despite an overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary.
He is currently associated with two libertarian think tanks, the
George C. Marshall Institute and the Advancement of Sound Science
Coalition (see www.marshall.org, www.tassc.org, and www.junkscience.com).

Dr. Seitz injected himself into the climate debate forcefully by
attacking the IPCC just days after publication of the IPCC's consensus
conclusion that humans were probably contributing to global warming.
Writing in the WALL STREET JOURNAL June 12, 1996, Dr. Seitz called the
IPCC report a "major deception on global warming." He accused IPCC
scientists of the most "disturbing corruption of the peer-review
process" that he had ever witnessed. And he accused one particular
scientist, Benjamin Santer, of having made "unauthorized changes" to
the IPCC report for political purposes. It turned out that Seitz had
not attended any of the IPCC meetings, and he had not contacted Santer
to find out whether the changes to the IPCC document were "authorized"
or not. It also turned out that all of Seitz's charges were wrong --
the IPCC report had been peer-reviewed by roughly one thousand
qualified scientists and all of the writing in the final report was
fully authorized.[5]

Dr. Seitz and his associates at the George C. Marshall Institute are
now preparing to release a petition that they reportedly sent to
"virtually every scientist in every field" in the U.S.[6] There are 10
million people with undergraduate degrees in science in the U.S., and
half a million with science Ph.D.s. Of these, 15,000 science graduates
and 6000 with Ph.D. degrees have reportedly signed the petition, which
rejects the Kyoto agreement and argues that increasing levels of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the planet. The mass
mailing to scientists included a copy of an article formatted to look
as if it had been published in the prestigious, peer-reviewed journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. It was not. The
article, which had been neither peer-reviewed nor published, argued
that the release of more carbon dioxide "will help to maintain and
improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all
people." The Union of Concerned Scientists (www.ucsusa.org) has
branded the exercise "a deliberate attempt to deceive the scientific
community with misinformation on the subject of climate change."

According to the NEW YORK TIMES, the energy corporations plan to spend
$5 million over the next two years to "maximize the impact of
scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media, and
other key audiences." Their plan calls for spending $600,000 (not
including costs of advertising) on a media campaign to influence
science writers, editors, columnists, and TV network correspondents
using as many as 20 "respected climate scientists" recruited
specifically "to inject credible science and scientific accountability
into the climate science debate, thereby raising questions about and
undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom.'" The energy
corporations say they intend to provide "a one-stop resource for
members of Congress, the media industry, and all others concerned."

This latest plan to "educate" Americans about global warming will be
paid for by Exxon, Chevron, and other supporters of the American
Petroleum Institute. Previous similar attempts in recent years have
been funded by Exxon, Shell Oil, Unocal, ARCO, the British Coal
Corporation, the German Coal Mining Association, and Cyprus Minerals,
a western mining company that is the single biggest funder of the so-
called Wise Use anti-environmental movement in the U.S.[7]

Who knows? With enough money, it may be possible to convince Congress
and the media that global warming is not happening, despite the
evidence, which is considerable (see REHW #430, #466):

** Average global air temperatures have risen this century.

** The oceans have warmed this century;

** The level of the oceans has been rising this century because water
expands as it warms;

** Many glaciers have shrunk this century in response to warming;

** Plants are moving upward on mountainsides as temperatures rise;

** Rainfall --particularly torrential rainfall --has been increasing
this century as global warming has put more water vapor into the air;

** Floods are increasing because of more rainfall;

** In England, where climatic records reach back several hundred
years, spring has been arriving earlier in recent decades;

** The IPCC and the World Health Organization say that global warming
is expanding the range of mosquitoes that carry malaria, yellow fever,
and dengue fever, a trend that will put millions of additional humans
at risk from these diseases. (See REHW #466.)

** Computer models predict that global warming will be accompanied by
more storms and more intense storms, and, in fact, this has been
happening. To protect itself the U.S. insurance industry in 1996
stopped insuring certain storm-prone areas on the eastern seaboard and
along the Gulf coast.[8]

Already severe storms are hurting people in California, Alabama, the
upper midwest, and New England, to mention only U.S. locations where
extreme weather events have struck in recent months. Real people are
suffering. Affected individuals, and all taxpayers, are paying large
costs. If the world scientific consensus is correct, this will
continue until our use of coal and oil is cut by 60% or 70% and the
atmosphere can stabilize again. At present there is no possibility --
none--of achieving such drastic cuts because the oil and coal
companies are too powerful.

Global warming is the most important problem we face because it has
the potential to disrupt every part of the global ecosystem. It is
also the most important because it promises to reveal the fundamental
flaws in the permissive way we treat corporations: (1) we give them
the free- speech protections of the Bill of Rights, allowing them to
spend millions on disinformation campaigns aimed at maintaining a
harmful status quo. And (2) we allow them to manipulate our most basic
democratic institutions by pumping millions of dollars into election
campaigns. It seems clear that if we are to solve the global warming
problem, these two practices will have to change.

--Peter Montague (National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)

=====

[1] William K. Stevens, "New Evidence Finds This is the Warmest
Century in 600 years," NEW YORK TIMES April 28, 1998, pg. C3.

[2] Michael E. Mann and others, "Global-scale temperature patterns and
climate forcing over the past six centuries," NATURE Vol. 392 (April
23, 1998), pgs. 779-787. See also, Gabriele Hegerl, "The past as a
guide to the future," NATURE Vol. 392 (April 23, 1998), pgs. 758-759.

[3] J.J. Houghton and others, editors, CLIMATE CHANGE 1995: THE
SCIENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1996).

