Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
Of course, little matters like data are irrelevant to the larger picture – for as the true believers frequently remind us: cold winters, warm winters, hot summers, cold summers, average summers, more tornados, fewer thunderstorms, heavy snowfall, cold snaps, chinooks, drought and heavy rainfall are all signs of the coming global climate apocollapse. It’s a point the Telegraph also notes;
In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say “how silly to judge climate change over such a short period”. Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming.
Indeed.
I’m reminded of this every time the local (or national) news breathlessly reports “breaking a record set in 1913” – often with added commentary that global climate specialists have warned that we “will see more of this”.
If global warming is truly a recent and accelerating phenomenon – why are these hottest/coldest/dryest/wettest records so old? Shouldn’t the majority of records broken be recent ones?
BCL: If 999,999 scientists say the earth is flat and one says it is round, who is right?
On the sun burn topic, I thought that the contributing factor re severity of sunburn was the ozone thickness or lack thereof.Last I heard the ozone hole above the artic was actually closing.On global warming I believe we can all do things to help linit global warming but we can not control nature and if our world is a set for another ice age us humans won’t be able to do much about it.
Ask the Inuit who suddenly learning what “sunburn” and “skin cancer” are.
Oh, please.
You’ve really reached the pinnacle of lame hyperbole and absolutely stunning stupidity.
That comment alone should disqualify you from any contact with rational adults.
Seriously. Give it up.
I understand that if every major country signed on to kyoto, in 100 years the optimum results would be .06% decrease in greenhouse emissions.
Sounds like another lib/left pilfering of the public purse to me. Born criminals.
BCL – what was your cabal doing in Edmonton over the weekend? They look pathetic.
Here’s my take. Here in White Rock, where I live and have since 1948, we used to have regular winters (snow for a couple of weeks every January sort of thing). I look at the weather report every day and you might try this. Look at what the record lows and highs were and when.
In the Vancouver area we appear to have had a couple of quite warm winters in the late 30’s and early 40’s. In the 1950’s and 60’s we had some quite cold winters. The first winter I came to White Rock I saw ICE on the salt water in the bay. I have also spoken first hand with folks who lived in this area at the turn of the 19th/20th century and have heard apocryphyl reports of driving a loaded wagon across the Fraser River at New Westminster. I cannot attest to the accuracy of that statement.
I guess what I’m saying is that I think there’s been some global warming, at least. Possibly not as much as the scientists and politicians would like us to believe, but some at least.
I’d sugges that someone take a look at the weather record books for the past 100 years and see what they find.
Mike in White Rock
man is a result of global warming not the cause.
the naked age would have not strayed too far from Olgalvai gorge with his current stray hair problem.
10000 years ago, 3km of ice right here in Canada!!!
Im not making this up.
It is nice to see some experts in the area like Dr. John and Ceart on cearr. I too have huge doubts when these scientists claim disaster. Until they can create a true scientific model of the earth, it is purely theoretical. I do my part… quit using aerosol hairspray in the 80s and recycle now. But when they start using these THEORIES to move wealth around and destroy economies, I get furious.
FYI: According to the scientists in 1975, an ice age was forecasted as probable. The ground average temperature from 1945 to 1968 was reduced by half a degree in the northern hemisphere. Here is a copy of the newsweek article in 1975 proclaiming apocalypse http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/coolingworld.pdf
White Rock warming does not imply global warming, Mike. New Delhi had their first summer frost in 75 years a few months ago; Japan had record snowfalls last winter. Does that imply global cooling?
A set of measurements taken over time is called a time series. Time series analysis attempts to extract the independent funamental frequencies from the series. Then, people try to model what affects the fundamentals, and how. To the degree their models are of predictive value, they then attempt to build control systems, according to their model, to amplify or suppress various fundamentals in order to achieve the goals of the system they are trying to build.
One of my favourite books on the topic is “Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control”, by Box and Jenkins, 1976 (ISBN 0-8162-1104-3), especially chapter 12, “Design of Feedforward and Feedback Control Schemes.”
With “climate change” we don’t have a plethora of good measurements, we don’t know what the fundamental frequencies are (though we have some guesses that look pretty good so far, such as “that star over there”), our models don’t have predictive value, and so we can’t design control systems.
The whole exercise is a house of cards.
