Friday, September 08, 2006

Blogging Tory Shills for Big Oil

From DeSmogBlog, The Friends of Science are a pseudo-science astroturf group fronting for the Alberta energy industry. Their job is to spread disinformation on the Global Warming debate by producing, with money from the oil-patch, videos like Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: what you're not being told about the science of climate change.

Lately, this video has been repeatedly turning up on YouTube and, when the folks at DeSmogBlog tracked back the poster, they discovered it was none other than Craig Smith, a Conservative Party activist and one of the founders of The Blogging Tories.

Which begs the question: just what kind of Tory is Mr. Smith? After all, no less a figure than Brian Mulroney has acknowledged the severity of the Global Warming problem, and the need for action. Even Preston Manning seems to accept the underlying science. So, do today's Conservative activists have no sense of shame? Do they view themselves quite happily as extensions of the Alberta Oil Industry's Public Relations wing?

PR flacks get paid to spread untruth. What's Mr. Smith's excuse?

All hail the mighty DeSMogBlog, by the way, whose research I am merely recycling.

Update 11:30 am: Giant Political Mouse has more information on the FOS and their Tory connections.

8 comments:

Giant Political Mouse said...

I have some more on this story if you are interested

http://giantpoliticalmouse.blogspot.com/index.html

bigcitylib said...

Much thanks. Added a link to your site.

John M Reynolds said...

People who say that man made green house gases are making climate change use a chart by GRID, among other sources, to explain their case. The more I look at the GRID chart, found on the http://thiver.wordpress.com/2006/03/04/simple-proof-that-global-warming-is-a-fact/ page as well as many other sites, the more interesting things I notice. Look at 130,000 to 120,000 years before present. The temperature dropped while the CO2 concentration remained high. Look at the past 10,000 years that shows CO2 rising even though the temperature has been stable. Around 70,000 years ago, the CO2 spiked while the temperature continued to decrease. The http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/650000-years-of-greenhouse-gas-concentrations/ page has more recently obtained data from the Vostok ice cores that go back 650,000 years now. It too has a chart (just before the comments section) that is similar to the Grid chart. It shows that 420,000 years ago, the CO2 level rose before the temperature then stayed high after the temperature dropped. This tells me that the greenhouse effect is minimal if at all existant on a global scale. If this is wrong, then I would love for someone to be able to explain it to me. Does anyone have the answer?

John M Reynolds

bigcitylib said...

John, Your seeing things. The C02 concentrations on that chart are falling during the 130,000 to 120,000 time period, although the trend line isn't smooth.

John M Reynolds said...

I am not seeing things. It was indeed dropping, but no where near the rate at which the temperature dropped. The amount the CO2 dropped in those 10,000 years was quite little and thus remained high like I said. I did not say that it increased or stayed constant. I simply noted that it remained high.

The point is, the historical data does not indicate that high CO2 means rising temperature like the greenhouse gas theory suggests. Can you explain why, or do you know anyone who can?

bigcitylib said...

John,

it means that rising C02 levels are connected with rising temperatures, falling C02 levels with falling temperatures.

John M Reynolds said...

Hi BigCityLib. What you say almost makes sense, but only with respect to that one time span. Thank you for trying, but that is not what greenhouse theory predicts. It says that high levels of greenhouse gases causes a greenhouse effect that causes the earth to warm in a feedback loop.

Even if your explanation is correct, then it leaves more questions. Why does the bulk of the chart show that the two, CO2 concentration and temperature, are approximately linked much more closely than during that 10,000 year period?

If you are correct and a slight change in the CO2 level makes a big difference, then why did the spike 70,000 years ago not cause a rise in temperature? If high levels of CO2 do not predict high temperatures, then why have the past 10,000 years had rising CO2 while the temperature remained constant?

Giant Political Mouse said...

Hey JMR:

"Thank you for trying, but that is not what greenhouse theory predicts. It says that high levels of greenhouse gases causes a greenhouse effect that causes the earth to warm in a feedback loop."

That's not theory, it's fact.

See: Venus