The effects of human-induced climate change are being felt in every corner of the United States, scientists reported Tuesday, with water growing scarcer in dry regions, torrential rains increasing in wet regions, heat waves becoming more common and more severe, wildfires growing worse, and forests dying under assault from heat-loving insects.Assault from heat-loving insects. You may think this sounds political... but...
... insects... don’t have politics. They’re very brutal. No... compassion. No... compromise. We can’t trust the insect...
As William Beard explains, Brundle’s desire to function as the intermediary between the human and insect must failThere is... no return. No... mediation. It's very brutal. We are under assault. Assault from heat-loving insects.
... because insectness is so intractably and horrifyingly evil in human terms that it cannot be mediated. There may be shades of humanity, signifed by various degrees of trust, compassion, compromise – but there are no shades of insectness. (Beard, 2001, 220)Brundle’s transformation removes him from the human and takes him to a place from which there can be neither return nor mediation... This movement towards a limit point of human experience....
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89 comments:
Wow, The hot areas are hot! The dry areas are dry! The bugs are buggy!
Climate change is out of control!
Somebody do something! Restrict somebody else's activities! Raise somebody else's taxes!
The NYT article doesn't mention mosquitoes. Pity that. They kill about a million per year with malaria, and mosquitoes like warm weather, and the best prophylactic is DDT.
What a load of delusional shit.
this is what you get when you think that history began yesterday
It's dismaying to see every unusual event covered by the Climate Change umbrella. That's a very unscientific method.
Mountain Pine Beetles are a definite scourge, however, out west and they do thrive in warm weather, and their actions drive the local climate towards warmth.
The report probably conveniently neglects to mention historic floods in the past: 1972 in Pennsylvania, 1969 in Virginia, Milwaukee in 1986, all of Wisconsin in the 1880s, the Mississippi River flood of 1927....
I am very happy to see the Insect Politics tag!
These people area absolutely delusional.
This is religion, not science.
("A fervent belief in an improbable proposition despite all evidence to the contrary."
It wasn't 5 minutes ago that I saw a centipede searching for a way out of the men's room so I'm inclined to believe we're under assault.
It's an El Niño year. These idiots are going to be out of their minds for the next 15 months like it's a new thing.
The climate is to blame for the crappy economy. The preposterous has become the routine, voodoo a science, Excel bullshit the fortune teller's ball, poorly educated journalists as gullible as the palm reader's client. What is in front of your face is not in front of your face. Bizarre times.
With regards to THE FLY, perhaps Cronenberg's best film, (competing only with his earlier film THE BROOD), one writer at the time suggested one can see the story of Seth Brundle's transformation--and the devastation it wreaks on his love affair--as a metaphor for relationships in which one partner is irrevocably and radically changed by illness or addiction. A terminal disease or long-term addiction will transform one's partner, remove him or her from the realm of the familiar and quotidian, and place them out of reach of one's own experience and, possibly, understanding.
forests dying under assault from heat-loving insects.
Yeah. The temperature has risen about one degree in several decades, and unleashed a cataclysmic horde of heat-loving insects gobbling up forests?
By the way, which forests are dying, and what are the insects whose voracity was stimulated by the one-degree rise?
Lord of the Flies?
In the 1970s and 1980s it was red army ants. In the 2010s it is green bugs.
How do we know, though, if we are seeing the effects of climate change or of climate change mitigation?
Funny that the NYT doesn't mention the flooding on the Missouri River in 2011 that was exasperated by poor dam overflow release planning by the Army Corps or Engineers.
I believe Obama's streamlining of the campus sexual assault process is visionary in light of the growing climate catastrophe.
He know's we'll be busy sweating, swatting and swearing. There won't be time for the niceties.
Other similar accommodations will be necessary I'm sure.
I'm sure it's nothing. Exxon and the Koch Brothers would not lie to us.
Global Warming is a Liberal shmoo.
It's been a hard spring for insects.
More wildfires? Maybe that's because of their idiotic policy of not clearing out underbrush? Add more kindling!
Wow it's like the dust bowl never happened. Or any other weather- related event down thru the centuries didn't either. I winder what the explanation would be for what happened during the War of 1812 is?
