An environmentalist's guide

[Professor-Burgees]

An environmentalist’s handbook
A guide to global warming

So you think you’re ready for your first protest march? Why not, you say, you’ve got everything they said you’d need: standard issue Greenpeace t-shirt, protest banners, a repertoire of chant slogans (I hope you’ve been practicing) and a stack of bottles full of petrol (purely to keep such a ghastly pollutant away from the atmosphere, you understand). But you’ll need a little extra if you really plan to aid the Grand Cause of bringing humanity closer to perfect enlightenment.

You see, not everyone who hears
your rhetoric will be instantly swayed
to your cause. Some will even choose
to argue against you (the filthy
blasphemers). If you’re not careful, this can catch you off-balance (don’t worry though – most budding activists go into shock at the sight of opposition) but with the help of this Guide you’ll be fully prepared to argue your case against even the toughest opposition. Without further ado, lets go through some of the main points you can bring up.

IPCC
The UN-commissioned Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was conceived as the end-all of knowledge on global warming. As its unthinkable that a government-sponsored agency could ever be wrong, we can accept their august conclusions as canonical fact. The holy writ that constitutes their report tells us that “there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activity”.
This is a perfect put-down to any upstart. We all know how high accredited facts rate on the list of argumentative techniques, and who could argue with a group of people who are the top dogs in the field? I mean, who could believe that such an agency would ever print anything beyond pure scientific fact? Of course, there were two on the panel who objected at the content, but

Consensus
Another truly masterful argument is the well-documented consensus in the scientific community, which stand behind the accepted theory of global warming. As we’ve already seen, it is unimaginable that any agreement between so many of the world’s greatest minds could be wrong, so anyone trying to argue against you on that point can safely be ignored.
Of course, there are always rumours of dissention, or harder to argue against (and so more common) suppressed dissention, among scientists. The views and information available on this are murky and sometimes contradictory, so let me clear it up for you: while it may be true that a few are so foolish as to contradict their colleagues on this matter, they are inevitably found to be unsuitable for a career in modern science. And as for the latter argument, it is insane to suggest that any scientist would consider anything other than stating the pure facts of their findings. After all, what reason would men funded by government agencies or political lobbyists ever have for telling anything but the truth?

CO2’s effectiveness as a greenhouse gas
Unbelievable as it may sound, some are so desperate to meet their own agendas as to call into question the extent to which carbon dioxide is a part of the greenhouse effect. Questioning scientific tenets (which, I may add, have been known for almost a century) is, as we all know, complete fallacy. I personally wouldn’t recommend worrying too much about this particular brand of argument, as it won’t be too long before the noble people in the somewhat murky “relevant authorities” shield us from the bullshit of these lying little Galileos, as they’ve done in the past.
While on the subject of fallacious pseudoscience, its worth mentioning the “alternative” explanations this sort will have you believe. They would explain climate change with volcanic activity, or variations in the behaviour of the sun. Even that the climate change we’ve observed is, in fact, completely natural and unavoidable. If you do a little background reading on anyone using this sort of argument, chances are you’ll find links of a financial nature to oil companies or related industry, because no-one would attempt such an
obvious cop-out to try and dodge this issue. Top scientific research facilities, provided with the very best government funding, have shown us that CO2 in the atmosphere keeps heat trapped, and that increasing CO2 will increase this effect, and it is insane to suggest otherwise.

Alarmist nature of global warming
When all attempts at pseudoscience have failed, an anti-climate-change supporter may try to win the argument by quoting the allegedly alarmist nature of global warming. This is unique in the arguments that we’ve looked at, in that you’re allowed to acknowledge that to an extent, its true. Every committed environmentalist, after all, has a duty to ensure that the world’s environment is preserved as it has been, and this task has to be achieved in the face of ignorance, stupidity and laziness on many fronts, by any means necessary. With the world in danger, isn’t a little alarmism justified?

You never know, they may buy it.

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A little article I wrote for an English assignment. Feedback/opinions/arguments welcome

[AdamRice]

I think you're article is a dumb and contains too much sarcasm. Volcanic activity actually presents a cooling effect on the earth due to all the sulfur dioxide that spews out. There is very little CO2 released from a volcanic erruption, there is very little organic matter in the earth's mantel.

You see, when sulfur dioxide comes into contact with water vapor in the air, it turns into sulfuric acid. These tiny droplets of sulfuric acid are very shiny and reflect sunlight back into outer space. Thus the present a cooling effect.

Volcanoes also spew out a lot of particulate ash, this ash also plays a roll in blocking out the sun and thus causing a cooling effect.

You try to sarcastically suggest that volcanic activity is the main cause of global warming when infact volcanic erruptions always cause a cooling effect on the earth's average temperature.
Feel free to do a little research on the Mt. Pinatubo eruption that caused a drop in average temperature the year of 1991 and 1992. "Global temperatures dropped by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F), and ozone destruction increased substantially." Mt. Pinatubo

Another little FYI: Venus' atmosphere is 96% CO2 and it has the hottest surface temperature in the solar system. In fact, the greenhouse effect on venus is so great that it cancels out all the cooling achieved by the dense blanket of sulfuric acid clouds that cover all of vensus's upper atmosphere.

quote from source
Venus has an extremely thick atmosphere, which consists mainly of carbon dioxide and a small amount of nitrogen. The pressure at the planet's surface is about 90 times that at Earth's surface—a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of 1 kilometer under Earth's oceans. The enormously CO2-rich atmosphere generates a strong greenhouse effect that raises the surface temperature to over 400 °C. This makes Venus' surface hotter than Mercury's, even though Venus is nearly twice as distant from the Sun and receives only 25% of the solar irradiance.
Studies have suggested that several billion years ago Venus' atmosphere was much more like Earth's than it is now, and that there were probably substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface, but a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere.[9] Venus is thus an extreme example of climate change, making it a useful tool in climate change studies.
Venus Atmosphere Source

So basically I think your paper and ideas are complete bull plop.

[Sigma-Lambda]

It seems that the writer is focusing on attacking those who support the concept of global warming, rather than attacking the concept itself. That achieves nothing.

[Memorize]

At 1/5/07 02:32 AM, Sigma-Lambda wrote: It seems that the writer is focusing on attacking those who support the concept of global warming, rather than attacking the concept itself. That achieves nothing.

It's achieving humor, to me.

[Slizor]

It begins by misrepresenting environmentalist arguments (trying to boil them down to "global warming") it then moves on to trying to repudiate standard academic and scientific practices, then argues for a conspiracy and does all of this while providing no evidence.

So it's pretty good, if you want to work for Fox News.

[tigershark13]

Global warming is our fault. it wou8old have happened eventually but we have brought it on much quicker. because global warming is the beginning of ice ages. and ice ages happen at times when the carbon dioxide concentration in the air is high. and because of the carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere we have managed to bring the conditions needed far sooner than it would have naturally happened. its natures way of balancing things.

[Memorize]

At 1/5/07 09:14 AM, Slizor wrote:

So it's pretty good, if you want to work for Fox News.

So basically, it's pretty good as it pokes fun at enviornmentalists for being nuts.