Melting Arctic to kick global warming into overdrive
- Thread starter Dr Jon
- Start date
Innit. Global warming a conspiracy started by Maggie Thatcher...Fruitloop said:
The thing with all of this is though, unless you disbelieve either that there are anthropogenic effects on CO2 concentration in the atmosphere (there are) or that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations are ultimately going to have an effect on the climate (yup), then the only issue that remains really is that of climatic sensitivity. This is something of an unknown at the moment, and because weather systems are inherently chaotic, it seems like it will take a while for experimental data and modelling to provide a clear indication of how severe the likely effects may be. It's important to remember that by this time it may in fact be too late to do anything about it.
If some of the people concerned about global warming have ended up sounding slightly doomsday-ish, it's mostly out of frustration that so far nothing has really been done about it. There's also serious concern that the debate is being skewed by vested interests, whose tactics are now understood in some detail and are skulduggerous in the extreme. I personally haven't seen any even remotely convincing evidence that there is a conspiracy to promote global warming beyond what can rationally be suspected, and weighed against the vast investment that we still have in hydrocarbon energy facts like whether Mrs Thatcher had a chemistry degree seem inconsequential at best.
If anything, the message of previous ice-ages should be that the global climate is not an inherently stable phenomenon, nor is it an inherently linear one. Risk assessment under conditions of bounded knowledge is a tricky business at best, but the approach you seem to be advocating seems to me to resemble someone who's waiting until they have incontrevertible signs of lung cancer before they think about giving up smoking. It's nuts.
If some of the people concerned about global warming have ended up sounding slightly doomsday-ish, it's mostly out of frustration that so far nothing has really been done about it. There's also serious concern that the debate is being skewed by vested interests, whose tactics are now understood in some detail and are skulduggerous in the extreme. I personally haven't seen any even remotely convincing evidence that there is a conspiracy to promote global warming beyond what can rationally be suspected, and weighed against the vast investment that we still have in hydrocarbon energy facts like whether Mrs Thatcher had a chemistry degree seem inconsequential at best.
If anything, the message of previous ice-ages should be that the global climate is not an inherently stable phenomenon, nor is it an inherently linear one. Risk assessment under conditions of bounded knowledge is a tricky business at best, but the approach you seem to be advocating seems to me to resemble someone who's waiting until they have incontrevertible signs of lung cancer before they think about giving up smoking. It's nuts.
Loki said:
But the article in fact clearly states:
"The success of the global warming propaganda has induced some observers to argue that a conspiracy has created the imagined risk in the public’s perception (e.g. Böttcher, 1996). But consideration of the origins of the global warming scare deny the existence of any such conspiracy. Interests coincided and supported each other. And a coincidence of interests usually has a more powerful effect than a group of conspirators. The origins of the scare are political and have resulted in political policies that now threaten serious economic damage for the entire world."
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
You still haven't addressed the salient point - who is behind the 'conspiracy' of climate change? What is the possible motivation? Anyone who raises the spectre of 'economic damage' is basically talking shite - all a big switch to sustainables and other green techs would do is alter the products and services that cap provides - there is not a single reason why capitalism wouldn't become even MORE rampant if it worked out how to make disposable products that were also cheap to recycle, and it would encourage even more of a disposable society; new energy sources would still have to be paid for etc, and let's face it, the whole notion of green capitalism while derided by some is also looked at by others as being the biggest potential market in human history.
And even if we aren't fucking the planet up, surely there is a moral case to be argued for lower emissions, greater sustainability etc? This is a planet with finite resources, so surely taking care of them is important in and of itself. To an extent I find the current rash of 'World to end in 50 years/20 years/10 years/tomorrow stuff annoying, as much because many of these scenarios basically paint such a black, un-recoverable future that many people will sit back and say 'well, it's clearly upon us, why bother fighting it?'
I know what people mean about the Indie tho - I reckon it's readers must live in the same kind of perpetual fear that Daily Mail readers have, but with differing causes!
And even if we aren't fucking the planet up, surely there is a moral case to be argued for lower emissions, greater sustainability etc? This is a planet with finite resources, so surely taking care of them is important in and of itself. To an extent I find the current rash of 'World to end in 50 years/20 years/10 years/tomorrow stuff annoying, as much because many of these scenarios basically paint such a black, un-recoverable future that many people will sit back and say 'well, it's clearly upon us, why bother fighting it?'
