Clownfish,

See this update on the famous Ehrlich-Simon bet on the prices of five metals. If the bet had closed in 2008 instead of 1980, Simon would have only been right about one of them, and Ehrlich would have won, i.e. Ehrlich was only wrong about the time frame.

http://www.uslaw.com/library/Intellectual_Property_Law/EhrlichSimon_Bet_Update.php?item=78581

It is also notable that Simon refused to take Ehrlich's second bet on such things as fish stocks and grain production per person.

If environmental threats are all such nonsense, perhaps you can explain why reputable scientists are risking their reputations by writing such things, why reputable journals are publishing their papers, and why governments are giving them grant money, when everyone would prefer that they were wrong.

People like yourself are happy to believe scientists when their findings lead to yummy new consumer goods or cures for your ailments, but not when their findings threaten your world view or your religious beliefs. Then you look around for someone - anyone - who will tell you what you want to hear. This is not to say that the maverick is never right, but for every such case, there are many more where the maverick was wrong.

Many people suffered from ulcers over the years and some died because the medical establishment here and elsewhere was not open to new ideas on their cause. Those numbers pale, however, in comparison to the people who died of AIDS and the babies who were infected in South Africa because Thabo Mbeki withheld antiretrovirals from his people, choosing to believe the maverick Peter Duesberg instead of the medical establishment. Babies are dying of whooping cough right now in developed countries because parents have been influenced by maverick doctors to not vaccinate their children.

"If environmental threats are all such nonsense"

Er, go back and read my earlier posts on this thread: I don't say that there *aren't* environmental threats, but that they are quite often nowhere near as dire as certain environmental lobbyists claim.

Lying is lying, it doesn't matter which side is doing it, nor how politically acceptable their motives are.

"why reputable scientists are risking their reputations by writing such things, why reputable journals are publishing their papers, and why governments are giving them grant money, when everyone would prefer that they were wrong."

Because quite often, scientists are not writing such things: Environmental lobbyists, with an eye to continued donations and grants, often misrepresent - or outright fabricate - scientific studies, and a compliant media joins in the sham: after all, bad news is what sells.

Consider, for example, recent media reports claiming that a scientific study had shown that children of older fathers were less intelligent that others. Anyone who bothered to look up the actual study would find that the researcher himself had cautioned against generalising too much from his study, which found that children of older fathers averaged two IQ points lower than other children.

Given that individuals can typically vary at least two points between different IQ points, the difference was thus statistically insignificant.

But that wouldn't sell, now would it?

One could also point to the notorious "Australia is the fattest nation on earth" study: A deeply flawed study that has, nonetheless, become conventional wisdom.

Further examples abound, especially in the arena of environmental issues, but word limits forbid.

Finally, why do governments give out grant money? Because effective environmental lobbyists have successfully scared the pants off all and sundry with their lies, distortions and half-truths.

“Car exhausts use to be very dirty things.. there are now more cars but the exhausts have been cleaned up a lot more.”

Sheer unmitigated rubbish Curmudgeon.

Petrol and diesel emissions remain the largest source of man-made carcinogens on the planet. Ever heard of fossil fuels Curmudgeon?

And burning petroleum emits about three-fourths as much CO2 as burning coal, and thanks to oil’s role as the established fuel for transportation globally, it’s neck-and-neck with coal in the race to become the leading greenhouse gas producer.

"Dr Kearney, former head of Sydney University’s Infectious Diseases and Immunology Department alluded to the book: “ Lives Per Gallon”, which said that the oil and car industries had acted again and again to deceive regulators about the hazards of their products and had used their wealth to hamstring attempts by state and federal legislators to make laws that address such threats."

http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:PkcBkCK1UUIJ:www.bbibioenergyaustralasia.com.au/article.jsp%3Farticle_id%3D1232%26article_title%3DThe%2BCorruption%2BOf%2BScience+ray+kearney+unleaded&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

And the corporate grim reapers (supported by spindoctors) continue to wreak havoc on the planet. These are the “upstanding” corporate citizens who like to boast about sponsoring the local CWA ladies’ Devonshire tea parties to divert attention while they cut loose on our ecosystems.