AlGoreBullWorming! Is there nothing it cannot do? Yes, but only one thing: it cannot shut up.
And how can we forget the Mighty Miss flood of 1993? That was something, I thought we wouldn't be able to get home from Kansas!
when a name is repeated, for instance rape rape, the first time is taken narrowly, and the second is taken broadly.
The narrow is the original.
The broad is the left's new crime.
The left's claim is that the narrow is the right handle to take hold of the entire diverse bunch in the broad meaning.
Oh how I long for the good old days when the weather was always normal and the insects knew their place.
From the article:
"In recent years, sudden, intense rains have caused extensive damage."
That clinches it. This has never happened before.
Bull shit
"I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords!"
Life imitates the Simpsons.
Global warming became climate change because we stopped warming. It wasn't the warmness that would destroy the world, it was the change.
Are we seeing more variation? Is this change causing catastrophe? Is this change even caused by greenhouse gases?
There is no question that we are warmer now than we were in 1850. That is good, we are coming out of the Little Ice Age. CO2 is a known greenhouse gas, however it is already saturated so that each additional unit of CO2 is less effective in trapping heat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Despite the apocalyptical warnings by the alarmists, humanity generally thrives in times of global warming such as the Medieval Warm Period and suffers in times of cold and glaciation. The little Ice Age may have been one cause for the years of bad harvests causing widespread hunger in France which helped trigger the French Revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_French_Revolution
Congress: What's the Truth about Benghazi
Administration: Boy some weather we're having huh?
Also, did you know that low dose solutions of DDT sprayed on walls in Africa keeps down the population of mosquitoes and isn't harmful to humans?
Where is Rachel Carson to explain her war on poor black Africans through malaria?
Next up: Assault from heat-loving-insect-loving birds.
I will never understand the left and why they want people to starve. Warmer weather more food. Otoh, I loved the deep freeze we had here in Chicago cos those warm-weather nasties can't flourish.
Maybe they are trying to escape from the cold?
Global Mean Temperature
So, ahhhhh...ummm is this just an article saying that, like, weather and stuff is still happening and that it's happening, you know, everywhere?
I don't get it.
To paraphrase Churchill: I cannot forecast to you the action of the climate. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is liberal's national interest.
Climate change reports are immune to decadal weather patterns.
Garage:
You are right! Exxon and the Koch Brothers are wrong.
So, Walker isn't responsible for the lack of job growth in Wisconsin. It is Global Warming. Shut up the environmentalists are explaining
with water growing scarcer in dry regions, ... and forests dying under assault from heat-loving insects.
I tried briefly, and failed, to find that data in their jr-high-handout-looking "report" (actually multiple reports with vague titles, spread all over the place).
See if you can find it via their "Make Our Science Accessible" page: http://www.globalchange.gov/what-we-do/make-our-science-accessible
Though it doesn't matter much since recent "global warming" stopped about 15 years ago.
There used to be crocodiles in what is now Greenland (same latitude), rather unlike our current "just got out of an ice-age" period.
Tress help moderate temperature. The NYT can do it's part by not printing on paper.
I know they like to blame climate change for the massive explosion of pine beetles killing off the lodgepole pines in the High Country, but the beetles are a symptom of having an o!d, overgrown forests. Preventing forest fires for all those years has disrupted the natural forest growth cycle.
Last year I noticed that the worst hit mountain sides now have aspen trees growing up in between the dead pines. Enough sunlight has allowed the aspens to spread and grow.
Nature is just correcting a manmade problem of preventing forest fires, not climate change.
Hahaha. Global Warming jokes are so fun but they also gives me street cred with right wingers. Sort of like a gang sign. Stupid libtards don't know it's a global conspiracy among 97% of scientists to get more grant money.
If the insects are at war with us then lets get the pentagon to wipe them out with DDT.
Let's suppose I wanted to something vaguely like the Scientific Method and validate that the Climate Experts actually graphed the raw data correctly.
Where would I go to get the raw data?
Garage:
Yep. Scientists. 97%. Science/math all in one.
