eeuw! Links to RT should come with a warning!I thought it might be Suzuki you were chastising.
Bet you feel a bit warmer with the Riders victory!

... A tainted Rider victory, I might add. Nice holding call.

What's scarier than the so-called "report" by so-called "experts" are the comments at the link you provided.

As Michael Savage says, Leftism is a mental disorder.

They don't like us over there. I'm hurt.

Exactly. I'm more outraged than Libby Davies with three network camera crews in front of her. I've been back here for less than a week and I've already had a face full of snow. Al bloody Gore's going to get my heating bills this winter. He can spare a few kilowatt hours from that electricity-sucking Tennessee redoubt of his.

Hybrids? That's so 2006. I want a ZENN to putt around Regina with.

If the latest news report on it is any indication, a ZENN'll be as hard to get as a Tucker.

Libby Davies. Three camera crews in front of her. I wonder if they got full coverage?

Yeah, but... it's a dry cold, right? Look on the bright side. ;)

So Algore was in Victoria and Vancouver two week ago and the Gore effect suppressed temperatures for a week and a half. And then a day of summer like weather and a night of frost.

Weather! We all talk about it but no one does anything.

Speaking of greenazism, might I point out to Mr. Saskboy ('Boy, I'm from Regina, FYI) that EVs don't "putt". They're as silent as the Left when the Iranians execute women and "gay" folks...

(Might be fun to tool around in a golf cart in the city -sometimes we like to be silly and foolish in public and make a laughingstock of ourselves-... I see many Smart ForTwos here, plus yesterday was my lucky day and I spotted a supersubcompact Fifties-something, with little tailfins... what on earth was that?!)

As for AGW/climate change... It's colder, in fact, over here in NB as well. Near zero.

Feels colder than when I moved here in '78. And there's NO "climate change". It's quite peaceful. The only potential catastrophe I can realistically fear coming is a terrorist attack on the oil refinery... and that's far, far more highly probable... and plausible... than the dire Chicken Littlism of the Almighty Inventor of All Things, the AlGoreacle and the UN!

For the envirowingnuts out there, you will, within perhaps three years, be able to acquire a Chevy Volt, so never mind that wimpy little electric golf cart thingy we can't get here...

OH, btw, there was frost yesterday...

"I want a ZENN to putt around Regina with."

Meh. It looks like a Yugo and goes about just as fast. What you really want is a Tesla.

"So Algore was in Victoria and Vancouver two week ago"
==============
I wonder how much fossil fuel he and Suzuki burn up when they do all this globe hopping to show up at speaking engagements.

Anyone wishing to learn more about the Fruit Fly Doc, can pick up this weeks Maclean's Mag/Rag. It's cover may turn a few off with a picture of Suzuki captioned "The Remarkable Transformation of Saint Suzuki".
If we got him on stage with Gore could we call it the battle of the Saints or the battle for Sainthood?

Another dire prediction from another UN funded group.

Yawn, snorrtle, chort . . . . how many has it been in the last 30 years . . a dozen "sky is falling" calls for action

Global Cooling, Population bomb, Club of Rome, Nuclear winter . . . what else ??

naaaawww...you're just imagining your freezing your ass off...the globe really is warming...maybe it just left out the one small spot where you live...really the rest of us are melting down and expect to see drowned polar bears washing up at great lake resorts in the prairies.

Al Gore is the prophet all else is fiction.

Let's face it, we're all doomed; we're all going to die, within the next hundred years.

"What you really want is a Tesla."

-What I really want is the $100,000 it'd take go acquire one!

red tory, a particularly absurd oxymoron, if I've ever heard one, reports:

We've got 19.7 hectares each on the planet!

Belongs in the same category as the idea of a global temperature.

What we're actually seeing here is the leftard disease in the first stages of eating a human brain.

All this UN enviro-mentalism was started in 1983 and the Brundtland Report came at just the right time to provide the socialists with a raison-d'etre after seeing the collapse of communism. They jumped on the green bandwagon as an excuse to hate and loathe the most successful civilization ever, liberal capitalism. The Brundtland Babe was herself a Norwegian socialist and ex-PM who found a very nice new job as a trans-national dinner party guest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brundtland_Commission

Do you guys like to hear yourself talk, or do you just purposely ignore every single time that someone explains that small-scale variations are not indicators of large-scale changes?

In any case, you'd have better luck discussing the degree of variability, rather than the particular momentary states.

This will only make sense if you watched the video argument with columns and rows.

