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What would AGW look like if it actually *was* a pure scam?
If AGW actually was nothing but a scam, I, at least, would expect it to look different. Aside from the fact that there's a lot of obvious, direct physical evidence of the reality of AGW, I'd think that the people talking about AGW would be a little more... consistent about it. Lies are often less messy than the truth, since they don't have to match reality. And, well, I'd also expect to have seen more concrete results in the political arena.
I'd like to hear everyone else's speculations about who would be behind a scam like AGW (if it was a scam), what goals they might have, what they would do differently than what actually has been done, and so on. Basically, aside from the lack of evidence, what would a world where AGW was just a scam actually look like?...
D/dx: so, then, you're saying that if AGW was a scam, it'd have to be a lot simpler? Probably with a lot fewer disciplines "in on it"?
19 Answers
- d/dx+d/dy+d/dzLv 69 years agoFavorite Answer
There are on the order of 20,000 peer reviewed scientific publications supporting the AGW theory. A scam artist would not only need to fudge results across the existing body of literature, but also correctly anticipate the path of future research and corrupt data in advance. Only a few scientists reach the 200 publication mark over their entire career and none have the breadth to act at an expert level in all of the fields of science represented in the AGW evidence. A conspiracy would not achieve coordination among hundreds of experts (to survive scrutiny from thousands of experts) and would necessarily lack internal consistency. A chemist might be able to befuddle undergraduates for a while with a saturation theory, but would not be able to correctly anticipate the effect on plankton in the oceans. In the denier camp there are multiple contradictory theories about AGW united only in the assertion that greenhouse gasses are not the cause. The pure scam is real and it is the denial of science.
<D/dx: so, then, you're saying that if AGW was a scam, it'd have to be a lot simpler? Probably with a lot fewer disciplines "in on it"?>
Yes: the complexity of the empirical evidence is evidence of the validity of the evidence.
- Anonymous9 years ago
It would be incredibly sophisticated and heavily funded by Western style democratic governance structures, on which the entire academic structure supporting it depends....
Need I go on ?
- SagebrushLv 79 years ago
I suggest you read or watch the movie "The Music Man".
This salesman goes into River City, Iowa and sees that everyone is happy.
Quote by emeritus professor Daniel Botkin: "The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe."
So "Professor" Harold Hill stirs up some controversy and has people looking at their own children as juvenile delinquents.
BUT Harry has the answer. BUY HIS INSTRUMENTS.
Harry is a con artist and plans to just abscond with the money and do nothing.
The only difference is the greenies can't abscond. Where would they go? To Mars? Good. I'll donate to that. No they have to stay here and to stave off the wolves. They HAVE to make it seem like they are doing something or the enlightened peasants will tar and feather them. So they round up some stooges, the press, and PHDs who are 'F' students but talk a good talk (there are plenty of these) and coerce them one way or the other to seem like they have the answers.
So they told a lie but it has to be sustained.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Goebbels strategy.
So truth becomes the enemy of the con game.
So now you have two problems. You have to have an answer for a non-existent problem and you have to hide the truth.
So what is the solution? Raise taxes. That always solves a problem. Kill off people. That is always good to solve a problem. Hitler did it and Stalin did it even better. Form a do nothing committee. Thus we have the EPA and the UN-IPCC. (Notice these people act exactly like the 'weavers' in 'The Emperor's New Clothes') These issue proclamations, write fancy worded reports, and display their power but show no tangible results.
So how do you hide the truth? You get a bunch of goons to do your trolling for you. These have to be ones who think they are smart but are not really. (There are plenty of these.) In case of AGW scam, these greenie weenies fall into three classifications:
1. Leaders of the movement. These are making a nice livelihood by spewing falsehoods and don't want to give up their cash cow.
2. Useful idiots. Stalin described these best.
3. Pseudo-intellectuals. These people want to appear smart so they grab on to far out ambiguous ideas and claim to fully understand them so they can look down on you for not comprehending them.
These legions strike out to disperse and support disinformation.
These methods are not new. These methods are not even original. Just look at the scam in the garden of Eden. It followed these same lines. The Garden was perfect yet the Serpent created a problem and even had a solution to the non-existent problem. Notice he attacked the weaker more emotional one of the two.
The AGW or ACC scam is nothing more than snake oil less the bottle.
- MoeLv 69 years ago
I think observations have been made and in search for an answer they've settled on it's mans fault. Because many dislike the freedom man has taken in his destiny.
If there's a silver lining to the research, it's that the results could have a tangible impact on people's behavior, Anderson said.
That's the goal, and how can my scientific observations change peoples behavior.
Recent discoveries of how our atmosphere works are currently being associated to AGW when they don't even yet know if ozone loss is actually occuring. Summer Storms (which of course are now caused by AGW) are destroying the ozone layer. Not Hey, we just found out that summer storms may produce conditions that can destroy ozone. Seems like the same thing happened with the holes discovered in the Ozone layer. Nevermind that they are not holes and the thinning actually occurs every winter pre-human and post human, pre-cfc and post-cfc.
Like Obama giving himself a grade of incomplete because he hasn't ****** up our country enough, climate science is incomplete, and when I find new observations being associated with AGW it shows me an agenda to find man at fault regardless of reality.