You are hilarious. The school district responsible for your education should be fined then shuttered.
RE: trees being good-- indeed. And consider this comparison of four countries RE: forested land: Brazil, USA, Germany, and Ethiopia.
The USA and Germany have been rising in forested land over the last ten years. (This is a long-term trend, by the way.) Brazil, with twice as much forest, has been falling, but slowly. Ethiopia has fallen drastically.
The conclusions are obvious to everyone but leftist environmentalists.
If lefties were serious about global warming they would get behind nuclear power with breeder reactors. Until they get serious about genuine sustainable energy they are just noisy hypocrites.
Government asks panel of climate scientists to justify their outsized funding. They come through in spades.
garage: "Global Warming jokes are so fun but they also gives me street cred with right wingers. Sort of like a gang sign. Stupid libtards don't know it's a global conspiracy among 97% of scientists to get more grant money."
LOL
Garage, the backwoods high school woodshop academic chimes in with thoroughly debunked and out of date talking points!
Soooo, garagie, perhaps you'd like to take a swing at why there hasn't been any warming for the last 17 years and the cause for this "lag"?
While you are at it, go ahead and take a swing at the how the "experts" at the East Anglia CRU "lost" of all their raw data right after spending years fighting a court case, which they lost, to force disclosure of the raw data!
LOL
Again garage, it's better if you don't venture too far out without some lefty-talking point adult supervision.
cubanbob said...
If the insects are at war with us then lets get the pentagon to wipe them out with DDT.
hmmm, this planet crawls!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgq0ecMHfzc
"It got cold enough in parts of Minnesota to possibly wipe out up to 80 percent of the emerald ash borer population and significantly slow the advance of the invasive insect there" and:
" experts say that this week's record-breaking cold might slow the spread of other invasive species, including the gypsy moth, which begin to freeze to death when temperatures fall to 17 below."and;
"Another troublesome invasive species set back by the cold is the wooly adelgid, which has infested and killed hundreds of thousands of hemlock trees in the Northeast. It begins dying when temperatures fall just a couple of degrees below zero".
From NPR on January 10 2014 before we had the coldest part of this past winter.
(http://www.npr.org/2014/01/10/261435111/the-upside-of-the-bitter-cold-it-kills-bugs-that-kill-trees)
Or this from a Weather.com story entitled " Winter Won't Give Up: Now 18 States With All-Time Record March Cold"
"All-time record lows were broken in parts of upstate New York Thursday morning, bringing the total number of states recording unprecedented March cold to at least 18.
Rochester, N.Y. dropped to 9 degrees below zero Thursday, breaking the city's all-time March low of 7 below zero set March 8, 1999; March 13, 1885; and March 5, 1872.
Extensive and deep snow cover across northeastern North America has helped keep frigid temperatures locked in across a large part of the U.S. unusually late this winter. Tuesday saw a handful of March record lows in the Northeast, and dozens of all-time March records have been broken across the Midwest and South as well.
In Baltimore, the low temperature Tuesday morning dipped to 4 degrees, breaking the all-time coldest March low temperature on record – previously 5 degrees on March 4, 1873.
Atlantic City, N.J. broke its record coldest March low temperature late Monday night, dipping to a shivering 2 degrees. The actual location of this record is at the Atlantic City International Airport, which is located just inland from Atlantic City in Pomona, N.J.
Dulles International Airport, just west of Washington, D.C., reached 1 degree below zero Tuesday morning, tying the all-time March low previously set after the Superstorm on March 15, 1993. However, weather records at Dulles have a relatively short history, only dating back to 1962.
In Charlottesville, Va. the low temperature bottomed out at 1 degree above zero Tuesday morning, shattering the city's all-time March record low of 7 degrees."
How quickly we forget. No wonder "Climate Change" polls at about #15 concern with voters.
"Shit happens, therefore AGW is."
Very scientific.
Could someone once again explain how to create a link in the comments section?
Thanks.
A heat seeking chipmunk got into my garage this winter. Does that mean the end is near?
Garage, the backwoods high school woodshop academic chimes in with thoroughly debunked and out of date talking points!
