The Sound Of Settled Science

104 Replies to “The Sound Of Settled Science”

1. There used to a consensus among scientists that Alchemy was legitimate and they could turn lead into gold.
   Skeptics in that era were also purged.

2. I guess I am not prepared to comment on that says it all. It’s bad when a climatologist has to bend to someone who has very little or no knowledge on climate. George Taylor did the right thing, now let the moon bats do the explaining.

3. No they didn’t Fred. They had a choice:
   Recant your views and end your life with a mercifully quick hanging, or stick to your guns and be burnt at the stake as a heretic.
   Ya gotta give monkeys like Suzuki their due; they only want you censored, fired from your job and imprisoned.
   Science has progressed in the last 500 years dontchya know…
   🙂

4. Taylor: Look, if we reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, that will tend to lower the temperature, all other things being equal. The question is how much, and are the other things equal? Those are tough questions to answer.
   Taylor: When I look at precipitation, temperature and snowfall in the Northwest, I see stronger correlation with natural factors than with greenhouse gases.
   ROFL. No kidding pal.
   Taylor: So I have concluded that the influence of natural factors on climate is more significant than that of greenhouse gases.
   Is this for real?
   No wonder the governor told him to stop calling himself “state climatologist”.

5. The portion of atmospheric CO2 vapor that is produced by humans is about 3% or 0.03. The portion of green-house gasses that is CO2 is about 1% or 0.01. Thus, the portion of green-house gasses that is human produced CO2 is about 0.03% or 0.0003. The heat trapping effectiveness of CO2 compared to the average of green-house gasses is about 10% or 0.10. Thus, the portion of the green-house gas effect caused by human CO2 is about 0.003% or 0.00003 or 30 millionths. The portion of human-produced CO2 vapor that comes from Canada is about 2% or 0.02. Thus, the portion of green-house gas effects caused by Canadian-produced CO2 is about 0.00006% or 0.0000006 or 0.6 millionths.
   So, even if (contrary to the evidence that suggests that changes in CO2 concentrations are caused by significant temperature changes) we assume that changes in CO2 concentrations cause significant temperature changes, and even if we ignore the Beer-Lambert law on absorption saturation, and even if we assume (contrary to the evidence that suggests a slightly warmer planet would be a good thing) that an increase of a few degrees in temperature will cause terrible things, then even if Canadians stop producing any atmospheric CO2 at all, stopped all heating, stopped all transportation, stopped all manufacturing, then the reduction in terrible things will be less than 1 millionth; 999,999 millionths of it will still happen.

6. I like the ‘Global Warming Theory of Relativity’ aspect of the piece. Warmer/cooler than when? Good point George. It’s definitely warmer than 15,000 years ago and glaciers are melting – as they have been since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Does that mean the world will end? Not likely. We learn to adapt.
   The alarmists think on a very small short scale.

7. “No wonder the governor told him to stop calling himself ‘state climatologist’.”
   Sammy, would you like to explain how you are qualified to make such a snotty remark?
   I’m only a humble BSc but, having practiced a relevant science for 30 years I feel qualified to state that Taylor’s approach to science gives me hope for the survival of scholarship in a world of feuding ideologies.
   I was also impressed by the way he conducted himself with the hostile interviewer.

8. Warmer climate results in greater evaporation. Greater evaporation results in more cloud cover. More cloud cover results in cooler temperatures. Cooler temperatures results in less evaporation.
   In other words, hysteresis.
   But clouds are not in the models.
   And the climate-change-denier-hating trolls expect anything other than guffaws and the bum’s rush?

9. Ah heck, vitruvius. Are you saying that we Canadians are so insignificant in the global world that no matter what we do, regardless of any of our most earnest endeavours to make our mark on the world, that 999,999 millionths of the world will do just as it always does regardless of our input/output? Ah heck, vitruvius.

10. From the link:
    http://ncwatch.typepad.com/media/2008/04/again-cycle-24.html
    “Cedar Rapids and the surrounding Midwest has been consistently colder than normal since December. In Cedar Rapids, December averaged 3.0 F below normal, January 1.9 F below normal, February a whopping 8.3 F below normal, March 4.9 F below normal and so far in April 4.4 degrees below normal.”

