Exxon to cut funding to climate change denial groups
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/28/climatechange.fossilfuels

Exxon Mobil Corporation
2008 Worldwide Contributions and Community Investments
Public Information and Policy Research
http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/files/gcr_contributions_public_policy08.pdf

I could go on but what’s the point when you are trying to talk to someone with their head in the sand.
The result is that you will not hear and you will get sand in your eyes.

Sarnian, I remember this: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/environmental_law/2007/02/exxon_mobil_res.html

Naomi Oreskes is right, people like Amicus just regurgitate and throw back what they themselves are being charged with.

Sarnian,

Neither of those links is very persuasive. The Guardian's piece is two and half years old, and the notion of a Greenpeace spokesman objecting to the funding of rival groups is ludicrous. The Royal Society's writing to Exxon asking them to stop funding groups it didn't like looked like cheek at the time, and is worse now. The Exxon list consists of 120+ recipients. The reason for the asterisk isn't made clear, and the total amount the 120 divide up is $7 million. In terms of Exxon's revenue, that's rounding error.

Given the very large amounts of government and grant money that have gone into AGW research, what are you complaining of? Do you think that no money at all should be spent on questioning the orthodoxy?

"If you can't see the bleedin obvious, that humans are having a devastating impact on the whole biosphere, widely and compellingly reported across all media, or that it's unethical..."
-Squeers

See, there you go again, advancing your BELIEFS as if they were somehow as valid as empirical arguments. They're not, and you can't make beliefs meet the same standard of proof as empirical arguments by prefacing them with the phrase 'bleedin obvious'. That's not how rational argument works, I'm afraid.

And since you are, once again, resorting to unsubstantiated allegations in the place of empirical argument - and perpetuating the sophistry that you're making sound arguments to boot - it should be self-apparent to all but yourself that I haven't misrepresented you. Misrepresenting you would look something like this: you have a thourough grasp of the conventions of rational argument, and consequently never fail to advance a strong argument.

"Moreover, they do not contain any "arguments", unless I missed something?"
-Squeers

Only the argument that faith, emotion, opinion, hearsay, conjecture etc. are a less valid basis for rational arguments than logic or empiricism. I can understand why you'd choose to ignore this argument, as you seem to take it as a fait accompli that all forms of argument are equally valid, no matter how irrational they may be.

Dear Riz,
so let me get this straight; you want me to provide evidence that Humanity is devastating the whole biosphere--the biosphere being the "global sum of all ecosystems"?
Perhaps my terminology is what you object to? The biosphere is an evolving complex system that will no doubt continue to prosper and adapt, even if we radically alter the environmental limitations/conditions under which that occurs? There is something to this pedantic argument; in wishing to preserve, even romanticise, the current state of biodiversity, or florescence, we impose our snapshot, our moment in time view of nature, on its dynamic, which, like capitalist economics, is based on "creative destruction". It could be that we are driving an evolutionary experiment that leads to something momentous? But momentousness is also a human construction, whereas nature seems devoted to banality? And yet this too is a presumption upon nature's motives that we infer based on the fragment of time we have to consider nature's longue duree..
..Yet I doubt this is the tendency of your thinking?
On the ethics side of the ledger, perhaps you object that such is pure metaphysics? In which case you plunge us heartily into the cut and thrust of natural evolution which, 'tis true, cares nothing for nonsensical human notions like right and wrong?
Yet I would counter that this is where we transcend nature, or nature begins to transcend herself?
..Yet am I right in thinking that your position is less complicated? You simply don't agree that we are devastating the biosphere as it is, as it appears to us, in this scrap of geological time we occupy?
You surely don't argue that our presence goes unnoticed, that is unregistered, by the biosphere? If so, I suggest you consult with it--as we document it.

How about you now explain to me "your" notion that we are not harming the biosphere, and are not subject to ethical considerations?
Fairs fair; I've put up tons of substance on this thread, you've put up none (nothing new there). How about you offer "me" some evidence-based argument and I'll respond?

Iam going to look at the Conspiracy theory's just for a moment. This one in particular comes into focus on the grounds that greedy capitalists just might of set this all up as this link spells out.

What do you think of this?

So its fair to say that human impact is the main cause of AGW. So which ever way you look at it, mankind is having an effect.

So therefor its true in what I said.....We have just sped up the processes realistically. And see the more that human population expands, The worse it gets for all living things.

Oh and you do need to gamble with that fact.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvcuylMrkXk&feature=related

BLUE