[Some people in the Maldives] are bracing for a life change they fear could be catastrophic, after the Maldivian president’s announcement in January that leaders of Saudi Arabia were planning a $10 billion investment in the group of islands where Mr. Ahmed lives, known as Faafu Atoll....Nothing says "conservative strand of Islam" more than Pitbull...
Saudi Arabia has for decades spread its conservative strand of Islam in the Maldives by sending religious leaders, building mosques and giving scholarships to students to attend its universities. The Saudis are building a new airport terminal, and have pledged tens of millions of dollars in loans and grants for infrastructure and housing on an artificial island near the capital, Malé....
A year later, Prince Mohammed returned to host a week of parties. He and his entourage took over two resorts, said a person familiar with the plans. That person said guests had flown in night after night on private jets to attend the parties, which featured famous entertainers including the rapper Pitbull and the South Korean singer Psy....
... and Psy...
... unless "conservative Islam" is about rich, louche men mindlessly enjoying themselves.
But when I see the word "Maldives," what I think is: Islands that will be underwater soon. And I think that I think that because of articles I've read mostly in the NYT. Why is Saudi Arabia investing $10 billion in such bad real estate?
Maybe the answer is: For Saudi Arabia, $10 billion is a good price for a few decades of glamorous indulgence.
But I would like some discussion of the topic in The New York Times.* This is a long article. About the Maldives. How can you write about the Maldives and not address the #1 thing about the Maldives that you've been telling me about for years?
____________________________
* Examples: "Threatened U.S. Pullout Might Help, Not Hobble, Global Climate Pact" (published yesterday, "Maldives Environment Minister Thoriq Ibrahim - chair of the Alliance of Small Island States whose members fear they are at risk from rising sea levels - urged continued U.S. participation in Paris"); "At the U.N., a Free-for-All on Setting Global Goals" (May 2014, "Island nations like the Maldives, which lies less than six feet above sea level, worry more about what rising temperatures will do to the sea"); "Borrowed Time on Disappearing Land" (March 2014, "[T]he melting of much of the earth’s ice... is likely to raise sea levels and flood coastal regions. Such a rise will be uneven because of gravitational effects and human intervention, so predicting its outcome in any one place is difficult. But island nations like the Maldives, Kiribati and Fiji may lose much of their land area, and millions of Bangladeshis will be displaced.")
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94 comments:
It's difficult to predict because it isn't happening.
Right now "Mal" soon "End"......lettuce leaf them alone!
I hope the Saudis have the good sense to build on both sides of the island. Otherwise, I am assured by a certain Congressman, there is a risk that the island might tip over.
It's difficult to predict because it isn't happening.
This outright denial is getting tiring. It is one thing to claim that man has nothing to do with climate change, or that even if it is occurring, we can't do anything about it or it might even be beneficial for some people. But to claim that the vast majority of glaciers are not receding more quickly than any time in human history or that winters are not getting milder and summers hotter and the last couple years are the warmest on record, or that sea level is not rising and that rise is accelerating, is just ignoring observable facts.
And the polar bears, Freder, going extinct! Aren't you worried about them? Don't you feel sorry for them?
Because as we have seen old rich men don't care about climate change given their short human life view of life in the face of a global time frame that can move with slow gathering force. Carpe diem on our little island.
"more quickly than any time in human history"
Why "human history"?
Ann - that must be the new qualifier to their hysteria.
"ignoring observable facts"
I'd pay attention not to what is observABLE but what was actually and accurately observed.
Why would you write "observable"?
Why, right when you want to say there's nothing to argue about, do you go to weasel words that make me feel suspicious?
Examples:
...Might Help, Not Hobble,
...members fear they are at risk from rising sea levels -
...worry more about what rising temperatures will do to
...is likely to raise sea levels
Might, fear, worry, likely.
No mention of an actual rise in sea-level.
Or individual islands sinking, which is probably more likely.
Freder Frederson said...
This outright denial is getting tiring.
Well then, how much have the sea levels risen recently, how much land has been lost to the ocean, and where?
"Human history" began with the election of FDR.
>>just ignoring observable facts.
You mean like the shrinking polar ice caps on Mars? Directly observable, and measurable, and not "adjusted data".
Please explain how man is changing the climate on Mars.
