This stuff is starting to scare me:
The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said Saturday.
“We are basically looking now at a future climate that’s beyond anything we’ve considered seriously in climate model simulations,” Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
[….]Unexpectedly large amounts of carbon dioxide are being released into the atmosphere as the result of “feedback loops” that are speeding up natural processes. Prominent among these, evidence indicates, is a cycle in which higher temperatures are beginning to melt the arctic permafrost, which could release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon and methane into the atmosphere, said several scientists on a panel at the meeting.
The permafrost holds 1 trillion tons of carbon, and as much as 10 percent of that could be released this century, Field said. Melting permafrost also releases methane, which is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
All that said, I live in a cold climate so I could use a global warming, I don’t eat California produce anyway, it would be a mistake to act until some of our coastal cites are underwater, and I wonder how they know it’s really permafrost when it’s only been frozen for 6000 years tops, given the age of the earth.
Tim F.
Only people who hate Jesus would see a disconnect there.
[/2005 DougJ]
El Cid
You fail to mention the key facts that Al Gore is fat and has a big house.
Walker
All-of-a-sudden, my career-induced relocation from the SE (NC to be exact) to NY state doesn’t look so bad.
Though it would suck if NY got too warm for apple trees and maple syrup.
Ninerdave
I dunno, if the water levels rise enough I’ll have beach front property. Sounds good to me! Go Global Warming!!
Stuck
What makes my teeth hurt are the wingnut deniers who focus on a single or several warm winter or cool summer in a specific location, and wag their finger and shriek see, see nolo Global Warming, or even babble a new ice age is upon us. It’s further evidence of their ignorance (or denial) of the nuances and complexity of global climate science. Or any science for that matter. It’s all godless and liberal.
Here in the heavenly Podunk NM region, the past several summers have been cooler than usual, or normal, as have been the winters. After the first five years of the new decade were so hot and dry forest fires nearly burnt our asses to a crisp.
Knocks on wood.
The Grand Panjandrum
Look, if the Sumerians can invent ink 1000 years before the Earth was created then we should be able to solve this challenge, no? Of course, they didn’t have RSSF to keep them safe from bad people so that may explain why their civilization didn’t last.
Polish the Guillotines
@Ninerdave:
Dude, if you end up with beach front property where you are, then you’ll probably be making your living giving glass-bottom boat tours of the Lost City of Oakland.
Stuck
@Ninerdave:
And if they rise higher than that, you’ll be able to surf without leaving the house.:)
The Grand Panjandrum
@Walker: Actually their is some evidence that sugar bushes are not doing as well as they once did and the that slightly warmer winters (about one degree over the past century) may be the culprit.
Shawn in ShowMe
George Carlin said it best:
"The planet…the planet…the planet isn’t going anywhere. WE ARE!
We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe."
If Washington would have promoted manned space exploration after the Apollo program , maybe we’d be plotting a course to our new home now.
TheFountainHead
I really don’t get why everybody whinges about Global Warming so damn much. Even assuming any of these scientists have a remotely accurate model by which to predict our climatological future (they don’t) it doesn’t matter in the slightest because the Human race is FAR more likely to get wiped out by AIDs or an as yet unseen virus of the Flu type.
So seriously, why bother getting all jumpy about the weather?
Ninerdave
@Polish the Guillotines
I’ll need one of these an T-Pain
Ninerdave
@Stuck:
Body boarding…I never had enough talent to get up on a surfboard
dbrown
@TheFountainHead: If you are being serious, you don’t know very much about the scientific method, advanced statistical math, computer modeling nor intelligent thinking for that matter. For you to say a model is inaccurate requires that you understand said models well enough to prove your statement; while what you BELIEVE may possibly be true, these models are very good at getting answers that have a high probability of being close to the real value. So, unless you are an expert and understand such complex systems, you are just showing how little you understand any intelligent method of thinking.
As for not caring because of some other X danger may get us instead, that is as worthless a straw-man statement as any repug-a-thug can make. Please try and think before you post (not that that stops me but I don’t enjoy looking stupid when possible.)
Brick Oven Bill
I don’t know enough about Global Warming to have a strong opinion on it. But am very suspicious of it because it can be used as a mechanism to transfer power to the government.