[4] John H. Cushman, Jr., "Industrial Group Plans to Battle Climate
Treaty," NEW YORK TIMES April 26, 1998, pgs. A1, A24.

[5] Paul N. Edwards and Stephen H. Schneider, "The 1995 IPCC Report:
Broad Consensus or 'Scientific Cleansing,' ECOFABLES/ECOSCIENCE No. 1
(Fall 1997), pgs. 3-9. ECOFABLES/ECOSCIENCE is published by the Center
for Conservation Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020. E-mail:
; telephone (415) 723-5924; fax: (415) 723-
5920.

[6] Colin Macilwain, "Petition strengthens hand of global warming
skeptics," NATURE Vol. 392 (April 16, 1998), pg. 639.

[7] Ross Gelbspan, "Hot Air on Global Warming; Science and Academia in
the Service of the Fossil Fuel Industry," MULTINATIONAL MONITOR Vol.
18, No. 11 (November 1997), pgs. 14-17.

[8] Joseph B. Treaster, "Insurer Curbing Sales of Policies in Storm
Areas," NEW YORK TIMES October 10, 1996, pgs. A1, D6.

Descriptor terms: global warming; greenhouse effect; corporations;
kyoto; insurance industry; libertarians; think tanks; ipcc;

Bill Ward wrote:

Here's another possibility:

http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/...=2006&public=0

You're ignorance is so tragic, it's laughable.

--
Get A Free Orbiter Space Flight Simulator :
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html

On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 21:59:02 -0700, kdthrge wrote:

On Mar 28, 4:00 pm, "Lloyd" wrote:
On Mar 28, 3:27 pm, "W. D. Allen" wrote:

CO2 is caused by the climate, not the other way around!

WDA

end

Simple pap from a simpleton.

(1) What is causing the warming?
(2) Where does all the human produced CO2 go? (3) Why aren't the oceans
losing CO2?

You are the duffus.
Warming fluctuations in a system as large as the earth are natural and
very well indicated in the geological record. The natural cycle of carbon
dioxide is upward 440 billion tons per year recycled by vegetation.
Humans produce around 21 billion from fossil fuels and cement. Humans
produce around 7 billion annually from burning of tropical forests to
clear for agriculture.
This causes a cumulative reduction in the important recycling of
vegetation.
The oceans are in vapor equilibrium with CO2. This amounts to about 60
billion tons absorbed and released by the ocean annually. There is also
much old CO2 from decayed animals at greater depth.

http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/scq.CO2rise.html
http://www.agu.org/eos_elec/99148e.html

Notice the mention of 'unknown sinks'. This means that the calculations of
CO2 to human production are off. It probably means that the effect of
human input from fossil fuels would be entirely taken up by nature if not
for the reduction of vegetation by the intensive deforestation. Since
industrialization, 20% of the worlds forests have been lost.

Here's another possibility:

http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/...=2006&public=0


From ice core data, it is clear that warming causes increase in CO2
levels. The increases in CO2 follow warming, and are not so closely
related to temperature drops.

http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Pre...ning/New_Data/

The changes in CO2 concentrations must be primarilly from the effect of
warmer air temperatures and ocean temperatures on the exchange and release
of CO2 from the oceans. The greater rate of evaporation at the surface may
increase the concentrations of CO2 at the surface and cause a greater
exchange to the atmosphere, and currents may increase with warmer
temperatures and bring more CO2 to the surface where it is exchanged with
the atmosphere.

Deatherage

On Mar 28, 12:27 pm, "W. D. Allen" wrote:
CO2 is caused by the climate, not the other way around!

WDA

end

A New Disinformation Campaign, April 30, 1998

http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...= swishe_rank

This website is posted by federal court order and contains nothing
that was not evidence used in trials. At the trials lawyers had
opportunity of due process of law to object and exclude evidence --
these are the ones that were not excluded.

It confirms the activist website which merely quotes public knowledge.

TASSC "Global Warming"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Singer, F."
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Fred Singer"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Fred Seitz"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Seitz, F"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Lindzen, R"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Richard Lindzen"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC Milloy
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC Fumento
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Michael Fumento"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Michaels, P"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Patrick J. Michaels"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Patrick Michaels"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Science & Environmental Policy Project"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...=swishe_ra nk

A New Disinformation Campaign, April 30, 1998

http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/bulle...m?Issue_ID=521

#596 - A New Disinformation Campaign, April 30, 1998

A new study concludes that this has been the warmest century in 600
years, and that the hottest years during this century have been 1990,
1995, and 1997.[1,2] This is further evidence that global warming is
upon us, and that humans are contributing to it by burning coal and
oil. (See REHW #430, #466.) "Our conclusion was that the warming of
the past few decades appears to be closely tied to emission of
greenhouse gases by humans and not [by] any of the natural factors,"
say Michael E. Mann, principal author of the new study.[1]

The global temperature varies as time passes because of natural
changes in sunlight reaching the Earth, dust from volcanoes (which
reflects sunlight back into space), and changing amounts of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere.

So-called greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide [CO2], but also
methane and a few others that are less important) allow sunlight to
strike the Earth but don't allow heat to escape back into space as
readily, thus trapping heat near the surface, just as the glass roof
on a greenhouse does. Scientists have recognized the existence of this
"greenhouse effect" for about 100 years and they know that, sooner or
later, increasing the amount of "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere
must warm the planet. Thus scientists don't debate whether greenhouse
gases will cause global warming. They debate when it will be
noticeable, how big the warming will be, and what its consequences
might be.