11. Most significant is his comment:
    And then there are things whose role we dont understand, like clouds they are usually ignored by climate prediction models. They dont know how to include them, so they ignore them. Same with El Nio and La Nia.
    Clouds are the primary source of reflected sunlight and hence global cooling ant they’re not part of the GCM’s?! I happen to be in Vancouver this week and it’s snowing outside. I didn’t think I’d have to bring winter clothes to Vancouver at the end of April.

12. Have some mercy Vitruvius!
    The poor kids brain will explode from being exposed to so many facts that contradict his programming.

13. Y’all may be interested in Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics, a paper by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf Tscheuschner from the Institut fur Mathematische Physik, Technische Universitat Carolo-Wilhelmina, September, 2007. Here’s the abstract:
    “The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation.
    “In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.”
    You can find the PDF at arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v3

14. Digging up the reference to the Gerlich & Tscheuschner paper reminded me that I was planning to send it to my mailing list. I’ve now done so. I included there the Physicist’s Summary that starts on page 92 of the paper, but the whole summary is too long for here. However, here are the final paragraphs of the summary:
    “Already the natural greenhouse effect is a myth albeit any physical reality. The CO2 -greenhouse effect, however is a “mirage”. The horror visions of a risen sea level, melting pole caps and developing deserts in North America and in Europe are fictitious consequences of fictitious physical mechanisms as they cannot be seen even in the climate model computations. The emergence of hurricanes and tornados cannot be predicted by climate models, because all of these deviations are ruled out.
    “The main strategy of modern CO2 -greenhouse gas defenders seems to hide themselves behind more and more pseudo- explanations, which are not part of the academic education or even of the physics training. A good example are the radiation transport calculations, which are probably not known by many. Another example are the so-called feedback mechanisms, which are introduced to amplify an effect which is not marginal but does not exist at all. Evidently, the defenders of the CO2 -greenhouse thesis refuse to accept any reproducible calculation as an explanation and have resorted to unreproducible ones.
    “A theoretical physicist must complain about a lack of transparency here, and he also has to complain about the style of the scientific discussion, where advocators of the greenhouse thesis claim that the discussion is closed, and others are discrediting justified arguments as a discussion of “questions of yesterday and the day before yesterday”. In exact sciences, in particular in theoretical physics, the discussion is never closed and is to be continued ad infinitum, even if there are proofs of theorems available.
    “Regardless of the specific field of studies a minimal basic rule should be fulfilled in natural science, though, even if the scientific fields are methodically as far apart as physics and meteorology: At least among experts, the results and conclusions should be understandable or reproducible. And it should be strictly distinguished between a theory and a model on the one hand, and between a model and a scenario on the other hand, as clarified in the philosophy of science.
    “That means that if conclusions out of computer simulations are to be more than simple speculations, then in addition to the examination of the numerical stability and the estimation of the effects of the many vague input parameters, at least the simplifications of the physical original equations should be critically exposed.
    “The point discussed here was to answer the question, whether the supposed atmospheric effect has a physical basis. This is not the case. In summary, there is no atmospheric greenhouse effect, in particular CO2 -greenhouse effect, in theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics. Thus it is illegitimate to deduce predictions which provide a consulting solution for economics and intergovernmental policy.”

15. Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me
    – Al Gore –

16. So, Vitruvius, it is settled after all.

17. No, Shaken, as Gerlich & Tscheuschner explain in their fourth-last paragraph, “In exact sciences, in particular in theoretical physics, the discussion is never closed and is to be continued ad infinitum, even if there are proofs of theorems available.”

18. “There used to a consensus among scientists that Alchemy was legitimate and they could turn lead into gold. Skeptics in that era were also purged.”
    Please don’t do that. It makes everyone associated with you look uneducated and ignorant. For the record:
    1) Alchemists and scientists are tow completely different thing. You may as well compare witch-doctors to MD’s.
    2) Even amongst alchemists, the idea that lead could be turned into gold wasn’t exactly an accepted belief. It was more of a Holy Grail that many alchemists strove for without ever seeing any thing even resembling positive results.

