Those Freakonomics guys have shocked the high priests of science.
Suppose... that the best solution [to global warming] involves a helium balloon, several miles of garden hose and a harmless stream of sulfur dioxide being pumped into the upper atmosphere, all at a cost of a single F-22 fighter jet.
That freaks out Al Gore, et al.
[S]ubversively, ["SuperFreakonomics" authors Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner] suggest that climatologists, like everyone else, respond to incentives in a way that shapes their conclusions. "The economic reality of research funding, rather than a disinterested and uncoordinated scientific consensus, leads the [climate] models to approximately match one another."
Even assuming the global warming alarm is justified, the Stev(ph)ens still freak out the alarmists by pointing to easier, cheaper solutions:
[I]t may well be that global warming is best tackled with a variety of cheap fixes, if not by pumping SO2 into the stratosphere then perhaps by seeding more clouds over the ocean. Alternatively, as "SuperFreakonomics" suggests, we might be better off doing nothing until the state of technology can catch up to the scope of the problem.
All these suggestions are, of course, horrifying to global warmists, who'd much prefer to spend in excess of a trillion dollars annually for the sake of reconceiving civilization as we know it, including not just what we drive or eat but how many children we have. And little wonder: As Newsweek's Stefan Theil points out, "climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades." Who, being a professional climatologist or EPA regulator, wouldn't want a piece of that action?
Part of the genius of Marxism, and a reason for its enduring appeal, is that it fed man's neurotic fear of social catastrophe while providing an avenue for moral transcendence.
For some people, it needs to be a religion, and to the extent that it is a religion, we need the blasphemers.
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187 comments:
Of course it would freak Gore out. He stands to make billions with his VC pals on a hoax. Gore is just like Bernie Madoff. No one has caught on. Yet.
Hmmmm? Ever wonder why he and those paltry fifty or so scientists did not win one of the Nobel Science Prizes?
You're officially leaving the ranks of "liberals," at least per the current meaning of the term.
You have some of the best blasphemers here on your blog. Heck you married one.
Expect Gore to defend the lucrative granting of carbon indulgences at all costs.
The funniest thing is that Levitt's got Paul Krugman and Al Gore marketing his book for him. Pure genius.
Watching an interview of the writer of the Freakonomics this weekend was a pleasure. He discussed events based on knowable data and the finding of easy solutions. That is science in place of illusion making dressed up in science robes. I remarked to the wife that this was the first TV prentation that I had seen in years that threw facts into the discussion of subjects that usually were talked about with false information as the only accepted knowledge on the subject. The power of a drop of truth to negate a flood of false information must be the reason that controlling all of the Media content is the FIRST GOAL of the new World Government apparatchiks.
I'd have a certain amount of sympathy for the high priests if they'd limit themselves to pointing out that the technological fixes are at least as speculative as the climate models.
Listen folks, this science stuff is very complex and written totally in Latin and none of you are qualified to read it!
So shut up and sit still in your pew and we'll tell you what the gospel says and you will like it.
I think we need the hip hop perspective on global warming.
The opening line: Suppose for a minute—which is about 59 seconds too long, but that's for another column—that global warming poses an imminent threat to the survival of our species.
"Which is about 59 seconds too long" -- what a delightful turn of phrase. I'm heartened by the recent outbreak of common sense with respect to AGW that's breaking out all over the place. It makes me hopeful.
Actually Ann - The people who were slamming them, acknowledged their arguments and then refuted them.
But you think that people don't have a right to challenge the Freakonomics folks. So who is really trying to silence who?
And they were rightly slammed. The Freakonomics folks were deliberately trying to be confrontational by stating that global warming doesn't exist, and that we are experiencing global cooling. Actually - it's the exact same bogus argument you're peddling. As are so many others.
In the United States, 50% of citations on global warming in major newspapers quote those who dispute the theory. Pretty shocking - considering that not one serious climatologist disputes the theory.
a harmless stream of sulfur dioxide
Shall I point out the obvious?
Chlorofluorocarbons were thought to be harmless too. No need to worry about them entering the troposphere, they're stable!
So to pump "harmless" SO2 into the stratosphere as a solution? Well, it strikes me as poorly thought out.
The Ann Althouse cure for global warming: Ignore it. Funny, that's the same as my theory. Because I'll be dead by the time it would affect me. So I don't care.
I am so friggin tired of the Al Gores, Andrew Sullivans and Charles Johnsons of the world railing on global warming and ignoring the other problems of the world. That people are committed to throw away trillions to screw up health care is one thing--at least they have a point about the uninsured (even if their solution is nuts). But this belief that CO2 is the greatest threat to life on the planet is just not justified. And the Chinese and Indians are not buying it.
DTL...Why not buy a thermometer and place it outside and become a real Climatologist yourself. This winter while the CO2 levels are at all time high PPMs is going to Freak you out. Not that any facts that you observe will ever be allowed to be entered into the UN's computer model for fixed outcomes.
The very fact that all these global warming treaties exempt ‘developing nations’ right there screams fraud. Sorry but when you’re preaching to me the end of the world as we know it because of AGW and ‘SOMETHING MUST BE DONE’ and then turn around and exempt India and China which comprise what, 2/3 of the world population I call bullshit.
For those who worship the Goracle, maybe its things like that which cause clear thinking people to question the motives. Or perhaps articles like the Professor posted yesterday where middle class whitey needs to stop procreating while poor Bangladeshis are free to breed as much as they like. Its stuff like that which labels the AGW crowd as nothing more than Kool Aid drinkiners.
Economists are nerds who didn't like/weren't good at science.
Next up: A chiropractor explains how subluxations made the authors of Freakonomics write what they did.
MadisonMan, forget about the specific example of an easy fix for a minute, and just ask yourself if you would want an easy fix if one were available.
Except Ann is perpetuating a lie.
Liberals are not opposed to man-made inventions to solve global warming. I've read articles about sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and freezing it into a solid and then shipping that into space. It's just that the proposals the Freakonomics folks talk about have been disputed quite thoroughly.
The funny thing is that cap and trade would encourage people to do exactly the kind of research that they are talking about.
If you leave things as they are though - who in the world is going to build these contraptions. Who is going to pump the sulfer into space? The government I guess. And we know that Ann will oppose that flat out. Because she opposes all government intervention. As she should. The government has never done anything right. Just look at the incompetent law professors the government is hiring in Wisconsin after all. . .
In my experience, easy fixes make things worse down the road. (Maybe I say that because we're undoing old easy fixes in our house now). So I am suspicious of purported easy fixes.
IF the CO2 problem has to be fixed at some point in the future, it will be costly and non-trivial. And as I noted last week, or a week+ ago, it will be difficult to know if there is a problem until long after the problem is severe because of inherent natural variability.
The issue isn't the science. Even if we assume that all the science is 100% settled, it doesn't matter.
The issue is politics. Even as the climate scientists assemble and reassemble their unblemished mathematical models, the politicians they champion bravely construct legal models of singular stupidity.
Global warming, at the policy level, offers nothing more than economic idiocy and scientific ineffectiveness.
As long as the "experts" keep quiet in the face of that political folly they deserve no respect.
The science, at its best, is merely descriptive, telling us what is and the probabilities about what may eventually be. But it can't tell us how to choose among those "what may be's," or whether any one of them is better or worse than the others. As economists, all the two Ste[ph]ens want to talk about are how to make those choices, focused as they are on the good/bad prescriptive issues. They're hardly the first economists to do so. Lomborg and Nordhaus have both written serious and influential books on the economics of global warming; others (like the Stern Report) rather less so.
OK. Choices have to be made. So what criteria should be invoked to make them? The Gores of the world want to cast the options in moralistic terms; the two Ste[ph]ens in utilitarian ones. The moralizers talk about saving the world for "our children," even as they say we shouldn't have any, but their narrative is really about seeing themselves as "good people" and "responsible citizens of the world." It's all about them! The utilitarians talk in terms of cost/benefit allocations, all of which has a heartless, Dickensian sound to it. They're cast as greedy amoral profiteers, even as they try to take the profit out and put the utility back into golbal warming solutions. Their narrative is about doing the most good for the most people.
Preachers and scientists are never very good at economics. It shows, time and again. And so they pretend that problems in economics should be viewed as moral dilemmas. They need to rejoin the reality-based community.
I would heartily support freezing downtownlad and shipping him into space. Hell I'd even support a tax increase to fund it.
But again, when India and China are on board then we can consider the legitimacy of taking serious action to combat 'global warming'. When the West is the one which has to take the economic hit and fund the research and development, then its just nothing but a scam to effect the biggest transfer of wealth in human history.
dtl wrote: But you think that people don't have a right to challenge the Freakonomics folks. So who is really trying to silence who?
Is it even possible for dtl, ever, to comment without making something up?
Where does Althouse say "people don't have a right to challenge the Freakonomics folks?"
Climatologists have given away a lot of their credibility. They have refused to give up and then "lost" the original climate data that alledgedly established global warming. They have been caught in outright lies (the now infamous hockey stick graph and the claim that so many of the last 10 years were the hottest of the last century just to name two). They have been incredibly oppressive of any dissenting views. And they have made common cause with known idiots (Al Gore).
Worse still, the earth hasn't warmed significantly in literally decades despite the continued increase in Co2 levels and none of them can explain it. Unless and until they come up with a model and a theory that can actually predict something as opposed to post hoc explaining, I don't take them seriously. And I especially do not take seriously people who make radical pronouncement about the need to change our lifestyle but make no effort to change their own.
dtl wrote: Pretty shocking - considering that not one serious climatologist disputes the theory.