I know what people mean about the Indie tho - I reckon it's readers must live in the same kind of perpetual fear that Daily Mail readers have, but with differing causes!
kyser_soze said:
Once again:
"The success of the global warming propaganda has induced some observers to argue that a conspiracy has created the imagined risk in the public’s perception (e.g. Böttcher, 1996). But consideration of the origins of the global warming scare deny the existence of any such conspiracy. Interests coincided and supported each other. And a coincidence of interests usually has a more powerful effect than a group of conspirators. The origins of the scare are political and have resulted in political policies that now threaten serious economic damage for the entire world."
anotherTzone
New Member
Is it so bad with all this in mind to cut pollution?
Do we all really need a reason to do so? Global warming or not, surely we all don't want to consume car fumes every day, especially in major cities? Do we all not want a more environmentally friendly area to live?
I lived in Australia for a brief while and when i got up in the morning it was lovely to walk through the clean park areas etc... in the city. Makes you feel happier to start the day. It was also refreshing to see people using public transport which cuts omissions.
Never happen here of course, public transport is wank and people love living in shit it seems. Here we have to walk over broken bottles, needles and vomit
Not a good start to the day.
Do we all really need a reason to do so? Global warming or not, surely we all don't want to consume car fumes every day, especially in major cities? Do we all not want a more environmentally friendly area to live?
I lived in Australia for a brief while and when i got up in the morning it was lovely to walk through the clean park areas etc... in the city. Makes you feel happier to start the day. It was also refreshing to see people using public transport which cuts omissions.
Never happen here of course, public transport is wank and people love living in shit it seems. Here we have to walk over broken bottles, needles and vomit
Not a good start to the day.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
I think it might be useful to review the basic science of global warming here.
I know a little bit about this, but I'm sure that there are others here (e.g. snorkelboy if he's about) who know considerably more, so if I err or you want to add some clarification, please do join in.
The basic scientific consensus on how to model our planet's energy balance is not as far as I'm aware, seriously in dispute. As this helpful diagram shows that there are various scientifically documented energy flows in and out plus some significant internal flows going on within the biosphere itself.
Typically these flows are roughly in balance and preserve the surface temperature within a range suitable for life to evolve and prosper here.
The various mechanisms which control these flows are sensitive to change and interact with each other, and with various biosphere systems, in a variety of complex ways that we are aware of, and probably in some other ways that we've yet to figure out.
We could compare this system to an economy perhaps. Stuff (in this case energy, in an economy money) goes in and out in complex ways and the overall balance, positive or negative determines the internal state of the system.
If more energy comes in than goes out, it heats up. Historically, it has remained in balance, with various negative feedback loops coming into play to regulate the climate in a more or less stable state which has remained within a range suitable for humans to evolve and eventually to drill for oil.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't wobble up and down a bit over time.
For example, suppose that for whatever reason, more solar energy is reaching the surface. If the ocean heats up slightly as a result, the rate of evaporation increases, so the amount of low cloud increases, so more solar energy gets reflected by clouds.
This in turn decreases the amount of energy hitting the surface. As it decreases, evaporation decreases and the cooling effect it produces also decreases. Along with many other such feedback loops, this tends to keep the overall system in balance. Just as many small muscle movements keep a ballerina balanced on the toes of one foot, or indeed keep anyone at all standing upright. That balance though, implies many small fluctuations up and down. Sometimes, it implies larger fluctuations, for example during periods of increased solar inflow, or periods of heavy volcanic activity.
The concern about climate change is not affected one way or another as far as I can see, by evidence, plausible or otherwise of previous historical warm periods.
The reason for concern is that we can see from basic science that only a rough balance of competing and complex feedback loops is keeping the enormous energy flows concerned from frying or freezing us. Modelling these systems mathematically strongly suggests that the system is quite sensitive to changing the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, because as you can see from the diagram, the energy that they back-reflect to the surface already forms one of the major flows within the overall temperature balancing system.
That there is considerable correlation between human greenhouse gas emissions and recent upward changes in the overall rate of warming, taken together with our understanding of the sensitivity of this system to the amount of greenhous gasses, along with the measurable significant increase we've made to the quantity of known greenhouse gasses, this correlation is grounds for serious concern.
I know a little bit about this, but I'm sure that there are others here (e.g. snorkelboy if he's about) who know considerably more, so if I err or you want to add some clarification, please do join in.
The basic scientific consensus on how to model our planet's energy balance is not as far as I'm aware, seriously in dispute. As this helpful diagram shows that there are various scientifically documented energy flows in and out plus some significant internal flows going on within the biosphere itself.
