Climate Change Politics

I did not see that fox news was saying that the author does not believe in GW.

It is obvious that that is what Fox News were implying. So it isn't BS or Bunk to point out that that isn't what he meant.

Why don't you say what was meant ? I asuppose this means that you are saying that his actual words are not good enough to use ?

In any case, that "take' on it that your video offers...is not what was commonly reported, even by "deniers", is it ?

why don't you show us the sources that actually say what your video attributes ? You probably can find some source saying that, Dave Allen.

We can look at another skeptic newscaster, Rex Murphy. He doesn't mince words. Let's see if he says what your video offers as a strawman of a "denier" statement.

Well, it's not clear to me what you mean, to be honest.

Firstly the video does show it's sources, from various journals and newspapers and a section from the relevent e-mail in it's unedited form, all you have to do is pause the vid to have a better read and further sources.

This e-mail is provided as evidence that "scientists are fudging data to present their case for global warming", and Your World is one of the less biased Fox News commentators on the issue.

"If your guts said 'this global warming thing, I think it's a scam, well I think your seeing it now." Glenn Beck (in the Potholer vid I linked to earlier).

Both these 'reporters' held up the quote as evidence for their opinion.

That's how I derive my opinion that Fox News was attempting to twist this particular quote "we can't account for the warming we're seeing right now and it's a travesty that we can't" into an admission by an expert on AGW that it is somehow fraudulent.

However, as the vid points out, if you read the e-mail in its entirity, and couch it in the context of what other e-mailers were discussing, it isn't indicative of an admission of fraud or scam.

We can look at another skeptic newscaster, Rex Murphy. He doesn't mince words. Let's see if he says what your video offers as a strawman of a "denier" statement. I don't know who he is or what he said. He may very well be a more level-headed commentator on the issue. He doesn't have the visibility that less careful commentators have, as far as I can see and assuming he is more credible, so if there are canards produced by people like Beck, I'd say refuting them still 'counts' as criticism of Fox News.

If one newscaster is credible doesn't make the other newscasters credible, or the general thrust of the channel at large.

[INDENT]I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards 'apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data' but in reality the situation is not quite so simple? [There are] some unexpected changes in response that do not match the recent warming. I do not think it wise that this issue be ignored in the chapter. (Briffa, Sep 22, 1999, 0938031546.txt)
[/INDENT]He continued:[INDENT]For the record, I do believe that the proxy data do show unusually warm conditions in recent decades. I am not sure that this unusual warming is so clear in the summer responsive data. I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago. I do not believe that global mean annual temperatures have simply cooled progressively over thousands of years as Mike appears to and I contend that that there is strong evidence for major changes in climate over the Holocene (not Milankovich) that require explanation and that could represent part of the current or future background variability of our climate. (Briffa, Sep 22, 1999, 0938031546.txt)
[/INDENT]

Keith's series? differs in large part in exactly the opposite direction that Phil's does from ours. This is the problem we all picked up on (everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably concensus viewpoint we'd like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al series.

I can't view that article and I did not run for the hills.

I did notice this though uh huh. whose ensemble forecasts ?

The relationship between pH and ammonia is not even fish related. It's basic chemistry. Shift to more ammonium at lower pH, not THE REVERSE OF THAT.

From the doubled headed arrow we can tell that the reaction can go either way and hydroxyl ions and ammonium ions could combine to form ammonia and water. This is precisely what happens as the pH of water increases; that is the water becomes more alkaline. You may recall that alkalinity is caused by an increase in hydroxyl ions. An increase in hydroxyl ions (or alkalinity) pushes the equilibrium to the left and more unionized ammonia is formed.

Oh for god's sake, just take 2 seconds and read it. That is EXACTLY what they say. This is the Wilkes Univ site:

They specifically say here that with HIGHER pH, more UNIONIZED AMMONIA forms. That is the same thing you said -- that the LOWER pH the more IONIZED AMMONIUM forms. The left side of their equilibrium equation shows NH3 and H2O. Their chemistry is CORRECT. So is YOURS. Take the time to read it.

Toxicity increases as pH decreases and as temperature decreases.

Rex Murphy on the same thing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am3-HpSnE9Y

What gets cited as evidence of shenanigans at 1:45 in this vid.

Could it be "we can't account for the warming at the moment"?

Who gets cited as an interesting commentator at the start of the vid?
Could it be John Stewart, of Your World, the Fox News programme that the Greenman vid seeks to answer?

So it would seem that Rex Murphy is looking at the same things as people like Beck (who is, yes, an ass), and drawing the same conclusions from them.

He might be a bit more level headed and reasonable sounding, and I agree that in terms of tone alone he adds a bit more to the debate - but he makes the same fundamental error - which is that he is refusing to acknowledge that the context of the e-mails paints a different picture than the one that can be painted by a few cherry picked examples.

For example - the contention that the e-mailers were trying to stifle scientific debate and block alternative ideas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXesBhYwdRo

you keep saying they are taken out of context - as if in context they are not damaging - but IN CONTEXT, they are damning.

unable to quote what it is that you paraphrase so incorrectly ?

