Koch-funded study supports anthropogenic climate change

[Jeff]

Bombshell: Koch-Funded Study Finds ‘Global Warming Is Real’, ‘On The High End’ And ‘Essentially All’ Due To Carbon Pollution

By Joe Romm on Jul 28, 2012 at 5:31 pm

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) is poised to release its findings next week on the cause of recent global warming.

UPDATE (9 pm): A NY Times op-ed by Richard Muller, BEST’s Founder and Scientific Director, has been published, “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic.”

Here is the money graf:

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

Yes, yes, I know, the finding itself is “dog bites man.” What makes this “man bites dog” is that Muller has been a skeptic of climate science, and the single biggest funder of this study is the “Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000).” The Kochs are the leading funder of climate disinformation in the world!

It gets better:

Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.

In short, a Koch-funded study has found that the IPCC “consensus” underestimated both the rate of surface warming and how much could be attributed to human emissions!

...

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/0 ... pollution/

[seemslikeadream]

Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8 (left) and July 12 (right). Measurements from three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12. Courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.


Standing on the moon, where talk is cheap and vision true

[DrEvil]

^^That is one of the scariest pictures I've seen in a while. I live further north than the southern tip of Greenland. The only thing keeping me warm and cozy is the gulf-stream, and I can't imagine that dumping millions and millions of tons of cold fresh-water into it will do anything good.

I also wonder if Anthony Watts will come around, like he said he would if the Best-study came up with the results it has come up with.

[brainpanhandler]

^^That is one of the scariest pictures I've seen in a while. I live further north than the southern tip of Greenland. The only thing keeping me warm and cozy is the gulf-stream, and I can't imagine that dumping millions and millions of tons of cold fresh-water into it will do anything good.

I also wonder if Anthony Watts will come around, like he said he would if the Best-study came up with the results it has come up with.

Never, ever to be forgotten: It’s the sun stupid

[Burnt Hill]

Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8 (left) and July 12 (right). Measurements from three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12. Courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

But isnt that just surface melt?
I mean there is still tons of ice under the surface of the ice melting on top, because it was a warm couple of days?
Does it indicate how deep it has melted?
What am I missing here?

[Luther Blissett]

2.5° is a serious development indeed.

A recent political cartoon suggested that corporate propaganda will soon shift from denial to something else more overtly oppressive. I never pay much attention to cartoons, but for some reason I couldn't shake the thought of that one.

[Burnt Hill]

2.5° is a serious development indeed.

A recent political cartoon suggested that corporate propaganda will soon shift from denial to something else more overtly oppressive. I never pay much attention to cartoons, but for some reason I couldn't shake the thought of that one.

Something more oppressive, like doing something about it, for instance the Bill Gates sponsored weather modification in New Mexico? http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/17/us-geoengineers-spray-sun-balloon

[Hammer of Los]

...

The would be geo engineers have been at it for years.

They combine civilian and military applications.

Warming mitigation, weather modification, over the horizon radar, and possibly other more exotic applications.

Now where did I put my tinfoil hat?

They are beginning to show their hand on the particulate spraying albedo effect thing though.

In other words, starting to admit to what they have already been doing for over a decade.

I'd rather they stopped burning fossil fuels myself.

Decommission the military!

Ride a bike!

Don't get on a plane!

Wind Power!

Solar Power!

Tidal Power!

Geothermal Power!

It's all there, and more besides.

Every goddamn war is fought over oil and gas these days.

I'm sick of it.

...

[Wombaticus Rex]

^^I've been (re-re-)reading Tim Shorrock's Spies for Hire and there's a wealth of detail between the lines, not to mention the data dump that populates his footnotes. Still, I was struck by 2 things:

1) How much "security" gets invoked as a service to the American citizen, but operationally it means that key decision makers are being insulated from the consequences of their actions, and

2) How much "plausible deniability" has moved all of the risk (and power) of special ops and intel sourcing out into the private sector. Agencies like the NRO barely exist, except as accounting departments and clearing-houses for contract largesse to the "IT community" -- wholly private and mostly run by actors who brazenly and publicly bought their way in like Northrup Grumman.

To say that I see an identical trajectory for "geoengineering" would almost be an understatement. I grok why C****rails are a verboten subject, but the concerted campaign that made our house rule necessary is, in and of itself, deeply fascinating to me. Seeing things vs. Saying things, as Jeff once put it. That boundary line has fascinated me ever since.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_confo ... xperiments

It's just the sun. It's just swamp gas. It's just a theory.

