ClimateQuotes.com Remembering what they will want us to forget

1. 

   C Monster
   January 8th, 2011 - 08:46

   Excellent. Now I can make a better pitch to Don Blankenship and the Koch brother for some EvilBigOil/BigCoalAGWDenier® money.

   Oh, and the oversight of not having you in the blogroll has been corrected.
2. 

   CAPT Mike
   January 8th, 2011 - 14:04

   This is good journalism!
3. 

   David Spurgeon
   January 8th, 2011 - 14:58

   Like we’ve always said – it’s simply a racket which makes the banks and the corporations seem positively white as snow in comparison. Eh, talking of snow……!
4. 

   You are kidding
   January 8th, 2011 - 23:07

   @ David Spurgeon, since 2009 the US banks and corporations cost taxpayers thousands of billions of dollars to get them back on their feet after they nearly sank the world economy, as well as countless jobs lost. I expect you were being sarcastic
5. 

   Mkjon
   January 9th, 2011 - 15:00

   I will say again that our Federal Government is too big.
6. 

   T. A. Speaker
   January 9th, 2011 - 20:34

   An important post. Thank you.
7. 

   You are kidding
   January 9th, 2011 - 21:16

   When governments take action to prevent dumping waste into the atmosphere and more vigorously addresses the resulting significant adverse impacts on agriculture, health, town planning, drought, flood, dying forests etc, then we might be able to do something to tackle the problem.

   As long as the funding is so miniscule as shown above, compared to what is spent subsidising oil and gas production and usage, and otherwise propping up the companies that dump toxic gases into the air, then we are rapidly approaching even more extreme weather than we’ve seen so far. And it’s bad enough now.

   With major mines out of production from unprecedented flooding (impacting steel production and prices), oil pipelines busting and other events caused by our changing climate, coal and oil among the very things that are causing the warming, maybe more people will wake up.
8. 

   Sam
   January 9th, 2011 - 21:38

   You are kidding –

   I completely agree that government should not subsidize oil or gas.

   However you say ‘dumping waste’ and then you say ‘dump toxic gases’, so let’s be clear about something. CO2 is absolutely not waste and it is not toxic. Without it, you and I would both be dead along with all plant life on the earth.

   Your anecdotal evidence of flooding and pipelines bursting means nothing. Floods and burst pipelines are nothing new, CO2 increase contributed nothing to these events. I’m sure you would believe headlines that claim CO2 is responsible for both flooding and drought, record snowfall and lack of snow.

   You can go ahead and blame CO2 for all the world’s problems, then whine about how nothing is being done. Or you can look for genuine solutions which rarely come from government.
9. 

   You are kidding 2
   January 10th, 2011 - 05:49

   @You are Kidding: the mortgage financial crisis has its roots in Big Democrat Government: (1) the Community Reinvestment Act under Jimmy Carter, (2) the work of Andrew Cuomo and Janet Reno under Bill Clinton, (3) the efforts of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who prevented both McCain and GW Bush from regulating Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, and (4) such luminaries as Maxine Waters, Franklin Raines, and Jamie Gorllich.
10. 

    Moonbat
    January 12th, 2011 - 07:50

    snip – we don’t allow that kind of talk
11. 

    Hillary Guerra
    January 12th, 2011 - 18:29

    You are kidding – I completely agree that government should not subsidize oil or gas. However you say ‘dumping waste’ and then you say ‘dump toxic gases’, so let’s be clear about something. CO2 is absolutely not waste and it is not toxic. Without it, you and I would both be dead along with all plant life on the earth. Your anecdotal evidence of flooding and pipelines bursting means nothing. Floods and burst pipelines are nothing new, CO2 increase contributed nothing to these events. I’m sure you would believe headlines that claim CO2 is responsible for both flooding and drought, record snowfall and lack of snow. You can go ahead and blame CO2 for all the world’s problems, then whine about how nothing is being done. Or you can look for genuine solutions which rarely come from government.
12. 

    Bryce
    January 16th, 2011 - 14:29

    You do realize that most of this money isn’t being spent by “climate scientists.” You’re conflating money spent researching climate change (a small fraction of the numbers you post) with the money spent mitigating and adapting to climate change. A lot of the research money goes to simply maintaining and upgrading scientific equipment, including satellites and globe-spanning networks of recording instruments. Just keeping all that equipment working and keeping the data flowing is a large chunk of the NOAA budget.

    NASA is re-launching the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, which is an expensive proposition, but will give us a really clear picture of how CO2 moves through the ecosystem for decades to come.

    Much of the DOE’s portion goes not to “climate research” per se, but to advances in energy infrastructure. We’re talking about things like smart grids, superconducting transmission lines, solar panels… stuff that ought to be researched solely from an energy independence perspective. They also pay for actual programs that go out and install solar panels and weatherize homes and businesses. That’s in the “climate change” money category, but it doesn’t pass through climate scientists’ hands in any way.

    You talk repeatedly about duplicate research, but give no real evidence for it. The USGCRP program mentioned in the report is specifically designed to coordinate the research between various federal agencies. To prove that there is duplication, you can’t just quote a bunch of large and scary looking numbers (which I might add only add up to about 2% of the federal budget). You have to dig in, understand the many different research programs and the questions they’re trying to answer.

