"Dark Money" Funds Climate Change Denial Effort | Hacker News Reader

"Dark Money" Funds Climate Change Denial Effort

scientificamerican.com

I don't care where the money comes from. I care about the science. And nobody seems to be able to explain it to me (at least not since my simplistic - and wrong - environmental science class in high school).

Catalytic ozone depletion is a result of chlorofluorocarbon pollution. Molina, Crutzen, and Rowland won the 1995 Nobel prize in chemistry proving that [1]. CFCs are now banned, and the ozone depletion is reversing with a full recovery expected around 2050 [2].

Maybe there's something super obvious I'm not seeing because I don't get it. All I hear about is intrigue, conspiracy, and vague references to consensus. Hopefully we have a real climate scientist among us because I've studied ozone depletion and I'm just not convinced that there's a problem. If the Koch brothers want to pay me to hold that opinion my emails in my profile. Cash only, please.

[1] http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1...

[2] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol

>I don't care where the money comes from.

This is what the study is about. A decent conversation is hoped for around that alone, not opinions on the climate change debate.

I suspect the intrigue and conspiracy is the dark money at work.

Water vapor traps heat very well. CO2 does too. If enough CO2 gets into the atmosphere to heat Earth enough that more water vapor collects in the atmosphere, there's a feedback effect which will cook the planet a bit.

Try proving that, though. Unlike ozone depletion, which can be shown in a laboratory, only one Earth exists, and it is rather complex. The basic mechanism is well understood but the non-linear feedback mechanisms of the world are not.

the big issue is green house gases. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_house_gases

Cook, J.; Nuccitelli, D.; Green, S. A.; Richardson, M.; Winkler, B. R.; Painting, R.; Way, R.; Jacobs, P.; Skuce, A. (2013). "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature". Environmental Research Letters 8 (2): 024024. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

If these guys are really spending billions to deny global warming, there ought to be more than a few people who have become millionaires doing the propaganda work. Know of any?

Blogging is free, so they really spending billions on television? Have you heard lots of TV ads denying warming?

I'm skeptical about the "Billions" spent by the rich deniers. We're told they hide their funding, using big money. So how were they found out?

Could be true, of course. I just want some evidence. And I want to know who are the public figures getting all that dough.

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