Typically these flows are roughly in balance and preserve the surface temperature within a range suitable for life to evolve and prosper here.
The various mechanisms which control these flows are sensitive to change and interact with each other, and with various biosphere systems, in a variety of complex ways that we are aware of, and probably in some other ways that we've yet to figure out.
We could compare this system to an economy perhaps. Stuff (in this case energy, in an economy money) goes in and out in complex ways and the overall balance, positive or negative determines the internal state of the system.
If more energy comes in than goes out, it heats up. Historically, it has remained in balance, with various negative feedback loops coming into play to regulate the climate in a more or less stable state which has remained within a range suitable for humans to evolve and eventually to drill for oil.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't wobble up and down a bit over time.
For example, suppose that for whatever reason, more solar energy is reaching the surface. If the ocean heats up slightly as a result, the rate of evaporation increases, so the amount of low cloud increases, so more solar energy gets reflected by clouds.
This in turn decreases the amount of energy hitting the surface. As it decreases, evaporation decreases and the cooling effect it produces also decreases. Along with many other such feedback loops, this tends to keep the overall system in balance. Just as many small muscle movements keep a ballerina balanced on the toes of one foot, or indeed keep anyone at all standing upright. That balance though, implies many small fluctuations up and down. Sometimes, it implies larger fluctuations, for example during periods of increased solar inflow, or periods of heavy volcanic activity.
The concern about climate change is not affected one way or another as far as I can see, by evidence, plausible or otherwise of previous historical warm periods.
The reason for concern is that we can see from basic science that only a rough balance of competing and complex feedback loops is keeping the enormous energy flows concerned from frying or freezing us. Modelling these systems mathematically strongly suggests that the system is quite sensitive to changing the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, because as you can see from the diagram, the energy that they back-reflect to the surface already forms one of the major flows within the overall temperature balancing system.
That there is considerable correlation between human greenhouse gas emissions and recent upward changes in the overall rate of warming, taken together with our understanding of the sensitivity of this system to the amount of greenhous gasses, along with the measurable significant increase we've made to the quantity of known greenhouse gasses, this correlation is grounds for serious concern.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
The effect described in the OP is an additional cause for concern.
Just as negative feedback loops like oceanic evaporation tend to damp out an increase in the amount of energy reaching the surface, postitive feedback loops may come into play that increase it. If large areas of highly reflective ice and snow melt, the overall amount of surface radiation escaping from the biosphere decreases, in turn increasing the heating effect. Unless some corresponding negative feedback can damp this effect out somehow, the rate of heating will tend to increase.
Just as negative feedback loops like oceanic evaporation tend to damp out an increase in the amount of energy reaching the surface, postitive feedback loops may come into play that increase it. If large areas of highly reflective ice and snow melt, the overall amount of surface radiation escaping from the biosphere decreases, in turn increasing the heating effect. Unless some corresponding negative feedback can damp this effect out somehow, the rate of heating will tend to increase.
The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) recently released a short prospectus called Earth and Life - origins and diversity which includes the following image.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4713/1738/1600/ScanImage001.jpg
Note the rise in atmospheric oxygen and the decrease in CO2 over geological time.
Note that mass species extinctions have no apparent relationship to CO2 levels.
Note that average global temperature shows little correlation with CO2 levels.
http://www.yearofplanetearth.org/do...arch="Earth and Life - origins and diversity"
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4713/1738/1600/ScanImage001.jpg
Note the rise in atmospheric oxygen and the decrease in CO2 over geological time.
Note that mass species extinctions have no apparent relationship to CO2 levels.
Note that average global temperature shows little correlation with CO2 levels.
http://www.yearofplanetearth.org/do...arch="Earth and Life - origins and diversity"
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Bernie Gunther said:
So tell me, why did Michael Mann and the IPCC invest so much time and energy in to reconstructing a millennial temperature history?
In all likelihood, we already know the answer to that question. By expunging the MWP and LIA from the annals, the IPCC imagined it could recast a fairly unremarkable fractional centennial temperature increase in a far more alarming light than otherwise might have been possible, given that the rise can be explained more or less adequately in terms of the planet recovering naturally—under stimulus from a clearly definable increase in solar output—from the effects of the LIA.
Well the models may suggest that - if you are silly enough to place any confidence in them. By contrast, a more realistic interpretation of the planet's climate history can be rendered from multifarious scientific studies and tells a completely different story to the GCM's. This history tells us that the planet has so far managed to cope with very much higher CO2 levels for long periods in its past. History also tells us that the interglacial periods of planetary warming provided not only homo erectus with opportunities to advance and flourish, but the whole of life too (see the IUGS fauna progress chart in my previous post).