BCL and “Stockwell Day”
Here’s some good news.
Hope it makes your day.
KYOTO: CANADA DROPS OUT
Say BCL,
perhaps you’re not as well read as you think.
There have been numerous columns in the last year that have quoted the headlines the major newsmagazines used in their coverage of global cooling.
I also recall verbatim quotes along the lines of “consensus among scientists” and “the debate is over”.
Your attempt to misrepresent the facts has failed. (yet again)
.
.
.
The climate is always changing. We have to adapt.
The hysteria from the zealots and their leftist agenda must be fought.
To all the Kyoto fans; having (presumably) read the IPCC report which is the scientific basis used to justify the Kyoto protocol, could you answer me one simple question: according to the report did the “little ice age” occur or not occur? Hint: the existence of the “little ice age” is used to validate one set of data in the report; the existence of the “little ice age” is flatly denied to validate another set of data in another part of the report.
The green, greedy, hands of Maurice Strong & his henchmen/women.
Strong: co-founder of the WWF & Kyoto.
Kyoto & WWF: scams, hoaxes perpetrated on the credulous,& the gullible. +
PEHI – Maurice F. Strong – extensive biography
Co-founder of the WWF in Canada and a trustee until at least the 1970s. … Supposedly, in 1978, a mystic informed Hanne and Maurice Strong that “the Baca …
home.planet.nl/~reijd050/organisations/introduction/PEHI_Maurice_F_Strong_bio.htm – 20k –
wwf.ca
Global Warming
The planet is heating up at an alarming rate. Learn about the issues.
Global Warming
COP/MOP Conference
Begging Cup:
WWF-Canada Donation Form
bcl donates $$$$$$$
The Oregon Petition is a fraud. Ginger Spice appeared on it. The “think tank” that produced it are also creationists and survivalists. The nutball trifecta, in other words. Give it up.
Problems with theory of man-induced global warming and Kyoto Accord
1. Increase in termperatures was in first half of 20th century, not latter.
2. “Loading” of greenhouse gases from human activity miniscule part of overall gases. Human induced CO2 represents only 3% of overall greenhouse gases. Water vapour represents vast majority, CO2 only 5% of total. You do the math.
3. “Hockey Stick” is a fraud. Data was forced to give this picture. If believed, there was no warming period in the Middle Ages, despite evidence there was.
4. Anectodal pointing to this or that factor, without considering totality of evidence, presents distorted picture.
5. CO2 is not a pollutant, but CO is. That should be our emphasis. Instead, Kyoto proposes to “sell” credits to countries that are not subject to reductions (3rd world where growth of CO2 is greatest); this will increase pollution, which is the real foe we face.
6. Because of (5), we are taking our eye of the ball of pollution control, shifting resources into the global warming issue, where there is no consensus at all (Ask the entire climate science community, not David Suzuki, who is a geneticist, so no more qualified on this subject than your mailman).
IMHO Kyoto is political, not climate, science. It is doctrinare and very intolerant of dissenting views. This is not a good thing.
The sky is falling, the pie is rising, the sun is setting, the skin is Eskomoning, Maurice is counting……
all’ well with werl…..
No fluid birds? Shucks…. Sir said so… must be sew… +
Bird flu unlikely to infect people, says leading scientist
Times Online – 9 Apr 2006
By Sean O’Neill and Shirley English. THE bird flu virus is very unlikely to change into a form that will infect human beings, the Government�s Chief Scientific Adviser said yesterday. Sir David King said … via googlenews
On April 8, 2003, Matt Ridley wrote, in the Guardian, that:
“For the past century the world has got steadily better for most people. You do not believe that? I am not surprised. You are fed such a strong diet of news about how bad things are that it must be hard to believe they were once worse. But choose any statistic you like and it will show that the lot of even the poorest is better today than it was in 1903. […] All this has been achieved primarily by that most hated of tricks, the technical fix. By invention, not legislation.”