During the past 100 years, humans burning coal and oil have increased
the atmosphere's concentration of carbon dioxide [CO2] --the main
greenhouse gas --by 25%, and the concentration is still rising.

Actual temperature measurements only go back about 150 years, so
temperatures earlier than that must be inferred from tree rings,
corals and fossils in the oceans, deposits left by glaciers, the
chemical composition of ancient ice at the poles, and fossilized
pollen found in lake sediments. The new study, published in the
British journal NATURE, uses many of these techniques to reconstruct
the Earth's temperature back to the year 1400 A.D.[2]

The new study bolsters the consensus reached in 1996 by an
overwhelming majority of the world's climatologists, that (a) global
warming is probably noticeable now; and (b) human activities are
probably contributing to the rise in the planet's average temperature.
That consensus conclusion was published in the second Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),[3]
which is an office of the United Nations Environment Programme and the
World Meteorological Organization.

For their part, the coal and oil corporations are not taking this
scientific consensus lying down. They are fighting back with a multi-
million dollar public relations plan that was recently leaked to the
NEW YORK TIMES.[4] These corporations stand to lose by the global
climate-change agreement reached last December 11 in Kyoto, Japan. The
Kyoto agreement binds the U.S. to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions
to 7% below 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012. For a country like
the U.S., which has steadily rising emissions, the Kyoto agreement
will require cuts as great as 30% to 35% below where emissions would
otherwise be by the year 2012. (See REHW #577.)

In an attempt to undermine the Kyoto agreement, the energy
corporations plan "to recruit a cadre of scientists who share the
industry's views of climate science and to train them in public
relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians, and the
public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify
controls on greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that trap the sun's
heat near Earth."[4] The plan is being spearheaded by Joe Walker, a
public relations representative of the American Petroleum Institute.

The scientific talent for the public relations campaign is being
recruited by Frederick Seitz, who is a physicist, not a climatologist,
but who has an impressive scientific resume as former president of the
American Physical Society, former president of the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS), and president emeritus of Rockefeller University. Dr.
Seitz is also distinguished by being one of the last remaining
scientists who insist that humans have not altered the stratospheric
ozone layer, despite an overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary.
He is currently associated with two libertarian think tanks, the
George C. Marshall Institute and the Advancement of Sound Science
Coalition (see www.marshall.org, www.tassc.org, and www.junkscience.com).

Dr. Seitz injected himself into the climate debate forcefully by
attacking the IPCC just days after publication of the IPCC's consensus
conclusion that humans were probably contributing to global warming.
Writing in the WALL STREET JOURNAL June 12, 1996, Dr. Seitz called the
IPCC report a "major deception on global warming." He accused IPCC
scientists of the most "disturbing corruption of the peer-review
process" that he had ever witnessed. And he accused one particular
scientist, Benjamin Santer, of having made "unauthorized changes" to
the IPCC report for political purposes. It turned out that Seitz had
not attended any of the IPCC meetings, and he had not contacted Santer
to find out whether the changes to the IPCC document were "authorized"
or not. It also turned out that all of Seitz's charges were wrong --
the IPCC report had been peer-reviewed by roughly one thousand
qualified scientists and all of the writing in the final report was
fully authorized.[5]

Dr. Seitz and his associates at the George C. Marshall Institute are
now preparing to release a petition that they reportedly sent to
"virtually every scientist in every field" in the U.S.[6] There are 10
million people with undergraduate degrees in science in the U.S., and
half a million with science Ph.D.s. Of these, 15,000 science graduates
and 6000 with Ph.D. degrees have reportedly signed the petition, which
rejects the Kyoto agreement and argues that increasing levels of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the planet. The mass
mailing to scientists included a copy of an article formatted to look
as if it had been published in the prestigious, peer-reviewed journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. It was not. The
article, which had been neither peer-reviewed nor published, argued
that the release of more carbon dioxide "will help to maintain and
improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all
people." The Union of Concerned Scientists (www.ucsusa.org) has
branded the exercise "a deliberate attempt to deceive the scientific
community with misinformation on the subject of climate change."

According to the NEW YORK TIMES, the energy corporations plan to spend
$5 million over the next two years to "maximize the impact of
scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media, and
other key audiences." Their plan calls for spending $600,000 (not
including costs of advertising) on a media campaign to influence
science writers, editors, columnists, and TV network correspondents
using as many as 20 "respected climate scientists" recruited
specifically "to inject credible science and scientific accountability
into the climate science debate, thereby raising questions about and
undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom.'" The energy
corporations say they intend to provide "a one-stop resource for
members of Congress, the media industry, and all others concerned."

This latest plan to "educate" Americans about global warming will be
paid for by Exxon, Chevron, and other supporters of the American
Petroleum Institute. Previous similar attempts in recent years have
been funded by Exxon, Shell Oil, Unocal, ARCO, the British Coal
Corporation, the German Coal Mining Association, and Cyprus Minerals,
a western mining company that is the single biggest funder of the so-
called Wise Use anti-environmental movement in the U.S.[7]

Who knows? With enough money, it may be possible to convince Congress
and the media that global warming is not happening, despite the
evidence, which is considerable (see REHW #430, #466):

** Average global air temperatures have risen this century.

** The oceans have warmed this century;

** The level of the oceans has been rising this century because water
expands as it warms;

** Many glaciers have shrunk this century in response to warming;

** Plants are moving upward on mountainsides as temperatures rise;

** Rainfall --particularly torrential rainfall --has been increasing
this century as global warming has put more water vapor into the air;

** Floods are increasing because of more rainfall;

** In England, where climatic records reach back several hundred
years, spring has been arriving earlier in recent decades;

** The IPCC and the World Health Organization say that global warming
is expanding the range of mosquitoes that carry malaria, yellow fever,
and dengue fever, a trend that will put millions of additional humans
at risk from these diseases. (See REHW #466.)

