"... we just kind of have to walk around the world at this point and look at what is happening to nature and earthquakes and tsunamis."
Here's a tip: When you want to call somebody dumb, try not to say anything dumb.
Now, Eve Ensler, to make up for your embarrassing derision, you can "walk around the world." Make sure to take a running leap when you get to the oceans.
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266 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 266 of 266bagoh20: I am definitely willing to go where the data goes, but I believe we ought to be able to see the data and know, to paraphrase the poet, what was left in and what was left out. To select this weather station and not that, to choose these data points and not those, to report some findings and not others probably all makes sense, but shouldn't we get a look? A peek? You say that this January had global 20 year high temperatures? According to whom? Did the presenter of that fact know what to leave in and what to leave out? Are you also curious?
@SMG
Only in a rich capitalist liberal democracy can such nonsense survive.
Not to hijack the thread, but I made basically the same point about what sucks about Boomers yesterday...(said as I duck behind the nearest solid object and adorn a good helmet with +5 resistance to blogflame)
@smgalbraith
and the noise a vagina can make is actually quite rude...
wv: gletrib
We need to re-collect all the temperature data, that was "lost" by the CRU...
"Scrub" it.....
And run statistical analysis on it...
To their great credit, the left-wing Guardian UK is calling for exactly that.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/feb/08/case-for-climate-change-science
I haven't had time to read the 12-parter that goes with this column, but from a quick scan, it does seem to hold to the "nothing in Climategate should raise doubts about AGW" line. But unlike any US mainstream news outlets, they at least acknowledge the damage the e-mails caused to the credibility of these scientists, their methods and their ethics. At least they believe their country's FOIA is meant to further all inquiry, not just the storylines they favor.
As with the Sarah Palin story in 2008, the Climategate story of 2009-10 is as much about the state of journalism as it is about the story subject itself. I don't have to believe Sarah Palin ought to have been vice president or president to decry the shoddy journalism about her. And I don't have to be anti-environment to decry the NYT's inability to tell the story of the IPCC's intellectual corruption. If there is AGW, then by all means let's address it. But for fuck's sake, if the scientists who are telling us the current warming is "unprecedented" can't be trusted with the data that would prove or disprove that contention, then we need to start over. We just do.
Regardless of what you believe about AGW, nobody who has studied it really expects any controls put on ourselves to work at stopping it. In the end, if the worst turns out to be true, we will simply deal with it, because we will not prevent it.
AGW proponents need to grow up and accept this. If it turns out not to be a problem then their actions will have been criminal in the extreme.
It seem analogous to buying very expensive lightning insurance.
Opus One Media --
"Goodlord, you aren't one of those anti-science people are you? The ones with no brains? The pod people? Run run the sky is falling."
I'll take that as a refusal to define climate. It was a trap, of course. Climate is defined as the prevailing weather conditions averaged over a period of years.
Notice something? Period of years is a vague term. Two, ten, a hundred, a thousand: all are perfectly good stretches of time to define climate in.
It's telling that the AGW folk define climate as the time-frame convenient to their agenda.
Since you've been here a bit OOM, I'll have to assume your memory isn't good enough to recall my degree is in science.
We outlawed chloro-fluorocarbons years ago, but are they continuing to persist in the atmosphere? Because chloro-flourocarbons are vastly worse greenhouse gases than CO2.
CFCs are remarkably stable chemical compounds, which is why they were so in demand. Once CFCs are broken apart by UV in the stratosphere, the released chlorine has a residence time of 100 or so years, if I'm remembering right. Maybe it's 200 or 500. Less than a thousand.
And while CFCs are a great greenhouse gas, their concentration in the atmosphere is very much smaller than CO2. And it's decreasing, unlike the concentration of CO2.
"We need to re-collect all the temperature data, that was "lost" by the CRU..."
Some data has been preliminarily recast without "adjustment" and indicate a stable climate.
Here is one case:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/
Fuckin shovel my walk already, BAGO!
I of course mean that in as non-derisive a tone as possible. ;-)
@Ritmo, man up and shovel your own. I just did mine.
