Marlo –
You are so full of crap.
You have been proven wrong. The entire world has proven you wrong. You are the last guy on Earth to get it. Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.
Mike
Michael T. Eckhart
President
American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)
H/T reader “Ross” who explains;
Marlo Lewis is a lawyer who works at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington. He published a well-reasoned article critiquing a cap-and-trade proposal before Congress, based on recent testimony he gave before a Senate committee.
@canadian_2 (your 12.14pm)
You are incorrect when you state “that the overwhelming majority of world’s top scientists … consider the debate long since over as to whether man has a key role in warming” for the following reasons:
(1) The overwhelming majority of the world’s top scientists have not even considered the issue. Reason – these people tend to be very focused on their own work as of primary importance, and devote little serious thought to other fields.
(2) No definition of “key role” exists, and the consensus opinion among those scientists in the field is unstable. The field of planetary climatology is not yet mature, hence those in this field tend to be more modest with their language (unless they are writing a grant or on TV*)
*I can say this, because I am confessing my own sins here.
“ou are free to have your heroes; intellectual giants such and Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity etc…,”
This has got to take the month’s prize for the most toxic arrogant and illiterate statement made on SDA….congratulations cone head, your reactionary partisanism has conditioned you to make uncivil and philistine stereotypes…how F’ing “enlightened” …I suspect your depth of critical thinking is similarly degenerated.
Canadian_2. Your wrong. I belive Roy Green (on CHQR) has a standing offer for the Gore, fruitfly guy, and there ilk to debate with people like Prof. Tim Ball on his radio show but they refuse.
There is a noted Brithish climatoligist (name escapes me ) that has tryed to contact Gore and the like to set up a debate and they refuse.
I actually enjoyed Skip’s rant. It would be fun to debate him over a beer or two. (From a local brewery of course so we don’t have to burn fossil fuels for transportation, packaging etc and can perhaps deny those big corporations their profits 😉
canadian_2 thanks for the support. The broad and deep scientific support (ok by the scientific community that focuses on climate change if not all scientists) for the theory that humans are contributing to GW does tend to elevate this past the hypot.. (sorry can’t remember that big word) stage (ok perhaps a little shy of our reliance on the understanding of gravity). Even if you remain skeptical against over-whelming consensus you might find this of interest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ
And my point was … nobody should be threatening anyone, even career type threats as in the original email are stupid … and physically threatening anyone over this or beating people – those two both belong in jail IMHO!
The tipping point has come – witness the lip service Bush and Harper are now giving to the issue. We will tolerate you deniers cause that’s the nature of a “liberal democracy”. (ok Canada has some dumb Holocaust laws that rarely get enforced and give the offender far too much attention in the process.)
Just get used to being ignored as the rest of us get on with trying to mitigate the human stampede towards extinction.
really, ron? You are ‘mitigating the human stampede towards extinction? You’re kidding!
How? What are you doing?
I know it is an emotional high to be part of a collective utopianism, all singing together as you march along, to prevent the coming apocaplypse. But, apart from your song of faith and fight – what are you doing?
The ‘tipping point’ you refer to isn’t a scientific tipping point -for science most certainly doesn’t have the capacity to fully define, with any predictive capacity, the causes of climate change. I know you think that the cause is clear – AGW – but such reductionism isn’t science. The climate is a complex adaptive system, and can’t be reduced to singular causes.
The tipping point to which you refer is simply political; the people are emotionally entrapped within a utopian and apocalyptic scenario. They have moved outside of the reach of reason. How do you deal with hysteria? By appeasing the hysteric, by soothing talk of ‘there, there, you might be right’…until reason returns to their fevered brains. That’s what’s happening politically – soothing the irrational hysteric mob who have moved out of the reach of reason.
Again, ron, apart from your song, what are you doing?
Ron (7:29 A.M., July 14))
Lancer (10:52P.M., July 13)
A “small” list for you… oh, rough guess would be 6000 to 8000 scientists who signed the petition (left hand column, I figure 350 names under the “A” alone).
As opposed to the 300 or so scientists (yes, only 300 SCIENTISTS) who were signatories of the IPCC report.
You poor saps.
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p41.htm
(P.S. I know, I know, Lancer’s 2 scientists are correct, and these 6000+ scientists are wrong…
which makes me right about the “saps” bit!)
Oops, I forgot to include canadian_2’s name in my post.