So Richard Linzen of MIT is not a "serious climatologist?"
You did say "not one," didn't you? Do you have some wiggle room here or are you just a pathological liar?
For some people, it needs to be a religion, and to the extent that it is a religion, we need the blasphemers.
Sentences like this illustrate why I read Althouse posts.
Worse still, the earth hasn't warmed significantly in literally decades despite the continued increase in Co2 levels and none of them can explain it.
Eh?
You people are confused, if its warming, that's climate change, if it's cooling that weather.
The Gores of the world want to cast the options in moralistic terms; the two Ste[ph]ens in utilitarian ones.
Yes. And you can’t argue terms with a moralist.
On a related note, I went looking for information on what the temperature actually was during the medieval warm period as compared to now and all I found were global warming sites and anti-global warming sites and none of them got into the specifics I was looking for. I would like some specifics on that, if anyone can point me in a reasonable direction. Including how accurately we can actually guess at temperatures back then using ice cores and other such methods, as compared with our methods now.
"Three of four major datasets that track global estimates show 1998 as the warmest year on record with temperatures flat or falling since then. Even climate change researchers now admit that global temperature has been flat since that peak. As shown above, the CO2 chart continues upwards unabated. If the relationship is as solid as we are told, then why isn't global temperature responding? I'm told by climate change researchers that the current situation is within the bounds of model expectations. However, when I look at the IPCC 2007 AR4 WG1 report, I can see that without major warming in the next 1-2 years, we will fall outside those bounds."
http://m.climaterealists.com/?id=4012
FLS, 1998 was a very warm year. That allows for the nice graph of "five year averages" to go up through the early 00s and fixate people like you. The fact remains, that it is cooler now than it was in the mid 1990s and significantly cooler than it was in 1998.
Even global warming believers can't explain it. And none of the models predicted it. Fortuneately for them, there are still lots of stupid people like you who will never ask the right questions or do more than look at the pretty graphs.
So Richard Linzen of MIT is not a "serious climatologist?"
He's a great theoretical dynamicist. Emphasis in the mesophere, initially, then working downward. That's where his expertise lies. Reading his papers is to experience tedium (JMO -- can't stand dynamic theory, except for Hoskins' papers from the 70s)
I read his critiques of various reports as complaints that summaries are not written by scientists, but rather by scientists being pushed by agenda-driven policy-makers. Thus, conclusions don't note with clarity the limitations of observations and models because policy makers aren't concerned about that, they want to make policy and gloss over any questions.
AGW is like a religion. The left rejects traditional religion and morals and wouldn't dream of serving in the military, so most routes to heroism and transcendence are off limits to them.
Human beings have an innate need to be selfless, good or heroic.
Enter Al Gore, the pope of the left.
"I read his critiques of various reports as complaints that summaries are not written by scientists, but rather by scientists being pushed by agenda-driven policy-makers. Thus, conclusions don't note with clarity the limitations of observations and models because policy makers aren't concerned about that, they want to make policy and gloss over any questions."
That sounds like a pretty good critiqu to me. It is extremly hard to know something. You have to be incredibly careful not to let your own biases and predispositions get in the way. AGW is expecting us to beleive that we could know the climate in any meaningful way in just a few years of modeling. And that knowledge just happens to support every leftist and guilty western central control fantasy. And it was found just in time for the fall of communism. That is fishy to say the least.
AGW is expecting us to beleive that we could know the climate in any meaningful way in just a few years of modeling. .
Can you follow the red line in the graph? What does it tell you? I'm pretty sure my 7 yr old daughter could follow it. What is your prediction of that red line as to where it's headed?
I love how conservatives will reject any empirical evidence, like thermometer readings plotted on a graph, and call that a "religion". As if a thermometer is some unknowable mystical thing.
The material Althouse quotes says that the Freakonomics authors suggest that climate scientists agree with each other in order to get research funding. If true, that is despicable. I am saying that climate science is so far out of the Freakos' sphere of expertise their comments are not worth very much.
But as I see it, these are the issues:
1. Is there global warming?
2. If so, is it caused by human activities?
3. If so, which human activities are causing it?
4. Assuming a problem, what are the solutions?
4a. If manmade?
4a1. If caused by adding fossilized carbon to the atmosphere?
4a1a. If so, stop/reduce adding fossilized carbon to the atmosphere
4b. If part of the normal planetary heating/cooling cycle?
If 4a1a is the solution to a scientific problem, it must be implemented on a worldwide basis. Allowing developing countries to continue to burn fossil fuels is unscientific, as Hoosier points out.
"Can you follow the red line in the graph? What does it tell you? I'm pretty sure my 7 yr old daughter could follow it. What is your prediction of that red line as to where it's headed?"
Thank your for coming in to give an example of stupid people who can do no more than look at the pretty graph. You really are performance art. Sometimes you get it right. That was too funny. You do more to discredit and make liberals stupid than 100 conservatives could do in a year of posting. Many thanks.
"If 4a1a is the solution to a scientific problem, it must be implemented on a worldwide basis. Allowing developing countries to continue to burn fossil fuels is unscientific, as Hoosier points out."
Since preventing developing countries from burning fosil fuels is not possible, you had better come up with another sollution or learn to live with AGW is it is true. At this point you might as well be talking about fairies and leprechans because the developing world is not going to condem itself to poverty.
Thank your for coming in to give an example of stupid people who can do no more than look at the pretty graph.
There are those who look at the temperatures since 1998 and do just what you accuse garage of doing.
@garage - Can you follow the red line in the graph? What does it tell you? I'm pretty sure my 7 yr old daughter could follow it. What is your prediction of that red line as to where it's headed?
That's an interesting question, because the alarmist predictions the climate modellers made back in the 90s turned out to be wrong. Maybe when they make some predictions that turn out to be right, we should worry about what they say.
For some people, it needs to be a religion, and to the extent that it is a religion, we need the blasphemers.
Interesting rule of thumb, there.
Thank your for coming in to give an example of stupid people who can do no more than look at the pretty graph. You really are performance art. Sometimes you get it right. That was too funny. You do more to discredit and make liberals stupid than 100 conservatives could do in a year of posting. Many thanks.
So again, thermometer readings [in addition to being quasi-religious], can also be described as performance art? Here is a clue: At least I'm looking at real data. It's from fucking thermometers! Mercury. They've been around for a long long time. No one has ever disputed the accuracy of thermometers that I'm aware of.
So looking at the trend on the graph, what's your best guess where it's headed again?
"There are those who look at the temperatures since 1998 and do just what you accuse garage of doing."
When none of the models predict anything like what has happened since 1998 and cannot explain it, then yeah that is pretty important. Again, when these models actually predict something versus giving post hoc rationalizations, I will start to take them seriously.
"So again, thermometer readings [in addition to being quasi-religious], can also be described as performance art? Here is a clue: At least I'm looking at real data. It's from fucking thermometers! Mercury. They've been around for a long long time. No one has ever disputed the accuracy of thermometers that I'm aware of."
You can look at the thermometers all you like And all you can say is that it got warmer in the 1990s. You can't say anyting about what causes that. All you can do is guess, which is another way of saying faith. You don't know anything. No one does. All we have are guesses.
Since preventing developing countries from burning fosil fuels is not possible,
A political solution to a scientific problem is unlikely to either address the problem or satisfy the people who must make sacrifices.
At this point you might as well be talking about fairies and leprechans because the developing world is not going to condem itself to poverty.
Not sure why developed ones should have to do so as well.
Fact of the matter is we have clean energy right now. Its called nuclear power.
"A political solution to a scientific problem is unlikely to either address the problem or satisfy the people who must make sacrifices."
If you can't do it, you can't do it. Better to try to figure out a way to live in a warmer world and get as rich as possible before it happens.
Here is a clue: At least I'm looking at real data.
Not really. You're looking at a red line that someone drew on top of real data-- not realizing that the person who drew the red line is doing the exact same thing as the person who drew the blue line, only on a different time scale.
Again, when these models actually predict something versus giving post hoc rationalizations, I will start to take them seriously.
No, you won't start taking them seriously, because it's already been predicted and you, Althouse, and the rest of Conservatavia simply block out any data that doesn't conform to your dogma which holds that environmentalists and liberals are always wrong no matter what. Being anti-environment and anti-science is the way of the dittohead.
MadisonMan gets to decide who is and who is not a serious climatologist.
Since preventing developing countries from burning fosil fuels is not possible, you had better come up with another sollution or learn to live with AGW is it is true. At this point you might as well be talking about fairies and leprechans because the developing world is not going to condem itself to poverty.
I still haven't figured out how we get so quickly from man caused Global Warming to that it is bad to the only solution is flushing trillions of dollars down the drain every year.
It is almost as if they don't want us to think this through, kinda like those thousand page bills that absolutely have to be voted upon within hours of being published or the earth will end, etc. Even if most of the money won't be spent for years.
In any case, the Freaky economists do us all a service by slowing this freight train down and going whoa (ok, mixed metaphors, but slowing down a wagon just didn't work as well). Maybe we need to look at alternatives before we destroy our economy at the alter of Gaea.
No, you won't start taking them seriously, because it's already been predicted and you, Althouse, and the rest of Conservatavia simply block out any data that doesn't conform to your dogma which holds that environmentalists and liberals are always wrong no matter what. Being anti-environment and anti-science is the way of the dittohead.
This attitude is why Obama is losing the swing voters already.
Althouse, and the rest of Conservatavia simply block out any data that doesn't conform to your dogma which holds that environmentalists and liberals are always wrong no matter what. Being anti-environment and anti-science is the way of the dittohead.
