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The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere just hit its highest level in 800,000 years

Wow that would be amazing to have what basically amounts to a CO2 mop! I hope it pans out.

To people who deny that humans are accelerating global warming/climate change, I feel like the only way to refute that it's happening is to refute that we are dumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. And to suggest that we are not seems pretty silly, since burning fossil fuels DOES release gaseous carbon dioxide into the air, and we burn staggering amounts of fossil fuels. It is simply scientific fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. The more of it in the atmosphere, the less heat can radiate back out into space. Obviously burning fossil fuels accelerates the greenhouse effect. Yes, we're coming out of an ice age still, I know. The planet is warming naturally, too. But the rate of change is unprecedented compared to evidence we have of past natural climate change (for example from ancient arctic/antarctic ice cores, residues left in rock strata, etc). We aren't supposed to see, in one human lifetime, significant sea level change and the elimination of sea ice in the summer at the north pole. Coral reefs are dying too, you could go there and see it for yourself. Global climate change is supposed to happen on a geological scale, over tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of years. The evidence is everywhere. I tend to agree with Jess (I think it was Jess), that hundreds of years from now, people are going to be incredulous that anyone could have denied our impact.
 
^ I actually think we will screw up the atmosphere enough to enter the age of the squid/octupodes (octopuses/octopi are also acceptable).

They're quite smart and I think they're next. Or the lizard people. :)

aifhl usually posts something grim from NASA. I'm half anticipating and half scared.

It's interesting that Secretary of Defense Mattis recognizes the threat of climate change as a possible national security threat that the military should be prepared to deal with somehow.

It's like of like a meme I put up awhile ago. If we clean up the air and water, etc. and global warming isn't really happening, then what? It's not a bad thing.
 
Except a lot of people DON'T do that.
I know, so what? Stop talking about those people. I don't give a fuck about those people.
All you do is rant about idiots and fail to prove any of my evidence is stupid.
I agree with you that 99% of the stuff is nonsense.
But you're saying that absolutely nothing is true, even though you've admitted some of it is.
Maybe you should be clearer about the difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory.

so in the end, EVERYTHING is believed. Because they want to believe them. They think they're being critical but they're not.
Once again, not referring to those people.
It's the same with people who believe everything that the mainstream media tells them.

But it was a stupid project to start with. If it does still exist, most likely it's evolved into a modern version where it uses information to cause people to brainwash themselves, much like conspiracy theorists do, or how advertising works. Using drugs to mind control people is all fiction, it doesn't work.
I'm glad you've worked on the project and saw all of the destroyed documents.
Drugs don't influence people's minds..... ?
You think that they got caught and just stopped. It's just as plausible that they continued under a different name with increased secrecy.

The reality being that the shit the government works in, all the dirty classified secrets, are all mostly very boring compared to what the theorists imagine. We know this because of how bad a job they do keeping it secret.
Assumptions. You do not know if the stuff that was leaked showing the government was conducting unethical human experiment is only a fraction of what is really happening. You think everything secret has leaked already lol. Based on what. And you're glossing over the fact that the government was conducting unethical human experiments. That's a fact.

Like 9/11 with how controlled demolition works
How about architects, structural engineers, scientists and demolition experts. Do you care for their opinion?
It also doesn't take a genius to look at the collapse of Building 7 and say that it at least appears like a controlled demolition.
If you cannot admit that it at the very least looks like one then you are the one who has been brainwashed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWorDrTC0Qg
I mean seriously, office fires? This is my main litmus test to see how much cognitive dissonance a person is experiencing.

ET's with physics,
Ironic that the detractors of the ET phenomenon claim to know themselves how advanced technology works and also the intentions of ETs, who they also claim are fictional.

or what a plane hitting a building is supposed to look like.
The architects of the WTC have stated the buildings were designed to withstand being hit by an aircraft. They were built with this is mind.