Oh, say, maybe Larry , Moe and Cu…
I mean canadian_2, Ron and Lancer should get onto Google Video and search for Michael Crichton, “Complexity Theory”. Go ahead, guys, spend an hour and a half to learn something.
For once in your lives.
Joe B: The OISM petition project was based on a document that Soon and several others wrote. Would you care to discuss the science that is presented in that document?
Regards,
John
Ron: I would be very willing to debate Tim Ball and in fact have tried to engage him in meaningful discussion several times. He has yet to participate.
Regards,
John
ET: You said “You see, all the other variables haven’t been exluded, including ….. oh, and solar effects.”
Interesting discussion of the most recent paper here.
Regards,
John
Reference the document, John, so that we can all have fun.
Tenebris: Sure,
here it is.
John Cross (2:01 P.M.)
Discuss? No, I’m no expert in the field of atmospheric science. You ARE, no doubt.
So, which field is your specialty?
“Atmospheric CO2 concentrations”
“Terestial Northern Hemisphere Temperatures as
Deviations in Degrees C”
“Radiosonic Balloon Station Measurements of
Global Lower Troporsheric Temperatures”
“Satellite Microwave Sounding Unit
Measurements of Global Tropospheric
Temperatures Between Latitudes 83N and 83S”
Etc…
Why don’t you write a letter to Fred Seitz, stating what you believe about the “peer reviewed scientific paper on which this petition is based”? Perhaps if you proffer to “discuss the science that is presented in that document” with ANY one of the scientists who signed the petition, they’ll take you up on it; you can post a copy of your letter at SDA.
I’m surprised they didn’t contact you to ask if you would sign. Or did they?
I never was good enough to play professional hockey, but I can distinguish between a good hockey player and a so-so hockey… or a lousy hockey player. If ya know what I mean.
bottom line…..you threaten my family, I kick your teeth down your throat….end of story
and if that means thirty days in the clink, and loss of passport, so be it
Tenebris: Not sure what happened to the link. It was there when I posted – honest. Anyway, I will try it again:
here
one last thing…my oldest daughter, who was being stalked by a white rapper thug punk, is very proud of her 200 lb, 6ft tattooed ex-army dad….said punk does not bother my daughter any longer
Ron, sure, a debate over beers would be great, bring an open and schooled mind, and I’ll play devil’s advocate to any cause… 🙂 (I’m not worried about using fossil fuels to get there. I’m too old to give much of a damn about any of this, really. Besides, as a biologist, my catechism always starts with “Mother nature always compensates…”)
But really, “mitigating the human stampede toward extinction”? Do you actually believe that man has any ability to stop that?
The correct answer is “no”. One or more of the ancient Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will come into play, perhaps sooner than later, than any GW nonsense. People forget, or don’t comprehend, the capacity of the human species to exist in inhospitable environments. We already live on half the planet that cannot natively support us. There is little in the current “reasonable” GW predictions for the next 100 years (as a prediction, not even good table odds at any casino) that will do anything more than cause man to move around, and that will result in one more of the ancient Horsemen to kick butt. With luck, they will hand out enough Darwin awards to give us another kick at Mother Earth. But, no, you won’t stop it. We will extinguish or we will evolve, regardless of how we spend our time doing it. Man likes to create museums in which to live: from provincial, state and national parks, to cities, buildings with their artificial environments, and even ideological museums like the current “Great” religions. None of this has anything to do with our long term future, only how we get to enjoy the present. Bring another pitcher, please.
john cross – because Ball has ‘yet to participate with you in meaningful discussion’ does that mean that you are right?
A major problem I have with AGW is that, to have any validity, it must explain why the other variables that caused all the many previous warming and cooling eras are not a factor at this time, and therefore, why AGW is assumed to be the cause.
ET, regarding your comment about Dr. Ball – I couldn’t have said it better myself!! Not participating in a debate says nothing about the validity of an argument.
In regards to previous variables, there are several that we can rule out. Off the top of my head:
– Continental drift (too slow to cause current trend)
– Changes in solar activity (as above)
– Milankovitch cycles (wrong configuration).
John
John Cross, ET, others. We are wasting time debating AGW. It has a quasi religious dogma feel to it, but there is room for rational debate about how to proceed further, rather than presenting this or that scientific paper.
It’s good fun and quite interesting (must admit I’m not a scientist, so I glaze over at a lot of this). Sorry for sounding like a broken record, but all of us (I hope) can agree that the faster we transition out of fossil fuels, the better.