I'd like to see a Stand-In Against Global Warming. Millions (well, hundreds) of AGWarmists standing on beaches in places like the Maldives, daring the warming forces to drown them. When the water rises above their nostrils, still they persist, standing against them. It may take a long time, so perhaps a sit-in would be better.
... unless "conservative Islam" is about rich, louche men mindlessly enjoying themselves.
The Saudi ones, anyway, from what I hear.
Maybe the answer is: For Saudi Arabia, $10 billion is a good price for a few decades of glamorous indulgence.
Why would they need the Maldives for that? "Conservatively Islamic" Saudis have all the capitals and swank resorts of Dar al-Harb for extravagantly sleazing it up, as they go about their pious business of funding Wahhabism and buying Western politicians. (I guess you can import top-grade blonde hookers anywhere, though. I hear that's a priority.)
Freder Frederson said...
This outright denial is getting tiring.
Lawyers, brother. Lawyers.
"Man-made" "Global Warming" is the greatest hoax since Piltdown Man..
AA wrote, "How can you write about the Maldives and not address the #1 thing about the Maldives that you've been telling me about for years?"
Because CAGW is a complete scam; pure speculation based upon flawed models and corrupt data.
Wait a minute, I thought that Obama stopped the oceans from rising, and that the world was presently healing.
Please explain how man is changing the climate on Mars.
You ignored the point of my post.
Why would you write "observable"?
Why, right when you want to say there's nothing to argue about, do you go to weasel words that make me feel suspicious?
Why is "observable" a weasel word. Climate change deniers always claim that the data is fudged and climatologists are deliberating falsifying data. But to deny photographic evidence of shrinking glaciers, or that winters in Madison are not as harsh as they were 30 or 40 years ago, is a whole other level of denial.
Why "human history"?
Because before human history we don't have sufficient tools to judge the rate of climate change (we know that it has been much warmer with much higher sea levels and colder with lower sea levels, but how quickly those changes occurred is uncertain).
@Freder "winters are getting milder and summers hotter over last couple years..."
"last couple of years"?
Scientific research about climate change is over tens, hundreds and thousands of years.
Instapundit has beaten me to it, but: in their heart of hearts, no one really believes the Maldives are going underwater soon, nor do they believe any specific catastrophic prediction.
The climate snowflakes wouldn't travel by jet at all if they believed their own shit, much less continuously and in formation, etc.
Drought or flooding? Who knows? We'll have to adapt, like we always have. Human deaths from catastrophic weather events have gone steadily down since the beginning of the twentieth century. That's progress.
"Please explain how man is changing the climate on Mars."
I take full responsibility. I threw non-recyclables into the recycle bin last week.
Please don't tell anybody.
Al Gore sometimes parks his private 737 at the airport in Jackson Hole.
Is Al Gore invited to these extravagant parties? If so, he can lecture the Saudis on the dangers of Climate Change and the inevitable devastation to the islands. Right after a nice healthy toast to the good life.
There's "human history": the entirety of mankind.
There's "recorded history": the time dating back to the first historical records in Sumeria, circa 3500 BC.
Global thermometer measurements go back to the 1880s -- 2% of 'recorded history.'
Proxies are rough estimates, nowhere near the margin of error: 0.1C.
The differences in the last ten-plus years fall under the margin of error.
The Sky is Falling.
I am Laslo.
In order to solve man-made C02 Climate Change, average Americans must be taxed.
Hand it to the Saudis for capitalizing on global warming hysteria. The art of the deal.
"The climate snowflakes wouldn't travel by jet at all if they believed their own shit, much less continuously and in formation, etc."
Al Gore owns a $9 million oceanside mansion in Montecito, purchased with money he got from people like Freder. Al is apparently not afraid his home and chakras will perish in a deluge anytime soon. He's also clearly unembarrassed by the amount of energy wasted to house one man in a massive estate.
Neither are the film stars who tell me I shouldn't be using plastic bags or driving too much.
"This outright denial is getting tiring."
As tiring as the religious fervor of the chicken little crowd?
As tiring as the silence/jail all deniers crowd?
As tiring as the incessant pronouncements of the doomed-by-date-certain crowd?
As tiring as the blame everything from my thinning hair and bad breath on global warming crowd?