19. You raise a good point Alex. Greenhouse warming alchemists strive for the Holy Grail of a carbon-dioxide based feed-forward control system, without ever seeing any thing even resembling positive results, while real scientists keep their nose to the grindstone trying to do something actually useful.

20. Alex:
    “You may as well compare witch-doctors to MD’s”
    And your point is?

21. Speaking of “settled science”, seems the Failed Presidential Candidate has gone even more hollywood than first thought… Weird Al’s majestic ice shelves in his movie are nothing more than styrofoam – and not just any styrofoam,but the exact same styrofoam used to create the ice shelves in the movie “Day after tomorrow”.
    I just laughed when John Stossel showed this on 20/20 on his Myths show….
    “Al Gore’s “traveling global warming show,” the award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” includes a long flyover shot of majestic Antarctic ice shelves. But this shot was first seen in the 2004 blockbuster “The Day After Tomorrow.” Sculpted from Styrofoam and later scanned into a computer, the ice shelf “flyover” looks real.”
    Al and his team declined interviews with 20/20…
    Ah slowly but surely the global warming snow job is melting….

22. After rereading the posts on the previous MMGW thread on this site I was struck by the arrogant ignorance of the trolls infecting it.
    How anyone can survive this modern world without being a natural skeptic is beyond me.
    And how anyone can look at the entire structure of the MMGW argument and not see the massive holes inherent in it is also beyond me.
    From the “case closed” mentality that flies in the very face of scientific procedure itself to the computer models that admittedly ignore VITAL factors with a DIRECT impact on climatology to the simple fact a politician and a scientist in a completely unrelated field are it’s main pitchmen,it is abundantly clear to me that this is not real science.
    In my lifetime I have heard many who claim to be able to accurately predict the future and they have all proven to be frauds.Yet they always find the gullible to lead.
    And as has been said before,the Gore/Suzuki/Travoltas,etc,travelling the world preaching reducing carbon emmissions is no different than alcoholics driving drunk from AA meeting to AA meeting tellings others not to abide.
    Without the MSM’s help,this UN generated farce would have died immediately after it’s birth.

23. From their pot of water example, it seriously seems like Gerlich and Tscheuschner don’t know the difference between energy and heat.
    Care to explain, vitruvius , why Gerlich and Tscheuscher don’t seem to grasp the concept that radiative energy can be reflected back to the surface from the atmosphere?
    
    Actually, just answer me this one, pretty simple question. If you have two systems, one at a lower temp than the other, is it possible for the warmer system to absorb some level of energy from the colder one?
    (Hint: If it can, the second law of thermodynamics isn’t broken when some smaller degree of radiative energy is reflected back to earth, as compared to the amount passing through the atmosphere — and their premise is out the window)

    Also, vitruvius , you might be interested in this link
    http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2005/2005_Hansen_etal_2.pdf
    and
    http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1990/1990_Lorius_etal.pdf
    In response to your sophomoric calculation in your first post.

24. Samuel, I do thermodynamics modelling for a living.
    I actually grok the Gerlich & Tscheuschner paper.
    I’m actually interested in the truth about metaphysics.
    I’m not interested in playing footsie with alchemists.

25. Canadian Observer :
    In this case I believe you have drunk deeply at the spring of common sense.
    This whole con is being exposed finally. I noticed in Drudge a recantation as well as warnings about this UN boondoggle. My only concern is legitimate science will now be hurt by these chicken little’s lies.

26. An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: “argument to the man”, “argument against the man”) consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.
    
    An appeal to authority or argument by authority is a type of argument in logic consisting on basing the truth value of an assertion on the authority, knowledge, expertise, or position of the person asserting it. It is also known as argument from authority, argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it). It is one method of obtaining propositional knowledge, but a fallacy in regard to logic, because the validity of a claim does not follow from the credibility of the source. The corresponding reverse case would be an ad hominem attack: to imply that the claim is false because the asserter lacks authority or is otherwise objectionable in some way.
    