Why do you keep insulting the GOP base? You need rednecks like me.
Rural rednecks and billionaire polluters have the same exact interests. It's Freedom and Liberty.
Illuninati said, "If lefties were serious about global warming they would get behind nuclear power with breeder reactors. Until they get serious about genuine sustainable energy they are just noisy hypocrites."
They are not hypocrites. They honestly hate themselves, and all humans. Their goal is immolation, suicide, disintegration.
They are noisy, though; I'll give you that. "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! This Condi Rice has got to go!"
Hey, hey, Professor, what's your stance on this?
"There is... no return. No... mediation. It's very brutal. We are under assault."
I imagine this is what the insects who try to get into my house say about my pest control contract.
"Where would I go to get the raw data?"
Unfortunately, the dog ate it. He was afraid that if you got your hands on it then you would only use it to try to attack his work. This sort of behavior by the dog is also a symptom of global warming.
Of course, they're insects, so it's more like, "Ghreeeee! Tktktktk, vrrrrtptsssss! Sssssstktktk eeee nknkvrrrr!"
garage: "Why do you keep insulting the GOP base? You need rednecks like me.
Rural rednecks and billionaire polluters have the same exact interests. It's Freedom and Liberty."
LOL
Incoherent.
As usual.
Again, you make a mistake every time you venture out rhetorically without adult supervision.
Create a link by replacing the "Link Text" in the line below with the url.
Link text
Bunkum by the barrel load.
This is all the libs has left. Well global climate catastrophe and "income inequality" I suppose. Every other harebrained idea they've foisted on us has been an abject failure, so they have to double down on AGW.
A friend teaches guitar at a very expensive private school in Marin County and the bulk of the school day is devoted to global climate disaster and saving the Earth. The poor kids, besides wasting valuable time that could be spent productively, are terrorized by all the doomsday talk. They're doomed alright, but not by global climate change.
Blogger garage mahal said...
I'm sure it's nothing. Exxon and the Koch Brothers would not lie to us."
Well, with Obama and Carney and Hillary, it's nice to see somebody who doesn't. You are absolutely correct, garage.
Of course it created a link.
Here's the page:
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_links.asp
See the third section that starts: HTML Link Syntax
When 9 out of 10 heart doctors recommend something, listen to the one doctor. Seems like the smart play.
Marshal;
Thanks, but I hit your blue link and got an error message.
Hey garage: look at the graph of failed AGW models here, and report back as to what they mean to you:
http://thefederalist.com/2014/05/06/climate-change-is-real-too-bad-accurate-climate-models-arent/
http://tinyurl.com/moj7b87
"These are not the AGW models you are looking for" is not a valid response.
Found a really helpful site re Links
here
I actually do think that Warming will accelerate and bad things will happen -- especially in the Ocean because of pH changes.
However, a US-centric change will not do much. And I don't see anyone on the international stage leading a charge. Nuclear Power is what is needed, and I don't see much research into that.
So when ice sheets melt, and oceans rise, at least I won't be surprised. But will I castigate myself for not having done more? No. Guilt doesn't really work with me. You can't convince people who don't want to be convinced. And a wicked lot of people have plenty invested in not allowing themselves to be convinced, as if being convinced will lose them a place at their groups' tables.
You might argue that others -- climate scientists -- have plenty at stake in fulminating a fear of chaos in the future. Perhaps. They have something others lack however.
Paul: "Every other harebrained idea they've foisted on us has been an abject failure, so they have to double down on AGW."
Actually, "AGW" was what was used initially.
When it became clear that "AGW" was just a little too precise and allowed for most folks to ask basic questions which blew up the BS models, it was changed to "Global Warming".
Of course, that "limited modified hangout" became inoperative quickly and so the left shifted to "Climate Change".
Even that vague, never defined term was not politically useful enough.
Now it's become "Climate Disruption".
What does that term mean?
Whatever the left needs it to mean each day regardless of what it meant the day before.
Very similar to obama's "Jobs Created" to "Jobs saved or created" to "jobs touched".
Create a link by replacing the "Link Text" in the line below with the url.
Link text
Oops! It got formatted; can't see what to do.