Damning of what?

Because the last time I asked what you what was damning about them all you could provide evidence for was that they were damning of a vague agreement about avoiding an FoI request for something unspecified.

Which isn't exactly my conception of damning.

I'm not paraphrasing. That is what is written on his slideshow at that time.

not another one of your hoax vids. OK, I'll look.

Well, the only reasons you've chosen to dismiss the others as hoaxes have been strawman arguments, or quibbling over whether they've been quixotic or not. Hopefully you'll see that this one even credits some scientific skeptics and criticises some of the e-mailers behaviour (though it stops short of accusing them of fraud).

on the screen as he talks is a series of the emails ! Those are not his words, but Climate Change scientists. ooh, boy, you are offering some great stuff.

yes, I dismiss strawman arguments offering Glenn Beck's type of statements as representative of skeptic arguments.

That's the evidence for which he bases his words - and it's not evidence at all - so his words are irrelevent - whilst the vid made by Greenman explaining why "we can't account for the warming at the moment" is a canard is relevent.

Because "we can't explain the warming at the moment" isn't actually what Fox News presents it as being

An argument wich is, in itself, a strawman, because he vid doesn't just tackle Glenn Beck, and those aruments were, for a while, bandied about by deniers as a gestalt, even if a few scientific skeptics are above such things.

"If your guts said 'this global warming thing, I think it's a scam, well I think your seeing it now." Glenn Beck (in the Potholer vid I linked to earlier).

bunk. that statement is not the only evidence on which he is basing his words, they are just ONE PART of the evidence.

You still have not quoted Fox to show that what you say has even a morsel of truth in it.

.a few ? and the rest are in agreement with Beck types? what kind of crap are you into putting out, Dave Allen ?

They don't talk about G Monbiot, a pure AGW proponent and anti-denier, who is concerned about this. No, they talk about Beck and his ilk. they do not talk about climate audit people, such as Steve, the one who exposed now admitted errors..who says CO2 may be a huge problem, a medium problem, or a little problem. Do they ?

It's not bunk, it's true. Watch the video yourself again if you don't believe me. It's there at 1:45. Are you denying this?

What does it mean? Well, there's no discussion from that anyone on Fox is there? They have jumped to the assumption that it is indicative of conspiracy and have reported it as such (in tones of varying tentativeness or zealousness depending on the persona of the 'reporter').

People on this forum seem to believe its also indicative of a conspiracy of the sort worth commenting on - rather than 'jane and john conspire to watch TV' or something.

It isn't all the evidence - but it is representative and, as you can see from the potholer vid, something other pundits focussed on as well.


Well I quoted Beck in reference to it. I also don't need to quote Fox really, as the vids are full of remarks from Fox reporters and pundits on the issue.


No, they don't have to be.

As I said, I haven't actually been dismissive of scientific skeptics.

I posted the vids, originally, to ask you if your reading of the emails showed anything damning, or were they just twisted out of context, as these vids show has been done on Fox News shows and the like.

As a side note: It's really sad that Climate Change became politicized in the first place. Once people view anything as a "political" issue, their loyalties and hatreds are marshaled; the wagons get circled and otherwise insightful and intelligent minds become closed.

*buys a time machine to have someone other than Al Gore blow the first, big whistle*

I've already shown you the mistaken part. Yes, they got it right in one section, then got it wrong. As they explain it, the un-ionized ammonia is the problematic part, not the ionized (ammonium ), which is true.

but then they say this, which is contradictory - an error
Quote:
Toxicity increases as pH decreases and as temperature decreases.
to be consistent, they would have said it decreases as pH decreases.
but they got it mixed up.

Those statements are absolutely not inconsistent. The first statement describes the dependency of the ionic state of ammonia on pH. The second statement describes the dependency of the toxicity of ammonia on pH.

The second statement, in other words, has to do with the toxicology of ammonia to a given organism and is not a general statement about ammonia chemistry (like the first statement).

Ammonia toxicity and its relationship to pH in fish is a much more complex question that they don't really answer. The pH dependence of ammonia toxicity may not actually have to do with the ionic state of ammonia -- it may have to do with an independent effect of pH on the fish, esp their gills.

The fishdoc table cites TAN (total ammonia nitrogen) which is a combination of NH4+ and NH3, not a proportion of the two, so NEITHER site makes clear which ion is more toxic.

As we have already said, ammonia (NH3) is highly toxic, whereas the ammonium ion is significantly less toxic.

The toxicity to ammonia is primarily attributable to the un-ionized form (NH3), as opposed to the ionized form (NH4+)

They also aren't really defining "toxicity". In the fishdoc site, their table clearly is a measure of potency, i.e. the toxic dose of TAN decreases with increasing pH and increasing temperature. That contradicts the statement on the Wilkes page, but I can't be sure that they're talking about the same thing: Potency is not synonymous with toxicity.