No I block out bullshit solutions that require ome to sacrifice while the 'developing world' is exempt and can continue to pollute away. FLS and I rarely agree on anything but any solution is doesn't require worldwide compliance is nothing more than a wealth transfer from one side to another.
FLS:
political solution to a scientific problem is unlikely to either address the problem or satisfy the people who must make sacrifices.
Answer - the USA must be cut down to size since India and China will not reduce their CO2 emmissions.
I'd say the rational approach is not to flush 50% of our GDP down the toilet w/o rock solid PROOF that AGW is something WE are causing and CAN reverse!
MM wrote: [Richard Linzen is] a great theoretical dynamicist. Emphasis in the mesophere, initially, then working downward. That's where his expertise lies....
If this comment was intended to minimize Linzen's credibility on the issue of climate change, I suggest you review MIT's description of his background. His publications also demonstrate that his area of emphasis may well have changed in recent years to issues surrounding global warming.
If your intention was merely to demonstrate familiarity with his work, thank you for sharing.
he Ann Althouse cure for global warming: Ignore it. Funny, that's the same as my theory. Because I'll be dead by the time it would affect me. So I don't care.
No, she's simply agreeing with Freakenomics guys that we need to not commit economic suicide to satisfy the high priests of AGW.
WV: lenin - yes Althouse is a commie.
DTL said: "Liberals are not opposed to man-made inventions to solve global warming. I've read articles about sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and freezing it into a solid and then shipping that into space."
I'd like to nominate this as the single most stupid thing ever written by a human being.
Is this parody? Is DTL actually a conservative's sock puppet?
Can anyone be so stupid as to suggest launching CO2 into space? Do you suppose, DTL, that this launch might generate a few greenhouse gases, in an amount several orders of magnitude greater than the CO2 being banished from our planet?
If only we could engineer some sort of machine that could absorb CO2 and sequester it into some sort of material that we could use to build structures, or transform it into food. And if we could engineer these complex devices so that they'd build themselves from carbon, and create more of themselves. And if only they were solar-powered, and gave off pure oxygen.
Someone as scary smart as you, DTL, should probably get busy designing such a mechanism.
No all that really matters right now is the mush-headed kids' minds are being filled with fairy tales of AGW as we speak. Right NOW in classrooms across the country kids are being brainwashed in AGW religion and there is NOTHING we can do to stop it!
No I block out bullshit solutions that require ome to sacrifice while the 'developing world' is exempt and can continue to pollute away.
“Waaa! But, Maaaa, China and India are doing it! Why can’t we?”
I'd say the rational approach is not to flush 50% of our GDP down the toilet...
More religious dittohead insanity. That's not even close to reality, but you go ahead and cling to that delusion because it helps fuel your hate at teabagger rallies.
"Just look at the incompetent law professors the government is hiring in Wisconsin after all. . ."
Just look at the incompetent law professor the people put in the White House...
There, fixed it for you DTL.
BTW, still no one questions why Gore and is paltry few so called scientists did not get a Nobel Science Award or any other science award. The Oscar does not count.
Can you follow the red line in the graph? What does it tell you? I'm pretty sure my 7 yr old daughter could follow it. What is your prediction of that red line as to where it's headed?
Garage, your graph starts in 1950! Why on earth should we make decisions based on fifty years of data?
4. Assuming a problem, what are the solutions?
See, I would stop at “assuming a problem”. Even if it is getting warmer right now, even if it’s caused almost entirely by us, we need to stop and ask if it’s something that needs fixing. Who decides what temperature is best for us? Maybe hotter is better than colder. When does it become a problem and are we likely to reach that point? Those are the questions I would like to see someone slow down to actually ask before we tank our lifestyle and our economy to fix something that might be a net positive. I know the descriptions of the little ice age didn't sound all that fun to me (except for the snow. I would like it to snow more here).
Actually, dealing with climate, one thing you are going to see is that colder weather might be lovely for certain parts of the globe and hotter weather lovely for others. Then we are in a position of deciding who it's more important to please.
“Waaa! But, Maaaa, China and India are doing it! Why can’t we?”
Useless parody of yourself already!
More religious dittohead insanity. That's not even close to reality, but you go ahead and cling to that delusion because it helps fuel your hate at teabagger rallies.
Who do you think you're winning over with calling people names you leftwing shithead?
“Waaa! But, Maaaa, China and India are doing it! Why can’t we?”
Why not then? Either the planet is in mortal danger or its not. If it is, worldwide mandatory compliance in reducing carbon emissions should not exempt the two largest nations from being signatories to any treaties.
If they are exempt then the planet is not in mortal danger and cap and trade and emissions cutting is nothing more than a transfer of wealth from the richer nations to the poorer.
What's really amusing about Garage's simple-minded linear extrapolation is that if you project 20th-century warming to continue at the same rate in the 21st you end up with a forecast like those offered by skeptics like Lindzen and Singer. Alarmists are alarmists because they expect warming to accelerate, not continue at the same rate.
No liberals anywhere are saying to give up on getting China and India to conform, only conservatives and their insipid straw man attacks. But to sit idly by and do nothing until they do is more excuse making by shit-for-brains conservatives who think we're stupid enough to listen to them.
And yes, I think name-calling is appropriate at this point because it doesn't matter anyway. I presented a link to an AP article debunking the ridiculous global cooling claim and none of you asshats will respond to it.
FLS, 1998 was a very warm year. That allows for the nice graph of "five year averages" to go up through the early 00s and fixate people like you. The fact remains, that it is cooler now than it was in the mid 1990s and significantly cooler than it was in 1998.
Apparently Global Warming tracks the NASDAQ index. Let's correlate!
Try to be less of an asshole, tonejunkie, and more people might be willing to respond.
Try to be less of an asshole, tonejunkie, and more people might be willing to respond.
More stalling by you. Once again.
“In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.”
No liberals anywhere are saying to give up on getting China and India to conform, only conservatives and their insipid straw man attacks.
I'm sorry I must have missed where China and India are being included in any climate treaties. Please point to where they are or what measures the signatories will take to ensure compliance.
But to sit idly by and do nothing until they do is more excuse making by shit-for-brains conservatives who think we're stupid enough to listen to them.
No you continually miss the point. Climate change disciples insist that the planet is in danger. If it is, compliance must be mandatory worldwide otherwise its simply half measures. Kind of like having lung cancer and cutting down to a pack a day.
I presented a link to an AP article debunking the ridiculous global cooling claim and none of you asshats will respond to it.
I read that article this morning, and nothing in it tells me why we should be concerned with warming trends over the last 100 years, just because that’s how long we’ve been able to measure more accurately. Tell me why this particular trend is somehow more worrisome than any other warm or cool periods in our history and then maybe we’ll be getting somewhere.
“In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.”
*fingers plugging ears* la la la la la la
If this comment was intended to minimize Linzen's credibility on the issue of climate change
My comment was in response to the assertion that he was a serious climatologist. A serious climatologist might have a long list of original work in the literature. As I said, he's more a theoretical dynamicist.
Note that this does not mean I think he's wrong in some of his critiques about AGW -- he makes excellent points -- just that the assertion that he's a serious climatologist is a dubious claim.
One notion that I think is very foolish is that someone who is not a trained X cannot argue coherently about the field of X. I am reminded of the horrible ad I see in which Person A is saying My barber says that I get too many calories from High Fructose Corn Syrup at which point Person B asks : A Registered Dietician Cuts your Hair? as if nutrition and diet knowledge is sooo complex that a mere barber couldn't cotton to it. Asserting that a critic of AGW is somehow invalid because someone is not a climatologist is equally silly. If you have to argue that Lindzen is a climatologist to make your point, you've bought into this misguided notion.
(Have I said this before? It seems familiar. Maybe I typed it in and then didn't publish. I do that a lot.)
If someone is disputing your claims about AGW because you aren't a climatologist, well that's a bad way to argue.
Who knew climate modeling could be as simple as y=mx+b?
Tonejunkie
In regards to exempting India and China and why that’s bad (m’kay?), you need to brush up on your poli sci. Particularly, do a little research on the concept of the “security dilemma”. That should answer your question.
Besides, you still haven’t answered HD’s question about global peril.
No, no decline. But maybe a random walk.
Or maybe not. I know the climate modelers have their statisticians too. I'm still not impressed with non-predictive models and speculative horror stories.
On both sides the use of the data is very unscientific. People here are picking time periods or data sets that by themselves prove only the intended point. The whole truth is only discernible from long time periods (millions of years) and broad data sets. What's happening here is game playing with numbers, kind of a he said she said thing.
One difference I see is that the pro crisis people are suggesting serious, expensive and disruptive action to address an interdependent unproven set of hypotheses: that AGW is real, a problem, and fixable. That is a huge stretch of faith and the most unscientific and foolish position.
Personally I'm agnostic and therefor, I did not sell my stuff and build a bomb shelter at the end of 1999 either. There were many making money suggesting that crisis too with data and experts ta boot. I'm willing to follow the facts (all of them) wherever they lead.
I'll start taking these guys seriously when they start taking 3 minute showers. Freder, am I right?
The international politics of World regulation will be the same as local Regulation of industries. It fixes the big boys nin their dominant position and insulates them from start up competition. Everybody knows that. So where is the dominate industrial production in the world going on today? In China. Therefore China will cooperate in the World Regulation of the industrial uses of energy. They can hardly wait.
If only we could engineer some sort of machine that could absorb CO2 and sequester it into some sort of material that we could use to build structures, or transform it into food. And if we could engineer these complex devices so that they'd build themselves from carbon, and create more of themselves. And if only they were solar-powered, and gave off pure oxygen.