Michael,
Here is a link about the record January temps:
http://reason.com/blog/2010/02/10/global-temperature-trend-updat
Like you, I want all the data and methodology open to all. Any scientist who does not should be ignored, period.
Ritmo,
You know I'll do it. I'm willing to do almost anything to help the feeble. I don't know why you care about the snow, aren't you grounded till summer anyway?
Ritmo...Your are right. It takes cold air mixing with warm humid air to start a snow storm. So half the cause of the massive snow is colder air coming down from the Artic. But how could that have happened? The cold air keeps on coming down. Is the continued waves of polar air blasts a normal climate variation that has been MIA since 1880?
Luckily the most I've been obligated to shovel so far was my car out of the snow floes yesterday. I left it over a few days and then garaged it last night. But there is simply no letting up tonight. Folks are pitching shovels into ice sheets inches thick that won't stop forming. The roads have too much continual build-up of fluffy powder to do much.
I think I'm going to watch my company tonight make me some snow angels, as promised. But she's got that strong Midwestern/Northwest PA stuff in her. And then for some dining in.
I finally took off a Red Wings hat. The Russian guy that relieved us all from the rest of the day's work must have figured out how Detroit's hockey team came to be over the last couple decades. No fear. Emergency weather conditions be damned!
Not sure what you mean by "grounded", Bago, my pal. But my romantic life may surely suffer if I can't be allowed to hop a plane every few months in pursuit the fauna of lush, exotic, environs. Not in terms of quantity, you see, but in terms of quality and fun.
You know how it goes, Bago. You know, you know.
Just about the only romantic getaway in the ice is Superman's Fortress of Solitude. And I ain't flying with no engine to the North Pole. Not tonight, at least.
If you believe the AGW alarmists, then most of what you do today is immoral.
Come, join the agnostic and be free of your guilt. You also get the added benefit of not having to feel guilty all over again later if you find out you were wrong.
But that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is an undeniable fact--as much an undeniable fact that the air in a glass greenhouse is going to be warmer on a sunny day than the air outside.
No, Freder, it is not that simple.
Neither the CO2 nor the greenhouse shell is a stand-alone factor that automatically insures a warmer temperature.
We have had more CO2 in the atmosphere during Ice Ages and early "snowball earth" days. Other factors in the net climate equation meant net cooling, despite increased CO2.
A greenhouse will not be warmer than surrounding atmosphere on sunny days if you have an inadequate number of windows, and if 2/3rds the windows are missing, adding new quantity so you have 50% sealage - makes no difference in temperature.
Your greenhouse can be 5-10 degrees cooler than surrounding air if you are spraying with water and evaporative cooling and open vents for water vapor, while the rest of the glass seals in the "natural AC".
===============
Freder Frederson said...
CO2 is not a pollutant. Can we at least agree on that?
Depends what you mean by pollutant? I'll agree to your characterization if you agree to spend two hours in a room where the CO2 level has reached 5%.
Freder, you really don't "get" what a pollutant is.
If you think it is "anything that is in too great or too little a concentration" well, water, driven mainly by its enabling culprit, "BLessed Solar power!" - has killed more men than all wars combined.
CO2 becomes lethal over time at 9%. Though steady state adverse effects are noted between 2-8% by the MSDS Sheet research, and OSHA limits it to 0.5%. (5,000 ppm).
Water kills in many ways. It's toxicity is known. Breathing more than 2% in air mass as mist into the lungs over time will kill. Forced consumption of more than 1 liter/hr (human equivalent) over several hours will kill from edema and electrolyte depletion.
Oxygen becomes fatal via lung deterioration if breathed in concentrations greater than 50%, less at higher partial pressures. If it's concentration ever reached 32-35% in the atmosphere, all acquatic life would die and anything burnable would eventually get burned.
So CO2 is toxic in the same sense that water and oxygen (or cheeseburgers) are.
ot: wv: kings
That was a pretty good show. I'm sorry it was canceled.
If you're talking to me, Bago (4:59), I'm not sure why morality is a more accurate lens than simple prudence. And I'm fine with agnosticism regarding the ultimate results of this giant science experiment we're conducting. If we turn out fine, then wonderful.