Also that it is a meal ticket for its proponents. So here are my two questions:
1. If Global Warming is a problem, then why is the globe not warming?
2. If Global Warming is a problem, then why is Antarctica growing?
Tony J
That’s the really scary bit. Especially if oceanic temperatures heat up and those naturally stored methane deposits hit the atmosphere.
We’re looking at heat you wouldn’t believe, driving the atmosphere to produce weather that simply won’t let us grow crops. At which point we all die, slowly enough to see the last wingnut waving a flag on top of Mount Rushmore and calling for tax-cuts.
Be very afraid. I am.
dbrown
@Brick Oven Bill: Your questions show that you don’t understand human induced global warming – Antarctica is supposed to grow in AGW (Duh) and is following the models very closely for reasons that you can find out for yourself by trying something DANGEROUS: read (try REALCLIMATE site). As for your first statement, what world are you living on? The average Global temperature is rising – notice the artic ice cover has thinned over 60% the last 50 years (one minor example, try reading for the many others.) Again, try learning for yourself on the subject and not fall into the trap of listening to the dumb talk about that they know nothing about. KEY: read experts in the field just like you don’t trust a street person to do your dentistry (I hope) go to someone who has been trained to understand a job.
Your straw-man ‘Also that it is a meal ticket for its proponents.’ Is just silly BS thinking; last time I checked, MD’s benefit from people smoking yet strangely, they try to get people to stop, go figure.
SGEW
Oh, Bill. Why do I bother?
Ahem. So this is not a "strong" opinion?
That’s from the same thread where you complained about that "whole human evolution thing."
Also:
1.) It is, you fool. I would link to the IPCC reports, but it probably falls under tl;dr for you. Instead, try this website the EPA put up for kids – it’s pretty easy to read.
2.) Your answer here, from actual scientists. May also fall under tl;dr territory for you. Sorry.
Interrobang
1. If Global Warming is a problem, then why is the globe not warming?
Because the globe is warming unless you are a denialist crank and you cherry-pick the data to only include the downward fluctuations in the graph, asswipe.
2. If Global Warming is a problem, then why is Antarctica growing?
Because Antarctica isn’t growing unless you’re a denialist crank and you cherry-pick the data to only include the downward fluctuations in the graph, asswipe.
See also the many ice shelf collapses we seem to be having, climate shifts that are resulting in temperate climates having hotter summers and colder winters, and heightened hurricane activity.
If all you’re worried about regarding climate change is that some people might use it as a chance to seize power, you seriously need your fucking head read.
KG
Funny thing about humans, we’re probably the best creatures the Earth has seen when it comes to survival instincts. We’ll figure out how to adapt and deal with a changing climate because we have a few times in our history. We’ll figure out how to deal with the real of extra carbon or methane – hell, it may well end up being our next power source. In short: I’m not scared, and neither should you be.
Martin
It already is too warm for maple syrup.
Pennsylvania was the leading producer of maple syrup 150 years ago. It moved up to Vermont/NH and now it’s Canada. Those places didn’t used to get enough of the daily freeze/thaw cycles needed to extract syrup, but they do now.
Fortunately with apples, there are species that grow with fewer cold hours. I have a very productive tree in my yard and we only get about 200 hours below 40 degrees each year here in SoCal.
SGEW
Tell it to the Bangladeshis. Not to mention the Mayans.
Shawn in ShowMe
Well, maybe we’ll by worthy of that title after we’ve ruled the earth for 150 million years like some dinos I know.
Brick Oven Bill
This from World Climate Report:
It’s likely that the average temperature for 2008 will fall below the value for 2007 and quite possibly be the coldest year of the (official) 21st century. 2008 will add another to the growing recent string of years during which time global average temperatures have not risen.
I might not have spent much time on Global Warming, but I do understand calculus, and the difference between rates and acceleration. Theoretically, the rate of mankind releasing carbon to the atmosphere would be roughly linear over the past fifty years. This would mean that temperature would be accelerating upward, as the derivative of the rate of mankind releasing carbon.
But temperature is not accelerating upwards, it has been steady and is now dropping, per the data. So the trends do not check. The link indicates that temperatures peaked around 2002 and have been trending down. The data I provide is more complete than Interrobang’s above.