The flaw in the argument is that he is operating on the assumption that bankrupting developed nations to attempt to alter the climate would certainly reverse the climate trends. This is what many logical people dispute. This assumption is very likely false and would not result in a happy face in his lower left quadrant. Both squares in his left column should have "Cost and Global Depression" penciled in them. The only viable option left is the upper right square which is "Take only reasonable action" and "The doomsayers turn out to be mostly wrong". (I modified them a touch to reflect what I believe to be reasonable.)

"blithely chirps"

thems fighting words

You got it wrong anon,we think for ourselves;you think what others tell you to think.Thats the difference between right and left.

"first stage leftard"

I like it.

small-scale variations are not indicators of large-scale changes?

So tell us Einstein, how exactly do you measure large scale changes?

Still waiting for your answer to yesterday's question about your beloved dictators. I'm sure we will be waiting a long time for this answer too.

But I'm certain we'll see a personal insult appear shortly.

This comment from the link sums up leftard non-thinking. They don't know what they're doing, but surely some "smart person" will save them from themselves. heh

If no one in the history of humanity had anymore intelligence or creativity than I do (or anyone I know) then we would probably still be living in caves.

RT opines "...then why for goodness sake can’t they see the advantages in aggressively pursuing a strategy of conservation and environmental stewardship that regards maintaining the planet’s essential health..."

There are so many points with which to take issue in your post that it is almost not worth it, but let me begin with your comment above.

We are a consumer society. Full stop. To affect the change you want to achieve, you need to (1) change our entire (planetary) economic model; and/or (2) change human nature.

We can effect macro change only as regards (1), and only in disruptive "cure worse than disease" fashion.

We can either moderate problems, displace them with others, or contain them within acceptable limits based on growth/efficiency/yield advances. Thus far, we have managed.

Change human nature? Its been done, and the price was high. Its also something that only works one person at a time, and from the heart, not from the gun.

Doug: I answered your straw-man implication: I don't believe that the US or Bush is as bad as the others. As for personal insults, I find those passive-aggressive implications just as insulting. At least my insults aren't disguised as passive-aggressive pussyfooting.

If you're really interested in understanding how large-scale (either spatial or temporal) changes can be measured, then you should join some of the discussion groups. Try realclimate.org and search for 'chaos'. Whether the system is chaotic or not is still up for discussion, but nonlinear dynamicists still push ahead and suggest ways to measure the *probability* of occupying being in an 'attractor', rather than trying to predict the particular state. IOW, predicting the weather is not possible, but approaching the problem as one of predicting the probability of being in a particular attractor basin is more promising.

This site has some illustrations and discussions. http://www.clivar.org/science/magnets.php

There are still many problems that are being discussed: how do we characterize an attractor (how do we divide state space)? Is the system chaotic, or WHEN is it chaotic? What state are we in at a given time, and more importantly, what attractor are we in? What role does climate variability play - can it help identify a shift between attractors? How do we characterize the variability of the state space? etc, etc.

spike1: Thanks for your insight.

We're going to start calling you "straw man" around here.

Still waiting for the answer. Both answers by the way.

Obfuscation is not an answer to a direct question.

Posted at applyliberally:

"I find it slightly ironic that you guys are ragging the "deniers" on not having intellectual discourse. From what I gather from your posts and comments, you guys are more interested in ragging on a private artist from Sask.

Let me explain science to you, hopefully the terms I use make it easier for you to understand.

Science is a method by which we determine what is provable and what is not. I identify a problem, then I make an assumption which must be in the positive (I'll explain later). I then define my methods, meticulously observe and apply those observations to determine a conclusion that must be supported by the observable and repeatable evidence.

For AGW the problem is that communism failed... I mean that capitalists are filling the atmosphere with CO2. So the hypothesis is therefore brought forward that our addition of CO2 is causing the warming. The methods used are computer models and collection of data that is biased due to the UHIE, urban heat island effect. Now we look at the observations, according to NASA, the hottest years were in the 30s and 90s. Can we attribute our CO2 pollution in the 1930s in the same way that we do now? I'm no history scholar (thankfully an engineer) but I'm pretty sure that there was an economic slowdown (grinding halt) starting in 1929. So the observations are not consistent with the hypothesis, therefore the hypothesis should be discarded. If we turn to the use of modeling we see that models are not repeatable and are therefore inadmissible as scientific evidence, and therefore must be discarded.

BUT NO! Instead of following the scientific method, the proponents of AGW use something called the precautionary principle. The effects of doing such a thing are so negative that we must stop, just in case. To use the god analogue: If I don't believe in god, I'll go to hell, so even if I cannot prove with any evidence whatsoever that he exists I will believe anyways just in case.