Part of the problem with the way we treat concepts like climate change is that we pay too much attention to scientists and politicians and other people who aren’t actually responsible for building anything that actually works. When you want to build a better world, you need to talk to the master builders. Remember the words of Gary Numan, who sang in 1979:
All that we are
Is all that we need to be
All that we know
Is you and machinery
We’re engineers
We are your heartbeat
We are your night life
We are your `low-line’
We keep you alive for now
We’re engineers
We are your voice
We are your blood flow
We are your eyes
We’re all you need to know
We’re engineers
All that we are
Is all that you’d love to be
All that we know
Is you and machinery
We’re engineers
While I yet await an answer to my first question from the Kyoto fans, here’s another one: can you tell me whether rises in atmospheric CO2 are causes of global warming or an effect of warming of the oceans? Hint: look up Henry’s Law regarding the solubility of gases in liquids.
What pisses me off is that the Global Warming scare a lie that KILLS PEOPLE.
How?
The money wasted could so easily be used on something that saves lives: police, fire, medical care, food, shipping, and many other possibilities.
Instead, it’s squandered in COUNTERPRODUCTIVE activity that not only is pointless, it’s harmful. And all that wasted time and money could be used for something good.
It is interesting to read through all these comments and see all the FUD going around. Let us first review the primary causes of climate change:
Order 1 – Solar and cosmic variability, tectonic activity (works on the order of millions of years)
Order 2 – orbital variability (works on the order of 10s to 100s of thousands of years)
Order 3 – atmospheric and hydrological forcing, ie CO2, CH4 forcings and ice cover (on the order of hundrdeds to thousands of years)
Order 4 – sunspot cycle, oceanic circulation, cloud cover, volcanic activity etc (months to decadal scale)
Now, what happens when you all the sudden quadruple the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere over a period of 150 years (which is what is predicted by 2100 at current emission projections)? You get global warming. Unless the sunspot cycle suddenly slows down, or there is a meteorite impact or supervolcano eruption, there is no way that the average mean temperature is going to stay at the current level. These climate models that the backwards sceptics like to dismiss have been extensively tested to ensure that they are sound. This means running them through the past 200 years that climate records have been kept. Sure there are uncertainties in all models, but it is difficult to model how the sun is going to behave in the future.
You know, I used to be sceptical of all this climate change business until I sat down and read a bunch of scientific papers on the subject. Although greenhouse gasses do not ultimately drive climate, they are a strong forcing mechanism that will enhance the effects of extreme events. Like I said in my first post, climate change will not be perceived by people because it works on a timescale that is greater than the lifespan of the average human. The largest worry about increasing the mean temperature by a degree or two is that it could be enough to cause rapid wasting of the permafrost in the Arctic, which holds a vast supply of methane. Methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, and if the permafrost melts, it could be cataclysmic (one of the proposed ways that the Permian-Triassic extinction happened was that the permafrost was melted and caused extreme global warming from the release of methane, for instance).
The laissez-faire attitude of many people on climate change is unfortunate. Most do not have a grasp on the fundamental science behind the research, including those who created the Kyoto Accord. For example, Canada’s attitude under the Liberal government was to make their goals by purchasing credits from former communist nations like Russia and Germany. The Kyoto Accord’s failure to put restrictions on the emissions on developing nations also makes the whole idea hypocritical.
And you know, I have read some of the critism from scientists on CO2 forced climate change. The biggest sceptic will tell you that reducing CO2 emmissions is still a good thing as it is a pollutant. Like any field of science, there is always more work to be done, and theories must always be refined. The attacks of human induced climate change from non-scientists to me is completely political, and is no different in my eyes to the attacks on the Theory of Evolution from the Intelligent Design crew.
It took me a while to clamber my way to the computer to make a post. That’s cuz I had to fight my way through the sixty or seventy billion or gazillion or whatever the number was of people that were predicted to be inhabiting the earth by now in all those Population Bomb type scare mongering, junk science books of the sixties and seventies. I thought we were all supposed to have starved to death by now, or was it froze to death? Or weren’t some new chemicals supposed to have killed us all by now?
Maybe giant space badgers eating our brains?
Zombies mutant enviromentalists producing frightnening stories that would scare us all to death, perhaps?
Oh, wait.
Yeah: No.
Agreed on Henry, DrD, but we don’t even need to go that far. The Universal Gas Law, PV = nRT, says that if the temperature goes up, the atmosphere gets bigger (assuming constant gravity).
Put that in your pipe and smoke it. No, wait, I meant, smoke a bowl of good pipe tobacco and think about the implications of the Universal Gas Constant and Avogadro’s number.