Forgive me, but between 1938 and 1976, when roughly 75% of the total mass of man made CO2 was released into the atmosphere, the Earth actually experienced a 40 year long period of cooling! So much for your assertion of a "considerable correlation" between GHG's and upward temperature changes—for 40 years temperatures fell while CO2 emissions rose. That's not correlation, its an absence of correlation over 40 percent of the time frame being measured. If correlation is what your after then you need look no further than the more than "considerable correlation" that exists between the length of the solar magnetic cycle and Northern hemisphere temperatures.
The northern hemisphere land temperatures plotted
with the solar cycle length (Friss-Christensen and Lassen; 1991).
The globally averaged sea surface temperatures plotted with the sunspot numbers (Reid; 1999).
Both sunspot number and solar cycle length are proxies for the amount of solar energy that Earth receives.
The similarity of these curves is evidence that the sun has influenced the climate of the last 150 years.
The truth of the matter is, both Human activity and natural factors influence climate, not just the politically-selected factor of carbon dioxide emissions. Unfortunately, we don't know very much about these influences. But the key question is:
Can we manage the Earth's climate in a predictable manner by fiddling about at the margins with just one of the factors from the millions that drive climate variability?
And the answer to that question is surely a resounding NO!
In a complex and chaotic system like climate, such action could signal unexpected consequences. For a coupled, non-linear system, doing nothing (not emitting gases) is as equally unpredictable as doing something (emitting gases). Even if we closed down worldwide industry and sacked billions of workers, climate would still change—often dramatically—just as it has in the past.
jiggajagga
Judge_Mental
Anyone hear the story of a thousand soldiers marching? Left, right, left,right.
All of a sudden one was seen going right, left, right, left
A mothers voice was heard crying from the back " Look! Our Johnny is the only one in step!"
= Bigfish.
If it looks like cack and feels like cack and tastes like cack, trust me BF, it IS cack!
All of a sudden one was seen going right, left, right, left
A mothers voice was heard crying from the back " Look! Our Johnny is the only one in step!"
= Bigfish.
If it looks like cack and feels like cack and tastes like cack, trust me BF, it IS cack!
Dr Jon said:
But the instrumental temperature record only goes back 150 years, while the Earth has been experiencing climate change for more than 500 million years. Just imagine, if the thermometer had been invented by the ancient Greek's you would no doubt sleep easier in your bed at night, because in all probability you would be able to see for yourself that average September temperatures were often higher in the Roman and Medieval warm periods than they are today.
I'm a novice on this particular topic, but having done some reading I feel the above is erroneous for the following reasons.
Milankovitchian forces (orbital forcing) use tens of thousands of years to predict climate change, and these can't explain the observed rise in atomspheric\ surface temperature.
http://members.cox.net/rcoppock/Slope1952-2005.jpg
The cooling you suggested could be for any number of reason though the obvious one is that it belonged to a previous global weather cycle.
new calculations suggest sunspot and fuculae are too weak to produce the rise in temperature the earth is witnessing.
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/brightness.shtml
Some of the material you post is nformative, and does sway my opinion toward a more balance view of the debate, though your implied interpretation of that information (i.e. global warming isn't a threat) is what galls myself (people) on this board.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Thing is BF, aside from highlighting a quote which says 'confluence of interests' you haven't actually stated, or attempted to state, what those interests are and why warning people about the possibility of GW is a bad thing; nor have you addressed my point on the moral issue WRT resource consumption etc.
I too have a fairy balanced view on GW, accepting that it is a natural phenomena, and that we don't have a clear enough picture of what the earth's temperature is over 000s of years. However, you haven't said anything about who and what these 'interests' are, and why it's in their interests to promote the 'fallacy' of GW.
I too have a fairy balanced view on GW, accepting that it is a natural phenomena, and that we don't have a clear enough picture of what the earth's temperature is over 000s of years. However, you haven't said anything about who and what these 'interests' are, and why it's in their interests to promote the 'fallacy' of GW.
muser said:
The Earth has been typically warm for more than 500 million years. There have been four major ice ages in the past which happened for reasons we do not yet completely understand, and we have been in an ice age for about two million years. But within the present interglacial, there appears to be a smaller cycle of warming and cooling alternating roughly about every five hundred years. There was the Roman Warm Period, followed by the cold Dark Ages, followed by the Medieval Warm Period, followed by the Little Ice Age. Right now we seem to be about a century into the Modern Warm Period. All being well, this latest period should last for at least another 2 or 3 centuries, if the pattern holds. Which is great news for the whole of life, in my view.