I think that that should win the award for the best comment in this thread.
Hoosier Daddy,
Obviously it's difficult to get China and India aboard. But because it's difficult, AGW deniers/skeptics like you consider this a beautiful opportunity to insist we stall, stare them down and do nothing forever like you want us to do. What about leading the way to a renewable energy future that needs to happen eventually anyway? Oh, but to you idiots that only means economic ruin because you're too simple-minded to see it any other way. You think addressing one impending disaster necessitates creating another because you have this retarded notion that liberals hate the rich and want to bring America down to appease our nostalgic Soviet love affair when nothing could be further from the truth as evidenced by the fact no liberals anywhere are protesting in front of malls to have them shut down to thwart "evil" capitalism. It's all a figment of dumbass conservative talk radio "thinking."
Tell me why this particular trend is somehow more worrisome than any other warm or cool periods in our history and then maybe we’ll be getting somewhere.
That you think climatologists aren't aware of natural trends of global warming and cooling and that the issue is warming above and beyond what's natural indicates how severely afflicted with conservatism you are.
@tonejunkie
Do me a favor. Be the open-minded thinker that you seem to insist nobody here is but you.
Please do this for me. Step outside yourself for a second and try to think abstractly and seriously about a list of negatives for our children if China and India are exempted. This is not a "gotcha" comment. I'm honestly interested in what you can come up with.
I'll start taking these guys seriously when they start taking 3 minute showers. Freder, am I right?
And using only four squares of toilet paper. Actually, that is one place where I think we need a daily ration, because I suspect that some of us use more, just less frequently, and it is really the total amount that counts. (ok, that is a sexist suggestion, I will admit that).
Actually though, I would think that paper might be good for combating global warming (maybe not toilet paper because of how it is typically disposed). Burying it in landfills would seem to be a great way to sequester carbon.
Indeed, the more I think of this, the better it sounds. No more recycled paper - much better in the fight against Global Warming for us to grow trees (full of carbon), cut them down, make the wood into paper, print, dispose, sequester in land fills, and repeat as necessary.
That you think climatologists aren't aware of natural trends of global warming and cooling and that the issue is warming above and beyond what's natural indicates how severely afflicted with conservatism you are.
Climatologists are "aware" of natural trends, yes. But they haven't sorted out how much of the present warming trend is man-made as opposed to natural. Their climate models were based on the assumption that man-made CO2 is a strong driver of global climate trends and those models have proved to be remarkably inaccurate.
So...we still really don't know how much of garage's super-scary graph showing a 1 degree farenheit temperature rise over 50 years is due to natural causes.
"What about leading the way to a renewable energy future that needs to happen eventually anyway?"
Are we not doing so already? Isn't the issue really at what pace that transformation takes place? There are very good reasons for getting off of fossil fuels. The destruction of human civilization due to a warming planet because we don't take drastic measures within (fill in alarmingly short timeframe here)has not been demonstrated to be one of them.
But the child-run are being brainwashed in AGW-religion as we speak. Even if we can block cap n tax right now, by 2020 there will be a critical mass of brainwashed idiots that will elect a majority left-wing government that will enact full socialist measures. There is nothing we can do to stop it. Enjoy your next 11 years the best you can.
I'll start taking these guys seriously when they start taking 3 minute showers.
The chicken hawk argument!
Please do this for me. Step outside yourself for a second and try to think abstractly and seriously about a list of negatives for our children if China and India are exempted. This is not a "gotcha" comment. I'm honestly interested in what you can come up with.
We are already seeing some of the effects of those countries surging. I saw something yesterday about the reverse brain drain. Luckily, a lot of Indians speak some sort of English (I use the "some sort" for those of us who have spent time talking to support people in India). Chinese is just not a pragmatic language, as far as I am concerned.
It will be interesting though, to see all those call centers moving back here, and U.S. workers having to bone up on their Mandarin just to have work.
I am also worried about the fact that the U.S. Dollar seems destined to fade as the world reserve currency. Renminbi, here we come. Of course, we can blame Obama and the Democrats for that already, through their feckless economic policies. If we sign the next Kyoto (or adopt the "tax and bribe" (aka "cap and trade") plan), this will happen all that much quicker.
So, yes, I can see a downside when those two countries, and others in that area, go shooting by us economically.
I'll start taking these guys seriously when they start taking 3 minute showers. Freder, am I right?
And wake me up when they start actively supporting nuclear power. If this is really about a pending disaster due to man-made global warming, wouldn't they support what is currently the best alternative to fossil fuels?
Climatologists are "aware" of natural trends, yes. But they haven't sorted out how much of the present warming trend is man-made as opposed to natural. Their climate models were based on the assumption that man-made CO2 is a strong driver of global climate trends and those models have proved to be remarkably inaccurate.
Keep in mind that these models all come with numerous provisos and simplifications. It is simply impossible right now to adequately model climate, both because it is far too computationally expensive, and we just don't know enough yet about the physics and the interactions (including feedbacks) among all the parts. So, many of these provisos involve the many simplifications that are made in order to generate any output from the models.
One of the things that is routinely excluded from these models is solar activity. But, almost all of the heat in our climate ultimately comes from the Sun, and there is a lot of evidence that the warming trend of the 1990s and the cooling trend of the 2000s were more dependent upon solar variations than anything else.
So, part of what these models likely try to eliminate is consideration of this variable so that other factors can be identified, but since it is the biggest variable in the equation, it is hard to do.
We don't need to worry about China and India. We'll have our green jobs to fall back on. From everything I've heard, this amounts to installing insulation in old houses. Prosperity, here we come!
MM wrote: If you have to argue that Lindzen is a climatologist to make your point, you've bought into this misguided notion.
If dtl claims that "not one serious climatologist disputes the theory," it would seem that an appropriate response would refer to a serious climatologist who does so, don'tcha think?
Certainly, you can argue that Linzer doesn't really dispute the theory, in which case I will name others who do.
However, if you continue to imply that Linzen is not a "serious climatologist, you obviously either ignored or failed to grasp the contents of the MIT link I provided.
Additionally, both the IPCC and the NAS have selected Linzen to serve on panels assessing issues regarding climate change. Their opinion of his qualifications evidently differs from you own. H-m-m. I think I'll go with them.
I think that some people *do* need a religion. They need a purpose. They need a cause.
Need, not want.
Other people don't. That doesn't mean there has to be a rejection of religion or purpose, just that it's not tied to the same level of psychological need.
But we all know people who are "religious" about something other than religion. They might even be virulently anti-religion... which means that pointing out in any way to them that they are acting in a religious *way* does not go over well AT ALL.
That you think climatologists aren't aware of natural trends of global warming and cooling and that the issue is warming above and beyond what's natural indicates how severely afflicted with conservatism you are.
Nice non answer. Somebody thought of that already, but I have no idea what they found out. HERETIC!
"a harmless stream of sulfur dioxide..."
MM: "Shall I point out the obvious?
Chlorofluorocarbons were thought to be harmless too. No need to worry about them entering the troposphere, they're stable!
So to pump "harmless" SO2 into the stratosphere as a solution? Well, it strikes me as poorly thought out."
ANYTHING that actually has the potential to directly affect the whole climate of the whole world is poorly thought out.
Do you trust *anyone* not to over correct?
I don't.
No one has ever disputed the accuracy of thermometers that I'm aware of.
Then you are astoundingly unaware.
Pt1
In grade school science class we learned there were four well-understood great ice ages known as glacial periods wherein glaciers exceeding a mile in altitude in places covered large portions of Europe, Asia, and North America. They're given names. Later we learned throughout the geologic ages there occurred even more lesser glacial unnamed periods when the ice sheets were up, the oceanic levels down, and land bridges exposed. It was during these lesser glacial periods that allowed migration across the Bearing land bridge from China to North America, but that's another much more recent story and another separate story. Between all those glacial periods, as many as twenty, there existed quite naturally what is known as interglacial periods. Warmer times when the glaciers retreated and the waters rose. The ice sheets rise and fall in accordance with variations in geologic global temperatures When they rise they take up and lock in the Earth's water. When they fall they release that water. It's a natural geologic reoccurrence that has been cycling from time immemorial.
‹aside›
The fossil record leaves evidence of dinosaurs and of tropical climate on Antarctica, but let's not become confused by this oddity, that's due to continental drift. Antarctica was once part of Australia and positioned near the equator. If it were possible for Al Gore and for scientists who live by government grants along with Europeans eager to get their envious, resentful, and rapacious mitts on US economy by assembling an overarching world governing body, and climate control was not more convenient, they'd contrive an urgent need to control that!
‹/aside›
Pt.2
Back to grade school. Plants take in carbon dioxide and use sunlight to convert it along with water to sugars and oxygen. Some of the sugar is used by the plant for its own life process, the rest is added to plant tissue as carbohydrates (←note "carbo"), protein, and fats. Carbon is an element that combines easily with other elements. Much of our own bodies are carbon. All life on earth is carbon-based. Carbon is used by all living organisms and circulates in the earth's ecosystem. According to the genius of this Geological Carbon Cycle as taught in the lower grades, animals need plants a hell of a lot more than plants need animals.
The person who imagined locking up carbon and shooting it into space thus reducing the most important natural element on earth needs to just stop trying because they're too stupid to participate.