If there is a Global Warming model that shows that the Antarctic ice cap is to grow as the globe warms, I question that model for Global Warming. I suspect that historical temperature changes have more to do with solar activity than with the arrangement of carbon atoms on earth.
Martin
There’s a big difference between surviving and flourishing. I don’t think turning NYC and Miami into NOLAs is going to advance us in any meaningful way. If the consequences of climate change are no biggie, then TARP and the stimulus shouldn’t even be commented on – because the effects on standard of living due to climate change will make all of this look stupidly trivial.
dbrown
@KG: Never have I read such a selfish post here, ever. AGW can and will cause billions of third world woman, children to suffer terribly and countless millions to strave, die from lack of water, exposure, disease, and war but as long as you are ok, well it is ok for all these deaths. That is sick.
As for your statement that AGW gases in the atmosphere may be our next energy source is beyond stupid. Your lack of intelligence has hit a near record low on this site. Please try and understand, AGW will not ever provide energy for anyone.
Adapt? Right. Unless you can figure out how to feed, provide clean water, housing and good jobs to billions of people that are being displaced and harmed over just the next twenty years, your statement is utter shit. Try thinking like someone who cares a little about other humans that are not as well off as you – not required but try it.
calipygian
Uh, H. Sapiens has been around a scant two million years, while ants have been around for at least a 100 million years.
As far as survival instinct, human beings are pikers compared to many species.
dbrown
@Brick Oven Bill:You may have passed calculus class in college but you understand ZERO science. The carbon dioxide rate released by all sources has very little direct relationship to instantaneous heating of our planet nor even for the average heating rates for finite periods of time (under ten years). Also, the rate of release is not linear but that is not really important to the point I’m making here, but even if it was, that does not make your statement correct. The Earth system is not a simple math relationship between gases coming in and temperature rise.
As for your current understanding of calculus you are now a failing student so go back and relearn. You have NO equation to take the derivative of. So please share with us your equation of State for the rate of heating of the planet called Earth – your Nobel is waiting. Until then, try learning from experts before you post on a subject you clearly do not understand.
Gizmo
I actually take comfort in the notion that our species may not be around for too much longer. It puts the little stuff in perspective. Who cares about dental cavities and property taxes and hemorrhoids when mankind itself is headed off the cliff?
Martin
And how reputable is your source? Or should we all cherry-pick our sources to disprove you?
The Hadley Center has been running mean global temp for the longest: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/fact2.html
So, we’re in a local cooling cycle among a longer term warming cycle. Don’t try so hard to be a douchbag, okay?
SGEW
Bill,
For someone who questions the motives of AGW scientists, I find it interesting that you blithely quote an online newsletter put out by Western Fuels Association, a "cooperative that supplies coal and transportation services to consumer-owned electric utilities."
Funny that.
Martin
Ah, see, Bill is protecting us from a transfer power to the government by deliberately transferring power to the coal industry. The coal industry cares about our long-term well-being, whereas the government is only out to fuck us over and take our money.
dbrown
Aside: most AGW models predict greater snow falls over most of Antarctica and this will cause the ice layers to get thicker over much of those areas. As for rate of ice flowing to the sea, grounded ice being undermined, no model exists but these are major issues that will play a major role as tempeartures of the ocean rise but all bets are off there.
Mike in NC
Just proves that now would be an excellent time for some MASSIVE TAX CUTS and the science stuff be damned!
Proper Gander
I do understand calculus, and the difference between rates and acceleration.
Your claim to understand an extremely basic calculus concept doesn’t hold up under observation. You cite a two-year drop in temperatures. First of all, get in your car for a 0-60mph time test, hit the brakes briefly, and then resume your acceleration. Your net acceleration is still positive, despite a section of its graph where it is negative.
Theoretically, the rate of mankind releasing carbon to the atmosphere would be roughly linear over the past fifty years.
With your famed understanding of Calculus, you should know what a graph of an exponential function looks like, such as this one for anthropogenic carbon emissions since 1750.
But temperature is not accelerating upwards, it has been steady and is now dropping, per the data.
Uhhhhm, not true? See acceleration test scenario above.