The assumption in the positive exists because it is impossible to prove that something doesn't exist, like god. I can prove that it's very unlikely that god exists, or that global warming is happening. Since proving that something does not exist is impossible without faith, one can assume that when we say "AGW is not happening" you can assume what we really mean is "AGW is unlikely to be happening because there is little that backs up the scientific hypothesis on the matter, the physical observations do not meet the hypothesis and the models used to prove the hypothesis are not repeatable. Therefore by reason and careful logic we must discard our hypothesis and submit a new one to be tested".

It always grinds my gears that you (arts major I assume) can say "look the scientists said it, we must implement the policy". Scientists have created hypotheses that has many skeptics have disproved (see climateaudit). An engineer is responsible to take scientific theories (scientific things we believe to be true are theories), and apply them in such a way that they benefit society at large."

What do you think would happen to these sites if AGW deniers started bombarding them with real science? They are used to mindless agreement, they are not used to thoughtfull disagreement.

Minus 7 degrees this morning is southern B.C.

Posted at applyliberally:

"I find it slightly ironic that you guys are ragging the "deniers" on not having intellectual discourse. From what I gather from your posts and comments, you guys are more interested in ragging on a private artist from Sask.

Let me explain science to you, hopefully the terms I use make it easier for you to understand.

Science is a method by which we determine what is provable and what is not. I identify a problem, then I make an assumption which must be in the positive (I'll explain later). I then define my methods, meticulously observe and apply those observations to determine a conclusion that must be supported by the observable and repeatable evidence.

For AGW the problem is that communism failed... I mean that capitalists are filling the atmosphere with CO2. So the hypothesis is therefore brought forward that our addition of CO2 is causing the warming. The methods used are computer models and collection of data that is biased due to the UHIE, urban heat island effect. Now we look at the observations, according to NASA, the hottest years were in the 30s and 90s. Can we attribute our CO2 pollution in the 1930s in the same way that we do now? I'm no history scholar (thankfully an engineer) but I'm pretty sure that there was an economic slowdown (grinding halt) starting in 1929. So the observations are not consistent with the hypothesis, therefore the hypothesis should be discarded. If we turn to the use of modeling we see that models are not repeatable and are therefore inadmissible as scientific evidence, and therefore must be discarded.

BUT NO! Instead of following the scientific method, the proponents of AGW use something called the precautionary principle. The effects of doing such a thing are so negative that we must stop, just in case. To use the god analogue: If I don't believe in god, I'll go to hell, so even if I cannot prove with any evidence whatsoever that he exists I will believe anyways just in case.

The assumption in the positive exists because it is impossible to prove that something doesn't exist, like god. I can prove that it's very unlikely that god exists, or that global warming is happening. Since proving that something does not exist is impossible without faith, one can assume that when we say "AGW is not happening" you can assume what we really mean is "AGW is unlikely to be happening because there is little that backs up the scientific hypothesis on the matter, the physical observations do not meet the hypothesis and the models used to prove the hypothesis are not repeatable. Therefore by reason and careful logic we must discard our hypothesis and submit a new one to be tested".

It always grinds my gears that you (arts major I assume) can say "look the scientists said it, we must implement the policy". Scientists have created hypotheses that has many skeptics have disproved (see climateaudit). An engineer is responsible to take scientific theories (scientific things we believe to be true are theories), and apply them in such a way that they benefit society at large."

Doug: You're wrong, I answered both the question and your implication, look back. Allow me to do it again.

You mean like Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler, Guevara, Castro, Chavez and all the other totalitarians got to do what they wanted?

No. This is a ridiculous comparison.

How many films were prodcued during their reign IN THEIR COUNTRY BY THEIR SUBJECTS that were critical of them?

I don't know, and I don't care, because I wasn't comparing Bush with these dictators - you were.

Answer the question, Marxist bootlick.

I did, many times, and I explained why they were unfair questions. I also told you that you don't know me, and you don't know what my political beliefs are, so calling me a Marxist is not only silly but unfounded. Finally, I decided to insult you directly, as you started with this post, rather than skulk around the outside of a normal conversation dropping ambiguous and idiotic ad hominems disguised as disingenuous implications.

Jon: An engineer is also required to weigh risks vs. benefit, and reasonable people disagree about the nature of the risks and benefits here. Your statement, while true, is missing the details, and therein is the devil.

Anon,

What you say is precisely why some engineers are "naturals" and other are not. The crux is discarding the information which is faulty and using scientifically derived theories to implement policy, even if that policy is just making a skyscraper, or a car. The trouble usually happens when the non-naturals leverage the naturals to do things beyond reasonable judgment (eg. Kyoto Protocol for a natural resource extraction based economy).