Use a regular HTML link, like the example here
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org">Nest of pedants</a>
—will become—
Nest of pedants
Pay careful attention to quotes, angle brackets, and the a's - note they are all paired, more or less (though a is 'paired' with /a).
Khesanh: "Could someone once again explain how to create a link in the comments section?"
Google "HTML code" and find a site that has examples.
The Obama's are very serious about global warming. That is why their globe trotting is done by electric plane.
Tom Steyer is also serious about global warming. That is why his funds only invest in coal production overseas.
Barack, Michelle, Tom, et al., beguiling the Obamadupes. LOL.
I'm not sure if the insects are serious about it. Probably not.
There is... no return. No... mediation. It's very brutal. We are under assault. Assault from heat-loving, money-grubbing, data-inventing global warming theorists.
This gets tiresome.
Every global warming thread, garage trots out the "97% of scientists" statistic.
And every time, I fall for it:
Garage, 97% of precisely whom?
Re 97%, I'll add:
If we were trying to create a system in which a subgroup of scientists are substantially wrong, then circle the wagons, double down and become combative when challenged, we couldn't do much better than modern climate science:
- Most of the older scientists came into this young discipline from other areas of science because they believe human activities are threatening the planet
- Most of the younger ones started in this field because they believe we have a serious environmental problem, which we need to study so we can inform public policy
- A huge majority of all academic scientists are liberal (trust me, I am an academic scientist), and therefore predisposed to be pleased when the policy implications of their research findings are more government control and more power to scientists
- I'm going to guess that around, oh, 97% of the people administering the grant pool are convinced that the planet is warming up dangerously and that human activities are largely to blame. No matter how objective, they are going to be predisposed to fund research that proves this, and to cast a very skeptical eye on any proposed research that casts doubt on this foundational premise.
- A large number of those who question these scientists' findings are not professional scientists. This insults the pride of the professional scientists.
- A large number of those questioning these scientists' findings are politically right-of-center. This means that a huge majority of academic scientists disagree with them vehemently and are inclined to dismiss all their skepticism as politically motivated (which some of it is).
Add it all up, and climate scientists had better hope they got it all exactly right as of 1998 or so, because we have in place every possible reason for them to ignore anyone suggesting that if natural variability is behind the "pause" in rising temperatures, maybe it was behind a good fraction of that rise from 1979-1997, which caused global warming to become the huge deal it is today.
Ah yes, garage, like the 9 out of 10 doctors who have been recommending we eat low fat untiol recently, and convinced our governement to recommend that as well. Now we are coming back full circle to ppass the eggs and butter.
There are some things only Ph.Ds and politicians can be made to believe. As someone else pointed out, they seem to have no sense of history or humility. For most normal people, once bitten is twice shy as far as voodoo weather prognostications go. The Medieval Warm Period is apparently too far back to count. Or the ice age scare in the 1970s. Ancient history.
Insects to right of us, insects to left of us, insects in front of us! Ours is not to question!
garage mahal said...
Hahaha. Global Warming jokes are so fun but they also gives me street cred with right wingers. Sort of like a gang sign. Stupid libtards don't know it's a global conspiracy among 97% of scientists to get more grant money.
Garage that 97% represents the view of 77 people. 77 believed the climate has been getting warmer since pre 1800 and 75 of those that humans(CO2) are responsible for a "significant" portion of the warming. These were hand picked after 3,000 plus scientists responded to a two question survey email that was sent to over 10,000 "scientists". 90% of the scientists were Americans, 6.2% Canadian and the remaining 3.8% represented the scientists from the rest of the world. It was done by two graduate students.
I can see you not knowing that from assuming you rely on NPR, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, wapo, nytimes, & etc. to get your information.
Google up "Top Climate Scientists" and browse what pops up. The head of the organization that won the Nobel Prize is no more a scientist than Garage, another thinks AGW is self correcting, a third is "a senior climate scientist" but has her degree in isotope geochemistry. Apparently a "senior climate scientist" is an honorarium, a title.
pH changes in the oceans appear to be measured at the mouth of vents that would not be replicated in the open seas.