This strikes me as similar to people who research paranormal phenomenon. It's something that, while almost always fruitless, could be done in a serious and scientific way. But I've never met anyone, EVER, not even ONCE, with conspiracies or the paranormal, who actually seemed to be doing that.
Seriously stop talking to insane people. I met a crazy doctor once does that mean all doctors are crazy?
This brings me back to my main point that you are not qualified to give your opinion on this subject:

https://www.futurehealth.org/populum/page.php?f=Parapsychology-and-the-Par-by-Grant-Lawrence-100316-459.html said:
One of the most widely performed extra-sensory perception experiments is the Ganzfield test. In this test, a subject is deprived of sensory stimulus while a sender attempts to send random images mentally. The subject repeats out loud the mental images that he or she is receiving and those responses are compared to the visual images sent by the sender.

"By chance, the average subject should guess the right target 25% of the time but Edinburgh's Koestler Parapsychological Unit often achieves 33% . Also, "Between 1974 and 2004, 88 Ganzfeld experiments were done, reporting 1,008 hits out of 3,145 tests (a 32.1% hit rate).[11] In 1982, Charles Honorton presented a paper at the annual convention of the Parapsychological Association that summarized the results of the Ganzfeld experiments up to that date, and concluded that they represented sufficient evidence to demonstrate the existence of psi."

The amount of experiments and the massive data from decades of research is overwhelming. Yet, The skeptics always say, after decades of proof, that the experiments are flawed (even before examining them) and/or that more proof is needed to make a firm conclusion. No matter how much scientific and empirical evidence is gathered concerning the paranormal, the skeptics will always decide that the massive amount of replicated proof obtained will not meet their unscientific and ill defined requirement of 'extraordinary evidence.'

No, they aren't. We've worked out how it was done, people have even done it to show that it could be done
I haven't seen anyone move a 3,000 ton stone or even a 1,500 ton stone (Baalbek) without using advanced equipment.
One of my questions was also WHY. Your answers are insufficient.

But just hypothetically, even if we didn't know how it were done, that still wouldn't mean aliens.
Never said it was aliens, I said we do not know how it was done. You assume too much.

I couldn't give a shit. "A scientist" could mean anything. It's arguing by proxy authority. It means nothing. It's settled.
lol science is never settled. Saying that is unscientific.

Not wanting to assume what you believe, but just... to throw this out there. You don't have to melt steel to weaken the supports of a building and cause it to collapse. As I said, I've gone into a lot of conspiracy theory's. And 9/11 is the one I've spent more time on than any other.
If that's the case then I'm disappointed with your conclusions.
I would've preferred you addressed the specific points I brought up regarding 9/11 but that's fine you claim you've looked into it and have made up your mind.
I've spoken to fairly educated people who believe that Building 7 looks like it collapsed from fires.
IMO they're not being honest because they're afraid of what questions will arise if they are.
 
This is a complete waste of time. Like I said right from the start, to people like you, it seems all so convincing, so absolute. So much so that anyone who has seen the "evidence" and doesn't believe has to be in denial.

You act like you think 99% of it is crap, but based on what you've said, it looks to me a lot more like 10 or 20%. Probably the same 10 or 20% most conspiracy theorists don't believe, which is to say the most extreme suggestions. It's how they convince themselves they're being critical.

Man, this isn't going anywhere. And it's off topic. So how about this, I'll say what you wanna hear and we will call it a day.

Deep down I and everyone else who's seen the evidence knows that <insert conspiracy of choice> is real, but we're too brainwashed by <insert preferred target> to accept it and or in too much denial.

Therefore we shall continue to be in denial, and we will leave it at that.
 
Jgrimez stay on topic please.

Your "method" seems to be inserting all manner of unrelated content into your posts. It makes them unreadable. Please drop the conspiracy stuff, it is off topic and generally uninteresting. CEP is not the place for it. Which you do know by now.
 
^mod said the OP was cool with us going off-topic for a bit. That conversation is over.