Clownfish says: “For instance, claiming that the world's forests had declined and degraded significantly, when in fact they had actually slightly increased - and making the wildly exaggerated claim that 16 million ha of forest were disappearing every year.”

As is typical of Clownfish's posts, there's never a link to be seen anywhere and only those suffering from depleted cranium would take him seriously:

UNEP 2008:

"Global economic growth over the past 50 years has been accompanied by accelerated environmental decline.

"Over the past 300 years, the global forest area has shrunk by around 40 per cent; half the globe's wetlands have been lost since 1900 and human - led species extinction rates are now 1,000 higher than the 'natural' rate of extinction.

"Some 60 per cent of the Earth's ecosystems and the goods and services they provide are now degraded."

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=548&ArticleID=5957&l=en

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2448863

protag: "And burning petroleum emits about three-fourths as much CO2 as burning coal, and thanks to oil’s role as the established fuel for transportation globally, it’s neck-and-neck with coal in the race to become the leading greenhouse gas producer...the global forest area has shrunk by around 40 per cent"

No, wrong on several counts there.

First: the ocean is "the biggest greenhouse gas producer", and will remain so even if every man, woman and child in the World drove Humvees from the driveways of their constantly air-conditioned McMansions.

Second: So what if "burning petroleum emits about three-fourths as much CO2", etc.? All living organisms emit CO2, including above-said ocean.

Third: So what if forest depletes? The silly assumption behind such scaremongering is that humans contrive to replace pristine rainforest with car parks and Walmarts. Yet Australia's rainforest coverage is understood to have depleted down to some 2-3% of pre-white settlement, for example, but that long-term destruction was rarely the cause of such real, current environmental problems as salinity and soil erosion. Elsewhere, forest depletion and degradation replaces with new vegetation, including plantations. That's a resource management issue, not a cause for eschatological panic and Malthusian fire-and-brimstone hatred towards humanity and civilization!

Or is all that actually the life-denying cancer and weakness at the heart of this green cult? While its head is driven by cynical financiers in the Stern/Garnault/Gore mould, desperate to impose another, more controllable type of debt bubble in ETS/CRTS, etc.

“First: the ocean is "the biggest greenhouse gas producer", and will remain so even if every man, woman and child in the World drove Humvees from the driveways of their constantly air-conditioned McMansions.”

Do you ever cringe with embarrassment Mil-observer? The oceans are the planet’s main carbon SINKS. Together with other carbon sinks, it is the ocean which absorbs the “human-generated carbon”. You really should try to learn more before putting foot in mouth.

However, it is evident that the ocean’s ability to absorb the elevated major greenhouse gas has weakened and in the last ten years or so they have become increasingly unable to play this role, in both the northern and southern hemispheres. In addition, CO2 is less soluble in warmer water, so as the oceans warm, eventually they start to emit CO2.

Such weakening of one of the Earth’s major carbon dioxide sinks will lead to higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the long-term, seriously exacerbated by the actions of ignorant hillbillies like yourself.

Second: So what if "burning petroleum emits about three-fourths as much CO2", etc.? All living organisms emit CO2, including above-said ocean.

You have my pity Mil-observer. It is obvious that you wouldn’t know a VOC from a sock and I have much better things to do than conduct remedial classes for the climate mafia.

How sad. Protag means that oceans are not CO2 emitters at all, but just absorbers of "carbon"? Try the term "outgassing", which may double as an apt description of protag's prolonged, but still very premature, ejaculation - and one sparked off by a fetish about the "carbon sink" concept and other AGW S&M rituals...

Sort of gives it away if the self-appointed science guru refers repeatedly to "carbon" (a la carbon compounds like common plastics, wood, etc.)! All that bluster to condescend from a position of shocking ignorance, matched by gigatonnes of toxic arrogance.

Onlookers take note: such is the blind, haughty fanaticism that the AGW creed generates.

So back to basics: "the ocean is the biggest greenhouse gas producer". Please, someone dispute that factual assertion with a point based on fact, not protag's fantasy.