Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

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NotAPhysicist
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by NotAPhysicist »

The AGW church "debunks" everything that does not conform to the doctrine.
Investigates things that don't conform to prediction and tries to update their models to better conform with reality..
It does not even shy from "Policy Based Evidence Making".
Please show. Seriously. Some actual verifiable examples would be nice. I can quite believe this exists, some people will always be dishonest, but that still wouldn't undermine the vast majority of genuine data and analysis.
Sometimes they can be even right
Please give me some examples of AGW being correct, I'd love to know what you consider solid and grounded.
but the more they have to "debunk"
Ongoing task of understanding is ongoing..
by creating satellite theories to why the evidence does not match the predictions,
Trying to understand complex things is difficult and requires adaptation to new things learnt and new understanding. Simple underlying principles may be learnt and provide an easier way to model and better predictive power but in lieu of those underlying rule you have to do the best you can to improve your models and thus, hopefully, your predictions. This isn't being dishonest, this is how you actually get somewhere with something.
the less plausible the main theory is.
This seems to miss the idea that you are working to create a comprehensive general idea of how something works and fails to acknowledge complexity and subtlety in something. The central thesis maybe that increased CO2 causes warming but to leave it at that without recognising everything else is unreasonable. An important driver but it doesn't lead to simple results or even necessarily make direct intuitive sense.
Simple application of Ockham's rule in the exercise of the Scientific Method.
Things should be no simpler than necessary. You can make things simpler because you would like them to be but that doesn't make them simpler in reality. I can apply the same rule, more reasonably I'd say, to the are thousands of people lying and scheming and to promote AGW or are they, just perhaps, all genuinely worried and seeing trends in their own disciplines to cause alarm. I'd say it is the second. That the other option seems reasonable seems to me to show a significant degree of paranoia, that's me though.
There was a theory in 70s that mass does not cause gravity but space has repulsive properties that mass shields from.
This I haven't heard but broadly speaking pushing or pulling is pretty well a matter of perspective we move according to the warping of spacetime by matter - that seems to be pretty firmly confirmed as far as we can. Unless this theory actually says something about how things would behave differently then it isn't yet useful. If it does say something different what is that and can it be tested (ever?).
Same story with the theory that continental drift is caused by Earth expanding.
I'm pretty sure that has been conclusively disproved - I've not looked this up but I'm sure I've read all about this in the past. Time to freshen up perhaps.
There are number of theories like that, and that is a good thing since they stimulate pursuit of knowledge.
Hey, I can agree here, that are useful thought experiments at least. Helpful to remember when things aren't true too though.
It becomes dangerous though when people want to use coercion to force their point of view in form of taxation or regulation.
Yes..
Though I'd point out that swings both ways and that taxation and regulation are important things in general to get right - they aren't inherently bad.
Coercion has the opposite effect, limiting intellectual freedom and ultimately slowing down technological progress.
Yes, certainly can.
I mean look at the tobacoo industry, all that money spent certainly helped slow down and muddy the waters on the dangers of smoking.
That too swings both ways yes?

choff
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by choff »

I have no difficulty believing in massive global conspiracies. If the term 'tin foil hat' existed before communism and fascism were devised, Hitler and Stalin would have caused Churchill to be written off as a kook. The very idea of political movements trying to militarily conquer the world would be labeled as absurd. The Mafia would still be considered imaginary, and there would be no laws against criminal conspiracy on the books, only more padded cells.

The simple fact is, there are people set to make big money from cap and trade, and selling wind farms, and solar panels. Wealth gets concentrated when resources are locked up in parkland and overpriced by regulation. All they need is to convince the public of the necessity of more expensive power sources. If it's not CO2, then some other trace gas becomes the culprit. As with all things, follow the money.
CHoff

Maui
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by Maui »

Why is a worldwide conspiracy of a huge number of scientist so easy to believe, but it is so hard to believe the concentrated wealth of a small number of oil companies can be used to generate propaganda from a relatively small number of "experts".