As tiring as the (after adjustments we won't mention) this is the HOTTEST year evah(!!!) crowd?
As tiring as famous folk scolding us on our extravagant lifestyle then jet back home to their mansions (nay castles!) crowd?
Geez, I'm sure sorry you are tired.
It is so tempting to go after Freder's misunderstandings in detail but this is a family blog and the sight of body parts all over the roadway would be unseemly. I would just short-hand it and say, look at the rise of sea level. Which is so happening. At < 3 mm/Year for just about ever. Freder, 3 mm/Year gets you about 8" a century. Which means that your great-great-great grandchildren will have to move their beer cooler another few feet up the beach.
The Maldives exploited their Climate Change moment with stunts and unfalsifiable claims, with their eyes firmly fixed on the main chance: reparations from the evil greedy industrialized world. That game is ending (we can hope) so now it is on to the next funding opportunity. In a perfect world the Saudis will exhaust their shrinking treasury in projects to instill Wahhabism in the Maldiveans, only to see the ocean swallow the shiny new mosques and madrassas.
This story teems with irony.
except its not climate change that is affecting the maldives, sea levels have remained virtually stable if not down some. The Islands themselves are sinking.
This outright denial is getting tiring.
Outright denial is winning so perhaps you should move on before you succumb to complete exhaustion?
I propose that every wealthy liberal who is rattling around on an estate that could house an entire Marine brigade be required to take in at least 5 Syrian refugee families, thus doing their part for both the environment and the refugees. It would also bring even more beautiful diversity into places like Santa Barbara and Marin Counties.
Exiledonmainstreet: excellent suggestion.
So, first question: how fast is sea level rising? I go to google. First thing google gives is, quote:
"People also ask: How fast is the sea level rising? Answer: .... 3.2 mm per year (0.12 inches per year) ... "
And I think well wait I second. That sounds kind of fast. I don't remember that. So I ask the question again with "satellite data" as part of the query, and get first thing,
NOAA ... Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry
a chart of average ocean levels
translated it's 3.2 mm per decade
(per decade)!
So first thing I find out is that Google is putting out a number ten times higher than what's being measured. Wow!
Next, what is the average elevation of the Maldives? 4 feet.
So quick estimate, a rise of two feet would have a huge negative impact on the Maldives. How long will that take if current trends continue?
200 years for the ocean to rise 2 feet
400 years for the ocean to rise 4 feet
So that's a long time. And given the rate of technological advance that I'm seeing right now, we are going to have something better than fossil fuels as an energy source long before 200 years has passed. And probably, in addition, we are going to have control of atmospheric CO2 levels before 200 years have passed.
But it isn't that simple. Sea levels would rise dramatically if the Greenland ice cap melted (or of course Antarctica). Greenland is much more likely but still a huge complicated subject with many unknowns.
But when I see the word "Maldives," what I think is: Islands that will be underwater soon. And I think that I think that because of articles I've read mostly in the NYT. Why is Saudi Arabia investing $10 billion in such bad real estate?
Maybe because the Saudi royal family hasn't bought into the AGW bullshit.
My math is worse than usual today. 3 mm/yr = 30 cm/century = 12.5 inches/century. That beer cooler is under severe threat after all.
My plea in mitigation is that the actual rise rate is not 3 mm/year but something less; the guesses seem to be more like 2 +/- 1 mm.
PS: Laslo, when you are not killing the audience with your sex riffs you are laying down some nice rebuttal to Freder on the climate scam.
"Rebuttal." Did I really say that?
I talked to Rodrigues Island which is somewhere around the Maldives, oceanwise, but volcanic. Google refuses to map them both at once so I can't tell how far apart they are.
A bunch of explorers round them all.
The Chinese could be finished with their dredging equipment pretty soon and the Saudis could buy/rent it and build the Maldives back up.
Given the Maldives have been inhabited for quite some time, isn't it pretty well known that sea-level has been increasing for centuries? What did they think was going to happen?
Wait. Back up. Correction. I made a math mistake.
It is 3.2 mm per year according to the NOAA.
But I made a second math mistake, and it more than cancelled out the first.
So revised.
400 years for the ocean to rise 2 feet.
800 years for the ocean to rise 4 feet.