Let’s ignore the likes of Gore and Suzuki (and some ridiculous Ont commercial where we’re told the planet has ten years to live) with their overblown and inconsistent scenarios, such as “we the evil west caused the problem, so we must dramatically scale back our emissions, but it’s OK for China to quintuple what Kyoto, if fully implemented in its present form, would achieve.
Destroying our wealth will not help the environment. Purchasing carbon credits that do not actually reduce CO2 emissions will not help the environment. Making stupid threats and namecalling will not help the environment. Bitching about AGW to mask doing nothing will not help the environment.
Let’s focus on our areas of agreement, rather than where we disagree. If we do that, the the reasoned arguments of John Cross and ET will win out, and the zealot idiots like Gore and head in sand types will be outed for what they are – people who don’t give a damn about the environment, who have a political axe to grind.
Let’s get on with it!
Jeff said: “here’s a tip tough guy, turn off the computer and go for a walk. assault isn’t all that cool”
Spoken like a true little, urban, new age, candy ass.
What are you going to do little Jeffy, now that you’ve been oh-so-upset? Call your lawyer?
F*ck off asshole, if I recieved death threats and I were able to track the chickensh*t who made them down I’d do the same thing. So take your wussy-assed comments to yourself.
Wimps like you are the same type of smart assed Starbucks pansies that flip the finger to people in traffic then if they get cornerd in a parking lot by those same people they INSTANTLY phone the cops on their cell.
F*CK OFF JEFF.
john cross – then what was the point of your statement about your willingness to debate with Ball? If you accept that willingness to debate says nothing about the validity of an argument, then, why did you inform us that Ball hadn’t debated with you?
No, I don’t think that the other variables are definitively ruled out; the debate on them continues in the scientific world. They may be ruled out by YOU, but that is hardly conclusive.
What puzzles me is your reductionism – that you reduce a complex system, such as the climate, to one variable. That’s a mechanical analysis, and the climate isn’t mechanical. So, I’m puzzled by your attempt to turn the complex into the mechanical. Most unscientific.
Kingstonlad,
Dito on your life’s theories and laws. You practice what is right and honourable.
And you’ve just got to love Kate’s “returning the phone call” line.
All the best.
John,
Let us consider the recent paper by Lockwood and Frohlich. This is a nice piece of work. (Note the colloquialism.) Their source data appear to be solid, from my cursory validation. Their numerical treatment for the suppression of the solar cycle, while elementary, works well enough to capture the longer term trends, but distorts short-term time-correlation. Any person with a modicum of scientific training will have little trouble understanding the figures and drawing general conclusions along the lines of those reported in the BBC article mentioned by Lancer (see comment at 10.52pm yesterday).
But…
Lockwood’s comment to the BBC that “You can’t just ignore bits of data that you don’t like” (in reference to his critique of TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle) is particularly galling, since his statements rely on precisely this selectivity.
If you take the dataset back about a thousand years (a time period that makes a little more sense for assessing solar activity), one notes that sun spot numbers over the last century are more than double what they were over the previous millennium. Specifically, sunspots are trending strongly upwards, ever since their near-extinction during the Maunder minimum (roughly years 1650 to 1700) and may now have temporarily stabilized at about 70 (see Fig. 4a – fluctuations appear rms).
I am not exactly ignorant on these matters. My professional opinion is that the dominant source of variations in long-term climate is the sun. This is what the data strongly imply. However, please feel free to believe otherwise. It helps justify my lifestyle and gives me more research money.
@John, 2.42pm
Thanks for the link. Any chance you might want to summarize the points of specific contention?
ET, my comment about debate was in response to a comment by Ron. Please see that for context.
In regards to other factors, of course the debate continues you can never be certain in science. I have no desire to reduce things to one variable, but reduction of complex systems is what science is all about.
I have some background in fluid mechanics. Flow over a foil is turbulent and we do not have the computational power to predict where a particle of fluid will move in turbulent flow. But we know enough to build airplanes that work.
Dear Ann Landers (aka John Cross), my 9-year old son has challenged me to debate him regarding his claim that the moon landing was fake, but so far I have not taken him up on the challenge to the debate.
Does this mean that he is right and I am wrong?