I don't know what you mean by 'conspiracy stuff'. Is discussing government documents considered conspiracy? Honestly, it is confusing.
I'm getting labeled a conspiracy theorist every time I say something that doesn't align with liberal media. I'd rather people either ignore me or address the argument instead of attacking me personally.
 
Given the atmospheric conditions of earth have fluctuated significantly over billions of years and has had a series of sudden catastrophic changes caused by living organisms in the past, the himan factor is likely to be the next catalyst of change.

Oxygen is just a byproduct of animals including us.


Nothing else really needs it so its not the end of the world if animals die out.


Stuff like this makes me feel insignificant. Humans are not the be all and end all.
 
^mod said the OP was cool with us going off-topic for a bit. That conversation is over.

I don't know what you mean by 'conspiracy stuff'. Is discussing government documents considered conspiracy? Honestly, it is confusing.
I'm getting labeled a conspiracy theorist every time I say something that doesn't align with liberal media. I'd rather people either ignore me or address the argument instead of attacking me personally.

It's a worthwhile question, what is a conspiracy theorist. Here's what it's not, in this context I mean. It's not someone who simply theorizes about conspiracies. The term is a label that has grown beyond that. In this context, it is someone who exhibits what could easily be seen as an obsession with certain kinds of conspiracies and how they go about them. Honestly I couldn't straight up define the word for you without thinking about it a lot more, it's one of those "I easily recognize it but can't easily tell you how I recognize it" things. But to take a stab at it, it's people who come up with extraordinary theories that don't resemble established history in known conspiracies and their motives and activities. And rely on evidence that is challenged by most authorities in their respective subject matter as a misinterpretation or otherwise false.

Believing in a conspiracy to say, cover up illegal wiretapping, is not inherently being a conspiracy theorist. It's all about how at odds the belief is with what's considered with mainstream and how disregarded the evidence is by its respective expert communities.

Which doesn't itself absolutely prove any given theory is wrong, though it certainly makes it very likely. But in the end its not about right and wrong. It's about the fact most people aren't interested in listening to it nonstop.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds it a constant reminder about how stupid people can be and by extention all the problems caused by such ways of thinking. It's very much like religious extremists. And like a religion it can get very annoying to nonbelievers.
 
Since my important post was removed from the other thread. I thought it was worthy of a re-post here where it is relevant.
This destroys the uninformed accusations that the "science is settled" with regards to anthropogenic global warming (it's not - science is never settled), and I was also insulted and ridiculed for simply discussing the issue, however we can see that there are many scientists (who obviously know more than us) who doubt the AGW narrative.

Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority Of Scientists Skeptical Of Global Warming Crisis

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamest...ptical-of-global-warming-crisis/#322002e44c7c

It is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.

Don?t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.

The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.

ALL of these scientists must be compromised by the oil + gas industry! There's absolutely NO WAY that a scientist who knows what they're talking about could criticize the anthropogenic global warming narrative, right?

Is the 97% climate consensus Fake News?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/22/is-the-97-climate-consensus-fake-news/

Meteorologists examine causes of weather change every day. They are the scientists most likely to understand when unusual weather extremes are weather or climate change. Thus they have been polled every year about climate change.

However most don't respond. Basically three fourths of weather scientists choose NOT to get entangled in a political, non-scientific debate. In 2015 the response rate was 22%, just 32% in 2016 and in 2017 just 22%. And as true for most skeptics, most agreed climate change is happening. However the question is: What is the cause of that change?

Of 2017's respondents, only 15% thought climate change was entirely due to humans, while 34% thought 60 to 80% could be attributed to human activity. However the survey did not separate human contributions to climate change from urbanization, deforestation, loss of wetlands or CO2 .



One fifth, or 21% thought changes were mostly or entirely natural while 8% admitted they just didn't know.

So for ALL meteorologists surveyed only 11% actually claimed humans were mostly responsible for observed climate change: 22%(response) X 49% (attribution).
 