I am, further, all on board with your approach for where we go from here on collecting data that everyone can agree on.
The only thing we (may) disagree on is the role of prudence when it comes to science in the public interest and at what point it makes sense. I merely happen to take the wild-eyed, controversial stand that Arrhenius has not yet been proved wrong and should be taken as a guide.
Other than that, I really don't disagree much with anything you've said that I read so far.
former law student said...
Further, realize that the United Nations has taken the lead in eradicating female genital mutilation everywhere it occurs as a violation of the human rights of the child.
Oh, they have, have they? They lock up the perpetrators? They take the trouble to cut off the perpetrator's penis? They actually *do* something about it? I had no idea they had this kind of authority in Great Britain.
Besides, I was talking about American feminists. Where are the marches? Where is the loud screaming on the television?
Here is the NOW website. http://www.now.org
I did a search on "clitoris" and got nothing, and any action on "fgm" is from years ago. Somehow protesting it just doesn't fit well with the leftist narrative. On their front page, they DO trumpet that "Abortion is health care". Uh huh. I guess babies just start growing by themselves in there, like cancerous tumors or something.
So how long do I have to wait until someone claims that all this snow we're getting on the East coast is a sign of "cooling"?
Well, my cousins husband sent me an article in time about how the snow is the result of GW, and isn't that at least equally dumb, if not more so?
Oh Baby Trig, this makes me want to beat my head on the wall.
Michael Crichton was a global warming skeptic. He believed in some man made global warming (as do I). I guess he was an idiot too.
BEHAR: Well she plays fast and loose with facts.
ENSLER: Oh, does she ever.
This is too funny during a conversation that has about as much intellectual depth as "fire has never melted steel."
First, of course, as mentioned... Sarah Palin doesn't dispute that the world is warming. She's generally cautious about what she says, but I haven't heard her deny it.
Second, of course... climate change doesn't cause earthquakes or tsunamis. This thing called plate tectonics causes earth quakes and earth quakes cause tsunamis. Or if we want to be *precise* about it I sort of like this term... impulsive disturbance.
"A tsunami (pronounced tsoo-nah-mee) is a wave train, or series of waves, generated in a body of water by an impulsive disturbance that vertically displaces the water column. Earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, explosions, and even the impact of cosmic bodies, such as meteorites, can generate tsunamis."
These women embarrass me. Are men this embarrassing? I suppose that some are. They must be. Maybe the difference is that when men are being stupid they don't stand up and announce loudly, before they begin, that they are speaking for and representing MEN.
First, of course, as mentioned... Sarah Palin doesn't dispute that the world is warming.
You mean she actually caved on the AGW bullshit? Prove me that the earth is warming in any meaningful sense. Temperature reading over 30 years is meaningless.
If the Global Warming crisis is causing Global Cooling, then how will we cause Global Warming to come back when we really need it? Could we increase the CO2 trace gas? Unfortunately that raising CO2hasn't worked the last two years while a new Maunder Minimum has held sway. There's not enough virgins left to sacrifice them, and sacrificing the USA's remaining strength in a hostile world is super insane.
Synova said: " These women embarass me. . . Maybe the difference is that when men are being stupid they don't stand up and announce loudly, before they begin, that they are speaking for and representing MEN."
I'm right there with you. Maybe we can start a third sex. One where we don't talk about our sex a whole lot and just treat ourselves and each other like people.
- Lyssa
If warmer air holds more moisture, causing all this snow, then where does a hot dry desert come from?
Heh...
I think I finally figured it out.
It's not that Sarah Palin is pretty or fecund or married to a hunky guy or even that she's religious or conservative or didn't abort Trig...
It's that she talks to men.
Here you've got a lady with a talk show aimed at women, interviewing a lady who has dedicated her life to women's issues and vaginas and all of that.
And then you've got Sarah Palin, who is a woman, more or less spitting in the face of that by going off and pretending she can just step into a leadership position that isn't about women.
I read a short article the other week about how having so many black actors on television and in movies, and those really big ticket draws like Will Smith or the guy in "Book of Eli"... Denzel Washington? How all that didn't mean that blacks were doing better in Hollywood because (this part is important) the movies that these top draw actors and actresses are in aren't *about* being black. They are supposed to be *about* being black.