Apologies for the double post. I don't even know how that happened.

IPCC too blinkered and corrupt to save , from Fridays Financial Post .

You can blame the BC temps on these guys:

http://www.harbour-air.com/home/index.php?id=75

Jon: I'm not sure exactly what you mean, other than saying that some people make mistakes. It's not really fair to call some engineers 'good' engineers because they listen to the scientists that you or I agree with. Science and engineering are two disciplines that are almost impossible to seperate in any practical or sensible way. Personally, my training is in both Physics/Math (B.Sc.) and Aerospace Engineering (M.A.Sc., Ph.D). Most of the people that I work with are from both camps as well. Most engineers are part scientist, and most scientists are part engineer - I would say by necessity.

20 foot rise in sea level is unlikely. At the rate we are bottling and selling off water there won't be enough left for that kind of sea level rise. Go figure eh?

Red,

Your theory is let's destroy the economies of the West (China, Russia and India will tell you to pound salt) just in case Al Gore happens to be right.

Consider this ... Al Gore is a politician and therefore is fundamentally dishonest.

He is also a hypocrite, not a scientist. He doesn't actually even know what a real scientist is since he consulted with so many phony ones for his movie.

History shows that there have never been the kind of sea level rises that you are so afraid of.

The number of real scientists who are coming on line (now that there is less fear of losing their jobs), is great and they are all telling a very different story about how the climate and the SUN (the big ball that truly has influence over our climate) and sea currents actually work or don't work to affect climate.

How lucky to I feel?

I feel lucky enough to not destroy the economy as insurance against the possibility of drastic climate change.

If you think that destroying the economies of the West will not bring about all the other disasters that you point to in the lower right hand box of your fantasy grid, you are sadly mistaken.

Clinton said it long ago and it was probably the only truly wise thing that ever came out of his mouth. I quote: "It's the economy stupid"

I see you and others of your ilk as frightened little creatures who would sell your souls for some kind of government guarantee of a safe, down filled life, preferably in a high paid caring profession for some gov't agency or another. Or professor/teacher would be a nice safe place.

If only we could get Kate to stop pissing on the parade eh?

Anon,
Engineering is the application of scientific discovery. While some scientists may have traits of engineers and vice versa, they have diverging interests and goals.

Jon

While I agree with the definition, in practice it is usually the case that the two fields are intertwined (except in the pure sciences).

In any case, I think we're getting off of the original topic. You seem to want to say that scientists should not do any risk/benefit analysis in formulating their theories. I agree with that. But what we (the public) see are the results of policy 'suggesters'- many of them scientists - who are almagamating the results of the research of others, and taking the engineering risk mitigation approach - as expected, since they are suggesting policy. You are claiming that the risk mitigation exercise is affecting the science, and I'm not sure I think that is true, at least not to the degree you claim. The bigger problem in the exercise is that they have failed to convince some people of the science, and this makes their risk mitigation arguments seem incorrect. The final result is that their policy suggestions are suspect.

FWIW, I personally believe that there is enough science to support some pretty strong risk mitigation arguments - for both financial and environmental reasons. I also think that the predictions of economic ruin are grossly overstated, and that they ignore and understate the potential economic benefits of switching to a far more sustainable (and ultimately, efficient) energy policy that emphasizes short-term innovation.

Anon, we use "small scale changes" as humour. Every time there is something small-scale in favour of global warming, the hysterics trumpet it from their eco-mosques.

Now, how about those "large scale" changes? 0.6C in a century? That is buried in the noise, babe. One of the "small scale" changes Ottawa goes through is 65C every 6 months.

BTW How much has the planet warmed over the past 6 years? And where did you stick teh thermometer?

Eco-hysteric friendly small scale change: Artic ice at a minimum.

Eco-hysteric unfriendly small scale change: Antartica cooling and ice at a maximum.

Why do you praise the first and ignore the second?
Perhaps this is because the North pole will cool first as heat rises.

"What I really want is the $100,000 it'd take go acquire one!"

You and me both. :-)

Finally, after 20 years, global cooling is becoming a fact.