As with all things, follow the money.

charliem
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by charliem »

Maui wrote:Why is a worldwide conspiracy of a huge number of scientist so easy to believe, but it is so hard to believe the concentrated wealth of a small number of oil companies can be used to generate propaganda from a relatively small number of "experts".
And that, in my opinion, is the key question.
"The problem is not what we don't know, but what we do know [that] isn't so" (Mark Twain)

choff
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by choff »

http://notrickszone.com/2015/02/09/long ... F9KpW.dpbs

A few highlights

From the late 1970s through to the collapse of oil prices in the late 1980s, CRU received a series of contracts from BP to provide data and advice concerning their exploration operations in the Arctic marginal seas. Working closely with BP’s Cold Regions Group, CRU staff developed a set of detailed sea-ice atlases,

This list is not fully exhaustive, but we would like to acknowledge the support of the following funders (in alphabetical order):
…British Petroleum…Greenpeace International…Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates…Sultanate of Oman…Shell……

- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/02/09/long ... F9KpW.dpuf


Exclusive: How the Sierra Club Took Millions From the Natural Gas Industry TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking…” - See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/02/09/long ... F9KpW.dpuf


Climate Institute
About Us

The Climate Institute has been in a unique position to inform key decision-makers, heighten international awareness of climate change, and identify practical ways of achieving significant emissions reductions…

Donors
American Gas Foundation…BP…NASA….PG&E Corporation [natural gas & electricity]…Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Shell Foundation…The Rockefeller Foundation…UNDP, UNEP…”

- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/02/09/long ... F9KpW.dpuf

19. Dr. Michael Mann
WUWT – October 15, 2013

…it is enlightening to learn that his current employer, Penn State, gets funds from Koch, and so does where Dr. Mann did his thesis from, the University of Virginia. Those darn facts, they are stubborn things. See the list that follows…”

[Comments]

Jimbo October 16, 2013 at 11:49 am

Why stop at Koch funding?
Exxon Mobil Corporation
2012 Worldwide Contributions and Community Investments
…..Pennsylvania State University [$] 258,230…”

- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/02/09/long ... F9KpW.dpuf

Try putting together a list of who donates to deniers, then compare it to a list of who donates to alarmists, and by how much. Deniers get chickenfeed, if they don't lose their jobs for speaking out.
CHoff

pbelter
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by pbelter »

Maui wrote:Why is a worldwide conspiracy of a huge number of scientist so easy to believe.
Do you know anyone who seriously believes in "a worldwide conspiracy of a huge number of scientist "?
The whole idea of a "worldwide conspiracy" is pretty much self contradictory. How can you keep a secret if "huge number of scientists" are involved? Conspiracies by definition have to be confined to a very small group of people to be effective.

AGW is no conspiracy. It is a regular fallacy fueled by positive feedback between government hungry for expansion and people who are willing to provide an excuse for it and gain prestige and funding in the course.

It is all in the open, even the data falsification with its new fancy name of "Policy Based Evidence Making".
Maui wrote:, but it is so hard to believe the concentrated wealth of a small number of oil companies can be used to generate propaganda from a relatively small number of "experts"
Actually if someone is into conspiracies this is much easier to believe, and that is why some people fall into it. "Small number of experts" is much more fertile ground for conspiracy theory lovers then "huge number" of people. So there are conspiracy theories around how the oil companies are conspiring to hide their agenda.

Neither the government nor the private research is a conspiracy. However governments do have vastly greater funds to sponsor "huge number of scientist" to advance their agenda, while as you say the oil companies can only sponsor "small group of experts".

Frankly, as our discussion devolves into conspiracy theories, I am starting to lose interest...

charliem
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by charliem »

pbelter wrote:AGW is no conspiracy. It is a regular fallacy fueled by positive feedback between government hungry for expansion and people who are willing to provide an excuse for it and gain prestige and funding in the course.
What government are you referring to? All of them?

Do you think that now that the US government is in the hands of anti-AGW president (and staff), the [US based] scientists are going to switch sides and start backing the, by this line of thinking, now more profitable opposite position?
"The problem is not what we don't know, but what we do know [that] isn't so" (Mark Twain)

pbelter
Posts: 188
Joined: Thu Oct 09, 2008 2:52 am

Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by pbelter »

