Top Ten Conspiracy Theories

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Why do you keep calling him 'the ex-NASA scientist'?

[Rico1304]

RP - Feb 12th is 'Darwin Was Wrong' Day, you need a new tin foil hat.

[setreal]

Why do you keep calling him 'the ex-NASA scientist'?

 

Because calling him a big oil, Koch Bros funded conservative think-tank fraud would kinda hurt RPs agenda.

[Red Phoenix]

Why do you keep calling him 'the ex-NASA scientist'?

 

I don't know, maybe because it's an indication that he might have some idea of what he's talking about?

 

Because calling him a big oil, Koch Bros funded conservative think-tank fraud would kinda hurt RPs agenda.

 

Can you back that up? If so fair enough. My only agenda is looking for the truth, as much as it hurts some of you to think of it like that.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

I don't know, maybe because it's an indication that he might have some idea of what he's talking about?

Yes, I thought that was the reason. That's called an appeal to authority. His work either stands up or it doesn't. Where he used to work, for a space agency, doesn't mean he is right (or wrong) about this. It lends absolutely no credence to your argument at all.

[setreal]

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roy_Spencer#Affiliations_and_connections

 

http://www.southernstudies.org/2011/09/climate-science-contrarian-roy-spencers-oil-industry-ties.html

 

 

Spencer's Big Oil connections

As a global-warming contrarian with strong climate-science credentials, Roy Spencer is a relative rarity. He earned his doctorate in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981 and went on to serve as a senior scientist for climate studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where he and Christy received an award for their work monitoring global temperatures with satellites. Spencer became a research scientist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville in 2001.

While his personal website notes that his research has been entirely supported by U.S. government agencies and not oil companies, he does have a leadership role in groups with financial ties to Big Oil. They include:

* George C. Marshall Institute. Spencer currently serves as a director at the George C. Marshall Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit that receives substantial funding from oil and gas interests -- including Exxon, which has given the group at least $840,000 since 1998,according to Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets.org database. The Marshall Institute used to restrict its funding to private foundations and individual donors, but in the late 1990s, after it began working to cast doubt on global warming, the group made the decision to accept money from corporations and their foundations.

The Marshall Institute's former executive director, Matthew B. Crawford, wrote an essay for the New York Times back in 2009 that accused the group -- which he did not name -- of distorting facts in pursuit of its ideological agenda:

But certain perversities became apparent as I settled into the job. It sometimes required me to reason backward, from desired conclusion to suitable premise. The organization had taken certain positions, and there were some facts it was more fond of than others. As its figurehead, I was making arguments I didn't fully buy myself. Further, my boss seemed intent on retraining me according to a certain cognitive style -- that of the corporate world, from which he had recently come. This style demanded that I project an image of rationality but not indulge too much in actual reasoning.

* Cornwall Alliance. Spencer is a member of the board of advisors of the Cornwall Alliance, a conservative Christian public-policy group that promotes a free-market approach to environmental stewardship and whose "Resisting the Green Dragon" campaign portrays the climate-protection movement as a sort of false religion. The Cornwall Alliance has close ties to a conservative policy group called the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which has received over $580,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998, according to ExxonSecrets.org. Paul Driessen, who played a guiding role in forming the group now known as the Cornwall Alliance, also served as a consultant for ExxonMobil and CFACT, which has also received at least $60,500 from Chevron and $1.28 million from the the foundation of the Scaife family, whose wealth comes in part from Gulf Oil, as Think Progress reports.

* Encounter Books. Spencer is the author of three books critical of mainstream climate science: Climate Confusion, published in 2008, and The Great Global Warming Blunder and The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama's Global Warming Agenda, both released last year. All of those works were published by Encounter Books, which is a project of the conservative nonprofit Encounter for Culture and Education. That group's major funders include the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, which in turn is controlled by one of the owners of Kansas-based Koch Industries, among the world's richest privately held companies with extensive holdings in oil refineries and pipelines. The Kochs have played a critical role in funding climate-denial efforts, contributing $24.9 million to organizations that have worked to cast doubt on mainstream climate science.