The atmosphere isn’t a closed system (due to solar and cosmic radiation, and interplanetary and interstellar dust accumulation). Our job, as humans, is to react to external stimuli beyond our control by inventing what mechanisms we can to prosper while playing the hand we are dealt.
I don’t see a valuable return on investment, for the citizens of the good ship Earth, in the currently fashionable climate change scare tactics.
This is my theory on global warming.
CO2 is what plants live on. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more plants will grow and thrive, turning the CO2 into oxygen that we need to live. If the oceans are absorbing the extra CO2 right now (in algea), then they are also giving off more oxygen and that can’t be a bad thing (with all the trees that we have cut) The oceans are then taking the place of the rainforests. I think this is the cycle everbody is missing. The more animals on earth (breathing out CO2), the more plants thrive (using the CO2), the more food for the animals and more oxygen for them to breath is produced. The earth also becomes more tropical, opening up more usable land for the extra animals to live in (global warming). What we are doing by releasing CO2 is turning the earth back more like it was in the time of the dinosaurs (artificialy) and making the earth a more hospitible place for plants and animals to thrive.
Vitruvius et al,
This might be my favorite blog topic of all, and bigcitylib and I traded comments on Saturday on this same blog. You’ve gone to the heart of the matter – human response to climate change has to be some combination of adapt, get out of the way or perish. At least, that’s been our response since the dawn of man and it’s worked OK so far.
The rest of the scientific debate – confidence in climate models and theories of causality – should be left to scientists, while politicians, activists and professional alarmists should shutTFup. Sadly, the world doesn’t work that way. But a lot of money that should have gone to things like basic snowpack measurements and hydrography so that floods around Winnipeg can be predicted has been diverted to GW BS. What a negligent waste.
Halfwise, I agree with your comment. The “Chicken Little” approach is getting us nowhere other than diverting resources to politically inspired bogey men and away from legitimate environmental concerns.
“The graveyard is filled with missed El Ni�o forecasts,”
“There is no consensus,” +
Scientist Forecasts ‘super El Ni�o’ (Wet SW winter 06-07)
The Albuquerque Journal ^ | April 8, 2006 | John Fleck
One of the country’s leading climate scientists says there is “a good chance” for a “super El Ni�o” next winter, a powerful warming in the Pacific Ocean linked to wet winters in the Southwest.
In a draft paper circulated to colleagues, NASA climate researcher James Hansen blames global warming for increasing the chance of extreme El Ni�os.
When they happen, such extreme El Ni�os can wreak weather havoc worldwide, from deep drought in Australia to flooding in California.
Hansen’s new paper drew a flurry of attention among scientists because of his standing as one of the nation’s most prominent climate scientists. But the most common reaction was caution.
“The graveyard is filled with missed El Ni�o forecasts,” said Mickey Glantz at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Scientists also questioned Hansen’s El Ni�o-global warming link, noting researchers’ predictions on the subject vary widely. “There is no consensus,” said University of New Mexico climate researcher Dave Gutzler. +
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1612746/posts
and of course the Hillbilly neoCons in here who don’t believe in global warming have nothing to do with the oil sands or the vast wealth generated (ah, whatever). You people are SO selfish and hypocritical. Screw the grandkids, let’s all get dunebuggys!!GO CHUBBS McHARPER!!!
That’s the spirit!
Better yet, innoculate them from falling prey to the religion of the enviroleft – buy a dunebuggy for the grandchildren!
I love the fact that because there are so many overlapping long term cycles, addition of greenhouse gases, esp CO2, automatically creates global warming. Oh, wait, that’s a useless argument.
Could we be having anthropogenic global warming? Yeah. Could we simply be seeing the effects of one or many of the long term cycles? Yep. Could we simply be seeing statistical noise? Yep. Could we simply have bad data, thanks to heat island effects for reliable data sources and very unreliable and low coverage for most of the planet going back a few decades? Oh hell yes.
There are too many possible reasons to reach any given conclusion. Despite this, if the costs of a given path were so high and we could feasibly substantially reduce the likelihood of that outcome, action would be advisable. The problem is that it looks like the most effective remedies are actually mitigation, rather than prevention. Mitigation also looks to be much more cost effective, neglecting the large benefits in materials, technology, and producitivity that come from waiting, never mind the economic benefits of paying for things in the future rather than make current investments.