So I clicked on the link you provided to the peer-reviewed Organization Studies and unless I've read it entirely wrong, it states that the majority of scientists agree global warming is an issue and it even states that most of these scientists believe humans are the main cause of this. The study doesn't seem to be about disproving global warming, just talking about the different beliefs behind it.

Edit: "The largest group of APEGA respondents (36%) draws on a frame that we label ?comply withKyoto?. In their diagnostic framing, they express the strong belief that climate change is happening,that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause"

"However, given the polarized debate(Antonio & Brulle, 2011; Hamilton, 2010; McCright & Dunlop, 2011), gaining access to the reasoningof deniers and sceptics (Kemp, Milne, & Reay, 2010), let alone unraveling their framings,is far more difficult than analyzing supporters of regulatory measures (Hoffman, 2011a)."

"How do professional experts use frames to construct the realityof climate change, and themselves as experts, their credibility in making recommendations anddecisions, while engaging in defensive institutional work against others?"
 
As I said in the other thread, there are also studies that shown geoscientists have one of the highest degrees of climate change skepticism. And it's specifically centered around the geoscientists who are employed by the petroleum industry to use their skills to find and extract oil deposits.

So not only are they not a relevant field of expertise, being geology and not climate. But they're also a field that had strong ties to petroleum companies. And have reason to not want to believe in climate change.

Belief in climate change increases the more impartial the scientist is and the more their field of expertise involves the study of climate. Among climatologists the belief is about 97%. Even among geoscience the belief increases among people who aren't employed by petroleum companies.
 
I'm just going to have to keep repeating this, but nobody is denying that climate change is real. You're muddying the waters and misrepresenting claims by not referring to it as global warming or anthropogenic global warming. You are not arguing for climate change, as I 'believe' in climate change however the temperatures are dropping and we're facing the onset of a mini-ice age (keep your eye on the next couple winters).

As I said in the other thread, there are also studies that shown geoscientists have one of the highest degrees of climate change skepticism. And it's specifically centered around the geoscientists who are employed by the petroleum industry to use their skills to find and extract oil deposits.
By that logic I could say that any scientist paid by the IPCC or relevant institutions is only following the global warming narrative for money, which there is a LOT going around towards anyone who tows the party line. It's considered heresy to publicly doubt these findings (religion)

So not only are they not a relevant field of expertise, being geology and not climate. But they're also a field that had strong ties to petroleum companies. And have reason to not want to believe in climate change.
Would they still know more than us? Your story went from: nobody serious is doubting the AGW narrative, to these scientists don't know what they're talking about or if they disagree it means they've being paid off.

Among climatologists the belief is about 97%.
What source are you using for this?
Even among geoscience the belief increases among people who aren't employed by petroleum companies.
Source/link/evidence? Sounds like a unfounded assumption.

http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/16/...-16-years-but-we-should-still-listen-to-them/
Today I would like to debunk the claim that we have to act now because there's a "97% consensus".

In debates I keep hearing the claim that "97% of scientists agree" on global warming science and thus, with such an overwhelming consensus, taking action is a no-brainer. For example Hollywood actor and college dropout George Clooney recently parroted the argument that if 97 of 100 doctors recommend a procedure and 3% don't who are you going to listen to?

Would you listen to the 97 if you knew they had been wrong for 16 years and the remaining 3 had been right all along?

First of all, this "97%" of all climate scientists agree on global warming is bogus to begin with, and is based on a faulty paper by John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli. read here and here.

So in climate science and policy, should we listen to the "97%" and act now? Or should we listen to the outlier 3% fringe group? The answer to that question is: Don't listen to the winner of the popular vote, rather listen to the group that is right. And it turns out that the "97%" have been wrong for the last 16 years and the 3% minority have been right.