I've seen Al Gore's study, pictures of it anyway. It's impressively large and very serious looking. He has a lot of computer monitors flickering away all filled with serious content. He has a lot of book shelves stuffed with a lot of books whose titles I could not discern, they are probably not pop-up books like mine. Too many to fit on the shelves, in fact, so they're piled around in stacks with several of them opened on top of the stacks and piled up on every flat surface opened to important passages apparently. His mind is so vast. All that stuff just pours right in constantly. He's totally processing it. It's a shame after all that to have to remind him of these two elementary science lessons; the glacial ages and the carbon cycle. And remind further that there were periods on earth even more atmospherically carbonaceous than now with no humans around to blame it on. I wonder who Gore, his gaggle of government grant-beholden scientists, and control-rapacious Europeans would blame for that before an age when humans existed? Volcanos, I suppose.
Conservation, reducing waste, and limiting carbon emissions is all good in and of itself, and all that starts and ends with individual behavior. Any person or group that extolls this goodliness (and I do) but for obvious political ends and who does not actually observably practice it personally and in full, is simply not to be listened to, much less adored exalted awarded and blindly followed steered by the limitations in place by one's own partisan loyalty. Emulating them is not just contradictory; flying 50X as much as average for the weakest of reasons, and in private jets no less, being driven around in fleets of limousines, not to mention sucking the oxygen out of every room one enters, farting out carbon emissions from both ends, consuming quantities sufficient for at least two people, it's also foolishly politically and economically suicidal. He who failed in attaining national leadership through the ordinary mundane electoral process would place himself in world leadership by sidestepping that annoying process? It's up to rational people to see that doesn't happen. These people are not smart enough for global governance, nobody is, they just think they are.
“In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.”
You know... someone has to be an anti-science ditto head to think this means anything at all.
Some reporters (not scientists) gave some statisticians (abstract scientists) a bunch of data (we're not supposed to question) and asked if predictions could be made on that data. The statisticians said "no". And the reporters (not scientists) said they "didn't find cooling." Fact is they didn't find anything at all because the data is not adequate.
OMG the data isn't enough to show anything.
Whenever someone starts with this "anti-science" conservatives I have to laugh because science is about proof and about skepticism and about doing it *again* and showing your work. The "anti-science" charge is always always always in response to a demand that AGW sorts show their work. It's an attempt to get the skeptics to shut up and get with the program and it is almost invariably made by people who are not in a career field that requires hard data, math, or science... but they *believe* in scientists.
And it always reminds me of a movie shown by our science teacher in high school (love the guy, but honest, he had a biology degree and couldn't do simple algebra) who for some reason decided to show "fun" movies in class... one on the end of the world (the world was going to end horribly pre-global warming, too) and the other on past life experiences. One of my friends, afterward, INSISTED that past life experiences were SCIENCE because the people in the movie wore lab coats.
And seriously... for a whole lot of people this is the same thing. They can be intelligent by proxy if they glom onto what is perceived as all scientific and sh*t and start calling other people, who are less easily impressed by lab coats, "anti-science."
Hoosier Daddy,
Obviously it's difficult to get China and India aboard. But because it's difficult, AGW deniers/skeptics like you consider this a beautiful opportunity to insist we stall, stare them down and do nothing forever like you want us to do. What about leading the way to a renewable energy future that needs to happen eventually anyway?
Ok. When we start cranking out nuclear power plants that will provide us 1) clean energy and 2) plenty of energy to maintain our 21st century standard of living then sign me up.
Oh, but to you idiots that only means economic ruin because you're too simple-minded to see it any other way.
That's because some of us simple minded people have a better grasp of economics than AGW apostles.
you have this retarded notion that liberals hate the rich and want to bring America down to appease our nostalgic Soviet love affair when nothing could be further from the truth
Sorry but when I hear Nancy Pelosi use the words ‘obscene profits' or when Hillary was talking about taking oil company profits, it’s you who sounds retarded.
It’s not coincidental that the radical environmental movement and global warming hysteria sprouted up around the same time that Soviet communism was relegated to the dustbin of history. It’s not like communism ever died, it just put on a new mask. Oh and I’m not calling you a communist tonejunkie. Communists had another word for folks like you. Useful idiots was the term.
I'll start taking these guys seriously when they start taking 3 minute showers.
Jennifer Aniston is not available for a comment.
If dtl claims that "not one serious climatologist disputes the theory," it would seem that an appropriate response would refer to a serious climatologist who does so, don'tcha think?
The argument for or against any theory should rise or fall on the data, not on the qualifications of those making the argument. That is my point, however inelegantly expressed upthread.
You can argue 'til the cows come home, and dtl will not waver. He is so narrow-minded that his dangling earrings are forever getting entangled with each other.
Step outside yourself for a second and try to think abstractly and seriously about a list of negatives for our children if China and India are exempted. This is not a "gotcha" comment. I'm honestly interested in what you can come up with.
I see no negatives economically speaking (which is all I know you care about) because I disagree that enacting federal policies to address AGW is harmful for our economy in the long run. I think it's more harmful for our economy if we don't, regardless of China and India.
He is so narrow-minded that his dangling earrings are forever getting entangled with each other.
I'm going to steal that line, MM. Never heard or read that one before.
"I see no negatives economically speaking (which is all I know you care about)"
Nonresponsive.
You don't care about the economy, you care about the end of the world.
Do you not see a consequence if India and China get a pass?
If not, how do you justify warning of the end of the world?
If the world is really ending *I* don't care about the economy either.
But when what I see are alarmists clearly not taking the magnitude of the "disaster" seriously, I suspect they are more interested in economic meddling than with world-saving.
Would you trust a religious leader who spent all his time in the pulpit preaching morality and all his time in private with prostitutes?
I'm going to steal that line, MM.
Well, I stole it from someone else, so go for it!
There are a whole lot of things that would get broad support from the deniers that would do what the alarmists say must be done. Nuclear energy on a huge scale, as Hoosier Daddy suggested, for one obvious example.
So lets DO that, huh?
I disagree that enacting federal policies to address AGW is harmful for our economy in the long run. I think it's more harmful for our economy if we don't, regardless of China and India.
Then I suggest you go back to college and take Econ 101 and perhaps even a macro econ and finance class (preferably one that isn't hip hop based) and then come back and have an informed and intelligent conversation.
If I wanted a discussion on an emotional level I'll go talk to a 10 year old on why life isn't fair.
Would you trust a religious leader who spent all his time in the pulpit preaching morality and all his time in private with prostitutes?
Maybe they could take a page from the Goreacle playbook and purchase "bootie offsets" for a clear conscience.
@tonejunkie
You replied...
I see no negatives economically speaking (which is all I know you care about) because I disagree that enacting federal policies to address AGW is harmful for our economy in the long run. I think it's more harmful for our economy if we don't, regardless of China and India.
Three “I’s” in two sentences. You failed the most basic premise that I set forth, ie, stepping outside yourself to consider a very simple question. I wanted to have a serious discussion outside what’s usually debated on this topic, but you can’t even get out of the kid’s pool. I’ve set you to a philosophical /ignore. Thanks for not even trying to consider another angle, though. That makes you a bit tonedeaf to other points of view, doesn’t it?
By the by, economic impacts are only a part of what I’m getting at. I’m betting you didn’t look up the security dilemma.
wv-abloch lol...how appropriate
Doh...sorry. There were four I's in that reply. I apologize. I only counted 75% of your failure.
My mistake.
There are a whole lot of things that would get broad support from the deniers that would do what the alarmists say must be done. Nuclear energy on a huge scale, as Hoosier Daddy suggested, for one obvious example.
Synova the very fact that nuclear power is a deal breaker for them simply tells me they aren't serious and either a) don't care if the economy is crippled or b) that's their goal all along.
Fact of the matter is current energy technology to maintain our standard of living is 1) fossil fuels 2) nukes. Now perhaps there are alternative sources out there that would be better than those but for the foreseeable future there isn't.
@Synova
The second widespread nuke plants are greenlighted (greenlit?) the Sierra Club and their ilk will have the federal government in court so fast it will make Obama's basketball spin.
How about a long enema hose for the local wing nuts?
It would at least be a start.
And yet another day of the howling, whining and bitching about anything relating to real science.
I wish I could be around to see how the children and grandchildren of some here deal with the effects of global warming on their lives...and of course, how they'll explain to their children, why their parents and grandparents were so fucking dumb.
Anybody who thinks global warming isn't real should read up its effect throughout Africa, and of course the melting icebergs.
Of course, that would require the locals to actually read something before posting the standard inane Al Gore diatribes.
Chipper Head - You went to school?
WOW.
Hoosier Da Da - How was the corn and maze fest in Farmland?
Are you still interested in my ball drop?
Let me know.
Doh...sorry. There were four I's in that reply. I apologize. I only counted 75% of your failure.
Failure to do what, argue the details over a subject we both think the other is too religiously unyielding on to make any concessions no matter how damning the evidence is opposing their viewpoint? When 97% scientific consensus isn’t enough to persuade, what is? That’s right 97% of scientists active in climate research isn’t good enough for conservatives, so really, why should I bother arguing economics or security on this matter with you when even my best on this subject isn't good enough to penetrate your troglodytic skull? I just came here to get in a few punches and now I’m satisfied.
Jeremy, your cogent arguments in support of AGW over your last few comments have convinced me. You're an articulate ambassador for the noble cause of global warming.
Dipshit.
tonejunkie said:
I just came here to absorb a few punches and now I’m slinking away, bloodied and humiliated.
Edited for accuracy.
I hadn't set my /ignore yet, so I'll try again.
You seem to be suffering under the impression that I'm debating your vaunted percentage. Even if I agreed with you whole-hog, you're still ignoring my exercise. It has zero to do with whether or not AGW is real or not.
All I did was to ask you to do a simple academic exercise and you couldn't do it.
I'll try a different tact.