charliem wrote:
pbelter wrote:AGW is no conspiracy. It is a regular fallacy fueled by positive feedback between government hungry for expansion and people who are willing to provide an excuse for it and gain prestige and funding in the course.
What government are you referring to? All of them?
Not all of them, only in governments that have populations with traditional concerns toward uncontrolled government expansion.
South America and Africa could not care less, unless there is either money they get from industrialized nations or they think restricting industry growth in the north will give them competitive advantage. Russia will sign anything for political expediency then doctor their stats to show that they are in line with compliance goals.
charliem wrote: Do you think that now that the US government is in the hands of anti-AGW president (and staff), the [US based] scientists are going to switch sides and start backing the, by this line of thinking, now more profitable opposite position?
It doesn't work like that.
First, there is nothing to gain for being on the other side.
Second, it is difficult for people who vested their professional carriers into promoting AGW to admit they were wrong, even to themselves.
AGW will go into history books as major fallacy only when a generational shift in academia happens. This is going to be somewhat slowed down by the fundamentalist levels of their mind set that tolerates no dissent as the recent story of Judith Curry proves.
My prediction is that sometime between 2035 and 2040 the climate hysteria will be just a footnote in history books next to Lysenkoism.
Last edited by pbelter on Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

choff
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by choff »

If the Cultural Marxists succeed in making N.America and Europe into dictatorships they'll turn off the anti warming crusade like a light switch, won't need it anymore.
CHoff

Maui
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by Maui »

choff wrote:If the Cultural Marxists succeed in making N.America and Europe into dictatorships they'll turn off the anti warming crusade like a light switch, won't need it anymore.
That was the plan! Brilliant, wasn't it? A livable minimum wage would have been impossible to push through Congress, so, lucky for us, 121 years ago our Marxist predecessors foresaw this problem and had the incredible forethought to make up AGW in order to make possible the rise and anointment of King Bernie as the Great Leftist Prophecies had foretold.

But, alas, not even the Great Leftist Prophecies could foresee the rise of Trump and his comrade in democracy, Putin. And so we watch with sorrow as our most obvious route to raising the minimum wage, Czar Bernie, crumbles before our eyes.

KitemanSA
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by KitemanSA »

Maui wrote: That was the plan! Brilliant, wasn't it? A livable minimum wage would have been impossible to push through Congress, so, lucky for us, 121 years ago our Marxist predecessors... yada yada...
Strawman much?

paperburn1
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by paperburn1 »

In reality this 30 second video demonstrates why we can not have nice things.

http://www.businessinsider.com/animatio ... ars-2016-4
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

pbelter
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by pbelter »

KitemanSA wrote:
Maui wrote: That was the plan! Brilliant, wasn't it? A livable minimum wage would have been impossible to push through Congress, so, lucky for us, 121 years ago our Marxist predecessors... yada yada...
Strawman much?
KitemanSA - thanks for bringing it up.
There are several popular ways of winning an argument without addressing the merits of the problem which we should be aware of to be able to avoid them

Ad Hominem attack based on Totalitarian Principle. Totalitarian principle is a belief that if someone does something bad in one aspect of their life they must be bad in everything. So if Hitler was a genocidal maniac he must have been a terrible painter or golfer and there is no way he could be good in anything. If a lady sleeps around then her professional achievements are not to be trusted, etc. The latest take on it the Trump "pussy grabbing" argument that uses TP to imply that he cannot be a good governor. TP is a derivative of the way human mind processes information by compressing it into easily manageable groups based on previous patterns rather than analyzing every individual instance. To take advantage of TP one needs to show a bad side of one person and use Ad Hominem attack to apply the logical fallacy of TP to discredit a person.
Ad Hominem became very popular and that is limiting its effectiveness as people are watching out for it. I have not seen that in this thread.

Strawman is a way to discredit someone by pretending they hold positions which they do not. Like saying that people who believe AGW is fallacy are conspiracy theory nuts. Sounds familiar?

Bandwagon fallacy also known as "Argumentum ad populum" is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition is true because many or most people believe it: "If many believe so, it is so." . AGW proponents use this excessively by saying that 97% or 99% or 99.9% of all scientists believe AGW is real and invoking the magical "consensus". When confronted with the accurate data they exclude certain sections of the population to get better stats in arguments such as "but they were not climatologists" or, "but they don't have enough publications" or something else to maintain the pretense of the bandwagon. It is like tweaking the population sample to people over 7 feet in height and then asking how many tall people in the group. The important thing is that the entire argument is fallacious as it is intended to draw into the discussion of who is on the bandwagon instead of discussing the merits of the problem and thus distracting form the substance of the argument.

choff
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by choff »

Maui wrote:
choff wrote:If the Cultural Marxists succeed in making N.America and Europe into dictatorships they'll turn off the anti warming crusade like a light switch, won't need it anymore.
That was the plan! Brilliant, wasn't it? A livable minimum wage would have been impossible to push through Congress, so, lucky for us, 121 years ago our Marxist predecessors foresaw this problem and had the incredible forethought to make up AGW in order to make possible the rise and anointment of King Bernie as the Great Leftist Prophecies had foretold.