    Two logical fallacies in one!
    Maybe you can grok me the answer to my question Mr. “I do thermodynamics modelling for a living”

27. Samuel pose the question:
    Actually, just answer me this one, pretty simple question. If you have two systems, one at a lower temp than the other, is it possible for the warmer system to absorb some level of energy from the colder one?
    The answer to that question is as close as your refrigerator. Set the inside temperature of your refrigerator to a lower level and the warmer system (your kitchen) absorbs heat from the cold system inside the refrigerator. This requires the expenditure of energy to drive the heat transfer. What do you propose as the driving force for this process in the atmosphere?

28. Apparently I wasn’t clear, Samuel. In a June 4, 2007 survey of over 600 SDA readers, over half were scientists, engineers, and technologists. Many of the commenters here are capable of understanding the Gerlich & Tscheuschner paper, it is them who I may be interested in discussing it with.
    However, Samuel, you, sir, opened with the “it seriously seems like Gerlich and Tscheuschner don’t know the difference between energy and heat” gambit, when the difference between energy and heat is one of the principle considerations of the paper. That was a bad opening gambit.
    It takes a few hours to read the paper, and you probably have to read it a couplya times to get the flow, and I’ve done that. Yet about an hour and a half after I first post the link, you, Samuel, come waltzing in here with some cherry-picked quotes that completely misrepresent the paper.
    And you want me to interlocute civily with you?
    You, sir, are a fraud.

29. It seems as though you dont understand it either. Are you suggesting that greenhouse gases know where space is, and elect to only radiate energy that direction?
    Because that doesnt make any sense, they radiate energy in all directions.
    I think that perhaps you too are confused by the difference between “heat” and “energy”

30. Trolls, spam – same thing. Perhaps trolls can be eliminated the same way google’s gmail virtually eliminates spam from your inbox. (with trolls, you’d think embarasement alone would do it)
    sda, and millions of others, would belong to a master troll registry. When ever one blog site bans a troll, that troll would also be baned from the other millions of sites. One delete would be worth millions. Problem solved.

31. Cherry picked quotes Vitruvius?
    You’re the one who cherry picked the quote regarding the second law of thermodynamics @ April 18, 2008 9:56 PM.
    As for me reading the article, perhaps I read and understand things more quickly than you do.
    =)
    I can see that instead of discussing the paper with someone who has a working understanding of thermodynamics, you’ve chosen the countergambit of running for the hills.
    In your case, that’s probably a good countergambit.

32. Get a grip on yourself, Samuel. At 9:56 I posted the entire abstract of the paper. Anyone who could suggest that I was “cherry-picking quotes” by posting the entire abstract needs to stop in at the Reason repair shop for a tune-up. Perhaps we can talk after that.

33. Seems to me science has been hijacked by certain orthodoxies that are based on theory. Now as in the last century these claims are being challenged. The response? The usual inquisition . The two founders of continental drift where like wise ostracized. One committed suicide I believe. The other became a drunk from ridicule.
    Yet all we hear about is Galileo who was sentenced more for calling his buddy the Pope a SOB than his science.
    This is a pattern found in human nature to resist changing comfortable mythologies. reinforced by the learning institutions governed by Monies from government, sometimes religion, mostly defenders of the old ways. Professors who’s reputations where made on their theories. Who own the resources, so can dictate the terms or filter knowledge & research. This movie tackles this. I have no idea how sound they are, but it is an intriguing trailer.
    In my opinion all science is valid till a new theory comes up. Nothing is sacred , no idea should be spurned, unless proves rigorously fallacious. Science is agenda driven as well. To bad some crackpots with personnel axes to grind or even liars now infest this noble pursuit. To a Christian like myself , finding out the laws of the universe revels Gods attributes. So to most Christians I have meet see no dichotomy. it’s the individuals who read some meaning out of theory. Who become fanatic devotees of said theory , including silencing any dissent. Sad I say. This global warming scam will clean up that community soon I hope.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV8sN1UngFY