I’d like to see better data as well as appropriate arguments. Science isn’t about consensus or democracy. Rather it’s about proving your truth with good data. plate tectonics was very, very, very heretical when it first came out and is only recently accepted. Despite this, we rely on it completely and ignore the previous controversy because it predicts backwards and forwards so well. If we could have reasonably good backwards and forwards predictions coming from a climate model, I’d be more likely to trust its forward climate #s. Given what I know of our useful implementation of Chaos theory (and with an enginering degree and serious connections to the waterloo math faculty I know a bit), a functional model is a very, very long way off.
Um, Coach, we’re working on a 250 to 500 year hydrocarbon resource management plan here in Alberta, pursuant to your and your children’s &c general well-being. Our being selfish is for the good of the nation, and the species. Your being greedy is not.
We’ve got robot coal miners in the R&D pipe, and clean coal technology coming that will warm your heart and head. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Do you want to spoil it for everyone by invoking the dead hand of government bureausclerocracy? They can’t tell the difference between pressure safety systems engineering and farting.
Environmentalism: A Mask of The Religion of Socialism. Maurice Strong knows. +
Environmentalism secrets
eco.freedom.org ^ | April 1, 2006 | Fred Gielow
Posted on 04/10/2006 6:32:14 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
If you think environmentalism is all about saving the Earth, protecting the whales, stopping pollution, and the like, here’s some news. It’s not! Listen to what environmental advocates themselves have to say:
* “I think if we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don’t think it’s possible under capitalism.”
Judi Bari, Earth First! member.
[Environmentalism equals replacing capitalism with socialism.]
* “The environmentalist’s dream is an egalitarian society, based on rejection of economic growth, a smaller population, eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equally.”
Aaron Wildavsky, political scientist and professor.
[Environmentalism equals making everybody equal; that is, it’s communism.]
* “No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits… [C]limate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart, Canadian Environment Minister.
[Environmentalism equals changing the world.]
* “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists, and their projects… We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers, and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land.”
David Foreman, EarthFirst! member.
[Environmentalism equals a return to primitive living.]
* “We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Timothy Wirth, Clinton Administration U.S. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, and one of a number of politicians (including Barbara Boxer, Barney Frank, Al Gore, John Kerry, Christopher Shays, and others) who were designated as “Green Leadership for the ’90s.”
[Environmentalism equals changing policy by claiming � even without substantiation � it’s necessary to save the world’s environment.]
* “[W]e have to offer up scary scenarios [about global warming and destruction of the environment], make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts one might have… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Stephen Schneider, Stanford University environmentalist.
[Environmentalism equals lies “if necessary.”]
* “We routinely wrote scare stories about the hazards of chemicals, employing words like “cancer,” and “birth defects” to splash a little cold water in reporters’ faces… Our press reports were more or less true… Few handouts, however, can be completely honest, and ours were no exception… We were out to whip the public into a frenzy about the environment.”
Jim Sibbison, former EPA press officer.
[Environmentalism equals government-sponsored deception.]
* “Not only do journalists not have a responsibility to report what skeptical scientists have to say about global warming, they have a responsibility not to report what these scientists say.”
Ross Gelbspan, former editor of The Boston Globe.
[Environmentalism equals silencing debate, and stifling contrary opinions.]
* “I would freely admit that on [global warming] we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy.”
Charles Alexander, Time magazine science editor.
[Environmentalism equals indoctrination.]
Writer John Meredith summarizes:
“The radical environmental movement is destroying America. It is turning our society, once based on individual freedom and responsibility, into little more than mindless followers of regulations established at the whim of unelected special-interest groups.”
Walter Williams has the last word:
“While the Soviet Union has collapsed, communism is not dead. It has [been] repackaged under a new name: Environmentalism. Communism is about extensive government regulation and control by elites, and so is environmentalism.” +
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1612778/posts
Liberals slush fund: TCP
Technology Partnerships Canada is a key element in the government’s strategy to promote economic growth and job creation through innovation and by positioning Canada as a leader in the global knowledge economy of the 21 st century. The program represents an investment approach to technological development with sharing of real risks and rewards with the private sector. Investments are fully repayable and are intended to help ensure that products with high potential reach the marketplace. +
http://tpc-ptc.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/intpc-ptc.nsf/en/hb00095e.html
Actually the global temperature increase from the 1880s to the 1930s was a far larger increase percentage wise than the increase from the 1880s to now. And many of the record high temps set in the 1930s still exist today, inspite of so-called global warming.