@Freder Frederson:
Why bother arguing with religious fanatics? That's what the deniers of global climate change are, worshipers at the altar of global capitalism, which promulgates the doctrine that gcc is not happening, or if it is happening, (well, is it happening or isn't it?), it's not the result of human activity, so "there's nothing we can do, la de da." This lets them off the hook, obviating any need for them to alter their behavior which will cost them money. Just as tobacco companies knew smoking caused cancer before it became a topic of general public discussion, yet continued denying it for many years after it became a topic of public discussion, those with a financial interest in not changing their behaviors are successfully beclouding public discussion and perception such that any decisive action has been gridlocked.
In a few decades, when we're all boiling in our global cauldron, they'll cry, "Why didn't anyone tell us this was happening?!"
Mandrews: if you are worried about melting ice caps, do the math on the volumes and melting rates. Greenland is 2.7 Gigatons of ice and is losing (SWAG) 200 Gt/Year. Antarctica is 27 million Gt and is stable or gaining mass. If the current loss rate were to increase 10x, the ice sheets would be gone in...15,000 years.
The alarmists talk about runaway processes but there is no evidence of them. And some of the key processes they require to go into runaway mode, like increased water vapor, are physically implausible and indeed unprecedented. If you spend an hour or two reading Judith Curry or other serious scientists, you can get a strong sense of why this is mostly rubbish.
"In a few decades, when we're all boiling in our global cauldron..."
Global Warming is Dante's "Inferno" for the Progressives.
I am Laslo.
Cook -- "Why bother arguing with religious fanatics?"
LOL. Man-made C02 fanatic, Al Gore, The-End-Is-Near, REPENT! Do not question authority, the science is settled! = the very definition of religious fanaticism.
Those of us who ask questions and question authority - we are the heretics.
Sorry, more bad math on the ice sheets. Greenland is not 2.7 Gt but 2.8 million Gt. Result is the same: 15K years to melt if we assume a 10x increase in current melt rate.
Robert Cook: do you have anything to contribute in the way of facts?
Not to mention the fact that the Maldives is entirely made up of coral atolls, which tend to grow, not shrink under rising seas. For example, New Scientist reports that Funafuti atoll, which includes the capital of Tuvalu, has actually grown during the last 60 years, during locally-rising sea levels: As a whole, the island group grew by more than 18 hectares.
"There is presently no evidence that these islands are going to sink" - University of La Rochelle, France.
How inconvenient.
What about sand extraction? Millions of tons of Maldives sand is exported yearly.
But sea levels are rising?
That's rich. How gullible are people?
John Henry
The only way to stop global warming is to tax Americans. Right, leftists?
Do you have any other end game in mind?
"Their analysis, which now extends to more than 600 coral reef islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, indicates that about 80 percent of the islands have remained stable or increased in size (roughly 40 percent in each category). Only 20 percent have shown the net reduction that's widely assumed to be a typical island's fate when sea level rises.
Some islands grew by as much as 14 acres (5.6 hectares) in a single decade, and Tuvalu's main atoll, Funafuti—33 islands distributed around the rim of a large lagoon—has gained 75 acres (32 hectares) of land during the past 115 years."
But!
"But for the areas that have been transformed by human development, such as the capitals of Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Maldives, the future is considerably gloomier. That's largely because their many structures—seawalls, roads, and water and electricity systems—are locked in place."
But!
Despite popular opinion and calls to action, the Maldives are not being overrun by sea level rise
Of course, coral atolls have been growing to keep pace with sea level rise for the last 20,000 years or so. And many times before that. How? Coral grows, gets chewed up by parrot fish into sand, the sand washes up on the beach, and blows up into the dunes. Darwin understood the process.
Break any part of that, destroy the coral, fish out the parrot fish, or cover the island with hard surface, and the island can't grow upwards. But that's not the story you hear.
Owen, I've read a research paper published in Science where buried in the middle (kind of hidden) was a statement to the effect that they are measuring an increase in ice volume for the Antarctic as a whole over the last several decades.
And I've also read that the Greenland ice cap increased it's volume over this last winter. But that's just one year. The Greenland ice cap has in general been shrinking.
But I get your point. If we take current trends and project them into the future, then sea levels are not a problem. We should have the technological levers to deal with this long before it becomes a real problem for even the Maldives with their average 4 foot elevation.