** Computer models predict that global warming will be accompanied by
more storms and more intense storms, and, in fact, this has been
happening. To protect itself the U.S. insurance industry in 1996
stopped insuring certain storm-prone areas on the eastern seaboard and
along the Gulf coast.[8]

Already severe storms are hurting people in California, Alabama, the
upper midwest, and New England, to mention only U.S. locations where
extreme weather events have struck in recent months. Real people are
suffering. Affected individuals, and all taxpayers, are paying large
costs. If the world scientific consensus is correct, this will
continue until our use of coal and oil is cut by 60% or 70% and the
atmosphere can stabilize again. At present there is no possibility --
none--of achieving such drastic cuts because the oil and coal
companies are too powerful.

Global warming is the most important problem we face because it has
the potential to disrupt every part of the global ecosystem. It is
also the most important because it promises to reveal the fundamental
flaws in the permissive way we treat corporations: (1) we give them
the free- speech protections of the Bill of Rights, allowing them to
spend millions on disinformation campaigns aimed at maintaining a
harmful status quo. And (2) we allow them to manipulate our most basic
democratic institutions by pumping millions of dollars into election
campaigns. It seems clear that if we are to solve the global warming
problem, these two practices will have to change.

--Peter Montague (National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)

=====

[1] William K. Stevens, "New Evidence Finds This is the Warmest
Century in 600 years," NEW YORK TIMES April 28, 1998, pg. C3.

[2] Michael E. Mann and others, "Global-scale temperature patterns and
climate forcing over the past six centuries," NATURE Vol. 392 (April
23, 1998), pgs. 779-787. See also, Gabriele Hegerl, "The past as a
guide to the future," NATURE Vol. 392 (April 23, 1998), pgs. 758-759.

[3] J.J. Houghton and others, editors, CLIMATE CHANGE 1995: THE
SCIENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1996).

[4] John H. Cushman, Jr., "Industrial Group Plans to Battle Climate
Treaty," NEW YORK TIMES April 26, 1998, pgs. A1, A24.

[5] Paul N. Edwards and Stephen H. Schneider, "The 1995 IPCC Report:
Broad Consensus or 'Scientific Cleansing,' ECOFABLES/ECOSCIENCE No. 1
(Fall 1997), pgs. 3-9. ECOFABLES/ECOSCIENCE is published by the Center
for Conservation Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020. E-mail:
; telephone (415) 723-5924; fax: (415) 723-
5920.

[6] Colin Macilwain, "Petition strengthens hand of global warming
skeptics," NATURE Vol. 392 (April 16, 1998), pg. 639.

[7] Ross Gelbspan, "Hot Air on Global Warming; Science and Academia in
the Service of the Fossil Fuel Industry," MULTINATIONAL MONITOR Vol.
18, No. 11 (November 1997), pgs. 14-17.

[8] Joseph B. Treaster, "Insurer Curbing Sales of Policies in Storm
Areas," NEW YORK TIMES October 10, 1996, pgs. A1, D6.

Descriptor terms: global warming; greenhouse effect; corporations;
kyoto; insurance industry; libertarians; think tanks; ipcc;

On Apr 1, 3:16 pm, Bill Ward wrote:

Here's another possibility:

I know, people like you tend to giggle a lot. Just take your meds and
it'll pass.

A New Disinformation Campaign, April 30, 1998

http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...= swishe_rank

This website is posted by federal court order and contains nothing
that was not evidence used in trials. At the trials lawyers had
opportunity of due process of law to object and exclude evidence --
these are the ones that were not excluded.

It confirms the activist website which merely quotes public knowledge.

TASSC "Global Warming"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Singer, F."
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Fred Singer"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Fred Seitz"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Seitz, F"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Lindzen, R"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Richard Lindzen"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC Milloy
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC Fumento
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Michael Fumento"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Michaels, P"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Patrick J. Michaels"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Patrick Michaels"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Science & Environmental Policy Project"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...=swishe_ra nk

A New Disinformation Campaign, April 30, 1998

http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/bulle...m?Issue_ID=521

#596 - A New Disinformation Campaign, April 30, 1998

A new study concludes that this has been the warmest century in 600
years, and that the hottest years during this century have been 1990,
1995, and 1997.[1,2] This is further evidence that global warming is
upon us, and that humans are contributing to it by burning coal and
oil. (See REHW #430, #466.) "Our conclusion was that the warming of
the past few decades appears to be closely tied to emission of
greenhouse gases by humans and not [by] any of the natural factors,"
say Michael E. Mann, principal author of the new study.[1]

The global temperature varies as time passes because of natural
changes in sunlight reaching the Earth, dust from volcanoes (which
reflects sunlight back into space), and changing amounts of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere.

So-called greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide [CO2], but also
methane and a few others that are less important) allow sunlight to
strike the Earth but don't allow heat to escape back into space as
readily, thus trapping heat near the surface, just as the glass roof
on a greenhouse does. Scientists have recognized the existence of this
"greenhouse effect" for about 100 years and they know that, sooner or
later, increasing the amount of "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere
must warm the planet. Thus scientists don't debate whether greenhouse
gases will cause global warming. They debate when it will be
noticeable, how big the warming will be, and what its consequences
might be.

During the past 100 years, humans burning coal and oil have increased
the atmosphere's concentration of carbon dioxide [CO2] --the main
greenhouse gas --by 25%, and the concentration is still rising.