Wouldn't it be the opposite of that? Wouldn't the interchangeability of Bruce Willis and Will Smith in an action role (ignoring age for a moment) be the victory?
I find it hard to even get my mind around it but I think the same process relates to which sorts of "roles" are acceptable for women. It's like ghetto-izing yourself or something. And Hillary is off talking *women's* issues? What the heck? She's the Secretary of State. But she's a *woman* and therefore she can be expected to have pet "women" projects sort of like the first lady advocating for skinny kids.
Sarah Palin has the gall to get out there and act like she's not even *aware* of what she ought to be doing.
"If warmer air holds more moisture, causing all this snow, then where does a hot dry desert come from?"
From the prevailing air currents having passed over and dropped their moisture elsewhere.
Deserts are just as often cold as they are hot.
@Synova
It's like how we were expected to vote for Hillary because she was a woman and we're women and voting for her would be voting for women....
What a crock.
wv: duciessn
Are men this embarrassing?
Joe Biden. Case closed.
Garage,
"Have New Agers infiltrated any other scientific fields according to your crack research?"
Hell yea - Yale, like the global warming folks, wants a "more fluid concept of medicine" - which all these hospitals have already initiated. Dude, medicine is NewAge heaven these days.
I'm at work, but almost done - I'll try to give you more (in other fields) when I get home.
What I find interesting is that the level of debate has gone up remarkably over the last six months or so. A year ago, all someone had to do to win the debate by pointing out that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the consensus was that the world was in horrible shape here, and there was no contrary papers, etc.
Now we know that the main models are held together with band-aids, the programs are undocumented and unmaintainable, their inputs have been heavily massaged, the consensus was artificially created though manipulation of the peer review process, the IPCC used a lot of un-peer reviewed articles for their policy projections, some from environmental advocacy groups, the head of the IPCC is on the take, and that the feedback level assumed by the main models has been statistically rejected at over a 95% confidence level.
In short, the "science" was grossly oversold.
"Joe Biden. Case closed."
Oh I know. There are a lot of really stupid men who say and do stupid things.
I just wonder if it is different because Joe isn't up there insisting that he's speaking on behalf of men or particularly representing men.
There's this gender normative assumption, or something... like heteronormative but a normative assumption of just *being* without having to stick a "I'm a man" on the front of anything. Men don't think of themselves as this separate group.
And I think that Palin doesn't either.
Or Will Smith taking a part that just *is* instead of being about blackness.
And I think that there is a sense communicated at times that addressing humanity as a whole without seeming self-consciousness is somehow *bad*.
Me? I just think it means you grew up.
"If warmer air holds more moisture, causing all this snow, then where does a hot dry desert come from?"
Here in northern Nevada, to simplify a lot, the wet air cools as it rises over the Sierras, dumping its load. It then drops back down after the Sierras, warming back up. But now the moisture level in the air is far below its carrying capacity, and so all the way across Nevada and half way through Utah, the warm air picks up whatever moisture it can, until it hits the mountains in central Utah, where the water is again dumped when the air cools as it goes over the mountains.
I live now in NW Nevada, due east of the place where NV and CA bend. What is amazing is that we can see places where it may dump several feet a night around Lake Tahoe, yet we don't get it on the valley floor just to the east. And if you head east from here, it is nearly a high desert for 400 or so miles until you reach mid-Utah.
I would suggest that there are a number of reasons that we think of deserts as hot. One is that dry air warms up and cools down faster than damp air. Thus, the temperature swings during a 24 hour period are typically greater in a dry climate. That means hot days and cold nights. Combine this with fewer clouds, due to the lesser amount of moisture, and you get more solar heating during the day.
Pretty much anyone who believes in AGW is an idiot.
So Sarah Palin getting trashed by Joy Behar and Eve Ensler is the equivalent of a black kid getting beat up for acting white?
"Pretty much anyone who believes in AGW is an idiot."
They can believe whatever they want, but we have separation of church and state. Things like Cap and Trade are the AGW collection plate.
"So Sarah Palin getting trashed by Joy Behar and Eve Ensler is the equivalent of a black kid getting beat up for acting white?"