* Tech Central Station. Spencer served as a columnist and a member of the science roundtable for Tech Central Station. Until 2006, TCS was run by DCI Group, a lobbying and public-relations firm that has represented ExxonMobil.

So while Spencer may have "never been asked by any oil company to perform any kind of service," he has certainly served the oil industry's interest in amplifying doubt about climate change and downplaying the scientific consensus that it's real and caused in large part by human activity.

[Red Phoenix]

Yes, I thought that was the reason. That's called an appeal to authority. His work either stands up or it doesn't. Where he used to work, for a space agency, doesn't mean he is right (or wrong) about this. It lends absolutely no credence to your argument at all.

 

I'm not bothered about lending credence to my argument. I know hardly any of you, if anyone, agrees with me on this. I don't care, am just trying to research something from a different angle.

[Red Phoenix]

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roy_Spencer#Affiliations_and_connections

 

http://www.southernstudies.org/2011/09/climate-science-contrarian-roy-spencers-oil-industry-ties.html

 

Cheers! If I'm wrong about him, fine. Like I said, I'm after truth, I don't have an agenda. If it turns out that most of these people are linked with the Koch brothers then fair enough, it leaves me with very little room to want to support their ideas. I'll still try to work out what they're saying, but agreed, being linked with those two isn't good at all.

[SilverSong]

Some interesting debate in this thread but everytime is see the word denier I think of stockings and fear (for fear read wish) that the thread is headed all nsfw.

[setreal]

In my opinion, a very good way for laymen - like all of us here are - to learn about the science (and the objections) behind climate change in an easy way are these videos by Peter Hadfield

 

This is the introduction to the playlist:

 

 

 

Climate change explained, and the myths debunked

There is a lot of inaccurate nonsense about climate science written in blogs and the media, whether exaggerating the effects of climate change or seeking to undermine the science behind it. This series checks the sources of these claims and shows how they have been misinterpreted or deliberately altered. I have no expertise in climatology, I am a former science journalist, so checking facts is what I do. And I always cite these sources so you can check them for yourselves. Along the way, I explain the real science as relayed by researchers in published papers, in a way that makes it easy to understand.

 

Here is the playlist:

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfHsWPfAIyI7VAP

[Red Phoenix]

Thanks setreal. Have spent hours reading from people looking for flaws in the science behind global warming, so I guess it's time to spend some hours later looking at the other side. Will try to start working my way through those later.

[Cardie]

You need to look at one subject and focus on it instead of the scattergun approach you have now.

 

One minute you're researching for a book (which itself seems to be haphazard and wide ranging) the next you're banging on about a new subject convincing yourself that bogus websites and 'experts' with dubious motives are the be all and end all of the argument.

 

Once that gets torn to shreds you move on to your new most important subject ever.

 

 

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

You need to look at one subject and focus on it instead of the scattergun approach you have now.

 

One minute you're researching for a book (which itself seems to be haphazard and wide ranging) the next you're banging on about a new subject convincing yourself that bogus websites and 'experts' with dubious motives are the be all and end all of the argument.

 

Once that gets torn to shreds you move on to your new most important subject ever.

True.

[ratcatcher]

Eating fatty foods was bad for you. Now new research says the research on which that advice was based was flawed, incorrect and decidely unhealthy!

[Red Phoenix]

You need to look at one subject and focus on it instead of the scattergun approach you have now.

 

One minute you're researching for a book (which itself seems to be haphazard and wide ranging) the next you're banging on about a new subject convincing yourself that bogus websites and 'experts' with dubious motives are the be all and end all of the argument.

 

Once that gets torn to shreds you move on to your new most important subject ever.