Actual temperature measurements only go back about 150 years, so
temperatures earlier than that must be inferred from tree rings,
corals and fossils in the oceans, deposits left by glaciers, the
chemical composition of ancient ice at the poles, and fossilized
pollen found in lake sediments. The new study, published in the
British journal NATURE, uses many of these techniques to reconstruct
the Earth's temperature back to the year 1400 A.D.[2]

The new study bolsters the consensus reached in 1996 by an
overwhelming majority of the world's climatologists, that (a) global
warming is probably noticeable now; and (b) human activities are
probably contributing to the rise in the planet's average temperature.
That consensus conclusion was published in the second Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),[3]
which is an office of the United Nations Environment Programme and the
World Meteorological Organization.

For their part, the coal and oil corporations are not taking this
scientific consensus lying down. They are fighting back with a multi-
million dollar public relations plan that was recently leaked to the
NEW YORK TIMES.[4] These corporations stand to lose by the global
climate-change agreement reached last December 11 in Kyoto, Japan. The
Kyoto agreement binds the U.S. to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions
to 7% below 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012. For a country like
the U.S., which has steadily rising emissions, the Kyoto agreement
will require cuts as great as 30% to 35% below where emissions would
otherwise be by the year 2012. (See REHW #577.)

In an attempt to undermine the Kyoto agreement, the energy
corporations plan "to recruit a cadre of scientists who share the
industry's views of climate science and to train them in public
relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians, and the
public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify
controls on greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that trap the sun's
heat near Earth."[4] The plan is being spearheaded by Joe Walker, a
public relations representative of the American Petroleum Institute.

The scientific talent for the public relations campaign is being
recruited by Frederick Seitz, who is a physicist, not a climatologist,
but who has an impressive scientific resume as former president of the
American Physical Society, former president of the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS), and president emeritus of Rockefeller University. Dr.
Seitz is also distinguished by being one of the last remaining
scientists who insist that humans have not altered the stratospheric
ozone layer, despite an overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary.
He is currently associated with two libertarian think tanks, the
George C. Marshall Institute and the Advancement of Sound Science
Coalition (see www.marshall.org, www.tassc.org, and www.junkscience.com).

Dr. Seitz injected himself into the climate debate forcefully by
attacking the IPCC just days after publication of the IPCC's consensus
conclusion that humans were probably contributing to global warming.
Writing in the WALL STREET JOURNAL June 12, 1996, Dr. Seitz called the
IPCC report a "major deception on global warming." He accused IPCC
scientists of the most "disturbing corruption of the peer-review
process" that he had ever witnessed. And he accused one particular
scientist, Benjamin Santer, of having made "unauthorized changes" to
the IPCC report for political purposes. It turned out that Seitz had
not attended any of the IPCC meetings, and he had not contacted Santer
to find out whether the changes to the IPCC document were "authorized"
or not. It also turned out that all of Seitz's charges were wrong --
the IPCC report had been peer-reviewed by roughly one thousand
qualified scientists and all of the writing in the final report was
fully authorized.[5]

Dr. Seitz and his associates at the George C. Marshall Institute are
now preparing to release a petition that they reportedly sent to
"virtually every scientist in every field" in the U.S.[6] There are 10
million people with undergraduate degrees in science in the U.S., and
half a million with science Ph.D.s. Of these, 15,000 science graduates
and 6000 with Ph.D. degrees have reportedly signed the petition, which
rejects the Kyoto agreement and argues that increasing levels of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the planet. The mass
mailing to scientists included a copy of an article formatted to look
as if it had been published in the prestigious, peer-reviewed journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. It was not. The
article, which had been neither peer-reviewed nor published, argued
that the release of more carbon dioxide "will help to maintain and
improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all
people." The Union of Concerned Scientists (www.ucsusa.org) has
branded the exercise "a deliberate attempt to deceive the scientific
community with misinformation on the subject of climate change."

According to the NEW YORK TIMES, the energy corporations plan to spend
$5 million over the next two years to "maximize the impact of
scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media, and
other key audiences." Their plan calls for spending $600,000 (not
including costs of advertising) on a media campaign to influence
science writers, editors, columnists, and TV network correspondents
using as many as 20 "respected climate scientists" recruited
specifically "to inject credible science and scientific accountability
into the climate science debate, thereby raising questions about and
undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom.'" The energy
corporations say they intend to provide "a one-stop resource for
members of Congress, the media industry, and all others concerned."

This latest plan to "educate" Americans about global warming will be
paid for by Exxon, Chevron, and other supporters of the American
Petroleum Institute. Previous similar attempts in recent years have
been funded by Exxon, Shell Oil, Unocal, ARCO, the British Coal
Corporation, the German Coal Mining Association, and Cyprus Minerals,
a western mining company that is the single biggest funder of the so-
called Wise Use anti-environmental movement in the U.S.[7]

Who knows? With enough money, it may be possible to convince Congress
and the media that global warming is not happening, despite the
evidence, which is considerable (see REHW #430, #466):

** Average global air temperatures have risen this century.

** The oceans have warmed this century;

** The level of the oceans has been rising this century because water
expands as it warms;

** Many glaciers have shrunk this century in response to warming;

** Plants are moving upward on mountainsides as temperatures rise;

** Rainfall --particularly torrential rainfall --has been increasing
this century as global warming has put more water vapor into the air;

** Floods are increasing because of more rainfall;

** In England, where climatic records reach back several hundred
years, spring has been arriving earlier in recent decades;

** The IPCC and the World Health Organization say that global warming
is expanding the range of mosquitoes that carry malaria, yellow fever,
and dengue fever, a trend that will put millions of additional humans
at risk from these diseases. (See REHW #466.)