But, that's not the way climate works. The future is not necessarily the current trend. There is a chance, given what we know, that the Greenland ice cap might melt. It might happen.
Now, this is a long way from saying I agree with Bill Nye or Al Gore or Michael Mann!
>>Do you have any other end game in mind?
It's just a coincidence that the AGW remedies proposed by the left are more government control of the economy, less individual freedom, and greater funding for leftist causes and groups.
Funny how that worked out.
Liberals love to spend money and waste time on stuff like this which is almost impossible to fix....i.e. urban schools which are awash [and that is not due to rising sea levels] with non-English speaking immigrants, the expensive cost of housing in highly desirable cities, women in combat, transgender bathrooms, income equality when a third of the country has barely graduated from high school, reducing college costs by shoveling more and more govt money at it and encouraging every dopey kid to go to college.
"Please explain how man is changing the climate on Mars."
I blame the Russians.
>>Please explain how man is changing the climate on Mars.
>You ignored the point of my post.
And you ignored my question. Because the answer suggests AGW is completely false.
Robert Cook said...
Just as tobacco companies knew smoking caused cancer before it became a topic of general public discussion, yet continued denying it for many years after it became a topic of public discussion, those with a financial interest in not changing their behaviors are successfully beclouding public discussion and perception such that any decisive action has been gridlocked
Mr Cook, why not get your Senators and Representatives to make tobacco illegal? I'll answer that, check out the bold print that I added. They won't do it because your politicians want, and need that money. It has nothing to do with people who comment on this blog.
Mandrewa: agree, this math assumes no runaway process. But the burden is on the alarmists to elucidate that process and show that it is occurring or will occur. Right now we have hand-waving and epicycles, even though the demanded action will cost trillions. Because it would cost trillions, it won't happen --except for guilt-ridden illiterate chumps. China and India have refused to play this game, both because it lacks any real scientific footing and because it would be economic and therefore political suicide for them. But they are perfectly happy to let us play.
Cook: (T)hose with a financial interest in not changing their behaviors are successfully beclouding public discussion and perception such that any decisive action has been gridlocked.
It's interesting to me that the people who make oodles of money off of "Climate Change" also don't change their behavior.
Why is Saudi Arabia investing $10 billion in such bad real estate?
Why did Al Gore buy an ocean-view home on the coast of California for $8 mil if the seas are rising?
Let me think...
"But I would like some discussion of the topic in The New York Times.* This is a long article. About the Maldives. How can you write about the Maldives and not address the #1 thing about the Maldives that you've been telling me about for years?"
Oh, come now. You expect the NYT to do that? You silly person, you.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Unless it involves bigger government and more taxes.
"Why is "observable" a weasel word. Climate change deniers always claim that the data is fudged and climatologists are deliberating falsifying data. But to deny photographic evidence of shrinking glaciers, or that winters in Madison are not as harsh as they were 30 or 40 years ago, is a whole other level of denial."
That doesn't sound scientific! Listen to yourself. Photographs and personal experience of recent weather in ones own town... what is that without more? A photograph is only evidence when it's established what it is. Someone must say where and when the photo was taken. You can lie with photographs.
What I don't like is just getting mad at people and trying to make them feel social pressure not to be "deniers." If you want to stand on science, don't use that kind of junk. The emotional, political stuff undermines your credibility.
"Observable" is a weasel word for a reason that's already in my comment, so is it really worth explaining again? "Observable" means capable of being observed. What's missing is: 1. Were the observable things observed? 2. Were they observed accurately? 3. Are there also relevant factors that are not observable? 4. How do you know? 5. How will you account for the effect of what is not observable?
You just make science sound shoddy and haphazard and then yell at people who won't submit to the IDEA of science.
It's gruesome!
AA states: ".....It's gruesome!" The only thing this article points to is perfect for the "...gruesome..." meme is that educated people actually believed that the "...Maldives...." would be under water. Most reasonable people saw such a claim as nothing more than propoganda designed to generate money for that country. Not one scientific fact was offered to buttress that claim - only opinions steeped in political propoganda.
This is from a blog I used to use. It was from 2011 when it was claimed the 1st island became submrged due to global warming but I had found a story that reported it actually had occurred 22 years before 2011.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2006
When Did Lohachara Island Sink?