Let’s see- to begin with this one, you need to know that the minimum period indicative of climate trends is 30 years.*
2009-30=1979
So you’re stuck arguing with an insufficient sample size because to compare contemporary global weather with that of 1979* would make your thesis look foolish.
*The minimum time period that cyclical weather forces, such as the solar cycle and El Nino events can be averaged over.
**The year some credulous media types allowed themselves to be convinced that an unlikely climate scenario (a new ice age) was the one to promote.
The Grand Panjandrum
Until the climate change naysayers have at least a rudimentary understanding of science and mathematics we may as well be explaining the Buffon Needle Problem to a godammed fruit fly.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Proper Gander: The derivative will only give you a snapshot of what occurs at any given moment w.r.t. time. But I could wave my hands and make his argument true! Poof! See now it’s true. Wheeeeeeee ….
JGabriel
DougJ:
Doug, you display an alarming, even frightening, ability to think and write like a whingenut.
Is there anything you want to tell us, anything that explains this disturbing facility?
.
TenguPhule
These days there’s no telling what you find in the gene pool.
Chlorination, we can has it?
ThymeZone
Hey, I live in Phoenix.
Warming? Shwarming. It’s not like it can get ANY FUCKING HOTTER?
Amirite?
Seriously, it ca
{signal lost}
DRD 1812
Good grief, BOB, get a hobby. Take up sudoko. Model trains are nice. Anything to keep you away from the keyboard spouting what little you actually know about everything.
Melting ice gets all the news coverage. But one can find plenty of good evidence of warming in our ecosystems. The unnaturally rapid pace of anthropogenic warming results in many plant and animal species being stressed because they do not have time to adapt by migrating to latitudes or elevations where conditions are more favorable or by evolving into more survivable forms.
ThymeZone
Years of spoofing them perfectly?
TenguPhule
It merely requires that you pretend everything is really the exact opposite of itself and that facts and logic are a suggestion, not the rule.
ksmiami
I think the problem is that from an evolutionary perspective humans are wired in a way that we can fix short term small problems like contructing a dam or a bridge, but not long term big problems like global warming and we fail to comprehend how fragile our existence is on the planet… I mean talk to any astronomer about the myriad ways life on earth can end and you see that our position is incredibly precarious. Now I am 90% sure that we will at some point make thejump to other planets, but I would rather have it done out of curiosity than necessity (Wall-E).
ThymeZone
When did you start channeling my boss?
burnspbesq
@dbrown:
Hope your snark detector is still under warranty. It just malfunctioned.
JGabriel
Brick Oven Bill:
Let’s see.
Planet warms. More water evaporates. Those places where the temperature goes from 10F to 25F get a lot more snow and ice – because there’s more water in the air, and it doesn’t fall out (or falls out as rain) in more temperate regions as it might have done in colder days.
But god forbid a cycle that can be explained in 3 sentences. That far too complex for BOB’s aesthetics.
.
Stuck
@ksmiami:
The B o B is working on it. And without a spaceship.
JGabriel
calipygian:
Minor correction: Homo Sapiens has only been around for about 200,000 years. The entire Homo genus (Homo Erectus, Ergaster, etc.) has been around for about 2 million years, 4-5 million if you shoehorn in austrolapithecines.
The Other Steve
This thread needs more Bacon!
BrickOvenBill
Relax liberals. By the time the polar ice caps vanish, scientist will have found a way to replenish them.
Nancy Darling
This reminds me of a Phillip Dick novel (can’t remember which one) where you needed a special suit to go out in the hot streets of NYC and rich folks took their vacations on the beaches of Antarctica. In another of his novels, earth was colonizing Mars. People were drafted to go there. Conditions on Mars were so bad that every one took a drug called CanD which enabled them to take virtual trips into their ‘Perky Pat Lay-outs’ which were basically glorified doll houses. Everyone competed to have the best Perky Pat Lay-out—-tiny Persian rugs, chrome encrusted cars, etc. Dick may have had his own problems with reality (probably too many drugs) but he nailed American consumerist society.
We need a serious conversation with ourselves about existential values. What gives life meaning? How should we live? The changes will be forced on us so it might be better to figure things out now. I recommend the following conversation between John Horgan and Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of "The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization".