For the agriculturally ignorant global warming supporters out there, I’d like to point out that if we even went back to the average cold temperatures of the 1970s, there would be food shortages and world-wide starvation on a scale which would make your blood run cold.
Plants can still grow in warm or even hot temps, but they do not and will not grow in cold temps with frosts in June, July or August. Just ask the farmers in Sask.
So be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
Frankly, I still can’t believe that grown scientists really think that human micromanagement of miniscule greenhouse gases is going to change the climate. We humans are a small, insignificant part of a much larger thermodynamic system than these learned and well-intentioned scientists want to believe.
They are still wrong.
Now when are we going to get to the real world problem of running out of oil in another 5 years?
Can anyone spell pulitykul synce?
How do you tell when it’s grant application time at the Canada Council? You need onlt count the news items on climate change. All those useless parasites sucking on the public tit are worried that the grant might not come through.
yea, they conveniently forget to mention the fossilized remains of trees in the arctic / antarctic, and the presence of “drop rocks” in Kenya, indicating the one-time presence of ice. Also that these last 150 or so yrs have been the wettest in many, many millennia. Perhaps things are as normal as ever. Of course, that line of thinking doesn’t raise any cash for the special-interest groups, eh? Bloody chicken little!
Rumor has it Al Gore was spotted in Montana Park with a power generator and a hair dryer.
I’m sure the glaciers will return after the 2008 election, won’t they Kate?
Consensus is not Science.
Here a history of the Climate over the last 500,000 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
Please Note: Co2 rises as the temperature rises.
We are at the height of the 100,000 year cycle.
It’s all downhill from here.
Awfully quiet bigcitylib,
Duck and run.
Gotta like it. A true liberal.
enough
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/
See the global data for yourselves. Debate angels on the head of a pin. Since 1880, temperatures globally are up .8 degrees C. Look at the anomalous temperature map on the right. Look at the North. Melting ice caps may not be new in an historical sense geologically, as one of your comments writers indicates. But the kind of drastic impacts that will have either in our lifetimes or those of our kids could mean upheaval and dislocation of entire populations of biblical proportions. Hysterical over reaction? Maybe. Worht considering? I htink so. We have the status quo more or less figured out and built into our economic, political and agricultural models. Are we capable of accommodating sudden, drastic change with wisdom, charity and peace? Doubt it.
A quote from this same site: Global warming is now 0.6�C in the past three decades and 0.8�C in the past century. It is no longer correct to say that “most global warming occurred before 1940”. More specifically, there was slow global warming, with large fluctuations, over the century up to 1975 and subsequent rapid warming of almost 0.2�C per decade.
I’d be more inclined to believe a word the climate cultists had to say if the science journals such as Nature didn’t deliberately as a matter of editorial policy refuse to print contrary data. When you politicize science and punish heretics who won’t tow the party line, you aren’t engaged in science anymore, but the cultish religion of environmentalism.
Ask yourself who would be motivated to go into climate science. If you didn’t already believe in GW, why would you waste your career studying it? Only those who believe would chose a career in climate science. Then ask yourself if you believed that the world was going to end if “something is done” what you would do to make people see the “error of their ways.” Wouldn’t the ends justify the means? If you really thought that you could save the world, you’d have to do it, right?
Then think of the career suicide of being a contrarians in a dogmatic field filled with frauds who think that manipulating the data is justified and who think that you are a dangerous menace if you question the party line.
Is there GW? Maybe. Are we responsible for it? Maybe. Do I grant the climate cultists even a small amount of credibility? Not a chance in hell.
I believe in lowering pollution (real pollutions, not CO2. Effluents from industry, sulphur dioxide, pesticides, etc..) I would like to keep breathing. I don’t want to die of nasty diseases from pollution. I would like to give my children a world at least as good as I had and preferably better. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to buy every bit of some lying bastard’s fraudulent snake oil just because they got a degree in bullshit from Cultist U and published a paper in a no-longer-credible “science” journal that won’t publish anything that doesn’t agree with the cult.
It would be nice if the “scientists” stopped being advocates and went back to being scientists.