97% have been wrong for 16 years

Let's look at the models coming from the "97% consensus" and see how they are doing compared to the real observed data. Here's a plot by Dr. Roy Spencer:

? Dr. Roy Spencer

Almost all the models from the "97%" have been flat out wrong.

But isn't Dr. Roy Spencer one of those deniers? Don't we need to look at a really objective source like the IPCC? Next is a chart from an early, untampered draft of the IPCC 5AR, with additional information from Dr. Ira Glickstein:

ipcc-ar5draft-fig-1-4.gif

Once again we see the models from the "97%" have all been wrong.

There are other charts out there, and they all tell us the same story: The models have been wrong from the first day.

Observed data show that the 3% are right

Even the IPCC's own chart shows that the models from the 97%" have all overstated future warming.

The next time someone uses the consensus argument, ask him/her if we should believe the 97% who are wrong, or the 3% who are proven right.

Science is not decided by a show of hands. If that's how science had been done in the past, then man would still be walking on four limbs. Science moves by one voice showing the consensus is wrong.
 
Fuck this shit. I'm not wasting my time finding evidence you'll ignore or r try and bullshit your way out of.

You could find the evidence yourself very easily if you wanted the truth. I didn't make an assumption, what I said was the information I found when verifying your claim about denial among geosciences.

The evidence is both overwhelming and easily established, which means you disbelieve it either because you want to, which means convincing you otherwise is impossible. Or you are completely ignorant of scientific method, so again you're letting yourself be convinced by your preferred reality. In which case you won't understand why you should believe one lot of evidence as opposed to another.

It's just a frustrating waste of time and I'd have to be totally masochistic to keep trying to convince you. So I'm giving up.

If you were really interested in the truth, you'd have asked yourself if geoscientists have a vested interest before I pointed it out. You didn't, you used it for all it was worth without questioning it because it was in line with your existing preferred truth. That's how you do it. Finding any reason to disbelieve what's against your preference, and never questioning what's in agreement with it. Then accusing the same in reverse of anyone else. So you need not consider it in depth.

And no, it's not that they're paid off, it's that they're just like you. They have reason to not want to believe, so they find a way not too. Which given their field has little overlap, is easy for them.

If you cared about the truth you wouldn't both argue that lots of scientists doubt climate change when you think you have evidence supporting that, then argue that it doesn't matter how many believe it for whatever reason when the evidence is against you. That's what you do when you don't care about the truth and just wanna be right.

I'm sorry, I wish I had the mental energy to debate this with you with the attention and respect it deserves, but I just don't. Hopefully someone else will. But I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of having the same discussion again and again.
 
Fuck this shit. I'm not wasting my time finding evidence you'll ignore or r try and bullshit your way out of.
Convenient.

so again you're letting yourself be convinced by your preferred reality. In which case you won't understand why you should believe one lot of evidence as opposed to another.
I have nothing invested into this issue. I don't care either way.

If you were really interested in the truth, you'd have asked yourself if geoscientists have a vested interest before I pointed it out.
I suggest you do the same with climate scientists.

And no, it's not that they're paid off, it's that they're just like you. They have reason to not want to believe, so they find a way not too.
lol just me like huh, and what's my motive? DESTROY THE EARTH!

If you cared about the truth you wouldn't both argue that lots of scientists doubt climate change when you think you have evidence supporting that, then argue that it doesn't matter how many believe it for whatever reason when the evidence is against you. That's what you do when you don't care about the truth and just wanna be right.
The point I'm trying to make is that there is no consensus. There's dogma and there's a lot of financial incentives (on both sides). Highly intelligent, respected scientists disagree on the anthropogenic global warming narrative. I'm not saying who is right or wrong because I don't know for sure, but the truth is that the debate continues and science is never settled. I wish activists would rally against pollution the same way they fight for global warming and alleged rising sea levels.
 
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Skeptical climate scientists coming in from the cold
https://www.realclearinvestigations...imate_scientists_coming_in_from_the_cold.html

In the world of climate science, the skeptics are coming in from the cold.