 

It's not really scattergun. I wouldn't have touched this subject if it didn't look like I have to study it in the near future anyway. At no point did I say that Spencer (the ex-NASA scientist!) and his theory was the be all and end all of the argument either, and you know that. "New most important subject ever", not really. Health and meditation will always be my most important subjects as far as I can tell, I don't think anything will change that either.

 

As for my book, that's well gone for the time being, I got stressed late last year and the whole thing had to be left. It'd probably take at least a year from here if I'm being realistic, and started up on it again shortly. I don't know about haphazard, it's fairly ordered with the subjects I ended up planning, but yeah, wide-ranging, and not easy.

 

Anyway, I fucked up, I'm Human, big deal. I didn't check Spencer out properly, and setreal thankfully helped me. I've used SourceWatch in the past as well and it's a good site, should really check there regularly. Am just going to move on anyway. If anyone wants to create a drama out of it then I'll just try to leave them to it. I still think there's data problems linked to the first posts I made, but will try to go back to that another time after I've learnt more about the basics of climate science first.

[Cardie]

It's not really scattergun. I wouldn't have touched this subject if it didn't look like I have to study it in the near future anyway. At no point did I say that Spencer (the ex-NASA scientist!) and his theory was the be all and end all of the argument either, and you know that. "New most important subject ever", not really. Health and meditation will always be my most important subjects as far as I can tell, I don't think anything will change that either.

 

As for my book, that's well gone for the time being, I got stressed late last year and the whole thing had to be left. It'd probably take at least a year from here if I'm being realistic, and started up on it again shortly. I don't know about haphazard, it's fairly ordered with the subjects I ended up planning, but yeah, wide-ranging, and not easy.

 

Anyway, I fucked up, I'm Human, big deal. I didn't check Spencer out properly, and setreal thankfully helped me. I've used SourceWatch in the past as well and it's a good site, should really check there regularly. Am just going to move on anyway. If anyone wants to create a drama out of it then I'll just try to leave them to it. I still think there's data problems linked to the first posts I made, but will try to go back to that another time after I've learnt more about the basics of climate science first.

You didn't check any of it out properly.

 

The stuff I put together on the other guy was literally a 5-10 minute job that consisted of googling his name, reading his bio and following his associations back to the chemical/energy companies that fund him and have a vested interest in casting doubt on climate change (6 mouse clicks tops).

 

It was barely early highschool level research.

 

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Dinosaurs never existed.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/nonexistingdinosaur/permalink/416488718476264/

 

 

Many atheists think that our disbelief in dinosaurs is simply just that. A disbelief in something without evidence (like the atheists' disbelief in God), however it is so much more than that.

It is hard to put into words the full extent of the ‪#‎DinoLie‬ but I have narrowed it down to five key points.

1. Big Paleo:

‪#‎BigPaleo‬ is THE biggest threat to modern society. Under the guise of "fracking", paleontologists are burying "dinosaur" bones made in secret factories all around the world to keep the Dino Lie alive. But what's in it for the paleontologists? Well, they get their funding directly from the toy industry. By keeping children entertained with stories of giant mythical monsters, billions can be made by the toy industry and by the museums that sell them in their gift shops.

2. Charles Darwin:

History remembers him well, but Charles Darwin was far from a saint. For those of you who don't know, Charles Darwin is most famous for falsifying the evidence for evolution. When he came back to his homeland after several months of isolation, it was clear that he'd gone barking mad. This didn't stop the masses from believing his every word. Not only did he invent the theory of evolution (when he claimed to witness a monkey give birth to a human in America), he realised that this story wasn't making him enough money. Because of this, he wrote a second book, The Land Before Time, in which he described the giant man-eating creatures we now call dinosaurs. Despite being dead, his name still carries weight in atheist circles because of his grandson (pictured) who continues to develop these falsified claims made by his grandfather.

