For me I enjoy using these things:



With 86% of the world energy coming from Fossil Fuels and 3 Billion people on the planet without power the polices governments enforce will impact a lot of people (negatively IMO). To make those polices based off prediction models and not concrete science is a bad idea. It has happened before with banning of DDT and things like eugenics. Climate change alarmist also remind me a lot of religious zealots, majority are proud atheist but replaced priest with scientist and love big government.

I'll just leave this discussion here I'm sure non of you will watch it though.

Lead in gas is still better aside from the brain damage to children.

A quick Google reveals that Epstein has a degree in philosophy. I can find no evidence of him having any qualifications in any of the relevant sciences or of having any papers published in peer reviewed journals. Looking at his Twitter account reveals that he has offered someone 100k to debate him. He appears to have ignored the response from someone pointing out that scientific debate is conducted through peer reviewed journals.

I'n not going to spend an hour watching this for the same reason that I didn't watch Loose Change or listen to Jenny McCarthy talk about vaccinations. He doesn't appear to be qualified to discuss the topic. I will read any peer reviewed papers published in credible scientific journals that support your viewpoint provided I have the time.

Holding up the opinion of unqualified people as if they're worth anything reminded me of this sketch.

Shifty,

what is your relation to Alex Epstein?

hey, youre right about one thing!

Counterpoint: Video 2000

Who's the 10 year old who made that list of things? It has both "paint" and "house paint", and at least three football-related items.

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpr...-emissions.pdf

Some dudes Wordpress isn't a peer reviewed journal

It's a double blind peer reviewed paper.

You don't know what double blind means, huh?

Some guy talking for twenty pages about how CO2 feeds plants isn't it.

That's what it claims in the paper.

I haven't been able to find any evidence of it being published in a journal. Admittedly I only looked for 2-3 minutes so I might have missed something. Additionally, I didn't get any results when I tried to cross reference it on Web of Science.

It's propaganda put out by an lobbying group. It's a "conservative/libertarian" think-tank.

MGM and Wynn both approved by the PUC to opt out of being supplied by Nevada Power (NV Energy subsidiary) after they pay them 89 and 16 million in fees to Nevada Power.

http://www.reviewjournal.com/busines...e-nevada-power

Going down the rabbit hole a bit more. So, on the very first page of the paper you can see it's produced by a group called the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. They don't hide or try to bury that fact, which is good. But this is already a huge red flag--legit research papers are usually done by actual scientists or universities, not by nonprofit organizations. There is a ton of this stuff being passed around as real science on the internet these days, so you have to be particularly careful. That goes as much for a paper that decries the evils of GMOs as it does for a paper like this which handwaves away manmade environmental impact.

If you go to the third page, they have a description listed of their group. But this is not the same description they've always had apparently!

Current description:
Gee, that sounds swell. They're an innovative research and education charity. Kids need educating, that is so nice!

Then I googled the name of the org. I got this google result, which points back to their home page:


Now I couldn't find this particular text on their website anywhere. So I checked Wikipedia. I found a link to an "About" page on their website. This is what it linked to:


So I deduced what had happened. They started out with the original description, and at some time they realized that was giving away their cards. So they changed it to something a little more mysterious and a little more philanthropic sounding. They took away the Conservative and Libertarian in their description. There's a lot of this kind of fake scientific research going around, and it looks like they're getting better at it every day. The content is basically meaningless, but it is nice fodder for forum posts and social media arguments where you are asked to produce real scientific evidence. It's not scientific, not in the slightest--but at first glance it does appear to be. Very powerful stuff.

Now think about it. Not only do you have to make sure every research paper you pull info from is legitimate, you have to check every single source as well to be completely thorough. Now that this paper is out there floating around, somebody could cite it as a legitimate source and unless you really knew the science, you would probably never notice it and it would pass right by you. On a TV debate program, a lobbyist or politician can cite this study as a "double-blind peer reviewed scientific study" and do you think our current crop of journalists are going to call him on it? Hell, even the best journalists in the world would have a tough time if people are throwing these citations around constantly. It could quickly become a huge amount of work, and meanwhile the politician or lobbyist is getting his message out there just as effectively (perhaps more so) than the other guy who's telling the truth.

The proliferation of Think Tanks is a huge menace imo. It's lipstick on a pig for lobbying.

Oh yeah, the groups that put out this kind of stuff also apparently pay a lot for some very professional Search Engine Optimization services. Their results are very often the first to pop up in a google search over more legitimate sources.

Curious, did you waste that time googling because you wanted the paper to be correct or you wanted to try and discredit it?

Very nice post einbert. The fact that it didn't come up on Web of Science was a big red flag to me. Before I did a literature review on the effects of wolf reintroduction my adviser told me to cross reference every paper that I sited with Web of Science to ensure that the papers were peer reviewed properly. He stated that creationists, anti-vaxxers and so on produced papers that are designed to look like proper scientific papers so that they can boost the credibility of their ideas. This is the first time I've come across one.

I wanted to see if it was worthwhile reading before ploughing through 20 pages. I would love to be wrong about climate change. I'm studying zoology as I love the natural world. I would sleep a lot more easily if I had your beliefs.

Shifty, this is a genuine question. Why are you so convinced that man made climate change is a hoax? Doesn't the fact that you can't find anything credible that supports your opinion tell you something? I can point to literally thousands of papers that have been published in credible scientific journals that oppose your viewpoint.

Other big red flags about that paper:
- it was posted by a guy who gets all his information from fossil fuel lobbyists.
- its thesis is incredibly idiotic. CO2 emissions are a good thing because CO2 is necessary for life? Great news, and since water is also necessary for life I guess I can breath underwater.

So you still have no clue what "double blind" means, huh?

Because you have to be very skeptical about sources these days. I can totally understand how somebody could be fooled by this paper, these places do a great job of making this stuff look real.

That's really cool, I didn't know about that. I might have to use that in the future as well.

If fossil fuels ended today, we would still have all that stuff using ethanol and green plants to produce them. The less oil burned will produce more plastics products. There is already plastic from corn. Some plastic comes from natural gas, sewage plants and landfills produce natural gas. They actually burn it for energy and heating. HDPE, ethylene, and polythene, can be derived from ethanol. Even oil and gasoline can be made from plants and animals (biogasoline).

Do at your own risk, but any car will run on pure ethanol. I have a friend who used to make his own from sugar. He has a source of waste sugar so it didn't cost him anything.

I used to run a truck on biodiesel, but the gas station near me that sold biodiesel was bought out by Shell and they stopped selling it.