As the 21st century American way of life seems to be the bane of existence, why would you exempt two countries (LARGE countries) who seem hell bent for leather to get it at seemingly all costs to their people and environment?
That seems awfully counter-intuitive if you do in fact believe that western excesses caused this whole thing.
Question is there a way I can actually block Jeremy from appearing on the comments?
So now titus is doing Alex and Jeremy.
If global warming is truly such a dire prospect - you might see Greenies advancing their religion to advocate truly drastic actions..rather than the present religion of demanding all in the West but no where else do small acts of hairshirt donning. Or if not voluntary, then forced hairshirt suffering imposed by government.
Such as?
1. Realizing one illegal alien family plopping up 5-6 insta-citizen spawn on US soil generate as much carbon as a whole city of 300,000 saves by switching from evil incandescent bulbs to Algore bulbs.
Where is the call to end insta-citizenship and deport unwelcome carbon users? Not on the Green agenda.
2. Where is the Green call for nuke power? After their Miracle Ethanol debacle, their mantra is now only Solar-Wind-Westerner Hairshirt-like penance through dumb meaningless acts of symbolic conservation and more Gummint..
3. Why are Greenies not working to reduce the rampant breeding of 3rd World human surpluses?
4. Why do Greenies count Germans getting rid of their coal-burning cement factories to Egypt and importing the cement as "carbon-saving" when much of the savings just shift high CO2-generating industry elsewhere on the planet?
We need blasphemers.
We need to ask if stopping CO2 generations is so important, why do Leftists want to rush food supplies For The Children!! to every region of the planet where "carbon-users" have too many people to feed themselves 7 years out of 10? And depend on nations the Left pillories for using "too much carbon" to make the surplus food for relief aid?
Why save the Noble Darfurans?
The reason there is conflict is the land is not adequate to support both the high-breeding rate Darfur pastoral Muslims AND the nomadic Janjaweed Muslims. Why not let them sort out who gets to have the land needed to support their carbon use?
Why is chopping down Brazilian rain forest and promoting species exterminations to "grow" ethanol a good thing?
You know, maybe there is a reason to turn over all money and power in the planet to the UN and its agents AlGore and BarakObama just to give meaning too human existence by fighting a war with the sun. The wonder of these heroic supermen almost stopping the Sun from warming the earth One degree too much will be better reality TV than the NFL and the World Cup combined. It is a shame that they have to become Tyrants to get that ole Sun under their control. But Ophra would understand their story.
So now titus is doing Alex and Jeremy.
I thought he was doing some Indian guy that won't let him eat butter.
Seriously I just want to be able to block these trolls so I can have discussion with reasonable people.
Even if I agreed with you whole-hog, you're still ignoring my exercise.
The fact you won't agree is the sticking point. It's like arguing with someone who says, "Okay, if I stipulate evolution is real for the sake of argument, then will you argue with me about what I want to argue about?" No, such is a person is the proverbial Frankian dining room table and not worth discussing it with.
tonedeafjunkie - nobody gives 2 shits what you think about global warming. So STFU and leave.
Seriously we Titus now to talk about whole hogs vs cut hogs and his Indian husband.
Another point that the crisis pushers are ignoring is that the proposed remedial action will not work to prevent the warming they are accepting as fact. The most expected, if the proposal are enacted and followed and successful, will be to reduce Global temperature 0.5 deg. C. That's if they work in some land of unicorns where all nations adopt them.
If the crisis mongers are right we will have a warmer climate no matter what they get enacted. If we follow them, we will suffer, especially in the west, dramatic economic and social costs from trying to prevent the warming.
If they are wrong the climate will not warm. If we follow them anyway, we still suffer the consequences for nothing.
The logical thing is to not follow them. At least in way that will cause the economic and social problems.
The pursuit of new energy technologies is completely separate and worthwhile for it's own reasons, but that does not require it be done in a way that damages our civilization. It will be just like all such progress before it; driven my market forces and human ingenuity, neither of which can be superseded by politics in the long run.
I, as a heretic, ask: Can't we just be sensible here?
bagoh - STFU. 97% of climatologists have already spoken and we don't need to listen to you.
*plugs ears LALALALALALALALALALALALALALA*
So...not debating someone who disagrees with you (as you seem to know my point of view by heart...ridiculous as that may seem from someone who's never met me or talked to me before).
The point I'm trying to make is that you don't know WHAT I believe. You absolutely refuse to do something as simple as I asked for debate's sake, even assuming that you're right.
My five-year-old has the same problem.
97% of scientists active in climate research is 100% dependent on grants to study the crisis for their mortgage checks.
If the source of funding was anything different and the scientific "consensus" was in line with pay-checks, the "pro-science" smarter-than-us crowd would dismiss the "science" without a second thought no matter the degrees and education of the scientists involved.
I believe that's a bingo Synova!
In the last few years the earth has actually cooled a bit. This was not predicted by the scientists whose models we are relying on to construct visions of flooded cities. What to do? More models, better models and, of course, a slight linguistic maneuver to remove the"warming" from "global warming" to the more satisfying "climate change." Which, of course, means that whatever happens will not impact the certainty of the models' residual which is always catastrophe. Intermittent facts do not remove the residual certainty. Models are great. I read financial models all the time. Equally amusing.
So, I figure that a flooded world would make a pretty cool sci-fi story... like Mad Max but with water instead of desert (but not the stupid living on a boat thing that Costner did) so I look up maps of water level rising to figure out where my awesome shallow inland sea will end up (hey, some pro-science academic was saying that when the 'red' states were all underwater that the blue states better have strict laws against refugees getting voting rights or the whole world would be screwed).
So I found one. A dynamic map that showed the flooding if it's two feet of sea level or 20 feet of sea level, all the way up to the worst predictions and nothing was underwater but New Orleans (which is underwater already), only half of New York City, and the Sacramento Valley.
I was so freaking *bummed*.
I realize it's science fiction and all, but my shallow red-state sea was no where to be found, and even though the "rules" give you one big scientific hand-wave to make something up whole-cloth, there IS the assumption that one gets the ordinary science at least passably correct.
Grrrr.
Nobody's mentioned how badly SO2 reeks-not as bad as H2S, but pretty awful.
I don't think this idea passes the smell test.
Despite trying to hide behind "science", I don't think there is much scientific about this crisis. Many here on both sides suggest we read the science. I agree, and I have read a lot of it, and I just don't see a clear indication of anything, not warming, not cooling, just variation entirely normal. That's what you see if go back even 400,000 years of global mean surface temperature. You see a pretty regular pattern including recent data. Nothing there.
As shown in this graph, even a shorter period like the last 4500 shows current temps are far from unusual or a crisis.
4500 yr temps
@bagoH2O
That data looks like it's ripe for a Fourier transformation!
I wonder though, looking at that graph, whether we just don't have precise enough data in the past to pick out the very sharp peaks and valleys that we see at the (current) right end of the graph.
What will be interesting is to see if the global cooling really does extend to 2019, and then jump sharply to 2038, and then drop off just as sharply. I don't see being able to predict that from the past data in that graph.
But what is interesting is that the graphs seem to be tied to volcanic and solar activity. I don't think that we are all that good at really predicting solar activity, and likely far worse at volcanic.
Could that 4500-yr plot be more hand-wavey?
I ask that because I haven't really heard of many large (as in Pinatubo-ish or El Chicon) Volcanic eruptions between '98 and now -- and given that their thesis is that Volcanic activity causes cooling . .
And what's with all those volcanic eruptions between 1700 and 1990? Shouldn't they be causing cooling?
re: thermometers and accuracy
Not only is there error in the individual instruments, but global warming data is routinely "corrected" for thermometer placement. So the Baltimore temperature of 1910, which was taken downtown, surely was affected by the buildings holding heat when compared with the 2009 Baltimore temperature, taken at the airport. The 2009 data is raised by a correction factor to compensate.
At least one reputable study shows almost all the warming of the last century comes from the correction.
So we are discussing radically altering our society due to an assumption about the quality of data which may be false.
And that should trouble anyone considering AGW.
So I found one. A dynamic map that showed the flooding if it's two feet of sea level or 20 feet of sea level, all the way up to the worst predictions and nothing was underwater but New Orleans (which is underwater already), only half of New York City, and the Sacramento Valley.
I was so freaking *bummed*.
I realize it's science fiction and all, but my shallow red-state sea was no where to be found, and even though the "rules" give you one big scientific hand-wave to make something up whole-cloth, there IS the assumption that one gets the ordinary science at least passably correct.
I think that you would need maybe 500 feet or maybe more for a good Red state sea, and even there, it would just look like a much bigger Gulf of Mexico. I was amazed to find that Minneapolis, MN is around 850 feet above sea level, while I used to go up 2,000 feet every night on my way home in the mountains just west of Denver. I think though that by then you would also have flooding up the Columbia above the tri-Cities (Pasco is about 400 feet). So much of central Oregon and Wash. would be under at 500 feet.
And 500 feet is far higher than anyone, even AlGore, can expect, even under LSD.
On the other hand, I would think that anyone interested in the effects of Global Warming should also look at projections of arable land in such a warmer climate. A couple of years ago, using off-the-cuff calculations, I figured that moving the line of cultivation a hundred miles north could unlock over a billion acres of farmland that is currently too cold to farm, with minimal loss of land too hot to farm (due to the shape of the continents).
The affect of Mt. Pinatubo was recorded. But even saying that volcanoes and the sun correlate to the higher and lower temperature swings doesn't say that's the only reasons that there are warm periods or cool periods. Saying that CO2 levels correlate to higher temperatures, other than the ice core thingies that were shown to show the opposite correlation (warm leads to higher CO2 instead of CO2 leading to warmer). We seem to be going on CO2 as a greenhouse gas, which is only one of many including, what, water vapor?