Interesting story on Drudge today about the first island to be submerged by rising seas due to the dreaded global warming. I googled the name of the island, Lochachara, and found a story that indicates the island was actually submerged 22 years ago. Go figure? I wonder which is correct?
Here are the links to the two stories. Today's story on Drudge claims the island was submerged just recently.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2099971.ece
This story indcates the island was submerged 22 years ago.
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=207343
The quote below from the story (link above) indicates this Lochachara island was submerged 22 years ago! “Close to Jana’s hut is another witness to the misery after the rising sea submerged the islands of Lohachara and Bedford 22 years ago. Divakar Bhandari was in his early-30s when the catastrophe occurred.”
What I find most interesting is it appears the Saudis are trying to turn the Maldives into a protectorate/colony. The Maldives do not have a large population so it would not be overly difficult to take effective control by converting the natives to the Saudi brand of Islam, shipping in some Saudi colonists, and buying off local interests with petrodollars.
rhhardin said...
I talked to Rodrigues Island which is somewhere around the Maldives, oceanwise, but volcanic. Google refuses to map them both at once so I can't tell how far apart they are.
1820 miles. Google always seems to create truly wretched GUI's, but Bing maps could accomplish this dick-simple task.
Correction -the blog post was not form 2011. I was from 2006 so the story I found claimed the island had actually sunk 22 years earlier in 1988.
Static Ping said...
What I find most interesting is it appears the Saudis are trying to turn the Maldives into a protectorate/colony"
However, once the Saudis do that, they won't be able to go there to whore around and drink, will they?
That's a problem they don't seem to have thought through - once the world is converted to Wahhabism, there won't be any fun places for them to run off to.
You just make science sound shoddy and haphazard and then yell at people who won't submit to the IDEA of science.
It's gruesome!
It is not me who is making science sound shoddy and haphazard. I believe in the science. Your problem (and I realize you have never not denied that climate change is or is not happening or that man may or may not have anything to do with it), and the problem of many of your commenters, is that they do not believe the science and go to gruesome lengths to "prove" that all the data is false and the scientists collecting, backing and supporting it are evil and involved in a great conspiracy.
So I am trying to modestly find some evidence that can't be contradicted.
A question for the science types among us. Regarding these mm rises in sea level ... what is the reference point? With teutonic plate shifts, subsidence, coastal erosion, etc., what is the stable point of reference to measure how many mm the sea level rises or falls?
So I am trying to modestly find some evidence that can't be contradicted.
Sounds like a good idea. At what precise rate were Earth's glaciers melting in AD 1300? Or 1300 B.C.? What about on Mars, as a control to test whether any climate change is earth-specific.
In a few decades, when we're all boiling in our global cauldron
In a few decades as the current sunspot cycle really kicks in and the Earth begins to noticeably cool, the Left will be screaming about the government needing to warm the planet.
Beach Brutus said...
A question for the science types among us. Regarding these mm rises in sea level ... what is the reference point? With teutonic plate shifts, subsidence, coastal erosion, etc., what is the stable point of reference to measure how many mm the sea level rises or falls?
A great question. Clearly. the answer should be derived from the total volume of water in the seas. Unfortunately, that's a hard one to measure directly. Satellite altimetry measurements should be pretty good too, but I believe they're having a bit of trouble with an accurate calibration. Which pretty much leaves picking some spot in the middle between uplift and subsidence as the baseline, until proven otherwise.
the problem of many of your commenters, is that they do not believe the science and go to gruesome lengths to "prove" that all the data is false and the scientists collecting, backing and supporting it are evil and involved in a great conspiracy.
Science is based on skepticism. However AGW skeptics are called deniers.
Science is based on data. Climate change alarmists refuse to release their data, and most claim to have "lost" the original data anyway. What we are left with is models that don't work and predictions based on manipulated data.
Well Freder Talk to the true believers at the NOAA. They are science folk. There hasn't been a rise in overall global temp. in 18 years. Which has given rise to some other science type people theorizing that we may be in for another mini cooling period. I like science Freder. It deals objective observable facts. Facts aren't things you wish to be true they are the things that are true.
"In order to solve man-made C02 Climate Change, average Americans must be taxed."