[Ben D]

Hmmm, Muller's position doesn't appear to be new....‘You should not be a skeptic.’ October 24, 2011

[Rory]

With curious and coincidental timing, 'watts up with that' have issued a BREAKING NEWS press release on the same day as Muller's oped in the NYT, and the release of the Berkley team's findings.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/

There are nearly 500 (and still counting) comments stating their admiration and gratitude for Watts and et all for finally debunking climate science. They haven't read the paper clearly as it appears only to question the validity of some weather stations information recording. Nonetheless, they are delighted to be finally free from the tyranny of the 'warmists', and their 'pseudoscience'. It is an interesting 'live' observation in confirmation biases and prejudice. Strangely, there don't appear to be any dissenting voices either - I guess people who believe in climate science don't have anything to say for themselves.

[MacCruiskeen]

I just picked up a second-hand copy of Richard Leakey's beautiful and beautifully-illustrated book, The Making of Mankind. It was published in 1981. At the end of it, he mentions that the population of the world is over four billion, going on five. He finds this a bit worrying, although he is far from being a reactionary or a Social Darwinist, and in fact he argues stubbornly and cogently against the likes of Raymond Dart and Robert Ardrey and all those who argue that "aggression" is "innate". Still, he's worried (and who wouldn't be?). The last illustration is a photo of Hiroshima after the bomb.

Thirty-two years on, there are over seven billion human beings on the planet. The world's population has almost doubled since Leakey published his book, in the same year that John Lennon was shot.

Fwiw.

[8bitagent]

I always, always cringed when Alex Jones would put on his big oil/Dubya Bush cap and talk about how global warming is a hoax/doesnt exist.

However, I began to have a theory after the first time he mentioned it was some globalist hoax to push crippling sanctions and use as a cover to jumpstart bad bad bad policies.

Well...I kind of thought hey...what if these mega corporations and such that paid money to deny climate change via junk science turned around and then aggressively PUSHED global warming like there was no tomorrow? More than co-option, I see the fake smarmy corporate "eco green" angle. But how easy would it be for governments to push crippling measures and fascism through "saving the planet"? Green fascism. Hitler and the Nazis were big into it.

My argument was it's not that its fake or a hoax or misunderstood, its that it could genuinely be used as propaganda and a trojan horse...negating the real world solutions needed like alternative energy.

THEN I thought...wait, global warming IS the most obvious "globalist" orchestrated event. Who owns all the factories and things that cause pollution? Or mass clear cutting endeavors. The elite in a way without even realizing it created global warming, then denied it, now can use it to push any agenda they want while REAL conservationists and solutions get left in the dust.

[brainpanhandler]

My argument was it's not that its fake or a hoax or misunderstood, its that it could genuinely be used as propaganda and a trojan horse...negating the real world solutions needed like alternative energy.

So "they" come out and say global warming is real and somehow use that to... What? Counter alternative energy solutions?

THEN I thought...wait, global warming IS the most obvious "globalist" orchestrated event.

I don't think it was orchestrated in the sense that the intent was to cause global warming. The intent was to make billions and trillions digging and pumping the stuff out of the ground and burning it and crush anything that even so much as threatens that agenda.

The elite in a way without even realizing it created global warming,

They realized it a long time ago.

now can use it to push any agenda they want while REAL conservationists and solutions get left in the dust.

Not ANY agenda, but yeah it follows the model of problem-reaction-solution, albeit unintentionally. More like taking advantage of opportunities, capitalist style. They'll be selling us air eventually. There was a time when people would have thought buying water off a shelf was insane.

[8bitagent]

My argument was it's not that its fake or a hoax or misunderstood, its that it could genuinely be used as propaganda and a trojan horse...negating the real world solutions needed like alternative energy.

So "they" come out and say global warming is real and somehow use that to... What? Counter alternative energy solutions?

THEN I thought...wait, global warming IS the most obvious "globalist" orchestrated event.

I don't think it was orchestrated in the sense that the intent was to cause global warming. The intent was to make billions and trillions digging and pumping the stuff out of the ground and burning it and crush anything that even so much as threatens that agenda.

The elite in a way without even realizing it created global warming,

They realized it a long time ago.

now can use it to push any agenda they want while REAL conservationists and solutions get left in the dust.

Not ANY agenda, but yeah it follows the model of problem-reaction-solution, albeit unintentionally. More like taking advantage of opportunities, capitalist style. They'll be selling us air eventually. There was a time when people would have thought buying water off a shelf was insane.

Yeah you know what I mean:) I don't see any syncs or intentional orchestration. But greed and madness has ramped up any possible cyclical heat increases if not wholly is the main source.
You look at aerial photos of the Amazon, look at ice caps, I mean the climate deniers have long been living in fantasy land. I just have seen the old 2000's model of paying junk science to deny it to now trying to shape and push the debate. So I feel *that* portion of the Alex Jones argument could potentially come true.