No No No
Quite the contrary, the scam is the one, not based in science, the one you fall for.
In the first place, the really big money is on your side of the argument. Ever hear of oil companies?
Have you heard of even one skeptical scientist who is not funded by them and their propaganda mills, like the Heartland Institute and the American Enterprise Institute?
So far I haven't.
What you have been listening to is dis-information.
"The global warming is a hoax believers don't understand the difference between informed opinion, uninformed opinion, misinformed opinion and totally ignorant opinions." from comments at gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/11/23656/027
posted by LeeAnnG
Skeptic argument:
The kind of drastic actions required to mitigate global warming risk the destruction of the global economy and the deaths of potentially billions of people.
Answer:
"Is this supposed to mean the theory of anthropogenic global warming must be wrong? You can not come to a rational decision about the reality of a danger by considering how hard it might be to avoid. First things first: understand that the problem is real and present."
"Once you acknowledge the necessity of addressing the problem, taking action suddenly become less daunting. There is no point in discussing the best solutions or the cost of those solutions with someone who does not yet acknowledge the problem."
"But even if mitigating global warming would be harmful, given that famine, droughts, disease, loss of major coastal cities, and a tremendous mass extinction event are on the table as possible consequences of doing nothing, it may well be we are faced with a choice between the lesser of two evils. I challenge anyone to conclusively demonstrate that such catastrophes as listed above await us if we try to reduce fossil fuel use."
"Now, in terms of conservation and a global switch over to alternative fuels, the people who oppose doing this for climate change mitigation are forgetting something rather important. Fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource, and as such we have to make this global economic transformation regardless, whether now or a bit later. Many bright minds inside the industry think we are already at peak oil. So even if it turned out that climate mitigation was unnecessary, we would still be in a better place as a global society by making the coming switch sooner rather than later.
Seems like a win-win situation to me."
Oil is costing the U.S. citizens $800 billion annually in hidden costs above the cost of gasoline. That includes tax credits and subsidies to oil and gas of over $80 billion annually.
Oil accounts for over $300 billion of our annual trade deficit.
What possibly could be worse for the economy?
Right now congress is asking for $6 billion over 6 years for alternative energy tax credits. Compare that to the fossil fuel tax credits, or the nuclear tax credits of up to $9 billion annually. The changes that are being recommended will actually be a boost to the economy. If you don't believe me, ask Michael Bloomburg, a Republican who knows a lot about the business world. And maybe you should read the book he is recommending.
http://www.earththesequel.com./
"Krupp and Horn have turned the doom and gloom of global warming on its head. Earth: The Sequel makes it crystal clear that we can build a low-carbon economy while unleashing American entrepreneurs to save the planet, putting optimism back into the environmental story."
Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City
"Representatives from Silicon Valley tech giants, Wall Street investment banks and utilities signed a letter sent to the congressional leadership late Wednesday urging the long-term extension of the 30 percent investment tax credit as well as the production tax credit for the electricity produced by solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable energy systems. Among the signers urging action by March 1 are executives from Google (GOOG), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Applied Materials (AMAT), Credit Suisse (CS), Wells Fargo (WFC), venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and utility San Diego Gas & Electric, a subsidiary of energy giant Sempra (SRE)."
Posted by Todd Woody at Green Wombat
"There are areas in Denmark and Germany who use more than 40 percent of their electricity from wind. From what I have read, they are less concerned about the intermittency than we are in the United States even though we aren't at 1 pecent yet. Why? Because we are told by the fossil fuel guys, hey, can't use wind, can't use solar, what about the intermittency. If wind gets up to 40 percent of the electricity we use and solar gets up to 40 of the electricity we use, the other percents of electricity we need can be made up from the fossil fuel plants that are still there. If they are run less at full power, they can last a long time. That can be your electricity `battery.'"
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/1/7/05733/93954
"Solar energy is the great leveler (unlike oil, which has been the great divider) between the haves and the have nots). No one owns the sun. It can't be drilled or mined or tied up in financial derivatives. It is the only energy source in the world that is primarily free at its source and universally available to consumers. And the closer a nation is situated towards the equator - and the bigger their deserts - the better the technology works." (See Here Comes the Sun, February 17, 2007, Commentary, Chipstocktrader.com)
Your medievel warming idea has been debunked.
According to NASA it was not warmer then.
"There is no good evidence that the MWP was a globally warm period comparable to today. Regionally, there may have been places that exhibited notable warmth -- Europe, for example -- but all global proxy reconstructions agree it is warmer now, and the temperature is rising faster now, than at any time in the last one or even two thousand years."
"Anecdotal evidence of wineries in England and Norse farmers in Greenland do not amount to a global assessment."
"On its website, NOAA has a wide selection of proxy studies, accompanied by the data on which they are based. Specifically, they have this to say on the MWP:"
"The idea of a global or hemispheric "Medieval Warm Period" that was warmer than today, however, has turned out to be incorrect.
With regard to the "grapes used to grow in England" bit, here is some fairly solid evidence that grapes are in fact growing there now, denialist talking points aside. If that is not enough, RealClimate has a remarkably in-depth review of the history of wine in Great Britain, and how reliable it is as a proxy for global temperatures. (Hint: not very.)"
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/13/221054/33
Volcanoes do not cause global warming. On the contrary, they cause cooling. This is a well documented scientific fact.
Yes, they release CO2, but not nearly as much as they release particulates and aerosols, like SO2, that rise to the stratosphere blocking out sunlight. This was proven in the early nineties with the large eruption in the Phillipines.
"Fossil fuels also contain less carbon-13 than carbon-12, compared with the atmosphere, because the fuels derive from plants, which preferentially take up the more common carbon-12. The ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere and ocean surface waters is steadily falling, showing that more carbon-12 is entering the atmosphere."
"Finally, claims that volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities are simply not true. In the very distant past, there have been volcanic eruptions so massive that they covered vast areas in lava more than a kilometre thick and appear to have released enough CO2 to warm the planet after the initial cooling caused by the dust (see Wipeout). But even with such gigantic eruptions, most of subsequent warming may have been due to methane released when lava heated coal deposits, rather than from CO2 from the volcanoes (see also Did the North Atlantic's 'birth' warm the world?)."
"Measurements of CO2 levels over the past 50 years do not show any significant rises after eruptions. Total emissions from volcanoes on land are estimated to average just 0.3 Gt of CO2 each year – about a hundredth of human emissions (pdf document)."
"Not only is this false, it couldn't possibly be true given the CO2 record from any of the dozens of sampling stations around the globe. If it were true that individual volcanic eruptions dominated human emissions and were causing the rise in CO2 concentrations, then these CO2 records would be full of spikes -- one for each eruption. Instead, such records show a smooth and regular trend."
"The fact of the matter is, the sum total of all CO2 out-gassed by active volcanoes amounts to about 1/150th of anthropogenic emissions."
The USGS Volcano Hazards program