    There are a lot of different types of research that are being done, and pretty much every area in the United States needs a separate study of how climate change will affect their area on a number of fronts, like agriculture, tourism, population, water supply, ecosystem and endangered species effects, and a dozen other things I’m too lazy to think of right now. Some of these analyses may have to be repeated or updated every five or ten years. In order to know that two research programs really overlap, you have to dig into their details, which this article hasn’t done.
13. 

    Sam
    January 16th, 2011 - 21:28

    Bryce, you raise good points, but you are mostly wrong. You mention the NASA carbon project and other satellites, but if you read the article you’d notice I said this:

    “I also need to make a caveat. Just because this funding has been labeled ‘climate change research’ does not mean it is necessarily not linked to another field as well. For example, some of the costs associated are for satellites, which are important in more than just climate research. This is not entirely frivolous spending.”

    You mentioned other agencies such as the DOE. The DOE gets 28 billion. I only highlighted the 627 million which goes to the BER, which does not go towards advances in energy infrastructure as you claim.

    Addressing duplicate research, I know from personal experience that many of these “impact” reports overlap (because I’ve read them). I didn’t address that issue in this post, because that’s not what this post is about.

    Simply claiming that we need to fund research on climate change in every single area on every single topic doesn’t make it true. The world has warmed a small amount over a long period for reasons we aren’t entirely sure of. Using taxpayer money (my money included) to fund one side of a controversial issue to the tune of BILLIONS a year is crazy.

    Show me the benefits from the 4 billion dollars spent in the last two years on climate change research.
14. 

    Johnny
    January 28th, 2011 - 08:00

    To keep things in perspective, the National Cancer Institute spends about 5 Billion.
15. 

    Sam
    January 28th, 2011 - 13:28

    Johnny, you said:

    “To keep things in perspective, the National Cancer Institute spends about 5 Billion.”

    This is an excellent point. Cancer is a pervasive threat to our society. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been affected by it. It was estimated to kill over 500,000 people in 2010 alone.

    Let’s compare that to climate change. It doesn’t even remotely come close to a fraction of cancer’s impact. It can’t be said with certainty that anyone was killed by GHGs in 2010. Even if we claim to know that GHG emissions caused heat death or extreme weather events, the death toll would hardly reach into the hundreds, much less hundreds of thousands.

    Let’s take the climate science budget and give it to cancer research. It might actually save lives.
16. 

    David Spurgeon
    February 8th, 2011 - 15:40

    @Sam -

    Everything but everything you have said in these comments is so so true. I salute you, sir!
17. 

    David B
    October 13th, 2011 - 18:28

    What a scam! Nobody I mean nobody steals as good as libs! From UN food for oil to global warming to climate change to Freddie and Fannie to obama and the unions to fast and furious to Medicare fraud the dems/libs do it best!
18. 

    john
    February 15th, 2012 - 04:50

    you realize America spends 500billion dollars on the military? Why cant they spend it on global warming or something? global warming is probably a way bigger threat then the terrorists and not just to America its to the whole human race.
19. 

    john
    February 15th, 2012 - 05:08

    @sam

    yes cancer research is pretty useful. But global warming scientists predict that if the worlds temperature continues to rise at this rate the human race will pretty much become wiped out? If that time comes our children will ask why didn’t we do something about this earlier? All the facts and figures has been spoon fed to us, but we still don’t seem to care.
    Our world hasn’t warmed over a long period of time because of reasons we dont know. In last 14 years , ten of them has been the hottest years in the last 1000 years. There is also clear evidence that the temperature rises with the carbon dioxide levels. Even i can feel over the years, that the temperatures are getting hotter and hotter. Yes GHG doesnt affect us to much right now but in the future they will. Its not you who will feel it, its the next few generations that feel it.
    It doesnt seem that you have the slightest idea of what climate change is
20. 

    Steven
    February 23rd, 2012 - 04:16

    John, you really can’t be serious about your over-hype of the status of the globe. Why don’t you go talk to some farmers. Are their crops failing because of climate change? Go ask some surfers if they have lost their ‘wave breaks’ on Hawaii or at Mavericks in California. You can cry ‘Chicken Little’ all you want but things just don’t change that quickly. Have you looked at the whale population lately for the Gray Whales? They are increasing rapidly because some of the ice has melted in the Arctic that killed about 30% of them over the last 7-8 years. Too much ice in the north kills whales. More open water helps whales!

    http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog/32010/gray+whale+sightings+soar+to+record+numbers+off+southern+california/

    At the same time there are over 25,000 Polar Bears which seems to be an all time high.

    If you really want to do something to help people out is pass some type of legislation that keeps people from texting and driving. I can guarantee you that this has killed more people than all of the climate change in the last 15 years.
21. 

    mark
    February 26th, 2012 - 04:03

    I am shocked by those numbers and even more shocked that anyone thinks they are too high, add them all together and you are still well below the costs associated with the Joplin Torndo last summer (no i am not trying to link that event to climate change but rather to show the costs that weather can inflict on us). Out of well over three trillion dollars spent in 2011 2.5 billion on such an importnt issue seems like chronic underfunding to me

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