** Computer models predict that global warming will be accompanied by
more storms and more intense storms, and, in fact, this has been
happening. To protect itself the U.S. insurance industry in 1996
stopped insuring certain storm-prone areas on the eastern seaboard and
along the Gulf coast.[8]

Already severe storms are hurting people in California, Alabama, the
upper midwest, and New England, to mention only U.S. locations where
extreme weather events have struck in recent months. Real people are
suffering. Affected individuals, and all taxpayers, are paying large
costs. If the world scientific consensus is correct, this will
continue until our use of coal and oil is cut by 60% or 70% and the
atmosphere can stabilize again. At present there is no possibility --
none--of achieving such drastic cuts because the oil and coal
companies are too powerful.

Global warming is the most important problem we face because it has
the potential to disrupt every part of the global ecosystem. It is
also the most important because it promises to reveal the fundamental
flaws in the permissive way we treat corporations: (1) we give them
the free- speech protections of the Bill of Rights, allowing them to
spend millions on disinformation campaigns aimed at maintaining a
harmful status quo. And (2) we allow them to manipulate our most basic
democratic institutions by pumping millions of dollars into election
campaigns. It seems clear that if we are to solve the global warming
problem, these two practices will have to change.

--Peter Montague (National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)

=====

[1] William K. Stevens, "New Evidence Finds This is the Warmest
Century in 600 years," NEW YORK TIMES April 28, 1998, pg. C3.

[2] Michael E. Mann and others, "Global-scale temperature patterns and
climate forcing over the past six centuries," NATURE Vol. 392 (April
23, 1998), pgs. 779-787. See also, Gabriele Hegerl, "The past as a
guide to the future," NATURE Vol. 392 (April 23, 1998), pgs. 758-759.

[3] J.J. Houghton and others, editors, CLIMATE CHANGE 1995: THE
SCIENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1996).

[4] John H. Cushman, Jr., "Industrial Group Plans to Battle Climate
Treaty," NEW YORK TIMES April 26, 1998, pgs. A1, A24.

[5] Paul N. Edwards and Stephen H. Schneider, "The 1995 IPCC Report:
Broad Consensus or 'Scientific Cleansing,' ECOFABLES/ECOSCIENCE No. 1
(Fall 1997), pgs. 3-9. ECOFABLES/ECOSCIENCE is published by the Center
for Conservation Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020. E-mail:
; telephone (415) 723-5924; fax: (415) 723-
5920.

[6] Colin Macilwain, "Petition strengthens hand of global warming
skeptics," NATURE Vol. 392 (April 16, 1998), pg. 639.

[7] Ross Gelbspan, "Hot Air on Global Warming; Science and Academia in
the Service of the Fossil Fuel Industry," MULTINATIONAL MONITOR Vol.
18, No. 11 (November 1997), pgs. 14-17.

[8] Joseph B. Treaster, "Insurer Curbing Sales of Policies in Storm
Areas," NEW YORK TIMES October 10, 1996, pgs. A1, D6.

Descriptor terms: global warming; greenhouse effect; corporations;
kyoto; insurance industry; libertarians; think tanks; ipcc;

On Apr 1, 1:10 pm, Bill Ward wrote:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 21:59:02 -0700, kdthrge wrote:
On Mar 28, 4:00 pm, "Lloyd" wrote:
On Mar 28, 3:27 pm, "W. D. Allen" wrote:

CO2 is caused by the climate, not the other way around!

WDA

end

Simple pap from a simpleton.

(1) What is causing the warming?
(2) Where does all the human produced CO2 go? (3) Why aren't the oceans
losing CO2?

You are the duffus.
Warming fluctuations in a system as large as the earth are natural and
very well indicated in the geological record. The natural cycle of carbon
dioxide is upward 440 billion tons per year recycled by vegetation.
Humans produce around 21 billion from fossil fuels and cement. Humans
produce around 7 billion annually from burning of tropical forests to
clear for agriculture.
This causes a cumulative reduction in the important recycling of
vegetation.
The oceans are in vapor equilibrium with CO2. This amounts to about 60
billion tons absorbed and released by the ocean annually. There is also
much old CO2 from decayed animals at greater depth.

http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/scq.CO2rise.html
http://www.agu.org/eos_elec/99148e.html

Notice the mention of 'unknown sinks'. This means that the calculations of
CO2 to human production are off. It probably means that the effect of
human input from fossil fuels would be entirely taken up by nature if not
for the reduction of vegetation by the intensive deforestation. Since
industrialization, 20% of the worlds forests have been lost.

Here's another possibility:

http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/...=20061003.0958...





From ice core data, it is clear that warming causes increase in CO2
levels. The increases in CO2 follow warming, and are not so closely
related to temperature drops.

http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Pre...ning/New_Data/

Interesting link- thanks- A. McIntire

The changes in CO2 concentrations must be primarilly from the effect of
warmer air temperatures and ocean temperatures on the exchange and release
of CO2 from the oceans. The greater rate of evaporation at the surface may
increase the concentrations of CO2 at the surface and cause a greater
exchange to the atmosphere, and currents may increase with warmer
temperatures and bring more CO2 to the surface where it is exchanged with
the atmosphere.

Deatherage- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

On Sun, 01 Apr 2007 14:13:01 -0500, kT wrote:

Bill Ward wrote:

Here's another possibility:

http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/...=2006&public=0

You're ignorance is so tragic, it's laughable.