3. Freemasonry & The Illuminati:

Here is where we delve into the more controversial. Not because some Christians don't believe they exist - but because they're too scared to admit it. Hiding in the shadows of every major political event in the last century, the Illuminati have been the driving force behind the Dino Lie, providing strategic points of interest for dinosaur burials as well as controlling the world's media. The First Freemason (Charles Darwin) set up the organisation to raise funds and stamp out any opposition brave enough to admit that they hadn't been indoctrinated by the public school system.

4. Oil Prices:

You may be wondering how oil prices fit into all this. However, when you realise that all of the world's oil is created by dinosaurs (or so they tell us), all they need to do is bring up the story of dinosaur extinction to remind world leaders that the oil will one day run out. This increases oil prices, of which all the profits go directly to the Illuminati.

5. Government Corruption & Election Rigging:

The revenue generated by increased oil prices goes partly to Big Paleo and predominantly to the US military budget. Dinosaurs are directly responsible for the war in Iraq (Bush was forced to declare war because all the oil from the dinosaurs in the US had been used up, forcing us to search for Iraqi dinosaurs to fuel our cars, and more importantly, fund the Illuminati). This influences the outcomes of Presidential elections because the hoi polloi are too afraid to rise up and tell our leaders that we do not need to go to war to find more oil - that oil did not come from dinosaurs. Oil has always been in the Earth, just like rocks and lava. It was put there by God, but has been used as a tool by corrupt organisations pulling the strings of every aspect of modern life.

PLEASE SHARE if you want the people to wake up!

[cloggypop]

Christians Against Dinosaurs! Hahahaha!

 

Chris Morris would be proud of that.

[Red Phoenix]

You didn't check any of it out properly.

 

The stuff I put together on the other guy was literally a 5-10 minute job that consisted of googling his name, reading his bio and following his associations back to the chemical/energy companies that fund him and have a vested interest in casting doubt on climate change (6 mouse clicks tops).

 

It was barely early highschool level research.

 

I wasn't focusing on checking sources, didn't even attempt to for most of last night. I got caught up in trying to understand climate data over recent years, how and why it'd been adjusted, and possible alternatives to man made warming.

 

Also, the guy you researched. If his paper was counted in the "97% consensus" study, and he's there saying that it was wrongly added, all you're doing is helping confirm that the study itself wasn't done properly. You basically helped prove my point (although I didn't even think of that at the time.) That's unless you want to say that the oil cartels got to him after the study was released and paid him to cause a fuss and lie about the intentions of his paper. It's possible I suppose, but am too tired now to look further into that.

[Anubis]

I thought they believed dinosaurs existed in the same time as Jesus? And that they were cuddly and shit?

[Bob]

The only way that you can try to research these issues - any of them - is not by reading what one side or the other says. It is to obtain an expert knowledge in the field and then look at the research by others with an ability to debunk or back up their findings.

 

Until you have expert understanding of the issues you will only ever go by your gut and by a feeling that you are being sold a lie. And until you have an expert understanding you will forever sound like a nut.

[Red Phoenix]

The only way that you can try to research these issues - any of them - is not by reading what one side or the other says. It is to obtain an expert knowledge in the field and then look at the research by others with an ability to debunk or back up their findings.

 

Until you have expert understanding of the issues you will only ever go by your gut and by a feeling that you are being sold a lie. And until you have an expert understanding you will forever sound like a nut.

 

I don't think you have to be an expert to understand that there's bullshit going on. If you spend enough time looking at different areas of one subject it can become clear fairly quickly. I get that with science it can get complicated though and might take more time than it would with most other subjects.

[Anubis]

[SilverSong]

The only way that you can try to research these issues - any of them - is not by reading what one side or the other says. It is to obtain an expert knowledge in the field and then look at the research by others with an ability to debunk or back up their findings.

 

Until you have expert understanding of the issues you will only ever go by your gut and by a feeling that you are being sold a lie. And until you have an expert understanding you will forever sound like a nut.

Thats all well and good but what about ill informed kneejerk reactionism and/or unfounded single source convictionism. For the love of your chosen deity will somebody please think about the dinosaurs.

[setreal]