An Inconvenient Truth / Lie Blurring of the Truth, Phony Scientists?

Question

Gore asserts that there are truth distorting, fact blurring, false scientist that are intentionally putting out confusing reports about the reality of global warming.
If this is true, Who is doing it and why?.
Who is responsible for releasing disinformation about the potential global warming and why?

Answer 1

Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Dr. Pat Michaels, Dr. Robert Balling, Dr. Sherwood Idso, and Dr. S. Fred Singer, among others.

Lindzen, Michaels, and Balling were hired as expert witnesses to testify on behalf of Western Fuels Association, a $400 million consortium of coal suppliers and coal-fired utilities. Hmmm...

Michaels has received more than $115,000 over the last four years from coal and energy interests. Hmm...

Balling has received more than $200,000 from coal and oil interests in Great Britain, Germany, and elsewhere. Hmm...

Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services. Hmm...

Singer, who proposed a $95,000 publicity project to "stem the tide towards ever more onerous controls on energy use," has received consulting fees from Exxon, Shell, Unocal, ARCO, and Sun Oil. Hmm...

Answer 2

I'm afraid the responders before me don't know what they're talking about. Yes, there are a few people, some of them in the sciences, who deliberately distort information regarding global warming. They're doing it to protect their jobs and income. A few of them are doing it for ideological reasons.

The worst thing about it is that those ideologues, to whom the corporate-owned (and no longer free) media grant far too much newsprint and face time on t.v., are entirely convinced that it's God's will, what's going on. It does not matter to these ideologues because they have convinced themselves that even if the world comes to an end this very afternoon, God will whisk the Believers off to heaven in an instant (the so-called "rapture") and tough luck to those left behind 'cause the left-behind are evil and deserve to suffer. These ideologues won't lift a finger to help prevent the decimation of the environment, the rape of the global economy, the wholesale destruction of civilizations great and small because all that matters to these ideologues is their own bloated selves. These ideologues are the corporate leaders and the industry giants. They're the creatures that creep along the hallways in Washington that we call Senator and Congressman.
They're the corporate owners of our news outlets busy fellating those Senators, Congressmen, industry giants and George W. Bush. They're the fascists we should've recognized and turned out in tar and feathers back in 1990. Sure, some of 'em have legitimate scientific creds...but then, so have most of the world's rottenest in the past hundred and fifty years. To put it bluntly - we're s c r e w e d and so's the rest of the world.

Answer 3

Al Gore is the confusion factor, while the earth is indeed warming, if you read his book, "earth in the balance" he advocates moving folks into cities per UN "Agenda 21" mandates, to lessen the human impact on the earth. In order to do this, he needs justification, and the more he works folks up, the more he can advance the agenda. He ignors the fact that not only is the earth having global warming, but Mars as well. I doubt very much my old 64 impala I drove 20 years ago, had much to do with global warming on Mars. This fact is not in agreement with his statements concerning earth. Man is arrogant to believe that they can have as big an impact on the earth as say a metor strike like th 1912 siberian that flattened trees for 20 miles in every direction....

Answer 4

The Bush Administration, in concert with big oil, coal, gas, automobile and other large powerful industries (who are more than happy to contribute mega dollars in return for strong lobbying advantages) are also making a huge effort to blur, confuse and distort the truth about global warming. I heard an interesting theory today. We invaded Iraq, (not as I had originally suspected to get hold of more oil for ourselves) but to antagonize the Arab/ Muslim world. The result has been a dramatic raise in the price of gasoline here in the States and NOW what was just voted in in the house a couple of days ago? Why, the ban of off shore drilling for oil off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts here in the United States is to be reversed! This leads to eventual huge profits for Bush's buddies in the oil industry. All in the plan, all in the plan!
Greed, nothing quite like it! And the world is going to suffer the consequences of voting in the corrupt Bush administration not once, but twice in a row. How dumb are we anyway?!

Answer 5

"Gore asserts that there are truth distorting, fact blurring, false scientist that are intentionally putting out confusing reports about the reality of global warming."

Gore is being ironic. In his ad hominems, he fails to note that the IPCC has routinely politicized and bastardized the science to make the global warming scenarios look worse than the otherwise would be, were we to use reasonable assumption.
For example, you have to assume a near doubling of the concentration of CO2 to get the worst-case sencarios for temperature... and how would that happen - why, you have to assume we would drastically increase CO2 generation well above current rates. But those are non-realistic scenarios, as modern technology in practically all countries is enabling per capita *reductions* in CO2 generation, not increases.