Exactly who are YOU that Dr. Tim Ball would spend his time debating YOU? I suspect THAT is the reason he hasn’t taken you up on your offer.
the comment by the leftard is correct…..what happened that day was assault(not the first or last time)….but the key thing is the commie puke bag never called the cops…..why? because he knew he would do as much time as me….it all balanced out in the end…seems fair to me….the threat was eliminated, and the wimpoid leftard received a valuable life lesson….do not threaten tattooed, muscular ex-army guys, it is bad for your face
kingstonlad, I used to know an electrical contractor about 20 years back who wired the outdoor lighting for a back yard pool at some local muck-a-muck’s mansion. I guess there was some sort of problem with the lights; wouldn’t come on at midnight during the week. Mr. Big automatically assumed it was the contractor’s fault, so he phoned him up that minute, got him out of bed, and tore him a new one, demanding IMMEDIATE redress of the “crappy job” this electrician did wiring the lights.
The contractor went over right away, you bet, and chucked the high-flown S.O.B. in the pool.
He NEVER went back. And he never heard from the dipstick again.
no, john, cross, reduction of complex systems to mechanical systems is definitely NOT what science is about. A complex system remains and must remain, complex and can’t be reduced to singular causes. Yet that is exactly what you seem to be attempting.
Yes, I’m aware that you responded to ron; that still doesn’t explain your comment. As eeyore said, much better than I was saying – Why should Ball debate with you? Who are you, frankly, that he should do so?
And water/air flow, which is a kinetic interaction of X and Y is not comparable to a complex system such as the climate.
“The vast majority” and ‘the overwhelming consensus’ have becoming meaningless terms. Especially when they are far from the truth. Yet the pinheads will stick to their mantra, repeating propoganda over and over. As if that’s going to lead to success.
In a recent study, the majority of the British don’t believe in AGW.
Guess it’s time to sharpen the guillotines, the deniers are really adding up.
Including the President of the Czech Republic:
“I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.
The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.
As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
■Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
■Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
■Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
■Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
■Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
■Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
■Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.”
————————–
“It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth”, Bjarne Andresen says, an an expert of thermodynamics. “A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate”.
———————–
… the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate reported, “Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame.”
… according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, “Although it’s tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests’ humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine.”
… the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, “Africa’s deserts are in ‘spectacular’ retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa.”
… a 2005 study in the Journal of Glaciology, “the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain.” In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that the past two decades were the coldest for Greenland since the 1910s.
… the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.
———————–
According to a recent survey, the majority of the British don’t believe in AGW. Better get those guillotines sharpened, pinheads.
I like Kingstonlad. We both live in the same Province (although at opposite ends), but his approach to conflict resolution management is most refreshing. A Pity it isn’t utilized more often.
Tenebris: There are some points of contention (we can look at these is you like), but there are a number of points where the science has moved on and what they say is wrong.
A good example is their use of the MSU data. They reference the S&C tropospheric data set as showing cooling when it is now acknowledged that it shows warming.
Regards,
John
Eeyore: “Does this mean that he is right and I am wrong?”
That was my point. I am glad that you and ET agree with it.
Dr. Ball is well within his rights to not debate me as are Mr. Gore and Dr. Suzuki. It says nothing about the strength of the arguments.
Excellent article Kate! It is about time people stand up and speak their mind. Also, the courage to use their voice. So many times people are afraid to say anything or do anything to “ripple the water”.
Kingstonlad: Good on YOU! It seems in this day and age if you give people an inch they will take a mile. ANYONE that would threat my family, granddaughter, I’m am right in there too. If you leave it to the law and courts your family is put at risk. (I don’t have tattoo’s either)
One of my hobbies is studying the dynamics of non-colocated limited-bandwidth conversations like those in blog comments, UseNet groups, and mailing lists, and I must say this one is a classic.
Perhaps we need a variation of Goodwin’s Law that says something like: whenever “climate change” is mentioned by a commenter, the thread is over, because all that will follow is the same old debate about whether or not “climate change” is “real” (for some value of “real”), even if the matter of “climate change” is only incidental to the point the commenter was making, and even though the “real”ness question can’t be decided in blog comments.
I s’pose we could call it Vitruvius’ Law, but there are already so many laws named after me that it would probably be better to pick some other name 😉
That’s the left for you — fear mongering, threatening, and smearing…pathetic.
Vitruvius, when I first read your comment I could have sworn it said non-chocolated! The mind boggles at the possibilities!
If I may put a little more meat on the bones of my previous comment, say the letter originally quoted by Kate had said this:
“You have been proven wrong. The entire world has proven you wrong. You are the last guy on Earth to get it. Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against insert topic here, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.”