Except that one is violent, otherwise both involve attacking someone out of jealousy for them being successful. Good observation!
Willfully misconstruing a quote like "good rape" taken from a work of artistic license is pretty pathetic.
No glorifying adult - teenage sex is pathetic, artistic license or not.
There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
- Michel de Montaigne
"There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
- Michel de Montaigne"
And sainthood for not indulging his desires.
Maguro said...
"How many feet of water are those east coast cities going to be under? Melting floating ice doesn't change sea level. Ice displaces water."
In a target rich environment of utter stupidity I suppose it isn't fair to just pull Maguro out of the cesspool but what the hell....Hey, idiot...when water temperature rises what happens? (hint: think of any fluid that enjoys a temperature rise...and think about volume.....) You mean that when water temperatures rise the volume of water increases a little bit? onmygod...you ignorant putz...and you didn't stop to think about that?
Couple that with your equally stupid ice and water observation (hey that would mean you fill your glass full to the brim with water and drop an ice cube in it and it wouldn't overflow???? is that what you friggin mean????) and we have a leader among fools here...
I do have to observe that your bravery is astounding and i am in awe...that you can get up every day and face the world with a head full of mush and disdain for science, no curiousity and takin' it up your butts for some boneheaded beliefs is truely admirable.
"So Sarah Palin getting trashed by Joy Behar and Eve Ensler is the equivalent of a black kid getting beat up for acting white?"
Maybe. I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, but yeah, a bit.
I mean... it's something I've pondered quite a bit and maybe I'm wrong and it really doesn't apply to Palin and attitudes toward her.
Most of the time I'm thinking of it in terms of feminism or minority art... usually writing, but other things too. There seems to be this idea that minorities should do minority things... should write minority books or make minority movies. And then a great deal is made of the lack of popular inroads achieved.
Isn't that result actually part of the design?
The article about Hollywood pretty much came out and said it. Because only a couple of films that Will Smith made lately were *about* being a minority, his success doesn't *count*. Because so many of the parts he plays could have been played by a white male actor his *success* doesn't really count.
And I've thought that about Ensler before. She has made the decision to promote women, but she does so in a way that means never moving to saying important things about *people*. And when that's part of the design, it makes sense that the result would be marginalizing your own voice.
And even if one doesn't like Palin's politics, her approach to it all has been... she doesn't even *ignore* it, because that involves actually noticing it's there to ignore... she just sticks herself out there and *presumes* to have a voice that speaks to absolutely anyone and everyone.
Sort of like men do.
Am I delusional?
Opus, I think you've missed some points.
Ice floats because the structure of it is *less* dense than liquid water. I believe water ice is unique.
Ice in a full glass of water, when it melts, doesn't increase the volume of water in the glass.
I do not know how much less dense warm water is than cold water. I had thought that liquids, unlike gasses, don't spread out and can't be compressed.
Which is why hydrolics work.
It is a fact that CO2 has certain physical properties relating to how it aborbs and emits light and heat. It is not a scientific fact that it is a "greenhouse gas", because the existence of a greenhouse effect is theoretical, not factual. Theories are how you explain facts; they are not facts themselves.
Now, it is certainly true that *aspects* of the greenhouse effect theory are pretty solidly proven and that, all things being equal, a planet with more CO2 will be warmer than one with less. But that doesn't tell us how much of a temperature increase we would see from, say, tripling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We can hypothesize what the effects would be, but there is no way to test the hypothesis.
In short, anyone who tells you it is settled science that the Earth will warm dangerously because of human activity is either ignorant or actively lying to you. It isn't settled science. It might be a belief widely held by people who work as scientists -- but science is about what you can prove and disprove, not about how many people agree with you.
Water is not very easily compressed, but like almost any fluid it does become less dense at a hotter temperature. You're right that solid water (ice) is unique in having a lower density than its liquid state, and there are chemical models to explain why this is so. But in the liquid state, it does indeed expand with temperature, no matter how difficult it is to compress.
Compressibility has everything to do with pressure exerted on it and little to almost nothing to do with how it behaves in response to a change in temperature.
