In his must read blog today, Trotter highlights the manner in which big oil and big industry push the climate denial message to stop the citizens of the world from demanding real change from our politicians…
The Fossil Fuel Industry-inspired “Big Lies” that anthropogenic global warming is either a scientific “hoax” or a “left-wing plot” to bring down the capitalist system. Earth’s climate is always changing, they argue. Long before human-beings made their appearance, the planet was, by turns, boiling hot and freezing cold. If, and the word “if” is emphasised, the planet is going through another warming period, then 1) it’s not our fault; and 2) there’s nothing we can do about it except adapt the best way we can. After all, with just a tiny fraction of the technology they now possess, human-beings made it through the Ice Age!
…what Chris misses is not just those with vested interests distorting the truth about climate change, but the mainstream corporate media who allow so much of that propaganda to go unchallenged.
Look at todays NZ Herald, they have a Dr Geoff Duffy vomiting the most inanely dense science garbage to make it sound like there is no science to suggest methane increases global warming and attacks the governments attempt to include methane (the gas our cattle produce) into any climate change legislation.
Look at how the NZ Herald describes Dr Geoff Duffy…
Dr Geoff Duffy is a professor emeritus of chemical engineering at the University of Auckland.
…sound pretty robust right? Well, do some digging and lo and behold, Dr Geoff Duffy is a climate denial scientist who blogs for the NZ climate denial blog, Climate Realists, and who funds this climate denial blog? why surprise, surprise the fucking sheep and beef farmers from the East Coast…
We are sheep and beef farmers farming off the East Coast of the North Island of NZ.
We believe in the necessity of farming sustainably and making wise use of finite resources.
We believe in protecting the environment.
But….. we also believe all decisions should be based on scientific fact, not mere conjecture.
When the Kyoto agreement was signed we believed what we heard, and were global warming believers. But with the announcement of the ‘fart tax’ our suspicions were roused.
Since then we have done extensive research on both sides of the argument.
We have to conclude that if any global warming is being caused by man, the net effect is very small, and will not have any harmful effect on the planet.
So we formed the Climate Realists’ Network. New members are welcome.
…so let’s get this completely fucking straight – the NZ Herald publishes a climate denial scientist who is arguing against including methane in climate change legislation but don’t tell you that he is a climate denial scientist who writes on a blog that is funded by the very industry that methane gas inclusion would hurt the most.
I mean, even for the fucking NZ Herald this is deceitful beyond belief.
Climate change poses an existential threat to our species and corporate media allowing climate deniers to speak without telling readers they are climate deniers is a deception too far.
Are these the twats that assert that animal (cows, sheep) generated methane is different to mineral gas methane?
So many lies and liars it’s hard to keep up with them.
If there’s one industry that is dependent on stable climate it’s farming and agriculture.
How do you recognise a kiwi farmer?
Bullet holes in the foot and nose cut off.
Some have very long noses – they seem to grow just like of some other puppets.
“…the fucking NZ Herald”
“…the fucking sheep and beef farmers from the East Coast.”
wow.! a course in anger management for you there, Martyn.
@ e-clectic
Gidday e…didn’t we have a little conversation together over at The Standard ?
https://thestandard.org.nz/we-need-to-push-back-on-leighton-smith/#comment-1523033
Dunno why you’re deriding E-clectic, Mack. He makes a valid point. Deniers point at anything but carbon (plus other sundry greenhouse gases).
It really does remind me of the tobacco industry: lung cancer? Caused by the sun, chemicals, cat hair… anything but, god forbid, their product.
I’m surprised you’re still going down this route.
What I find interesting, is that the climate deniers state that the scientist have no evidence to say climate change is manmade. In the same breath the climate deniers rant and rave that this is just natural phenomena, yet can’t provide an ounce of evidence to prove this so, Frank.
Mack is an intransigent denier – last time I looked he doesn’t accept the Greenhouse Effect or that there has been any warming of note since the 1800s.
That’s just so 1997.
I hope he never steps out onto the surface of Venus then E-Clectic, without adequate shielding. The runaway greenhouse effect on that planet is something wicked. I’m told… (Though who knows, maybe it’s all a conspiracy to portray Venus as a hellish cauldron of acid clouds, CO2, and horizontal lightening – whereas it’s actually closer to the Bahamas on a summery day. Maybe Al Gore holidays there, along with NASA admin and scientists.)