I know, people like you tend to giggle a lot. Just take your meds and
it'll pass.

On Apr 1, 2:52 pm, wrote:

- Show quoted text -

A New Disinformation Campaign, April 30, 1998

http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...= swishe_rank

This website is posted by federal court order and contains nothing
that was not evidence used in trials. At the trials lawyers had
opportunity of due process of law to object and exclude evidence --
these are the ones that were not excluded.

It confirms the activist website which merely quotes public knowledge.

TASSC "Global Warming"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Singer, F."
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Fred Singer"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Fred Seitz"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Seitz, F"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Lindzen, R"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Richard Lindzen"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC Milloy
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC Fumento
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Michael Fumento"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

TASSC "Michaels, P"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Patrick J. Michaels"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Patrick Michaels"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...by=swishe_rank

"Science & Environmental Policy Project"
http://tobaccodocuments.org/all/docu...=swishe_ra nk

A New Disinformation Campaign, April 30, 1998

http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/bulle...m?Issue_ID=521

#596 - A New Disinformation Campaign, April 30, 1998

A new study concludes that this has been the warmest century in 600
years, and that the hottest years during this century have been 1990,
1995, and 1997.[1,2] This is further evidence that global warming is
upon us, and that humans are contributing to it by burning coal and
oil. (See REHW #430, #466.) "Our conclusion was that the warming of
the past few decades appears to be closely tied to emission of
greenhouse gases by humans and not [by] any of the natural factors,"
say Michael E. Mann, principal author of the new study.[1]

The global temperature varies as time passes because of natural
changes in sunlight reaching the Earth, dust from volcanoes (which
reflects sunlight back into space), and changing amounts of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere.

So-called greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide [CO2], but also
methane and a few others that are less important) allow sunlight to
strike the Earth but don't allow heat to escape back into space as
readily, thus trapping heat near the surface, just as the glass roof
on a greenhouse does. Scientists have recognized the existence of this
"greenhouse effect" for about 100 years and they know that, sooner or
later, increasing the amount of "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere
must warm the planet. Thus scientists don't debate whether greenhouse
gases will cause global warming. They debate when it will be
noticeable, how big the warming will be, and what its consequences
might be.

During the past 100 years, humans burning coal and oil have increased
the atmosphere's concentration of carbon dioxide [CO2] --the main
greenhouse gas --by 25%, and the concentration is still rising.

Actual temperature measurements only go back about 150 years, so
temperatures earlier than that must be inferred from tree rings,
corals and fossils in the oceans, deposits left by glaciers, the
chemical composition of ancient ice at the poles, and fossilized
pollen found in lake sediments. The new study, published in the
British journal NATURE, uses many of these techniques to reconstruct
the Earth's temperature back to the year 1400 A.D.[2]

The new study bolsters the consensus reached in 1996 by an
overwhelming majority of the world's climatologists, that (a) global
warming is probably noticeable now; and (b) human activities are
probably contributing to the rise in the planet's average temperature.
That consensus conclusion was published in the second Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),[3]
which is an office of the United Nations Environment Programme and the
World Meteorological Organization.

For their part, the coal and oil corporations are not taking this
scientific consensus lying down. They are fighting back with a multi-
million dollar public relations plan that was recently leaked to the
NEW YORK TIMES.[4] These corporations stand to lose by the global
climate-change agreement reached last December 11 in Kyoto, Japan. The
Kyoto agreement binds the U.S. to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions
to 7% below 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012. For a country like
the U.S., which has steadily rising emissions, the Kyoto agreement
will require cuts as great as 30% to 35% below where emissions would
otherwise be by the year 2012. (See REHW #577.)

In an attempt to undermine the Kyoto agreement, the energy
corporations plan "to recruit a cadre of scientists who share the
industry's views of climate science and to train them in public
relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians, and the
public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify
controls on greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that trap the sun's
heat near Earth."[4] The plan is being spearheaded by Joe Walker, a
public relations representative of the American Petroleum Institute.

The scientific talent for the public relations campaign is being
recruited by Frederick Seitz, who is a physicist, not a climatologist,
but who has an impressive scientific resume as former president of the
American Physical Society, former president of the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS), and president emeritus of Rockefeller University. Dr.
Seitz is also distinguished by being one of the last remaining
scientists who insist that humans have not altered the stratospheric
ozone layer, despite an overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary.
He is currently associated with two libertarian think tanks, the
George C. Marshall Institute and the Advancement of Sound Science
Coalition (see www.marshall.org, www.tassc.org, and www.junkscience.com).

Dr. Seitz injected himself into the climate debate forcefully by
attacking the IPCC just days after publication of the IPCC's consensus
conclusion that humans were probably contributing to global warming.
Writing in the WALL STREET JOURNAL June 12, 1996, Dr. Seitz called the
IPCC report a "major deception on global warming." He accused IPCC
scientists of the most "disturbing corruption of the peer-review
process" that he had ever witnessed. And he accused one particular
scientist, Benjamin Santer, of having made "unauthorized changes" to
the IPCC report for political purposes. It turned out that Seitz had
not attended any of the IPCC meetings, and he had not contacted Santer
to find out whether the changes to the IPCC document were "authorized"
or not. It also turned out that all of Seitz's charges were wrong --
the IPCC report had been peer-reviewed by roughly one thousand
qualified scientists and all of the writing in the final report was
fully authorized.[5]

Dr. Seitz and his associates at the George C. Marshall Institute are
now preparing to release a petition that they reportedly sent to
"virtually every scientist in every field" in the U.S.[6] There are 10
million people with undergraduate degrees in science in the U.S., and
half a million with science Ph.D.s. Of these, 15,000 science graduates
and 6000 with Ph.D. degrees have reportedly signed the petition, which
rejects the Kyoto agreement and argues that increasing levels of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the planet. The mass
mailing to scientists included a copy of an article formatted to look
as if it had been published in the prestigious, peer-reviewed journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. It was not. The
article, which had been neither peer-reviewed nor published, argued
that the release of more carbon dioxide "will help to maintain and
improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all
people." The Union of Concerned Scientists (www.ucsusa.org) has
branded the exercise "a deliberate attempt to deceive the scientific
community with misinformation on the subject of climate change."