In England in the early 1800’s, there was a week of fog. The air was stagnant and everyone at that time heated their homes with high-sulphur charcoal. Many people suffocated to death in their homes. (I’d look up the date but the exact event isn’t the point. The fact that the environment was terrible is the point.) The environment of the western democracies has improved dramatically from the filth of the early industrial revolution to now. It’s not Canada that needs to clean up, it’s China and the 3rd world. There are many countries that still use leaded gasoline. The west can do more, but through real scientific advances in technology – not shifting our wealth from the west to the 3rd world from socialist envirofraud. Technology yes. Free money, no.
Enough,
you’re being unfair. BigCityGlib has retreated to his church (student union bar) to meet with the other faithful (hippies) and pray for your heretic soul. Global Warming is the new religion. I defend his right to practice his religion. I don’t defend the right of junk scientists to take my taxes and produce shoddy reports based on “data_sort_by_preferred_answer”
DrD – the oceans are not releasing CO2 (net content), they are taking it up, with the result that the oceans are acidifying “a hundred times faster than has happened for millions of years.”
TJ – I wish it were so. Actually the oceans are absorbing the CO2 directly, not just having it taken up by 02-producing phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are threatened by the changes in ocean chemistry I just mentioned.
All those who are saying “CO2 is not a pollutant, it’s a plant nutrient” – yes to the second part. As for the first part, I don’t like the term pollutant, because it implies that something is universally bad. CO2 is necessary for plant growth, and it is the trigger for human breathing, so it’s not all a bad thing. If you want another example of something that is good at some levels and not others, look at oxygen. The atmospheric concentration of oxygen has been very stable for millenia. A small drop in the level makes breathing difficult; a small increase creates a fire hazard, as materials that are ordinarily stable will burn more easily when more oxygen is present.
Bigcitylib – please do some more reading. Higher incidences of sunburn and skin cancer are caused by higher exposure to UV radiation, which has nothing to do with CO2-forced warming. Unless it’s like this: higher CO2 –> warmer temperatures –> less clothing worn –> more skin exposed to UV?
Oh, and Kate – you can still have warming without breaking recent records. The warming is in the averages, not the extremes. In fact that’s what you see here in Western Canada – earlier spring thaws, earlier flowering of poplars at Edmonton (a full month earlier than when record keeping began). Is this a bad thing? Depends on your perspective. My background is in ecology. I suspect that agriculture and industry can adapt to (and even benefit from) warming much more easily than natural systems, which will tend to lose species and become simpler, less resilient systems under rapid change. At the same time these natural systems are dealing with habitat loss and fragmentation, invasion by introduced species, pollution, nitrogen enrichment – the list goes on. I recall saying at one time that climate change was “the big issue” for me. Now I tend to agree that it has been blown out of proportion. It is just one of many pressures on natural systems as our very effective free market system finds more and more ways to claim natural resources for immediate human use. The trouble is that it has no mechanism to make allowances for the long term. Such allowances require a choice, to limit what we use and leave the rest for other species and for the future. But how can we make that choice? If I choose to live frugally, have a small family, etc., I am doing my part. But others who champion economic growth will quickly take up whatever I have left and put it to use. They may also accuse me of laziness, or even say that I should work more and spend more so everyone can have more. This reasoning is probably correct – except that it neglects the issue: have more of what? Of the productive capacity of the biosphere, that’s what.
I am not anti-human. I do not loathe myself. I just believe that if you look at longer time scales and overall systems, the good of humanity does not lie in growing the human enterprise bigger and bigger. It lies in finding balances, choosing positive directions, closing loops, doing things better not just bigger, finer not just faster.
Sorry for drifting OT.
El nino shows how theoretical this is,
The same wizards now who claim to know how the universe works didn’t know what el nino and el nina were a few years ago but they know everything except why you can’t farm now in greenland.
Bob Carter writes for a foundation funded by big oil.
Actually I have done some research and it seems that Dr Bob Carter is the one who is the propagandist. A blogger called Skeptipundit also pulls apart Bob Carter’s piece from a scientific point of view.
Sorry … linking badly tonight.
I was saying I have done some research and it seems that Dr Bob Carter is the one who is the propagandist. A blogger called Skeptipundit also pulls apart Bob Carter’s piece from a scientific point of view.
I strongly reiterate my statement that global warming is a religious cult and not science.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220