Yep. It's amazing how, no matter what the problem du jour might be (global cooling, then global warming, now global "climate change"--a nice, non-specific, non-falsifiable issue) the prescription never changes.
At least they seem have to given up on the "population explosion! we're all gonna starve or wind up eating soylent green!" bullshit. But only because, as we're seeing with "climate change" we've blown past one point-of-no-return after another with no sign of imminent worldwide starvation, and in fact the population of the developed world is falling (aside from immigration in some places). And the population drop isn't due to their prescient warnings--its because wealth and technology means you don't need to have lots of kids to account for expected losses or to work the family farm.
Freder F
" I believe in the science." "Science" is a discipline, a process. "The Science" is a political term suggesting that "the science" has reached incontrovertible proof of something on the order of gravity
Once the Spell coming from 1950s Sci-Fi Films showing virtuous scientists saving the world from attackers has been broken, it becomes very easy to ridicule the CO2 Trace Gas Warmist Hoaxers. They are totally duped. The only question is if they care more for a career and big money, than for science.
Land six feet above sea level includes most of Florida. And since 1950 I can testify that there has been no sea level rise seen on beaches of Florida.
And I noticed that the D Day invasion coast of Normandy has seen no sea level rise since 1944. And I noticed that old pictures of California Coast Hotels from the 1920s, compared to today's pictures, show no sea level rise there.
Freder: I believe in the science.
Don't. Believe in the scientific method. Make a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, revise the hypothesis as necessary, keep testing it until the hypothesis can be trusted to make predictions. Keep an open mind that the answer is what it is, not what you care for it to be. Always keep in mind that just because the theory you come up with is a good predictor of whatever you were testing does not mean it is correct, just useful and subject to future revisions.
Science as a field includes the scientific method and its production. It also includes a wide variety of wrong answers: old theories brought forward in good faith that have been revised/discarded as new evidence has come to life, outright frauds and hoaxes that sometimes have gone undetected for decades and/or were enforced orthodoxy by the powers that be, and current theories that will be proven wrong in the future. As with any field that has become popular and/or pays well, it attracts those that want the rewards but do not want to do the work or are incapable of doing the work, as well as busybodies of various levels of talents that like to bully other people into their worldview. Like any field that gets government funding, it is necessarily politicized. Believing in "science" is foolish. Save your faith for things that require faith. Whenever a scientist declares that opposing viewpoints are "deniers" or whatnot, this is usually a very good indicator that the scientific method has been discarded and the actor should be treated like a political or even religious animal.
The problem with climate science is it highly dependent on computer models. Current computing power is insufficient to even make a decent approximations of Earth's climate, not to mention that there are still critical unknowns that cannot be modeled at all. These models have been proven time and time again to be unable to make effective predictions and are regularly "forced" to make the model match reality. This makes the models effectively useless for predictive purposes. Without the models, there is not much left of substance to act upon. The climate changes? Of course. That's not really actionable.
Because, Trad guy. There isn't any.
Rusty, it's not true that global temperatures have not risen for the last 18 years. If you go to Roy Spencer's site, who is part of a team that's been measuring temperatures in the lower troposphere for the last 39 years with satellites, they show a rise in temperature over the last 18 years.
Over the last 39 years they get an average increase of 0.12 deg C per decade. And that is unequally distributed with much of the increase happening in the northern hemisphere, and in particular the arctic.
I think there was confusion about this phrase: the pause. What the pause was really about was that the actual rise in temperature was considerably short of the predicted rise in temperature that the climate models collectively made.
Another site to look at is Berkeley Earth. Their calculations are based on basically on every known temperature record except satellites but including buoy and ship data. And they do some mathematical transformations that not everyone agrees with, and not certainly not everybody understands, but the result they come up with shows an average increase of between 0.15 deg C and 0.17 deg C per decade.
I believe that increased CO2 does increase the average temperature. The real question is how much. And what portion of the observed temperature is really do to other factors we don't understand. And at what point does this really become a problem for people, because I'm not sure it is yet.
And what actually is a smart way to deal with the problem, if we decide it really needs more attention than just waiting for advances in energy generation and storage technology.
Because I really don't think the Paris Climate Agreement is smart at all nor is it actually constructive.
