Posted on 08/28/2018 8:05:24 AM PDT by DeweyCA
If balance means giving voice to those who deny the reality of human-triggered climate change, we won't take part in the debate, say Jonathan Porritt... and 57 other writers, politicians and academics
We are no longer willing to lend our credibility to debates over whether or not climate change is real. It is real. We need to act now or the consequences will be catastrophic. In the interests of balance, the media often feels the need to include those who outright deny the reality of human-triggered climate change.
Balance implies equal weight. But this then creates a false equivalence between an overwhelming scientific consensus and a lobby, heavily funded by vested interests, that exists simply to sow doubt to serve those interests. Yes, of course scientific consensus should be open to challenge but with better science, not with spin and nonsense. We urgently need to move the debate on to how we address the causes and effects of dangerous climate change because thats where common sense demands our attention and efforts should be.
Fringe voices will protest about free speech. No one should prevent them from expressing their views, whether held cynically or misguidedly. However, no one is obliged to provide them with a platform, much less to appear alongside them to give the misleading impression that there is something substantive to debate. When there is an article on smoking, newspapers and broadcasters no longer include lobbyists claiming there are no links to cancer. When theres a round-the-world yacht race we dont hear flat-earthers given airtime: This is madness; theyll sail off the edge!
Theres a workable model for covering fringe views which is to treat them as such. They dont need to be ridiculed, just expected to challenge the evidence with better evidence, and otherwise ignored.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
No fossil fuels used in forging the metal?
How do the maintenance crews get there when they need repairs?
What kind of vehicles?
What does one windmill cost, and how many years does it take to pay off that cost?
I read somewhere (please do not ask me for links, use your own favorite search engine) that more people workers have been killed by wind turbine tower construction & maintenance than any other power source, due to towers which are 80’ to 140’ height. That is the height of a 10 to 17 story building.
And don’t even ask how many millions of birds are killed by wind turbines.
Bump!
Correct about inhabitants on earth (2 legged kind included) are just a speck compared to size of earth.
Consider this...earth is about 8000 miles in diameter.
Astronauts circling earth at only 100 mile high orbit can not see a single structure built by the inhabitants except sometimes they can see a faint squiggly line which is the great wall in China.
By far, coal is the worst because of the illness and death from black lung.
Drilling for oil and gas is also dangerous because a worker's safety is often in the hands of another, plus when pressure in the hole overcomes the equipment it is catastrophic.
There Are many more bird deaths for other reasons than because of windmills. The biggest threat to birds is habitat loss.
Are you interested in investing in windfarms?
“If its science, then pose a working theory and then build experiments to test.”
Your point is absolutely right on. The question is not whether climate change is occurring or not. The question (as stated in the article) is about human-triggered climate change.
The alleged “trigger” by human activity is through the emission of CO2 in the atmosphere. The greenhouse gas theory and ALL of the general circulation models predict that warming in the atmosphere (the tropical troposphere, to be more precise) will proceed at a higher rate (3 to 4 times) than the surface rate. This is reasonable because, if the warming is due to CO2 in the atmosphere, the atmosphere will have to warm first. This is the prediction. However, observations show that the atmosphere is warming at a lower rate than the surface. The exact opposite of what the theory predicts. Therefore, “Science” would conclude that the warming trend (if any) is NOT driven by greenhouse gases and therefore NOT the result of human activity. The prediction and experiment has been done, and failed. This is but one prediction/experiment. There is at least one other that I am aware of which also yields the opposite of the prediction.
Does the person who wrote this believe biology is real or would they consider that bigotry?
Clean coal is the solution. Kudos to president for reviving clean coal.
The wind turbine operators do not die from electrocution, as much as from falls from 10-17 stories high wind turbine towers. Nothing in my garage is that high.
Besides wind does not flow every minute. Since electric power is not easily stored, a reliable backup power such as coal is needed.
I have nothing against any green source of energy, so long as it is not subsidized with my taxes such as Solyndra was.
Finally those wind turbine towers are ugly and I certainly do not wish a view of them from my yard.
Even the most pro-windfarm sources admit that they will never produce the power needed by modern humans.
They are expensive, loud, and require a lot of maintenance.
Not to mention, they require fossil fuel backups for when the wind slows down or stops.
The most optimistic environmental sites I saw admitted that wind power will only amount to a few percent of the power grid.
Plus they are ugly.
Who wants to see a windmill on top of every hill?
I thought liberals liked nature and its beauty.
Investors like wind and solar because they can get cash flow quickly. Coal and natural gas plants take 8-10 years while a nuke power plant can take 20-25 years.
Like I said, just do not use my taxes to subsidize green energy. If it is justified and good, it can stand and compete on it’s own. No more Solyndra’s!
I am also against government incentives to buy electric cars, install solar panels etc. That stifles competition, which is UN-American.
Can you imagine the panic if the earth were to be cooling towards anew ice age!!!!
Trump has imposed a tariff on solar panels so some foreign corporations are considering facilities in the US and as long as the tariff stays they can manufacture but they won't be able to compete in the world economy.
All energy in the US is subsidized including fossil fuels.
The world has been steadily cooling for the last 10,000 years.
The sea shore has been steadily receding, just look at ancient cities that where at the sea shore in their headday.
Precipitation has been steadily decaying, drought taking over. Just look at the North Africa coast, it used to be the granary of the Roman Empire, the Sahara had tropical jungles.
We are heading for destruction if temperatures go much lower, thats why its so interesting to see those fanatical buffoons getting all excited about what should be a welcomed, albeit short and temporary, temperature increase, and see them wish for our collective doom hoping for a deadly global temperature decrease.
I’ll give you a more practical application that would serve nicely as an experiment.
On any ship with a US flag, if you have a CO2 room for fire suppression, the door to the space that houses the bottles MUST have a kickplate door hatch insert. If you do not, it is a massive safety violation, so much so that you’d have your Certificate of Inspection pulled.
Why?
Because, if there is a CO2 leak, you’ll never know it. It’s odorless. The only indication something is wrong is that you’ll start to feel light headed.
The kickplate insert is there so you can pop the plate out and late the room drain off the CO2 that’s built up in the space. Hate to say this, but I didn’t mind bringing shorter inspector trainees with me into those spaces because they’d get woozy first. (Canaries, if you will).
CO2 is heavier that O2. It settles to the bottom of the room and builds up like a pool filling with water. Oilers would go into check the space, bend over to check a gauge and then pass out, and never wake up.
Now, if we KNOW this is science, and we have a regulation in place that is based entirely on this science, how can it be the official position of ANYBODY in the US government that CO2 is, and can be, a sizable enough percentage of the upper atmosphere that it could have the slightest effect at all on climate?
So you can take a position on this matter from the standpoint of science vs faith, to start. Nobody, not even the most strident will argue that public policy of this sort of magnitude should be based on faith.
Fine, so you are back to science. You can then be agnostic - you haven’t seen any science in one direction or the other that would indicate that man-made chemistry is causing warming, and that you’d support such inquiry.
Until that day, however, raping people’s wallets on a hunch isn’t prudent.
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