Not that flooding, even the slowly creeping up on you sort, isn't an expensive disaster, it's just not an unavoidable human catastrophe. Moving is not a catastrophe. Putting new construction (that would be built in any case) on higher ground is not a catastrophe.
I grew up where seasonal flooding is fairly common. It really sucks a whole lot when it happens but I don't think that anyone figures that they have a right to somehow not have the water rise. (They do tend to figure that if other people get government handouts for living in flood zones, they should *too*, but that's a different argument.)
We seem to be going on CO2 as a greenhouse gas, which is only one of many including, what, water vapor?
Water vapor is actually the dominant greenhouse gas, accounting for
95% of the greenhouse effect.
We seem to be going on CO2 as a greenhouse gas, which is only one of many including, what, water vapor?
I have an old earth sciences textbook from the late '70's (before the whole CO2 is evil rage) and they very clearly spell out and explain the albedo effect of increasing clouds which should accompany any increase in terrestial warming. This effect deflects the radiant energy entering the troposphere.
A question for you modellers out there is whether this effect is modeled in your models?
"It's from fucking thermometers! Mercury. They've been around for a long long time. No one has ever disputed the accuracy of thermometers that I'm aware of.
So looking at the trend on the graph, what's your best guess where it's headed again?"
The data you are looking at is so far far away from a mercury thermometer its laughable. The data has been massaged, adjusted and readjusted beyond recognition.
"And what's with all those volcanic eruptions between 1700 and 1990? Shouldn't they be causing cooling?"
It's dependent on total effective emissions to the atmosphere not just quantity of eruptions. A few big ones can be more effective than a lot of small ones.
The point I make with the graph is not their hypothesis for the data, but rather that the data shows no indication of a trend except in the short time periods usually used to make the point like, the last 1000 years, last 50 years or on the other side the last 10 years. There is just nothing there either way in the long term view.
Some volcanoes, such as Pinatubo, also manage to blast particles far higher in the atmosphere than others do.
If you look at the last 450,000 years you see much bigger variations, and that data suggests we are entering a long term cooling period. That's what I see. I'm not a climatologist, but I also don't benefit either way as in riding the grant wagon.
I love how conservatives will reject any empirical evidence, like thermometer readings plotted on a graph, and call that a "religion". As if a thermometer is some unknowable mystical thing.
Garage, the problem is that if you really follow up on the science, it's not nearly that simple. First of all, the notion of the "temperature of the Earth" is an abstraction capable of endless definition and very large measurement error; careful examination of the actual thermometer sites has revealed sources of large systematic errors that aren't accounted for, most of which are upward.
Second, those charts with the nifty red hooks upward turn out to depend on sources of temperature information other than thermometers; unfortunately, the nifty red hook is very dependent on selection of the data sources. (In fact, applying the methodology to statistical noise tends to show similar hooks. This makes the information content suspect.)
Third, at this point its becoming easy to document predictions made of catastrophe in twenty yers that were made twenty or more years ago. The catastrophes haven't happened, the predictions haven't held up.
Now, I'm not a climatologist specifically, but I have spent rather a long time on modeling of complex systems. In most any other scientific discipline that uses modeling, a model that makes long-term predictions that don't hold up is considered falsified. If those same standards were applied to a lot of climate science. well, it wouldn't stand up well.
Add to that some instances of real scientific misfeasance — things like the data needed to replicate a procedure not being shared — and some inconvenient eventual corrections and retractions, and the story looks a lot less clear.
People who give a forum for Freakonomics should be ashamed of themselves.
No wonder US students are falling behind in science.
"....but you go ahead and cling to that delusion because it helps fuel your hate at teabagger rallies."
LOLZ!!! No hate at all embedded in that "teabagger" jeer...none at all.
Jeez, these folks are self-parodying.
And anyone who wants to see graphs with trend lines, go to YouTube and watch Lord Monckton's speech. It'll take more than an hour, but it has real science, put together by real climatologists, oceanographers and atmospheric scientists. You should split-screen to watch to Powerpoints that accompany the speech.
Warning to moonbats: it's got lots and lots of empirical stuff aka observation and experiment in it.
Pastafarian said...
If only we could engineer some sort of machine that could absorb CO2 and sequester it into some sort of material that we could use to build structures, or transform it into food. And if we could engineer these complex devices so that they'd build themselves from carbon, and create more of themselves. And if only they were solar-powered, and gave off pure oxygen.
Only God can make a tree!
If the solution to AGW involved free markets and less government, discussing AGW would be evidence of racism.
I can see it now - Time Magazine lamenting how many "green jobs" a cheap geoengineering solution would cost the country.
"It's just that the proposals the Freakonomics folks talk about have been disputed quite thoroughly."
*citation needed*
At least the Freakanomics guys cite their sources. Where are yours?
A question for you modellers out there is whether this effect is modeled in your models?
Of course it is.
It's really quite a challenging problem, however. Some clouds have a net warming effect -- I think it's low clouds, but can't for the life of me remember for sure -- because they intercept outgoing longwave radiation and thereby prevent its escape to space. And a lot of the incoming radiation is absorbed by the cloud. In contrast, high clouds let shortwave energy in, but also reflect a lot, and they're not as efficient at absorbing outgoing longwave radiation, so the Earth can still cool. Or not warm as much.
So you warm the Earth, which means there will be more vapor in the atmosphere. If that warmer Earth has a lot more low clouds, the net effect will be a warmer Earth than if that warmer Earth has a lot more high clouds.
I hope that made sense. It's mostly from memory and not very coherently written.
But then before posting, I read this and this and realize I may be completely wrong!
It's really quite a challenging problem, however.
The tricky part must be the dynamic aspect-the ever changing mitigating and enhancing effects.
"clouds..but now they only block the sun..."
I think that perhaps Joni Mitchell got it right 40 years ago.
After reading this thread I've decided to log onto Amazon and buy the book ASAP.
Shanna asked how warm the Medieval Warm Period (or what we used to call the Medieval Climate Optimum, before everyone decided that warm climates were not optimal, even though it meant that folks could grow wine grapes in England and north Germany) was.
Well, here's a medievalist who is far from a climate specialist but has to talk about it on occasion: opinions differ - but here's a citation for a somewhat negative view: "How Warm Was the Medieval Warm Period?" Thomas J. Crowley and Thomas S. Lowery. Ambio, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Feb., 2000), pp. 51-54.
I have JSTOR access, but basically they want to say "don't read too much into it." Most of the things I've read about Greenland ice core samples put it pretty warm, but with ups and downs.
There's a lot of contradictory evidence, pointing to me, at least, that ice cores lead to a lot of debate.
I'd say the consensus we historians hear* is that the Hellenistic and Roman periods were pretty good for agriculture in the Mediterranean and Europe. There was a colder episode from the 400s to 850 - cooler and humid. The classic Medieval Warm Period is 1100-1300, but really 850-1300 seems pretty good...lots of expansion of agriculture, retreat or clearance of forests, grapes grown places they don't grow now, etc.
Then the Little Ice Age kicks in - right about the same time as the Black Death. NOT an optimum.
*which doesn't mean the scientists agree - but it's what we're teaching now.
Not that flooding, even the slowly creeping up on you sort, isn't an expensive disaster, it's just not an unavoidable human catastrophe. Moving is not a catastrophe. Putting new construction (that would be built in any case) on higher ground is not a catastrophe.
Moving New Orleans and maybe even Manhattan over the next 100 years is not really that expensive, in the scheme of things, esp. when compared to the costs being proposed. Now 100 feet in the next decade would cause problems. But not 20 feet over a century, which is far more reasonable (even assuming that there is global warming going on right now, despite the evidence of global cooling over the last decade).
Besides, there is the problem that the people living at sea level should know by now that they are going to be underwater in the next couple of years, according to the Goracle, and so any of them who have moved there recently are "coming to the nuisance", and we shouldn't worry about them for that reason alone. And, this includes pretty much everyone in New Orleans, since they all vacated in the aftermath of Katrina.
I think that you can tell when people are more religious than serious about this debate when they don't even look at the costs of moving those cities, and the time frame involved, and compare those costs to the mitigation costs being proposed.
"We'll have our green jobs to fall back on. From everything I've heard, this amounts to installing insulation in old houses. Prosperity, here we come!"
Don't forget millions of rewarding high tech jobs wiping bird shit off the solar panels.
So you warm the Earth, which means there will be more vapor in the atmosphere. If that warmer Earth has a lot more low clouds, the net effect will be a warmer Earth than if that warmer Earth has a lot more high clouds.
Face it - even the most knowledgeable climatologists don't fully understand all the feedback systems involved - which is why they invariably simplify their models to ignore some, if not much, of it. And, indeed, it is those simplifying assumptions about feedback that are one of the points of contention right now concerning the validity of those models showing global warming caused by man caused CO2 emissions.
"I've read articles about sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and freezing it into a solid and then shipping that into space."
Annual global carbon emissions are on the very rough order of 10 billion tons. In 1950 it was about 3 billion. The Ariane 5 can put about 10 tons in geosynchronous orbit, the Soyuz 2 about 3 tons, the Titan IV about 5 tons. That's a lot of launches.
So in just which of your sources did you read that brilliant suggestion, DTL, the Weekly World News?
"We'll have our green jobs to fall back on. From everything I've heard, this amounts to installing insulation in old houses. Prosperity, here we come!"
Again, I think that you can tell when people are not serious about the issue when they try to convince you that "green" (defined to be solar and wind power, but little else) jobs will somehow both solve this problem, as well as our unemployment problem.