As for CO2 - During the last 100 million years, global mean surface temperatures and CO2 concentrations have been systematically decreasing. 50 million years ago, CO2 levels were almost 6 times higher than today (2,000 ppm), but mean global temperatures were barely 1.5°C higher than they are now. So one can reasonably ask: 'why didn't soaring temperatures and a runaway greenhouse effect kick in back then?' During the Ordovician, when CO2 concentrations were 16 times higher than they are today, tropical temperatures didn't increase at all, and in the higher latitudes the Gondwanan glaciation actually occurred. (C.J. Yapp and H. Poths, 1992, Nature, vol, 355, pp. 342-344).
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4713/1738/1600/ScanImage001.jpg
(The IUGS CO2 graph included in the above survey is based on the Yapp and Poths study)
You may be right, but that's a speculative hypothesis for which you have cited no scientific evidence.
Well I guess it all depends on who's doing the calculations. In China, for example, some scientist see matters differently.
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060105/20060105_15.html
But, as noted above, if very much higher concentrations of atmospheric CO2 did not result in a runaway greenhouse effect in the past, how on Earth can much lower concentrations cause one now or in the future?
There is a real danger in indulging your rhetoric BF. I was unable to open the first link you provided.
True, but the climatology isn't a hard and fast science, with discoveries made on a monthly\week basis that turn existing theories on their head. Not to imply that I'm right, but it is difficult to refute what I've stated.
second biggest polluter on the planet...
I'm currently reading sci.environment to get abreast of the main arguments for and against global warning.
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/sc...f+co2+in+earth's+past&rnum=1#1415b5350303eae3
This link supports your quote above, though it is the response that seems more significant. On another thread in this group, entitled 'what comes first Co2 rise or temperature rise' the GW activist are willing to accept that some of the naysayer objections are founded, though the chief naysayer (quite tellingly) admits to global warming being a threat - which it is. I hope their debate inspires you.
True, but the climatology isn't a hard and fast science, with discoveries made on a monthly\week basis that turn existing theories on their head. Not to imply that I'm right, but it is difficult to refute what I've stated.
second biggest polluter on the planet...
I'm currently reading sci.environment to get abreast of the main arguments for and against global warning.
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/sc...f+co2+in+earth's+past&rnum=1#1415b5350303eae3
This link supports your quote above, though it is the response that seems more significant. On another thread in this group, entitled 'what comes first Co2 rise or temperature rise' the GW activist are willing to accept that some of the naysayer objections are founded, though the chief naysayer (quite tellingly) admits to global warming being a threat - which it is. I hope their debate inspires you.
muser said:
PDF (page 6) http://www.yearofplanetearth.org/do...ch="IUGS+Earth and life origins of diversity"
Disjecta Membra
cashing reality checks but cant even pay atention.
just watched the al gore film scary stuff but i have'nt researched any of it yet though, it is a bit of an ad for him,but i dont think the science is bad
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
The relationship between the PR organisations set up to protect the tobacco companies from being sued for knowingly giving their customers diseases and subsequent professional science deniers who have since turned their hands to other fields and revenue streams, is an interesting one. Here's something I wrote on the subject ages ago for another thread. In a lot of ways, the tobacco guys were the real pioneers for this sort of PR activity
The Heidelberg appeal was the brainchild of PR wizard Michel Salomon and was associated with his PR front-group the International Centre for Scientific Ecology An organisation which had the grand-daddy of all professional science deniers, Dr Fred Singer on its board. Salomon is now associated with SEPP, one of Singer's other front groups (there is a fairly rapid turnover of these groups, as they get recognised for what they are, new ones need to be created to preserve the illusion) - a group part-funded by the Rev Sun Myung Moon.
The clever trick about the Heidelberg Appeal was to make it sufficiently vague and to include wording about ecology that many reasonable scientists endorsed, including the 49 of their 72 Nobel Laureates who also signed the World Scientists Warning to Humanity at approximately the same time. The nature of the second document makes it very doubtful that the 49 laureates who signed both would have had much respect for the uses to which the Heidelberg Appeal was then put by the PR people who originally circulated and promoted it. Here is a collection of documents demonstrating the agendas of the PR people behind the Heidelberg Appeal - Designer Front Group is a particularly juicy specimen. Salomon appears to have been initially funded by the tobacco industry, who were early pioneers of many of these techniques while they were trying to dispute the science that showed their products were carcinogenic.