Researchers who see global warming as something less than a planet-ending calamity believe the incoming Trump administration may allow their views to be developed and heard. This didn't happen under the Obama administration, which denied that a debate even existed. Now, some scientists say, a more inclusive approach - and the billions of federal dollars that might support it - could be in the offing.

"Here's to hoping the Age of Trump will herald the demise of climate change dogma, and acceptance of a broader range of perspectives in climate science and our policy options," Georgia Tech scientist Judith Curry wrote this month at her popular Climate Etc. blog.


William Happer

William Happer, professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is similarly optimistic. "I think we're making progress," Happer said. "I see reassuring signs."

Despite harsh criticism of their contrarian views, a few scientists like Happer and Curry have pointed to evidence that global warming is less pronounced than predicted. They have also argued that this slighter warming would bring positive developments along with problems. For the first time in years, skeptics believe they can find a path out of the wilderness into which they've been cast by the "scientific consensus." As much as they desire a more open-minded reception by their colleagues, they are hoping even more that the spigot of government research funding - which dwarfs all other sources - will trickle their way.

President-elect Donald Trump, who has called global warming a "hoax," has chosen for key cabinet posts men whom the global warming establishment considers lapdogs of the oil and gas industry: former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to run the Energy Department; Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma to run the Environmental Protection Agency; and Exxon chief executive Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.

But while general policy may be set at the cabinet level, significant and concrete changes would likely be spelled out below those three - among the very bureaucrats the Trump transition team might have had in mind when, in a move some saw as intimidation, it sent a questionnaire to the Energy Department this month (later disavowed) trying to determine who worked on global warming.

It isn't certain that federal employees working in various environmental or energy sector-related agencies would willingly implement rollbacks of regulations, let alone a redirection of scientific climate research, but the latter prospect heartens the skeptical scientists. They cite an adage: You only get answers to the questions you ask.

"In reality, it's the government, not the scientists, that asks the questions," said David Wojick, a longtime government consultant who has closely tracked climate research spending since 1992. If a federal agency wants models that focus on potential sea-level rise, for example, it can order them up. But it can also shift the focus to how warming might boost crop yields or improve drought resistance.

While it could take months for such expanded fields of research to emerge, a wider look at the possibilities excites some scientists. Happer, for one, feels emboldened in ways he rarely has throughout his career because, for many years, he knew his iconoclastic climate conclusions would hurt his professional prospects.

When asked if he would voice dissent on climate change if he were a younger, less established physicist, he said: "Oh, no, definitely not. I held my tongue for a long time because friends told me I would not be elected to the National Academy of Sciences if I didn't toe the alarmists' company line."

That sharp disagreements are real in the field may come as a shock to many people, who are regularly informed that climate science is settled and those who question this orthodoxy are akin to Holocaust deniers. Nevertheless, new organizations like the CO2 Coalition, founded in 2015, suggest the debate is more evenly matched intellectually than is commonly portrayed. In addition to Happer, the CO2 Coalition's initial members include scholars with ties to world-class institutions like MIT, Harvard and Rockefeller University. The coalition also features members of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorology Society, along with policy experts from the Manhattan Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute and Tufts University's Fletcher School.

With such voices joining in, the debate over global warming might shift. Until now, it's normally portrayed as enlightened scholars vs. anti-science simpletons. A more open debate could shift the discussion to one about global warming's extent and root causes.

Should a scientific and research funding realignment occur, it could do more than shatter what some see as an orthodoxy stifling free inquiry. Bjorn Lomborg, who has spent years analyzing potential solutions to global warming, believes that a more expansive outlook toward research is necessary because too much government funding has become expensive and ineffective corporate welfare. Although not a natural scientist, the social scientist Lomborg considers climate change real but not cataclysmic.