I do believe there is a link between gulls like Garage, AGW and income inequality, however.
---this is what you get when you think that history began yesterday
Yes. Also, lets look at the Socialist Paradise of Venezuela where global warming (also known as socialist poverty and the decline of good government health activities) has escorted in a third world disease (DDT anyone??).
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/may/06/venezuela-mosquitoes-bite-back-malaria-returns
here is some information on the survey that produced that "97% of climate scientists" number:
Question 1: When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
Question 2: Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
1.Number of surveys sent out: 10,257
2. Total number of respondents: 3,146
3. Total number of climate scientists respondents: 77 (!)
4. Total number of climate scientists who answered yes to question 2: 75
So, the respondents were self-selected. That is, if after reading the questions, the scientists didn't send it back for whatever reason, they weren't included in the numbers. Likewise, unless you submitted a paper that blamed humans for global warming, you wouldn't have a peer reviewed paper, and thus wouldn't make it into the group of 77 considered climate scientists. Finally, the first question is throwaway, most non-scientists know that temperature has increased since pre-1800s levels. Little Ice Age anyone? The second question is poorly worded: what exactly is meant by "human activity"? And what is meant by "significant contributing factor"?
To sum up, a shitty push survey where .007 percent of the surveys sent out were deemed to count is what is used by climate alarmists as 97%. Mendacious indeed, but it keeps the grant money flowing.
Tom Steyer and George Soros will protect us from everything if we just give them all our money and let them tell us what to do and how to live.
Video of Obama getting Osama bin Laden.
That ice cover is forcing more than a dozen coal and iron ore freighters to stay parked in Lake Huron. That ice could also have a serious impact on tourism in Michigan's UP and on Mackinaw island.
Last year, Coast Guard cutters broke up the ice by April 20th, but it will take several weeks longer this year.
http://www.13abc.com/story/25424943/frozen-lake-superior-strands-freighters-in-lake-huron
It’s nearly May and the Great Lakes are still largely frozen with surface ice melting at the slowest rate in recorded history. On April 20, Lake Superior was over 60 percent covered with ice up to 24 inches thick, severely impacting both shipping and wildlife.
Normally, ice constitutes only two percent of the Great Lakes’ surface by this time of year. According to satellite imagery captured by NASA on April 20, nearly 34 percent of the Great Lakes remained covered in ice. This is the most ice ever observed on the Great Lakes in late April since highly detailed satellite imagery became available in the late 1970s.
For perspective, last year on April 20, only 3.6 percent of Lake Superior was frozen. In 2012, Lake Superior was completely ice-free by April 12. The last time Lake Superior froze over in 2009, ice cover melted down to 6.7 percent by April 21.
http://www.examiner.com/article/great-lakes-ice-coverage-still-breaking-records
The ice is as thick as Garage.
phx said...
Video of Obama getting Osama bin Laden.
LOL
Yeah, especially the part where President Mom Jeans spie rigged down from the helicopter with the knife in his teeth and broke through the door of the house and put osama down with a couple quick bursts.
Very impressive.
Those Seal Team Six guys were basically just bystanders to obama's stunning courage.
I mean, we are talking a level of bravery not seen since garage and his pals protested against the heavy odds of Walkers jackbooted thugs in Madison.
Inspirational.
Garage, 97% of precisely whom?
Dentists.
97% of dentists believe in global warming. I mean climate disruption.
Dentists are teeth scientists.
Floss after every meal.
MadisonMan said...
I actually do think that Warming will accelerate and bad things will happen -- especially in the Ocean because of pH changes.
Can you explain to me, be as precise as you can, exactly how all this heat is being sequestered in the oceans? How is it being measured?
MadisonMan said...
I actually do think that Warming will accelerate and bad things will happen -- especially in the Ocean because of pH changes.
Can you explain to me, be as precise as you can, exactly how all this heat is being sequestered in the oceans? How is it being measured?
MadisonMan said...
I actually do think that Warming will accelerate and bad things will happen -- especially in the Ocean because of pH changes.
Can you explain to me, be as precise as you can, exactly how all this heat is being sequestered in the oceans? How is it being measured?
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