Salomon's associate Fred Singer was also responsible for the Leipzig Declaration a similar use of the third party scam, which also succeded in the purpose of getting lots of favourable press and in misleading members of the general public into thinking that numerous qualified scientists had serious doubts about climate change. This document was produced several years after the Heidelberg Appeal and it appears that real scientists had become wary of PR scams by then, because its signatories are quite as dodgy as those who signed Seitz's fake NAS petition
Seitz appears to have become involved in science denial in the late 70's when he was paid to lend his scientific reputation (in electronics) to pioneering cancer disinformation campaigns run by major tobacco companies. Seitz, along with Singer and Balunias (one of the authors of that article attacking Mann's research that caused the editors of Climate Science to resign see posts above) are also members of numerous similar industry funded PR front groups identified in this useful little page from the Union of Concerned Scientists. For example, Soon and Balunias are employed, along with Seitz by the Exxon funded Marshall Institute who are currently involved in a UK PR campaign to cast doubts on climate science.
This then is the core of the anti-science propaganda technique, pioneered by cancer merchants but now adopted by the energy lobby. Get something superficially plausible into the popular press, which causes the public to believe incorrectly that there is significant doubt among qualified scientists about some science your clients find inconvenient. Then just keep doing it shamelessly whatever actual scientists, writing in peer-reviewed journals that the general public doesn't read, are saying. That way the public gets this vague sense that the science is unproven or somehow doubtful, unless they check what the actual scientists are saying in peer-reviewed journals. Which most of them probably don't. They just vaguely remember hearing there were scientists who had doubts about climate change.
The Heidelberg appeal was the brainchild of PR wizard Michel Salomon and was associated with his PR front-group the International Centre for Scientific Ecology An organisation which had the grand-daddy of all professional science deniers, Dr Fred Singer on its board. Salomon is now associated with SEPP, one of Singer's other front groups (there is a fairly rapid turnover of these groups, as they get recognised for what they are, new ones need to be created to preserve the illusion) - a group part-funded by the Rev Sun Myung Moon.
The clever trick about the Heidelberg Appeal was to make it sufficiently vague and to include wording about ecology that many reasonable scientists endorsed, including the 49 of their 72 Nobel Laureates who also signed the World Scientists Warning to Humanity at approximately the same time. The nature of the second document makes it very doubtful that the 49 laureates who signed both would have had much respect for the uses to which the Heidelberg Appeal was then put by the PR people who originally circulated and promoted it. Here is a collection of documents demonstrating the agendas of the PR people behind the Heidelberg Appeal - Designer Front Group is a particularly juicy specimen. Salomon appears to have been initially funded by the tobacco industry, who were early pioneers of many of these techniques while they were trying to dispute the science that showed their products were carcinogenic.
Salomon's associate Fred Singer was also responsible for the Leipzig Declaration a similar use of the third party scam, which also succeded in the purpose of getting lots of favourable press and in misleading members of the general public into thinking that numerous qualified scientists had serious doubts about climate change. This document was produced several years after the Heidelberg Appeal and it appears that real scientists had become wary of PR scams by then, because its signatories are quite as dodgy as those who signed Seitz's fake NAS petition
Seitz appears to have become involved in science denial in the late 70's when he was paid to lend his scientific reputation (in electronics) to pioneering cancer disinformation campaigns run by major tobacco companies. Seitz, along with Singer and Balunias (one of the authors of that article attacking Mann's research that caused the editors of Climate Science to resign see posts above) are also members of numerous similar industry funded PR front groups identified in this useful little page from the Union of Concerned Scientists. For example, Soon and Balunias are employed, along with Seitz by the Exxon funded Marshall Institute who are currently involved in a UK PR campaign to cast doubts on climate science.
This then is the core of the anti-science propaganda technique, pioneered by cancer merchants but now adopted by the energy lobby. Get something superficially plausible into the popular press, which causes the public to believe incorrectly that there is significant doubt among qualified scientists about some science your clients find inconvenient. Then just keep doing it shamelessly whatever actual scientists, writing in peer-reviewed journals that the general public doesn't read, are saying. That way the public gets this vague sense that the science is unproven or somehow doubtful, unless they check what the actual scientists are saying in peer-reviewed journals. Which most of them probably don't. They just vaguely remember hearing there were scientists who had doubts about climate change.
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