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- ?Lv 79 years ago
If it were a scam it would look like Creationism, the anti-vaccine and other medical movements, and, AGW Denial. Like these and other anti-science social / religious / political movements, they would redefine and/or corrupt the true meaning of words like “science” and “facts” in the same way that manufactures of “supplements” lie about the medicinal value of their worthless (if not dangerous), products; the same way that Holocaust deniers simply declare thousands of photographs, hours of film, witness reports, dead bodies, and self-incriminating Nazi documentation are not real; the same way creationists use the term creation-science even thought it is – by definition – and oxymoron since the scientific method does not allow the use of supernatural explanations; and the same way that AGW deniers claim that up is down – except when up is caused by extra-normal forces that contradict empirical reality and violate the physics of our universe.
For example, climategate scientists could have funneled all of their research money to marketing and PR firms to aggressively, relentlessly, and shamelessly sell the idea that the emails prove how space aliens have been changing data, altering scientific test results, and even manipulating global climate into order to get God-fearing Republicans to elect politicians who are really space alien secret agents and, thus, ensure the successful conquest and colonization of planet earth.
- Lloyd JLv 69 years ago
I have heard dozens of scientists who reluctantly join the warmist conclusions with the caveat "The things we will do to combat global warming will be generally good for the environment anyway" . This tells me the data is not at all compelling. Most of the scientists go along due to this "no harm" principle. They are often startled when the potential economic damage to humanity from the "cap and trade" schemes are truly evaluated. It may not be a scam, it is more like a snowball that has grown too big for anyone to stop.
- Anonymous9 years ago
The laws of physics would have to be different. I do not believe that life could exist if carbon dioxide did not have a bond dipoles. If carbon dioxide did not have a dipole moment, no energy would be extracted in its formation in the mitochondrion.
Therefore, in order for AGW to be a scam, the laws of thermodynamics would also have to be a scam. But then, we still wouldn't need oil; we would be able to build perpetual motion machines.
On other thing; government conspiracies do not take 150 years to become policy.
- MattLv 59 years ago
Scientific hoaxes have been perpetrated before. They tend to be the work of one scientist or a very small number of scientists, published in niche fields, niche journals, or non-journals where editorial review will be less rigorous.
So in an alternate universe where AGW is a hoax, Michael Mann, and no more than one or two other notable scientists, might claim AGW exists, publishing findings mainly through personal blogs, sympathetic think tanks, partisan news networks, and less relied upon journals such as Energy & Environment.
Now wouldn't that be interesting?
Source(s): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal - Phoenix QuillLv 79 years ago
lol. If this scam were a scam wouldn't it look more like a scam?
No dear, scams only work when their targets are near incapable of seeing them as scams.
Now that said, AGW is NOT a 'pure' scam, it is a RELIGION evolved to promote Socialism.
So who is behind the 'scam' of Religion?
Well Religion isn't exactly scam is it?
Nor is it centrally controlled through a single office.
Religion evolved to address the existential crisis & promote Social cohesion.
It evolved because people feel connected enough to Nature to call it God.
And it is INEVITABLE that unscrupulous Politicians would hijack Religion to serve their own purposes.
And that's what AGW is.... a hijacked Religion.
The UN might be the Catholic Church of Warmonism, but other sects exist, each with their own politicos vying for the power that comes from massive Energy taxation.
The faithful, like you, are largely oblivious of the larger political struggle (& often poor).
For you, 'skeptics' are just manifestations of Satan: ignorant, selfish, greedy evildoers hell bent on destroying the Earth. aka Republicans. ;-)
If AGW were Science - then these last 14 years without warming would be a BFD regards sensitivity appraisals.
IF AGW were NOT about promoting Socialism, then Chemists like you would be working furiously to make bio fuels & renewables fiscally competitive, instead of using Government to artificially raise energy costs.
Warmons would have a sense of the time frames available instead of being in constant 'crisis' mode.
Nor would they gag at simple truths like "Warmer is usually better"
And believers would not be forming thumbs down cabals to silence skeptics.
Source(s): Burt Rutan on AGW http://burtrutan.com/burtrutan/downloads/EngrCriti... - 9 years ago
If it were a scam you would think the people perpetrating it (in this hypothetical, that'd be scientists) would be making a hell-of-a-lot more money than they do. Even the few prominent climatologists are only in the middle-high income bracket with a good portion of their money coming from speaking-fees and royalties from publications than their occupation. For the other less-known thousands, they live on a wage slightly higher than a teacher at double the student debt (depending on country).
As it stands, the people committing the 'scam' aren't really reaping much for their efforts. Compare this to the actual scammers in the corporate sector who've jumped at the chance to exploit a growing 'green' trend to increase their market shares by slapping an 'environmentally friendly' tag on their products and then calling it a day, with no tangible improvement to their environmental record. Basically, if scientists created AGW to scam the populace out of their money, they're horrible at doing it.
Plus, a scam wouldn't accurately reflect the progressive rate of summer melt in the Arctic that we've been seeing over the last few decades. So, scam or not, for all intents an purposes it is correct until something comes along that can better explain it.