Bjorn Lomborg

"Maybe now we'll have a smarter conversation about what actually works," Lomborg told RealClearInvestigations. "What has been proposed costs a fortune and does very little. With more space opening up, we can invest more into research and development into green energy. We don't need subsidies to build something. They've been throwing a lot of money at projects that supposedly will cut carbon emissions but actually accomplish very little. That's not a good idea. The funding should go to universities and research institutions; you don't need to give it to companies to do it."

Such new opportunities might, in theory, calm a field tossed by acrimony and signal a d?tente in climate science. Yet most experts are skeptical that a kumbaya moment is at hand. The mutual bitterness instilled over the years, the research money at stake, and the bristling hostility toward Trump's appointees could actually exacerbate tensions.

"I think that the vast 'middle' will want and seek a more collegial atmosphere," Georgia Tech's Curry told RealClearInvestigations. "But there will be some hardcore people (particularly on the alarmed side) whose professional reputation, funding, media exposure, influence etc. depends on cranking up the alarm."

Michael E. Mann, another climate change veteran, is also doubtful about a rapprochement. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State and author of the "hockey stick" graph, which claims a sharp uptick in global temperatures over the past century, believes ardently that global warming is a dire threat. He concluded a Washington Post op-ed this month with this foreboding thought: "The fate of the planet hangs in the balance." Mann acknowledges a brutal war of words has engulfed climate science. But in an e-mail exchange with RealClearInvestigations, he blamed opponents led by "the Koch brothers" for the polarization.

Mann did hint, however, there may be some room for discussion.


Michael Mann

"In that poisonous environment it is difficult to have the important, more nuanced and worthy debate about what to do about the problem," he wrote. "There are Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bob Inglis and George Shultz trying to create space for that discussion, and that gives me hope. But given that Donald Trump is appointing so many outright climate deniers to key posts in this administration, I must confess that I - and many of my fellow scientists - are rather concerned."

Neither side of the debate has been immune from harsh and sinister attacks. Happer said he stepped down from the active faculty at Princeton in part "to deal with all this craziness." Happer and Mann, like several other climate scientists, have gotten death threats. They provided RealClearInvestigations with some of the e-mails and voice messages they have received.

"You are an educated Nazi and should hang from the neck," a critic wrote Happer in October 2014.

"You and your colleagues who have promoted this scandal ought to be shot, quartered and fed to the pigs along with your whole damn families," one e-mailed Mann in Dec. 2009.

Similar threats have bedeviled scientists and writers across the climate research spectrum, from Patrick Michaels, a self-described "lukewarmer" who dealt with death threats at the University of Virginia before moving to the Cato Institute, to Rajendra Pachauri, who protested anonymous death threats while heading the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Putting such ugliness aside, some experts doubt that the science will improve even if the Trump administration asks new research questions and funding spreads to myriad proposals. Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Sciences who has long questioned climate change orthodoxy, is skeptical that a sunnier outlook is upon us.

"I actually doubt that," he said. Even if some of the roughly $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars currently spent on climate research across 13 different federal agencies now shifts to scientists less invested in the calamitous narrative, Lindzen believes groupthink has so corrupted the field that funding should be sharply curtailed rather than redirected.

"They should probably cut the funding by 80 to 90 percent until the field cleans up," he said. "Climate science has been set back two generations, and they have destroyed its intellectual foundations."

The field is cluttered with entrenched figures who must toe the established line, he said, pointing to a recent congressional report that found the Obama administration got a top Department of Energy scientist fired and generally intimidated the staff to conform with its politicized position on climate change.

"Remember this was a tiny field, a backwater, and then suddenly you increased the funding to billions and everyone got into it," Lindzen said. "Even in 1990 no one at MIT called themselves a 'climate scientist,' and then all of a sudden everyone was. They only entered it because of the bucks; they realized it was a gravy train. You have to get it back to the people who only care about the science."
 
I've had enough man. I get that you honestly believe it. I don't doubt that. But we could spend forever going around and around and I just don't wanna do that. There's lots of other people you can have this argument with but I've just had enough.
 
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