As each year is warmer than the previous and as CO2 levels creep up, the protestations of deniers becomes more farcical than anything else. I’m reminded of King Canute at the seaside and the incoming tide…
Why does TDB never mention the Stratospheric Aerosol Injection program being run by Prof David Keith out of Harvard University? He’s spending billions on spraying to “cool down the planet”. On another note…did you know you can now pay to have rain? The opposite of this is, of course, no rain.
The NZ Herald stands for deceit and manipulation.
If anyone were to write an article presenting the actual science (that the concentration of atmospheric methane is increasing and that it has a warming potential more than 80 times that of carbon dioxide for time scales that matter), the NZ Herald would refuse to publish the article.
Great post Martyn. It seems climate denial is alive and well at Auckland University, even after the departure of the late Associate Professor Chris de Freitas. Surely this is a further hit to their international standing as a university. Dr Duffy makes a serious misrepresentation of the facts when he says global temperatures are not rising even though CO2 has increased exponentially. This statement contradicts all known sources of data on this, including NASA. Dr Duffy is one of the famous 3% of scientists not in agreement on current climate science. Should such scientists, then, have only 3% of media coverage?
Climate deniers are unreal and un-believable as they live in the twilight zone.
“We need to adapt” – they say!!!!!
When their homes all go up in smoke will they learn to walk through a walll of fire???
And when the floods wash them out to sea will they learn to grow gills???
Unbelievable.
An often stated fact is that we have lost over ninety percent of our wetlands to farming and other sources. Thats a ninety percent reduction in methane from wetlands, maybe we need the odd bit of cow flatuance to redress the balance
Message to moderator: your system seems to be favouring the climate change deniers. I answer one of them, my message disappears into your moderation system, and a few hours later the deniers have had more published, but I will probably have to wait until tomorrow (going by past experience) to even see my possibly outdated message even come up.
What is wrong? Fix it, or you will always be a thousand miles behind The Standard.
I have said it many times before and I’ll say it again. Air temperatures can change dramatically and land surface temperatures can change dramatically (sometimes by tens of degrees Celsius in a 24 hour period).
What matters when we are discussing overall trends relating to climate change is the increase in the temperature of the oceans, particularly the deep water on the oceans. Oceans cover over 70% of the Earth’s surface and have a huge thermal mass.
The evidence is irrefutable. Despite large amounts of cold water entering the oceans from melting glaciers etc. the temperature (or hear content) of the oceans has been rising dramatically, and in 2017 the heat content was the highest ever recorded. That is abundantly clear from the top graph at this link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_heat_content
What is more, the heat content of the oceans has been rising at an alarming rate since mid-1990s.
Of course climate change deniers, if they ever bothered to actually look at the evidence, would assert that the data used to generate the graphs was fabricated by ‘corrupt’ scientists. Or that the rise in heat content had nothing to do with carbon dioxide, despite the CO2 content of the atmosphere having risen by 45 ppm, from about 360 ppm to well over 405 ppm, over the period under consideration.
In this uncertain world there are a few things we can be certain about. We can be certain that the CO2 content of the atmosphere will be higher in 2019 than in 2018 and that the heat content of the oceans will be higher in 2019 than in 2018. We can be certain that the consequences of overheating will be increasingly dire.
We can be also certain that climate change deniers will continue to deny the reality of planetary overheating and will continue to present faux arguments, even as the consequences of planetary overheating do become ever more dire. And we can be certain that climate change deniers will cherry-pick data or observations, and attempt to misrepresent the science in order to to support their phony arguments.
Mr Bradbury, when the Herald quotes you, do they disclose you as a Climate Alarmist?
A greater scientific brain than either you or I made the statement, “Science is NOT consensus, when there is consensus it is NOT science”.
Do you not believe that there is a body of erudite scientist well versed on the subject of GW/Climate Change, that hold an opinion that is contrary to yours, but it would seem you are not confident enough to debate them on an equal footing.
Your opening cartoon applies to people of your ilk just as well. How many of Al Gore’s alarmist statements have proven to be false?
‘Al Gore’s alarmist statements’
alarmist statements???
A decades ago Al Gore highlighted the overheating predicament but then went on to provide ‘solutions’ that would not work. They would not work because Al Gore’s solutions were designed to keep industrial civilisation going. Industrial civilisation is the problem.
Interestingly, our species thrived for 200,000 years without agriculture or civilisation. Thrived in a world of abundance!
Industrial civilisation comes to an end this century because it is predicated on desequestration of carbon and is predicated on wrecking the environment.
Collapse is already underway but we cannot say whether complete collapse comes as early as 2030 or somewhat later.
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