They won't, and they can't. For one thing, replacing cheaper carbon based energy sources with more expensive "green" sources has to reduce GNP, and to make things worse, economically, the money has to flow through the government first, guaranteed to make any such transfer even more expensive in terms of GNP. Otherwise, Keynesian economics would work, and you could get yourself out of a recession by paying half the population to bury money (or anything else), and the other half to dig it up.
Oh, and did I mention that all those "green" energy sources need continuous energy backup for times when the "green" energy sources don't produce energy, such as night time for solar and windless times for wind energy generation? This means that you typically need to have all your hydrocarbon or nuclear based capacity anyway.
ATTENTION CARBON-BASED LIFE FORMS
ALL YOUR ECONOMY ARE BELONG TO US
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE
Gore may think that the balloon idea is nuts, but I question the basis of his opinion.
Al's degree is in journalism, and he was not a remarkable student. I don't care how late he stays up at night or how many books he reads, he will never be a scientist, much less a cutting edge climatologist. He has no grants, no laboratory, no equipment, and no staff. What he is, is a parody of himself.
Charlie
So if the computer models give us data that completely contradicts the climate history of the Earth, which are we gonna believe? At some point that decision must be made to accept the model over history for the AGW crisis to be real.
There's a lot of contradictory evidence, pointing to me, at least, that ice cores lead to a lot of debate.
I'd say the consensus we historians hear* is that the Hellenistic and Roman periods were pretty good for agriculture in the Mediterranean and Europe. There was a colder episode from the 400s to 850 - cooler and humid. The classic Medieval Warm Period is 1100-1300, but really 850-1300 seems pretty good...lots of expansion of agriculture, retreat or clearance of forests, grapes grown places they don't grow now, etc.
Thanks! I actually saw this thing on the history channel on the little ice age and then read the book and I'm sort of fascinated by the whole thing now. Of course, I got into a discussion with my cousins husband the other day and he is apparently really passionate about how bad global warming is and the sea levels rising...but he's never heard of the little ice age or the medieval warm period (or climate optimum). I will admit that book made me really think that warm is likely better than cool for all of us.
But back to the temp, I am particularly interested in the how accurate those ice cores are and how they test them...do they look at them now, versus old ones?
For a theory to be of any use it must be falsifiable in some manner. We are told that increased temperatures or decreased temperatures are due to AGW. We are told that increasing intensity of storms or decreasing intensity are both due to AGW. More or less ice cap coverage... Okey Dokey. There appears to be no way in which these theories could be proven false. This is the "tell" in the con.
Here are just a few of the questions which you would need to know the answer to before it would make any sense to tamper with the economy and environment.
Is warming occurring?
Is CO2 the cause?
What are the downsides to increased CO2 and temperature?
What is the upside?
Does one outweigh the other.
If increased CO2 nets on the downside then what if anything can be done to fix it?
What are the negative effects of a potential fix?
What are the costs of doing this?
Are these costs added to the benefits of warming enough to outweigh the downside to not acting?
What are the political repercussions and can they be borne by a free men without rebellion.
Could we trust to political class to actually implement a fix without it being a Cash for Clunkers for the environment?
We are nowhere close to answering even the first question. But I KNOW the answer to the last two. To act before we know the answers to all of these questions is to acknowledge that we do not care whether we do more harm than good... for indeed we do not know which it will be. The whole thing is such an obvious non-starter to anyone with a scientific background that it boggles the mind it is even being discussed in a serious fashion.
Belief in AGW is very low amongst those with degrees in the sciences... much lower than in the population at large because we know the limitations of the sort of modeling that is being done. It is more or less useless and will not get any better for millennia once we have had a chance to take actual data over a significant period of time. Anyone who tells you differently is not a scientist.
Also, the unwillingness of the AGW proponents to share their data or the details of their models and the outright fraud that has already been perpetrated is enough to put most serious scientists off the entire field. Right now climatology occupies a spot in the scientific hierarchy roughly akin to psychiatry. Both fields study systems too complex to be modeled given our current state of knowledge and they are both fields in their infancy. I would no more enact Cap and Trade on the advice of climatologists than I would put antidepressants in the water supply on the advice of psychiatrists.
The other thing to remember is who is going to get funding for their studies? Scientists documenting the benefits of CO2 and those finding no warming or those with the shrillest claims? who will get money for follow-up studies? This is one of the few questions to which we definitively know the answer.
BTW I run a small business that is a factory with 17 employees. We have no insulation in the building and run lots of heavy equipment... all in the same jurisdiction as Al Gore. Even so, his electric bill at his home is several times what ours is. He does not believe anything he is saying. His actions give him away. It is as absurd as a Pope throwing an orgy while scolding his parishioners about their sexual appetites. Gore should be taken no more seriously by us than he takes himself.
Well, Cranky, what you historians should draw from the evidence is that approximately 1000 years ago the climate was such that Greenland was able to sustain Viking colonies using nothing more than normal Medieval farming methods.
I think we have a ways to go.
George, I usually hate long comments, but yours explains the hysteria very well. I especially liked this:
"I would no more enact Cap and Trade on the advice of climatologists than I would put antidepressants in the water supply on the advice of psychiatrists."
My observations on Science and AGW after working in academic research in Molecular Biology for the last fourteen years.
Academic Science in general.
1) In order to get a grant 90% of the research for that the new grant must already be done (your new grant funds your next grant under the table).
2) Incremental improvement of a field is the unofficial goal. Groundbreaking or revolutionary research need not apply for grants (you wont get them the orthodox guard has turf to protect and there are only so many dollars which are better spent on the orthodoxy) (examples look up the history of Helicobacter pylori or plate tectonics)
3) You must carefully watch for direct competitors reviewing your grants or papers (they will occasionally trash your proposal then rewrite it up for their selves or sit on a paper of yours for months until their own paper can come out first.
4) Scientists are people too. They will trend to the hot areas of interest and will generally follow consensus as that is the easiest course with the fewest obstacles.
5) No untenured professor will battle the orthodox (its career suicide).
6) Teaching doesn’t matter only research counts for tenure.
AGW
1) Almost all the original data used to construct the global warming models is gone, unavailable, or been refuse to be released. (Red Flag)
2) The models are all unsuccessful in running linear regressions that go back further than 30 years (Red Flag)
3) The same model will not produce the same result twice without forcing the model (Red Flag)
4) The error bars on global temperature overlap (Big Big Red Flag in any other field but Global Warning it will get you laughed at, ridiculed, and have your work loudly declared worthless)
5) The Medieval Climate Optima was renamed the Medieval Warm Period then recently renamed the Medieval Climate Anomaly (Small Yellow Flag)
6) The Little Ice Age ended. If it ended temperatures should go up (Red Flag).
7) Long term weather stations that provide temperature reading at the earth surface are fatally compromised. (They are to close to buildings, air conditioner exhaust ports, over pavement, etc greater than half fail the established standards) (Big Big Red Flag).
I’ll add to both later if I feel bored.
Looking for a serious climate science who is also an AGW skeptic? Try this one.
WV: progsc = progressives suck (j/k)
" garage mahal said...
Thank your for coming in to give an example of stupid people who can do no more than look at the pretty graph. You really are performance art. Sometimes you get it right. That was too funny. You do more to discredit and make liberals stupid than 100 conservatives could do in a year of posting. Many thanks.
So again, thermometer readings [in addition to being quasi-religious], can also be described as performance art? Here is a clue: At least I'm looking at real data. It's from fucking thermometers! Mercury. They've been around for a long long time. No one has ever disputed the accuracy of thermometers that I'm aware of.
So looking at the trend on the graph, what's your best guess where it's headed again?
10/27/09 11:19 AM"
The earth is four billion years old. Which year are you using as the base year? What's the frequency Kenneth?
So we are supposed to bankrupt ourselves on the basis of models whose data sets are suspect, relying on readjusted temperatures from thermometer readings done a century ago in sporadic areas with models that can't account for all of the probable factors that influence climate and whose predictions from the baseline they start with going forward can't predict the results their proponents claim. One has to be a progressive to believe such things, no ordinary man could that big a fool.
tonejunkie wrote:
When 97% scientific consensus isn’t enough to persuade, what is?
Consensus is not science. Did you know that the theory of plate tectonics was dismissed for decades by the "consensus" of scientist? Did you know that Thomas Gold, who suggested in the 1940's that our auditory system utilized an active receiver, was also dismissed by the "consensus" of audiologist for over 30 years. Are you at all familiar with the worldwide "consensus" of Eugenics at the turn of the last century with the end result we now call the Holocaust? These are but 3 examples of the long history of "consensus" science that that has been wrong. Consensus science being wrong is not the exception, it is the rule. Are you at all familiar with the history of science?
Probably already been said but until the scientists can take the data from a certain date and plug that data into their models and then accurately predict the actual climate at later periods of time, then I have no faith in the models at all.
For instance, take all the data available in the time period up to say 1950. Based on that and the trendline of the time, predict what the climate would be in 1980, 1990 and then in 2000. If the model can do that, then maybe I might have some faith in the model and the scientist who is foisting the model on us. Not much, but at least some. Without that capability, then it strikes me that it is all just BS and we should disregard the whole thing.
Marxism has a concensus.
Always.
garage mahal,
Shouldn't your pretty graph be corrected for the PDO? Known since 1997 and now in a cooling phase expected to last 30 years.
Hmmmm? Ever wonder why he and those paltry fifty or so scientists did not win one of the Nobel Science Prizes?
Now you've gone and done it! Expect Algore to walk away with one next year.
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