But, alas, not even the Great Leftist Prophecies could foresee the rise of Trump and his comrade in democracy, Putin. And so we watch with sorrow as our most obvious route to raising the minimum wage, Czar Bernie, crumbles before our eyes.
That's why we never hear the Greens talking about the ozone hole anymore, it did it's job, services no longer required. If you do any digging, you find out the ozone holes existed before CFC's. You also find out CFC type chemicals occur naturally and percolate up to the ozone layer. Do more digging and you find out CFC patent holders wanted them banned when the patents expired. That way chemicals way more expensive to manufacture would replace them, chemicals that the CFC manufacturers already had patented.

Funny guy that Karl Marx, he had a personal maid named Helene Demuth that served his family for over 20 years. She had a son by him named Freddie. Her services were provided to Karl and his wife Joanna Von Westphalen by her dad as a wedding gift, the Baron Von Westphalen. Karl and Joanna were childhood sweethearts, and childhood playmates with her half brother Ferdinand. Ferdinand went on to become the Prussian Interior Minister, responsible for rounding up Anarchists and Revolutionaries, take a guess who provided him with the names.

Keeps getting funnier, Karl brought a guy into the inner circle of the communist movement named Maltmann Barry, ran a lot of genuine socialists out of the movement. Barry went on to run for office as a Conservative, he joined a lot of other movements as well, usually providing money to subvert them.

Even Marx's Manifesto is phony. His writing style was to copy other economists, socialists, philosophers, claim the copy as originating with himself, then criticize the authors for not having grasped what he proclaimed as his own ideas. Guys like Victor Considerante and Owen comes to mind. There was another good Communist who wrote 'The Science of Government', he did it thirty years before Marx, guy by the name of Clinton Roosevelt(yes, related to the family that held the monopoly on the Opium Trade, same family that had the product banned to drive up the price once a family member became president). But I'm just a crazy old conspiracy nut.
CHoff

NotAPhysicist
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Re: Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

Post by NotAPhysicist »

That's why we never hear the Greens talking about the ozone hole anymore, it did it's job, services no longer required.
Yes, because fortunately we actually got regulation to shut down production of CFCs (and other things) and now the ozone layer is recovering nicely.
The amount of conspiracy built around this though is pretty amazing.
Is there any sort of environmental protection that won't just be spun out as some sort of conspiracy? And why is this? Is this money from companies trying to reduce the likelihood or regulation by muddying the waters and stirring up trouble or is it a natural paranoia about regulation at all because 'government bad'? or 'unfetter capitalism good''? Be interesting to understand where this is coming from.

To go off on a slight tangent, look at the awful pollution in China. It has got really pretty bad over there in places. This is industry without regulation to the point where cities are becoming unlivable. Government is now putting that regulation in place and taking it seriously. Now I'm not happy with China politically but are they wrong for introducing regulation in this case? Or do you deny the pollution even exists?

To go off on another tangent, I recently watched the SpaceX launch and landing - amazing stuff. Looking up some videos of this afterwards I saw one chap going on about how the landings were all a hoax. That even with a continuous video feed from the first stage booster, take off to landing, it was all a hoax. That they helicopter in a booster on to the barge in the couple of seconds of glitched video feed during touch down. He (I assume he) seemed dead serious and there seemed a fair number of commentators agreeing with him - how can't people see it is all a hoax, it is obvious. The feed always cuts out a bit, those grid fins are two small to steer a booster etc etc. No amount of more reasoned input was to be accepted. If you stuck the chap on a boat next to the barge and let him watch the thing land he would probably still find a way of saying it was a hoax.
Given that level of intransigent conspiracy reasoning what on earth can you do? And if we have a genuine crisis, environmental or otherwise, what on level of evidence or expertise is considered enough to validate the crisis as real? Apparently there is no level of evidence sufficient as far as I can see. I'm willing to believe there are bad actors within the AGW set since that set includes people, but to suggest the whole lots is rubbish and everyone is lying or misrepresenting the truth, making up evidence and suppressing other data is interesting. What would a genuine global environmental problem look like? Would it not look like this? Would there some how be even more people saying there was a problem? What evidence would be enough?

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