Well Freder Talk to the true believers at the NOAA.
You mean this NOAA? Seems to me you didn't bother to look at NOAA data.
And since 1950 I can testify that there has been no sea level rise seen on beaches of Florida.
And you are wrong about that.
Because, Trad guy. There isn't any.
wrong again. (And sea levels receding in Alaska is due the the melting of glaciers).
Please: Global warming and CO2 is just a hoax. I mean, sure, CO2 has an impact on temperature.
But it's like a 100 acre field with 100 cows and one sheep and focusing only on the sheep when asking "who is responsible for eating all the grass?" then arguing for much higher sheep control.
Here's the blunt truth: take the 1998 IPCC graphs of rise in CO2 and their best, medium, and worse case temperature scenarios. Then plot the actual temperature rise in the last 20 years--it's far lower than even their "Best case" scenario, even though the rise in CO2 is higher than their "worse case" scenario.
AGW is a failed theory. Let's not even discuss the simple fact that CO2 has a logarithmic effect: doubling CO2 does not equal twice as much heat retained. Indeed, the effect of CO2 on the climate is pretty much already taken effect; only more CO2 in the stratosphere will have any impact at all.
The left and the scientists don't mention any of that, of course. It's, shall we say, an inconvenient truth, to quote the High Priest of the Global Warming religion.
--Vance
Still waiting, Freder... what man made action is causing the polar ice caps on Mars to shrink? Mars is definitely getting warmer.
Mars is directly observable. Measureable. Real science, with repeatable results from raw data that can be shared, analyzed, and verified.
Not "inferred" temperatures based on "adjusted" data from tree rings.
take the 1998 IPCC graphs of rise in CO2 and their best, medium, and worse case temperature scenarios.
Even if I give you a pass on the fact that there is no 1998 estimate (1995 and 2001), you are still wrong
I believe that increased CO2 does increase the average temperature."
Yes it does. But the effect tops out. At that point the AGW folks hypothesize triggering another action creating a cycle of warming.
Now the fact that this mechanism is only a theory does not give them pause.
It should.
Ann at 9:46.
!!!!
That Pitbull video. He's a star. He just starts kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. He doesn’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. He just grabs them by the pussy.
You mean "Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming" or its hedged form "Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change", right?
Unfortunately, neither hypothesis tracks observation in the past or present, and globally. While the models (i.e. hypotheses) do match CAGW, but not necessarily CACC, predictions, they do not match observation and historical observations (other than inference from proxies). The CO2 fixation is based on its observed characteristics in isolation (e.g. laboratory) and in theory. It does not contribute to a greenhouse effect in the classical sense, but rather contributes to a radiative effect that correlates but is not equivalent to heating. It does not radiate absorbed energy uniformly and its actual behavior can only be estimated in the wild. A further misfortune for profits, is that the system in incompletely, and, in fact, insufficiently, characterized and unwieldy. This, despite the availability of super computers that still operate at resolutions that cannot simulate the system, processes, and environment to accurately forecast the weather in periods measured in units longer than hours and nominally days.
re: inference from proxies
Inference from select proxies. It's a Pro-Choice thing, with assumptions, assertions, really, that are often unstated or mischaracterized, liberal (i.e. divergent), and progressive (i.e. monotonic).
Freder, anyone who says "I believe in the science" doesn't understand the first thing about how science works.
Here's my favorite big picture climate chart.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/29/climate-and-human-civilization-over-the-last-18000-years-2/
Laslo in particular will appreciate the deep dive into earth history.
If you look at the subsidiary charts, they include far more than 18000 years.
It's pretty obvious that whatever the human contribution is to CO2 levels (400 ppm is moderately low) and temperatures, it's completely swamped by natural factors.
One of the most unfortunate things about the climate scam (I wouldn't call it a hoax because with a hoax the perpetrators know it's a put on) is that we now have no idea what's really going on in climate because the science has been so thoroughly corrupted.
Oh, and sea level rise since the last ice age is on there, too.
That's funny Freder. The NOAAs own instruments record no temp rise in N. America in the last 12 years. None.
Seems like the science isn't settled.
Can somebody take some time out of their day and check the bathtub ring around the Great Lakes? It seems to follow that if ocean levels are rising then the Great lakes should be inundating low lying areas.
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