Other than that, thanks for explaining that deserts are dry. Not never cold, not always hot. Just pretty consistently dry.
Ice floats because the structure of it is *less* dense than liquid water. I believe water ice is unique.
I believe that diamonds are the same. However, we really don't have the environment for this to work. I think I read this in relation to one of the outer giants - maybe Neptune or Uranus, that had the pressure to support different diamond phases.
because the existence of a greenhouse effect is theoretical, not factual.
And yet, Revenant does not, surprisingly, proclaim that greenhouses in themselves are a theoretical construct.
I suppose we just imagine that they become hotter than their external surroundings, though. Right?
I have no idea what you're talking about, Bruce.
Diamonds are one of three crystal (i.e., solid) structures of carbon.
I'm not aware that the same analysis of compression properties applies with any utility to crystals. The bonds between the atoms are stronger and compressibility is not an issue. Polymers, such as plastic for instance, might be a bit different. But compressibility is generally a property describing distinctions between various liquids - at least as I understand it.
You can use hardness to describe solids. But that is a different thing.
Liquids are not crystals; there are no bonds between the atoms. There is more give and take and those atoms can flow over and past one another. They have completely different physical properties. They might compress more easily or less easily.
I don't think that it really matters whether ice from glaciers sink or float. Eventually, they drift towards the Equator, where they melt, (temporarily) adding their water to the oceans.
BUT that doesn't mean that we need to start worrying about our coastal cities will be submerged (excluding New Orleans, much of which is already below sea level). Sure, there are models that show that if A, B, C, and D were true, then maybe the Greenland glaciers might thaw, or the Arctic ice. But A, B, C, and D are assumptions, and at least some apparently are not true, since in real live (as opposed to those models), the oceans seem to be rising at a fraction of an inch a year, if that. So, unless it continues to sink, even New Orleans will be safe for the foreseeable future. That is the great thing about models - you can predict anything you want, as long as you put your assumptions up front. But before panicking over this, people should have asked the scientists who actually measure ocean levels first.
Now, if AlGore had been right, and we could look at 20 feet in a decade, then maybe we should worry about this problem. But he was picking figures out of his rear end, and ignoring all those assumptions I mentioned above. The reality is that under any reasonable rise in the sea level, the rise would be less than the replacement rate for the buildings affected. Thus, there would be essentially zero cost in just moving the buildings. Far cheaper than the trillions of dollars to conform to Kyoto and Copenhagen.
It actually matters a whole lot if water ice floats or sinks.
If it sinks it *doesn't* float toward the equator. It freezes and sinks to the bottom of the lake or ocean and our bodies of water freeze from the bottom up.
We'd be looking at snowball earth for eternity.
Sometimes I think that the many properties of water, all by themselves, are proof of God.
Diamonds are one of three crystal (i.e., solid) structures of carbon.
That is what we see, because we cannot see the other phases of diamonds (except very recently). We just don't have the pressures. But apparently diamonds have the same types of phases as water.
Try this link: Oceans of Liquid Diamond May Exist On Neptune and Uranus which says that:
The research was conducted by taking detailed measurements of the melting point of diamond. When diamond is melted it behaves like water during freezing and melting, with solid forms floating atop liquid forms. Diamond is a very hard material which makes it difficult to melt. Measuring the melting point of a diamond is very difficult because when it's heated to very high temperatures the diamond changes to graphite.
Since it's the graphite and not the diamond that turns to liquid, scientist are faced with the problem of melting the diamond without it turning to graphite.
Scientists can get around this problem by exposing the diamond to extremely high pressures by blasting it with lasers. The diamond is liquefied at pressures 40 million times greater than that found at Earth's sea level.
If it sinks it *doesn't* float toward the equator. It freezes and sinks to the bottom of the lake or ocean and our bodies of water freeze from the bottom up.
Makes sense.
http://flood.firetree.net/
This site is much less fun than it could be. It can be set to different ocean levels up to 14 meters increase.
And yet, Revenant does not, surprisingly, proclaim that greenhouses in themselves are a theoretical construct.
I suppose we just imagine that they become hotter than their external surroundings, though. Right?