Patrick Michaels says:
"Karl and Trenberth repeat the usual United Nations saw that there's "a 90% probability interval for warming from...1.7° to 4.9°C" in the next century." In fact, the 21st century warming rate is now well-known to be confined to a much lower and smaller range, about 0.75 +/- 0.25°C per 50 years, and may be lower than that. ... People who assumed increases in per capita carbon dioxide were wrong 25 years ago and they are wrong now. But this is precisely what is input into every general circulation climate model, and these models serve as the basis for Karl and Trenberth's projections for warming. They've been run with the wrong data for a quarter century!

If you put in the right data, warming drops dramatically, to about 1.6°C in the next 100 years. A while back, in a statement he would probably like to have back, Robert Watson, then head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, allowed that such a small warming might actually be beneficial."
- Patrick Michaels
http://www.cato.org/dailys/12-30-03.html

Hmmm. Max of 1 degree per 50 years? 1.6C in 100 years? All Gore's fearmongering goes out the window.
No wonder he stoops to ad hominem rather than deal with the fact that the worst-case IPCC models are constructed from flawed and highly arguable models!

Some critiques of the IPCC models and assumptions:

http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/moderr.htm
http://www.john-daly.com/guests/tim-ball.htm

How IPCC 2000 report got politicized and bastardized:
http://www.john-daly.com/tar-2000/tar-2000.htm

Hug and Barrett on CO2 absorption questions:
http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/hug-barrett.htm
"It is clear from the calculations that there is a great amount of overlap between the spectra of CO2 and H2O and that in the presence of water, the effect of doubling carbon dioxide is considerably reduced compared to the effect in the absence of water vapour. Hug and Barrett consider that the spectral overlap, ignored by the IPCC, is the reason for the sensitivity being exaggerated by the IPCC and that the real value is considerably less that that accepted by the IPCC. If Hug and Barrett are correct, the effects of doubling carbon dioxide in the atmosphere seem to be minimal and are no cause for alarm and the extensive alteration of national economies."

Conclusion: Real scientists have real and legitimate questions about the actual magnitude of CO2's impact on the climate, about previous temperature measurements, and the models are still being tuned, challenged, and revised.

If Gore says there is disinformation in the debate he must be talking of his own efforts at propaganda.

Answer 6

to tell the truth Gore is the very last person you should believe about anything! (Invented the Internet my asp)!

but he had a point and it has to do with the way grants are the life blood academia! see a big company could post a research grant for,,,a few million??? with the goal of proving something like smoking is good for you? the way that grant is set up they give you 25,000.00 to get started. you take that money and set up a Private foundation skew a few tests reports and at the end of say three months you publish the findings the company hinted at in the beginning and the give you the rest of the grant.
Tax free as it's paid to your Private foundation...
you get to quite your 30k a year teaching post and start pricing pools and sail boats.

Answer 7

Some 'scientists' are paid off by the energy companies.

There's a group called Competitive Enterprise Institute, CEI, funded by Exxon and the American petroleum Institute, that's spreading a lot of disinformation. They're the ones behind the pro-carbon dioxide commercials

http://www.prwatch.org/node/4812

Answer 8

Al Gore and his ilk want to use global climate change as an excuse to expand the powers of government. Putting the U.N. in charge of the climate isn't going to make the world a better place. Only educated free citizens can bring about ecological harmony.

Answer 9

Lots of good information in many of these answers.

It is true that energy companies pay for research and that this payment affect the objectivity of the research.

BUT, somebody pays for any research. Nobody is doing it for free. To get a grant from the govenment for instance, you have to convince them you have a good project that deserves funding. To do this you have to convince people, and these people have opions and objectives as well.

ALL research has some objectivity failure. As difficult as it is for the lay person, the only path to truth is to study what is available being skeptical of everything and making your decisions based on your best knowledge, who you trust, and your "instinct" which is a single word for all the things you know but don't know you know informing the rest of you.

Answer 10

Truth is only truth depending on what you believe.

Weather and global warming could also be a cycle that is just coming around again.

Answer 11

big money is usually behind anything that is damaging the earth and they don't want to give up a little money to save the earth. example; replace the trees that have been destoyed all over the earth. make companies responsible for cleaning and keeping clean our air, land and water. trees help clean a lot of the pollution in the air, such as from automobiles, etc. don't let anything in the air that can cause acid rain, etc.