Now explain to me again why we are arguing about whether or not “climate change” is “real”. Whether or not I agree with Kingstonlad’s tactics (I haven’t said either way), at least he and those who followed his lead are on topic (other than the gratuitous swipe at lefties – threats are threats, left or right – which slightly diluted his presentation).
ET: If I can gently point out, you are the one who said mechanical, I only said the reduction of complex systems. In medicine, every person is different, yet we train doctors to treat people in general. It is still a complex task, but one that is easier than learning a different set of rules for each person.
No one is saying the climate is not complex. But it still follows physical laws.
To bring things back to topic, I don’t think there is any excuse for that type of talk in a scientific discussion.
john cross – you are continuing to divert the focus from Ball’s not debating with you. The point of debating with you has nothing to do with the topic to be debated, but with who you are. It is your inflated view of yourself that leads you to assume that Ball, or anyone else, should debate with you. That is what we are commenting on.
There is no need to be ‘gentle’ (passive/aggressive) with me. You also don’t understand that a mechanical perspective means a reductionist perspective. Same thing.
You have a tendency, in a discussion, to divert from the main issue to the peripheral. Your view of a complex adapative system is mechanical or reductionist. I suspect that you don’t know what a CAS (complex adaptive system) is.
And no, john cross, every person is NOT different. We are, as a particular biological entity, made up of normative properties – heart, lungs, liver, etc that behave, more or less, along normative lines. Even diseases have normative properties. So, a doctor does not treat each person as different, but as a specific case example of a normative process (health or disease). I suspect that you think ‘differences’ mean ‘complexity’ – no they don’t.
irwin daisy – thanks for the examples.
vitruvius – we could, after all, start to number your laws – using Roman Numerals of course.
I agree with John Cross’s last comment. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that if someone talks like that, then that is ipso facto evidence of some sort of behaviour, whatever it is, that is not scientific, for any value of scientific.
PS: ET, Vitruvius I is: “Existence Exists”, but that’s beyond the scope of this thread 😉
Skip,
I like how you think … “living in museums” is an interesting concept – esp. the ideological/religious ones… BUT (have to have a but, eh)
“We will extinguish or we will evolve, regardless of how we spend our time doing it. ”
Surely we have some ability to steer this due to our self awareness as beings… we ain’t just beavers building dams as we have some insight into the effects of our works.
Bottoms up
BTW, I kinda got here by accident today following a link so I haven’t spent much time on this site.
I must say that the numerous endorsements of vigilantly-ism are most disturbing to someone who believes in a civil society. I hope it doesn’t represent the average poster/reader (or owner) at SDA.
There are tens of thousands of readers of SDA, Ron, and hundreds of commenters, so it would indeed be risky to draw any general conclusions about average behaviour from only a few converstations.
ahh, vitruvius – of course, your first law is perfect. But, ahem, is that existence that exists both potential and actual? I hope so – I’m a realist, ie, aristotelian. Ok, ok, I know it’s not the topic of this thread which is purely kinetic interactions.
Technically, ET, Vitruvius I doesn’t care why or how existence exists, details like that really muddy up tautologies quickly. We must be patient, ET. Someday Kate will create a topic on Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Axiology, and that’s where I’ll continue this discussion, that’s where (in order keep in the spirit of this thread) I threaten to ask the question: “Does existence ever do anything exactly once?” But not here; we can’t even start without a whole defining our terms phase, and this is not the place, even if we were both amystical phenomenological non-deterministic mechanists, and you’re not 😉
Ahem. Note though that threatening to ask a question is a difference in kind, not degree, with threating to ruin someone’s reputation because one disagrees with them on a matter of science.
Say I believed the earth was flat? Would you attempt to ruin my reputation for believing that? Of course not, there would be no need to. Why is Bully Eckhart making his threat? Because Mr. Marlo has written a valid essay that Eckhart is unable to counter in context.
If you are worthy of debate, John Cross, please tell us your credentials. If worthy, we will help you arrange a debate. If not, zip.
We already know Tim’s and Patrick’s. And they are impecable 🙂 They have walked the walk.
The Gore doesn’t even make sense when he talks —- 26 ft sea level rise, and all.
ET: It is your inflated view of yourself that leads you to assume that Ball, or anyone else, should debate with you Which is why of course I said that he was well within his rights to ignore me. Please re-read my posts and show where I claim he “should” debate me. My point all along has been that not agreeing to debate is no indication of the weakness of an argument (and you say I get side tracked).
In regards to CASs I would have thought that the immune system was one, but I could be wrong. Do you have a couple of examples of CASs?