Certainly greenhouses exist. I'll even go so far as to say that it is settled science that if you encased the entire Earth in a large glass building, it would warm up quite a bit.
I'm just amused that you apparently think actual greenhouses are kept warm by "the greenhouse effect". It's a metaphor, silly goose.
...and disdain for science, no curiousity and takin' it up your butts for some boneheaded beliefs is truely admirable.
Off your meds again House? AGW is a bone headed belief. It is not based on science. It is a combination of bone headed made up theoretical models, junk science, and a biblical apocalyptic storyline.
Add to the fact that the UN, for the past forty years, has been a corrupt, incompetent, ineffective, and totally useless organization. This is who we are going to rely on to tell the world about a false prophecy?
Hundreds of real scientists have been sounding the alarm on this fraud for about two years. Some people are finally listening.
Did you ever wonder why Gore and company received the Nobel Peace Prize versus one of the Nobel Science Prizes?
Well, Eve Ensler may have done some good in the world (though I suspect she never actually got her hands dirty, since I can't find a cite of her involvement in this fabulous Congolese shelter), but she sure sounds like an idiot. And that's the point of the post, isn't it? Important life wisdom: if you want to call someone dumb, don't make up crap about them and then say dumb things.
I wonder what good old Eve would say about Germaine Greer's support of female circumcision?
Anyway, 258 posts in, I thought I'd lighten the mood by quoting a real moron, our current vice president, Joe Biden. Slate has a nice roundup, but here are some gems:
"Well, you know, look, that's the reason (Obama) ran for president, to separate the future from the past."
On America's job hopes: "Well, I say, they're going to start to see unemployment grow this spring."
How does he feel about his former colleage Arlen Specter? "Who would you pick—even if you don't like the SOB? Who would you pick? Arlen Specter."
They oughta put that guy on TV more often.
Ralph L sez:
If oil, methane, and coal come from decomposed plants,
While coal does come from decomposed (land) plants such as forests, oil does not. Oil originates from accumulated layers of deposits of oceanic and fresh-water plankton — diatoms, blue-green algae, single-celled planktonic animals such as foraminifera and the like.
then *all* the carbon we're burning now, and a whole lot more, was originally in the atmosphere, right?
Basically right — many hundreds of millions and even billions of years ago.
Yet there was enough dry land and a suitable climate to bring vast amounts of carbon to the earth in X billion years. Maybe it was too damp for big forest fires.
Of course there was enough dry land — since there is insufficient water (even if all the ice on the planet melted) to cover the continents. All the polar ice sheets (Greenland and Antarctica) melting would do is drown low-lying coastal plains round the world, raising sea levels perhaps 100 meters (300 some odd feet) or so. While coastal plains cover a lot of territory, they make up only a small fraction of all continental terrain, and mountainous regions — like Mount Everest, for instance (8,848 meters high, or 29,028 feet) — tower over the maximum extent that sea levels could possibly attain.
What I find amazing is that most of it ended up deep underground. There are relatively few peat bogs now in the world, and gaia knows my soil has little organic matter below the first inch.
On the contrary, there's lots of peat in the world, and if global warming (continues to) occur much of that peat may dry out and oxidize, releasing vast amounts of additional CO2 into the atmosphere.
But beyond that, and beyond great quantities of oil, shale oil and the like that still exist in the crust of the Earth, there are the huge deposits of limestone (CaCO3) and other carbonate rocks. Many islands around the world are almost wholly built out of limestone by sea-dwelling corals, while vast quantities of the rock are present in the continents. Elemental carbon also exists in the Earth's crust in the form of graphite and diamonds.
Moreover, it's appropriate that you mention “Gaia,” because the phenomenon that mystifies you (all or much of the carbon long ago being resident in the atmosphere in the form of CO2, and yet the planet wasn't superheated at the time) is a manifestation of James Lovelock's “Gaia Principle.”
Not that I think that he's right in considering “Gaia” to be an “organism,” but what Lovelock's basically talking about in his principle is the parallel operation of two opposing trends over hundreds of millions of years of time: 1) the tendency for the Sun to steadily warm (due to astrophysical thermonuclear considerations, stars gradually increase in temperature and luminous output as they age; the Sun now is some 25% brighter than it was billions of years ago), and 2) the tendency for carbon to be continuously extracted from the atmosphere (as a result of biological activity) after which it thereupon gets sequestered (e.g., as limestone) deep in the crust of the planet as time goes on.