34. Perhaps Maurice Strong’s dream of population reduction through Kyoto is dead.
    Gore and Suzuki must be sweating – Biofuels was a major plank in Europe’s Global Warming action plan.
    Saturday April 19 2008
    [EU set to scrap biofuels target amid fears of food crisis.
    The European commission is backing away from its insistence on imposing a compulsory 10% quota of biofuels in all petrol and diesel by 2020, a central plank of its programme to lead the world in combating climate change.
    Amid a worsening global food crisis exacerbated, say experts and critics, by the race to divert food or feed crops into biomass for the manufacture of vehicle fuel, and inundated by a flood of expert advice criticising the shift to renewable fuel, the commission appears to be getting cold feet about its biofuels target.] gaurdian.co.uk
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/19/biofuels.food

35. (With apologies to Vitruvius for intervening)…
    Samuel, you have picked the wrong fellow with whom to duel. Vitruvius, from what I can tell of him through his history of posts at SDA, is a true scientist. I refer you to his response to one of my posts earlier in this thread, wherein I invited him to invoke closure. He stuck to his scientific principles, and refrained. In my opinion, he seeks the truth, which does not choose sides.
    Vitruvius has not cherry picked “a quote”. He has cited a paper, of some considerable substance, that demands more than an narcistic quip from the audience.
    If Vitruvius has “cherry picked” from the truth, then let it be so. Did you have some kind of point you wished to make?

36. Revnant Dream
    The problem with Wegener (the continental drift guy) is that he thought that continents moved because of tidal forces and centrifugal force. Physicists knew that was ridiculous, so they dismissed his theory… throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
    As far as Science goes, I couldnt agree more with you insofar as nothing is sacred, no idea should be spurned unless rigorously proven fallacious. But that sword cuts both ways, you cannot put something like intelligent design forth, slap the label of a “theory” on it and call it science.
    For the reasons you gave, science needs to be able to stand up to rigorous testing… evolution does, intelligent design doesn’t.
    Protip: “Evolution” has nothing to do with how life originally came into existence, it’s the theory of how species adapt and evolve. Is Ben Stein this stupid, or is he just playing a role?

37. Biofuels are a failed, out of favour, major part of Kyoto. What other ‘damaged goods’ ideas are out there ?
    Windmills ? Because they don’t work.
    Solar ? Too expensive.
    And then there is the fact that the Earth has actually been cooling the last ten years.
    And that a warmer Earth is not all that bad.
    No wonder they try to silence people such as George Taylor.
    What does Al Gore have to hide and what is he afraid of ? Plenty.
    Exhibit A; AIT.

38. Isn’t a greenhouse a human-created, artificial environment noted for impermeable fabrics containing said environment and not subject to wind?
    Where did the term, “greenhouse gas” originate?

39. shaken
    Believe me, I have the credentials to call myself a “true scientist”, so that argument does nothing for me.
    
    You invited him to evoke closure on the subject of anthropogenic climate changed based on a single shoddily researched paper?
    Perhaps you should take your own advice and either do some research or leave the science to the adults.
    
    This comments section is filled with people preaching science, who seem to be wildly against disagreeing viewpoints. Isn’t that kind of the point?
    For the record, I’m by no means “sold” on anthropogenic climate change. But don’t cite garbage that claims the atmosphere violates the second law of thermodynamics. It’s laughable, gets in the way of the real debate and makes me seriously doubt your credentials.

40. No apologies needed, Shaken, indeed, thanks for bringing me back to the topic. Sometimes one has to go out on a limb as regards house rules to illustrate a point, but that’s enough of that.
    I’ve been thinking a bit over the last couplya hours about how to summarize the paper, and I think that I can now say something like this:
    There are two problems with climate prediction. Firstly, and relatively trivally, a lot of the science is actually wrong. But secondly, and more importantly, it is simply not possible to forecast future climate, if you actually look at the physics and thermodynamics involved.
    I really do think it is an awfully good paper, and even if one skips through a lot of the math and just digests the intro and outro to the sections, it really is a danming indictment against the whole fiasco. Assuming they’ve made no fundamental mistake, of course.
    Once again, that’s: arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v3
    How much are you willing to bet on a roll of the dice?