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/11143
The best way to find a balance between hope and despair is to do something! Some friends and I started a local environmental/educational group two years ago. It has been a slog, because we are mostly preaching to the choir but making a small dent is better than not making a dent at all. I have signed up as a literacy tutor and am adding space to my garden to grow vegetables for the food pantries here. Our Chevy dealer closed a few months ago with the loss of 50 jobs which is huge for our community. I also recommend Albert Camus’ "The Plague" in which he says that the strong should bear the burdens of the weak, and our choice is joining forces with the plague or uniting to fight against it.
I don’t believe we will run out of oil. It will just become so expensive that no one can afford it. The energy return on investment in the early 20th Century oil fields was 1:100. Today, because oil is becoming harder to find and produce the EROI is 1:5 and the environmental costs are beyond belief—check out what they are doing in Alberta, Canada to exploit the oil shale there.
I worry that the American people will not be willing to change and will demand that we switch to coal, and we have enough of it to last hundreds of years—if you don’t mind mountain top removal ala WVA and KY. Carbon sequestration and clean coal are still just pipe dreams. Ethanol is a bust. The EROI on ethanol is 1:1 if you don’t factor in environmental damage; then in my opinion it moves into a negative. Growing corn the way our farms do it is dependent on a lot of chemicals. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico gets bigger every year due to the chemical run-off from the Mississippi watershed.
I also worry about fascism coming to America "wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross" as Sinclair Lewis warned. There are plenty of wing-nuts in my neck of the woods who would lead the charge and the rich have their own army now known as Xe. I’m afraid my 410 shotgun will not give me much protection. Maybe I should armor up?
Anyway, in spite of it all, life is good here in NW Arkansas, but the hour is late—do what you can.
oh really
You’re kidding, right?
No disease has ever come close to wiping out the human race. The worst pandemics in history killed millions of people — but there are billions now. The Black Plague is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe’s population.
Climate change is potentially the greatest danger humanity has ever faced. A catastrophic impact from an enormous space object is of low probability (in the near future), but could lead to virtual extinction. At this point, it looks increasingly like climate change is of high probability (approaching inevitable and irreversible) and could be worse and possibly much worse than formerly predicted.
Your AIDS/flu scenario is fantasy. Such a pandemic might kill horrifying numbers of people, but I’ve never read any speculation that it would wipe out the human race. My guess is the likelihood that the human race could "get wiped out by AIDS or an as yet unseen virus of the Flu [sic] type" is zero.
ThymeZone
Bell curves and genetic variation say you are right.
I think we’d end up with a race of people who were not vulnerable to flu or AIDS, and who hated the taste of Nutella.
Something along those lines.
jenniebee
@KG: You see, KG, hardly anybody’s really worried about a total human extinction-level climate change event. Everybody’s fairly certain that, no matter what happens to the climate, at least 10,000 or so people will almost certainly survive.
Not worrying about global warming at all on that basis, however, is akin to that old story about soldiers in formation being told that the odds are that only one of every three soldiers there will survive the next action and each man thinking "oh, those poor two other bastards," except in this case it’s thinking "oh, those poor six hundred thousand other bastards."
Tonal Crow
@ksmiami:
I agree. Natural selection acts locally, individual by individual: those bearing traits better-adapted to the *current* environment produce more offspring than those bearing less well-adapted traits. A trait that allows an individual to predict (and plan for) the future 50 years hence has no present survival value, and thus will never become predominant in the population. But a trait that allows an individual to predict (and plan for) the next 5 days has huge present survival value, and thus quickly will become universal.
Mnemosyne
@Nancy Darling:
In other words, Dick predicted The Sims?
Mike in NC
Homo Republicanus = somewhere less than 200 years (it just feels like a million)
Proper Gander
@ Nancy Darling: They’re the same novel, called The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
Shawn in ShowMe
When the conventional wisdom in government is that we don’t need to do manned space exploration anymore because we can always send robots? Yeah, right. Wall-E is our reality in reverse.
jenniebee
@ksmiami: I dunno. I think we’ve got survival traits that allow us to work well with small groups, up to about sixty or a hundred people, but that we aren’t built to connect to, to empathize with, or even to conceptualize six billion. If you took a problem that affected a hundred people and which could be solved by a hundred people, even if that problem had a fifty year timeline, they could solve it (like ice age migrations, and the multigenerational cathedral-building, for example). Too many people means too much anonymity, which creates opportunities for personal interest to run contrary to group interest, so you get bad faith actors diminishing the group’s ability to accomplish its goals.