These two opposed tendencies have ensured that the planet remained roughly equable in temperature over eons of time, while the great amount of CO2 in the atmosphere during the planet's early days prevented the planet from totally freezing over (other than ephemerally, for a time or two, soon after photosynthesis was invented, drawing carbon out of the air), during a time when the Sun was still somewhat weak.
Voila! Earth's relatively steady-state (temperature-wise) history.
wv: baldsol
Bruce, half of New Orleans is above sea level, and most of the population lives and works on land above sea level.
bagoh20 sez:
The Greenland ice sheet is land supported, so it would raise sea level if it melted, unlike polar sea ice.
Correct.
But Green land ice sheet was substantially smaller 1000 years ago (thus the name Greenland) and sea level was virtually unaffected.
Incorrect. The extent of the “Inland Ice” (Inlandsis, as the modern Danish-speaking Greenlanders call it) was almost the same during the Medieval warm period as it was during the Little Ice Age that followed as it is today: namely, 1,833,000 sq. km of (more than 2,100 meters average thickness) ice covered terrain, and 342,000 sq. km of ice-free land (the latter being 83% the size of California).
Greenland was called “Greenland” by its Viking discoverers (and they did discover it, as it appears to have been uninhabited by the later-arriving “Thule” Eskimo culture at the time, the earlier “Dorset” Eskimo culture apparently having disappeared prior to the Vikings' arrival) as a marketing ploy to attract settlers.
Most scientists don't expect the Greenland ice sheet to melt much, even the lying ones who say so anyway.
If global warming takes off in earnest, most scientists do expect Greenland's ice to melt — but it will take many centuries to complete. By 2100 only about a foot (1/3 of the overall meter) of sea-level rise is expected to result from Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets melting back.
The most recent time that Greenland's ice sheet substantially melted was the last “interglacial” (warmer period separating ages of ice similar to the present one) known as the Eemian, which occurred between about 133,000 and 126,000 years ago. Here one can see a triad of maps (from the journal Nature) bracketing what Greenland's ice likely looked like during that period (the middle one is preferred), a time when sea levels were 4 to 6 meters higher than today.
Jane sez:
Oh, they have, have they? They lock up the perpetrators? They take the trouble to cut off the perpetrator's penis?
The “perpetrators” of female genital mutilation typically don't have a penis, as the procedure is done in most regions where the custom is prevalent by older womenfolk, with men strictly out of the equation.
nrn312 sez:
Yes, it's the magical ice that doesn't melt on land while the ice in cold water does. Would you be kind enough to tell me which ones are lying for future reference?
You can take all the faux victory laps you like, but your position is stupid. Water is a far better conductor of heat than air, and the cold waters of the polar oceans are connected via ocean currents to warmer climes which can and do convey heat into the Arctic and Antarctic waters.
Moreover, the floating pack ice present in those regions is only a few feet to a few dozen feet thick, and subject to getting shattered and broken by waves into small fragments that the surrounding waters can easily transfer heat to. Moreover, salt water freezes with much greater difficulty and melts more readily than fresh water ice.
Compare that with the situation on the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. The average thickness of both Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets is some 2,100 meters, or almost 7,000 feet — more than a mile — rather than just a few feet thick. It remains in large masses that hold the cold within. They are composed of fresh water rather than salt, and the surrounding air is an effective insulator compared with water.
This profound difference is reflected in climate simulations which show that the polar pack ice may altogether disappear (in summer) by the middle of this century, but the great ice sheets are likely to linger on for many centuries — even presuming the worst global warming occurs.
Peter V. Bella:
Try as you might you cannot make 2+2=5 or turn H2O into gold. Unless of course you are stupid.
The AGW Liars and Thieves Club (thanks tradguy) has done MUCH better than that -- they've been turning bullshit into gold for over twenty years.
Those silly medieval alchemists were just starting with the wrong inputs.
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