According to the NEW YORK TIMES, the energy corporations plan to spend
$5 million over the next two years to "maximize the impact of
scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media, and
other key audiences." Their plan calls for spending $600,000 (not
including costs of advertising) on a media campaign to influence
science writers, editors, columnists, and TV network correspondents
using as many as 20 "respected climate scientists" recruited
specifically "to inject credible science and scientific accountability
into the climate science debate, thereby raising questions about and
undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom.'" The energy
corporations say they intend to provide "a one-stop resource for
members of Congress, the media industry, and all others concerned."

This latest plan to "educate" Americans about global warming will be
paid for by Exxon, Chevron, and other supporters of the American
Petroleum Institute. Previous similar attempts in recent years have
been funded by Exxon, Shell Oil, Unocal, ARCO, the British Coal
Corporation, the German Coal Mining Association, and Cyprus Minerals,
a western mining company that is the single biggest funder of the so-
called Wise Use anti-environmental movement in the U.S.[7]

Who knows? With enough money, it may be possible to convince Congress
and the media that global warming is not happening, despite the
evidence, which is considerable (see REHW #430, #466):

** Average global air temperatures have risen this century.

** The oceans have warmed this century;

** The level of the oceans has been rising this century because water
expands as it warms;

** Many glaciers have shrunk this century in response to warming;

** Plants are moving upward on mountainsides as temperatures rise;

** Rainfall --particularly torrential rainfall --has been increasing
this century as global warming has put more water vapor into the air;

** Floods are increasing because of more rainfall;

** In England, where climatic records reach back several hundred
years, spring has been arriving earlier in recent decades;

** The IPCC and the World Health Organization say that global warming
is expanding the range of mosquitoes that carry malaria, yellow fever,
and dengue fever, a trend that will put millions of additional humans
at risk from these diseases. (See REHW #466.)

** Computer models predict that global warming will be accompanied by
more storms and more intense storms, and, in fact, this has been
happening. To protect itself the U.S. insurance industry in 1996
stopped insuring certain storm-prone areas on the eastern seaboard and
along the Gulf coast.[8]

Already severe storms are hurting people in California, Alabama, the
upper midwest, and New England, to mention only U.S. locations where
extreme weather events have struck in recent months. Real people are
suffering. Affected individuals, and all taxpayers, are paying large
costs. If the world scientific consensus is correct, this will
continue until our use of coal and oil is cut by 60% or 70% and the
atmosphere can stabilize again. At present there is no possibility --
none--of achieving such drastic cuts because the oil and coal
companies are too powerful.

Global warming is the most important problem we face because it has
the potential to disrupt every part of the global ecosystem. It is
also the most important because it promises to reveal the fundamental
flaws in the permissive way we treat corporations: (1) we give them
the free- speech protections of the Bill of Rights, allowing them to
spend millions on disinformation campaigns aimed at maintaining a
harmful status quo. And (2) we allow them to manipulate our most basic
democratic institutions by pumping millions of dollars into election
campaigns. It seems clear that if we are to solve the global warming
problem, these two practices will have to change.

--Peter Montague (National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)

=====

[1] William K. Stevens, "New Evidence Finds This is the Warmest
Century in 600 years," NEW YORK TIMES April 28, 1998, pg. C3.

[2] Michael E. Mann and others, "Global-scale temperature patterns and
climate forcing over the past six centuries," NATURE Vol. 392 (April
23, 1998), pgs. 779-787. See also, Gabriele Hegerl, "The past as a
guide to the future," NATURE Vol. 392 (April 23, 1998), pgs. 758-759.

[3] J.J. Houghton and others, editors, CLIMATE CHANGE 1995: THE
SCIENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1996).

[4] John H. Cushman, Jr., "Industrial Group Plans to Battle Climate
Treaty," NEW YORK TIMES April 26, 1998, pgs. A1, A24.

[5] Paul N. Edwards and Stephen H. Schneider, "The 1995 IPCC Report:
Broad Consensus or 'Scientific Cleansing,' ECOFABLES/ECOSCIENCE No. 1
(Fall 1997), pgs. 3-9. ECOFABLES/ECOSCIENCE is published by the Center
for Conservation Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020. E-mail:
; telephone (415) 723-5924; fax: (415) 723-
5920.

[6] Colin Macilwain, "Petition strengthens hand of global warming
skeptics," NATURE Vol. 392 (April 16, 1998), pg. 639.

[7] Ross Gelbspan, "Hot Air on Global Warming; Science and Academia in
the Service of the Fossil Fuel Industry," MULTINATIONAL MONITOR Vol.
18, No. 11 (November 1997), pgs. 14-17.

[8] Joseph B. Treaster, "Insurer Curbing Sales of Policies in Storm
Areas," NEW YORK TIMES October 10, 1996, pgs. A1, D6.

Descriptor terms: global warming; greenhouse effect; corporations;
kyoto; insurance industry; libertarians; think tanks; ipcc;