And according to the enviromentalists wackos the earth will look like it did in that dumb movie WATERWORLD with dorks like KEVIN KOSNER swimming around looking like a dork

Jon: I will post this at Applyliberal as well (if I can find the site) but I would agree with some of what you said but disagree with other parts.
To begin with we must go back to one of the things I keep bringing up on this blog (not so much on others for some reason) and that is the physics of CO2. It is well established in labs and in the atmosphere that CO2 will absorb EM radiation of certain wavelengths. Some of these wavelengths coincide with the infrared radiation being emitted from the earth. So there is a very strong theoretical basis for AGW backed up by observation of the CO2 molecule.
You also mention observations. You are correct that observations are critical to science (and I will also say engineering) but there are many more types of observations than just surface temperatures. One of the strongest bits of evidence for AGW is the fact that as the troposphere is warming, the stratosphere is cooling. Only the addition of GHG could cause both of these and adding GHGs should cause both. In regards to your surface temperatures I will note that the hottest years were only in the 30’s and 90’s for the lower 48 in the US. This is not the case for the rest of the world.
Can we attribute CO2 warming in the 30 in the same way – I am not sure what you mean here so I can not say (certainly the fundamental properties of the CO2 molecule have not changed) but I will note that the sun was stronger in the early 20th century than it was in the 19th. If you read up you will come across sulphate aerosols as well, but I will leave them for another day.

Regards,
John

Wimp:

Perhaps this is because the North pole will cool first as heat rises.

Are you saying that the hot air is going to 'rise' from the South Pole to the North Pole? Under what mechanism? 'Heat rises' because hot air (which is what you're really talking about) is less dense than cold air, so the cold air 'sinks' under gravity and the hot air 'rises'. The North Pole is not 'above' the South Pole except on maps; according to gravity, the North Pole is not 'higher than' the South Pole.

Hahahaha, that's funny.

Anon, I guess I should have put the [/sarcasm] at the end. Or perhaps an adult rated warning.

It always grinds my gears...

Peter Griffin, is that you? Great post, BTW.

Paul (not an engineer, but an ASME member anyway)

I just read that things are worst then expected with CO2 (plant food)up 35% since the 1990's. But We have seen global averages temperatures flat line since 1998 and the Southern Hemisphere cool in recent years. So with all that extra CO2 (plant food) why have the temperature's not soared.
Our weather men or women can not predict the weather 3 days from now with a better then 50/50 chance of being right. How the hell can anyone who says they can predict the weather 50 years from now be taken seriously?

Alan, to return your serve, temperatures have not gone up whil;e CO2 has because CO2 concentrations are really unimportant to the planet's "temperature' or climate.

Man-made global warming is a scam; it's the Sun wot dunnit. Thanks for asking :-)

An aside, you have roughly a two-thirds probability of being correct if you predict tomorrow's weather to be like today's.

...and that applies to the UK too..."Sunny periods with scattered showers".

anon

***Personally, my training is in both Physics/Math (B.Sc.) and Aerospace Engineering (M.A.Sc., Ph.D). *****

such credentials and poor comprehention, pitty that

now, as I'v said 3 or 4 times in various posts in sda " there isn't a program written, and if there wuz, there wouldn't be a computer ( not even the one built by the BC firm and anounce this past summer) that could run it. You as a "mathametion" should be aware of that. In the New Scientist (I think it wuz), that leftist rag, there is an article about existing programs not being able to run a climate model accuratly (no sh!t batman)

Here is somewhat of a scale of the enviro/mentalists contribution to the AGW madness.
No doubt it can and will be interpreted in many ways, depending on individual preference.
Senator Inhofe Speech Excerpt:
And just how minor is that man-made CO2 variable in the atmosphere?
Meteorologist Joseph D'Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chairman of the American Meteorological Society's (AMS) Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, explained in August how miniscule mankind's CO2 emissions are in relation to the Earth's atmosphere.
"If the atmosphere was a 100 story building, our annual anthropogenic CO2 contribution today would be equivalent to the linoleum on the first floor," D'Aleo wrote.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=dddc4451-802a-23ad-4000-a9b55ed9489a&Issue_id=

There is ultimately irony involved here. Only a rich, innovative and entrepenurial society could hope to achieve the objectives set out by the IPCC and the likes of Al Gore and David Suzuki but they are just as determined that the society that meets that criteria should be destroyed. I hate to destroy Red Tory's seemingly impregnable argument but methinks his tic-tac-toe chart needs another column to accommodate the very real, and more likely possibility that global cooling may be coming upon us rather than global warming. The geological record would indicate that we are even likely overdue for a cooling period. Who remembers the mid nineteen seventies.

I would be a lot more open to the global warming "thing" if EVERYONE promo;ting it wasn't

a. Crooked (i.e. UN and Moe Strong)
b.Financially profiting from it in some way. (i.e. Al Gore and MOST supposed UN scientists)
c.an asshole Kooky Suzuki

Horny Toad