41. Aw crap, I should have read Vitruvius at April 18, 2008 9:56 PM before posting that.
    Sorry.

42. It’s April 18th and it’s snowing in Vancouver. Global warming, yeah right.

43. tranio
    It’s April 18th and it’s snowing in Vancouver. Global warming, yeah right.
    Hah. That’s beautiful. Must be one of those engineers, eh Vitruvius?

44. The Mother Of All Battles
    The Intellectual Basket Weavers
    VS
    All Others Who Make Our World Tick
    The Weavers do not want facts to be part of the discussion. (If only they would debate) They do not like scientific facts, don’t understand them, never studied science. Maybe a Dumbed-Down course, no lab work.

45. Did you watch the interview with Rockefellers son on global warming when Alex Jones called in and raised the fact the ice on mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn were also melting. His response, they are closer to the Sun. The next leader of the world economy has a Paris Hilton brain. Where is eugenics when you need it.

46. Thanks for posting this link Vitruvius. I’ve downloaded it and will peruse it at a future time as my math has gotten rusty with disuse. A quick read through the paper yielded a very interesting paragraph:
    Rather, the atmospheric Greenhouse mechanism is a conjecture, which may be proved or
    disproved already in concrete engineering thermodynamics [95{97]. Exactly this was done
    well many years ago by an expert in this field, namely Alfred Schack, who wrote a classical
    textbook on this subject [95]. 1972 he showed that the radiative component of heat transfer
    of CO2, though relevant at the temperatures in combustion chambers, can be neglected at atmospheric
    temperatures. The influence of carbonic acid on the Earth’s climates is definitively
    unmeasurable [98].
    Normally in science one proves or disproves things by experiment and I have yet to see an experiment where one measures the temperature of an artificial atmosphere containing various concentrations of CO2. Given that one can measure temperatures accurately to thousands of a degree, one would expect there to be a whole series of experiments which should demonstrate the effect of CO2 in causing warming which is a function of [CO2] present. I have never seen such a study. I would be very interested in seeing the combustion chamber data and presumably there is an equation there with the effect of temperature on the CO2 effect. Perhaps Vitruvius could enlighten us how much of an effect one could expect at a temperature of 293 K.

47. Nope, I can’t do that Loki. But seriously, I think the forest delineated by the Gerlich & Tscheuschner paper is much more important than the details of any particular tree, especially since they’ve done such a good job of addressing the trees before backing off and considering the forest.
    The key to me, it seems, is that this is not about the science of climate, this is about the predictability of climate. There are two measures one wants to optimize in a forecasting model, first its correspondence to reality, and second its practicability.
    It is this second requirement that I think Gerlich & Tscheuschner are principally addressing, namely that considering the computational requirements that must be incumbent upon any approximating model of chaotic behaviour of this class, even if the science is correct, it is simply not feasible to compute a valid forecast. The equations, even when they are correct, can’t be computed with sufficent accuracy in tractable time and space to determine whether or not there is any convergence or the lack thereof.
    It reminds me of NP-complete problems, though I don’t want to explore that analogy now. The upshot though is that if we quite simply can’t actually compute climate forecasts, then why are we basing public policy on the perscriptions of those who would claim to do so?
    And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, I wish you all the best, including you, Samuel; thanks to our lovely and gracious hostess Miss Kate for hosting our considerations, and good night.

48. this is not about the science of climate, this is about the predictability of climate.
    Wrong, Vit. This whole fooferaw is the revenge of the weathermen (not the political crew with the same name, it’s the gang that tells you what to wear tomorrow).
    After decades of playing third banana to the blow-dried, respected glamour-types that read TelePrompTer text written by agenda-driven backroomers and the ex-jocks doing fill-in-the-blanks sports reports, it was time for them to rise.
    All those decades of standing in front of green and blue screens turned them into the superbeings they are today. Y’know, radiation does tend to do that mutation thing, just look at Godzilla, for example.
    I think I need a nap.

49. Samuel, like John Cross, a proponent of perpetual motion.

50. samuel and john cross sound VERY much alike in a couple of places. However I suspect that is more by fixation on CO2 than anything else. You have to wonder about people who fixate on one, TINY component of the entire climate of the planet, ignoring the PDO, volcanoes, cloud formation, THE SUN…