Martin
And the GOP will filibuster the funding bill and insist that tax cuts will allow the free market to restore them more quickly. And even when the scientists do find a way to replenish them, you’ll come in here and insist that it’s not possible because you took algebra II and suspect that it’s really just a scheme to fool us into turning over our guns to the U.N.
Brick Oven Bill
Hey, that other Brick Oven Bill is a fake!
Dbrown; thank you for your response. I am trying to understand your theory, and I figure debating it here might teach me something. You might learn something as well, so work with me.
There is a theoretical equation to chart the amount of Carbon Dioxide gas in the atmosphere. Let us say it goes CO2(t) = CO2(1950) + (0.001t)*CO2(1950). This is admittedly oversimplified, but represents the argument that there are increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, which I believe to be true.
I believe that the theory goes that this CO2 insulates the earth, retaining the sun’s energy in our atmosphere. So the insulating effect would be a function of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is going up linearly in theory, so the heating effect would accelerate with time.
This is not happening however. We have seven years of monthly datapoints, trending downward. This is more than significantly significant. We also have the period of 1940-1980, where temperatures also dropped. There was a lot of CO2 emitted during World War II and the industrial boom that followed.
…
Um, Proper Gander, that chart you put up showed a linear rise for the last 50 years, by the way. So my oversimplified equation, might not be that all that oversimplified. Science Grant? Obama? Science Grant?
…
JGabriel, but the planet has been cooling or steady for the last seven years, and the Antarctic Ice keeps growing.
Krista
A world with no Nutella is not a world in which I’d want to live anyway.
burnspbesq
OT, but make another batch of popcorn, please.
Yoo, Bradbury may face disciplinary action.
D-Chance.
Robert Stacy McCain:
Of course I never bother "craft[ing] logical arguments," sweetheart. It’s a freaking blog. If you want logic, subscribe to a magazine or buy a book. Pardon my double-entendre, Lola Wakefield, but people come here for the cheesecake. Logical arguments are a dime a dozen on the Internet…
Sweet Jesus, and he can’t figure out why he’s now part of the minority party…
Anoniminous
Even though I don’t unnerstand nuttin’ ’bout Chaotic dynamic systems, non-linear Complex fitness landscapes, statistical and probabilistic reasoning, quantitative and qualitative Modeling, Climate Science, Logic, Critical Thinking, Scientific Research methodology, or any intellectual developments of the last 150 years …
I KNOW global warming is a hoax because Al Gore is fat and has a big house.
(h/t to El Cid)
joe from Lowell
Brick Oven Bill,
A smooth increase in CO2 concentrations would only produce a smooth increase in temperatures if 1) there were no other factors influencing the climate, and 2) there were no "tipping points" or feedback (positive or negative) mechanisms.
We have seven years of monthly datapoints, trending downward. Actually, no, we have seven years of monthly datapoints, many of which trend upwards.
You can read the graphs as well as I can. The increase in temperatures over the past century isn’t smooth. There are dozens of examples of periods when the short term (7 years or less) trend was downward. There are also numerous examples when the short term trend showed a much greater rise than the overall line. Nonetheless, the long-term trend is pretty clear. You’re arguing, in essence, that this short-term level trend (which, itself, consists of lots of data points far above and below the trend line) demonstrates the cessation of the long-term warming trend, while none of the other identical, or even more dramatic, leveling or cooling trends did not.
Brick Oven Bill
Re: "You have NO equation to take the derivative of. So please share with us your equation of State for the rate of heating of the planet called Earth – your Nobel is waiting."
Using Proper Gander’s data and dbrown’s challenge, behold the CO2 modeling equation:
CO2(t) = 1000 + 160t
With:
t = the number of years since 1950; and
CO2(t) = Carbon Dioxide emissions, millions of tons
Now, behold the temperature modeling discussion:
As man-made CO2 constitutes approximately 0.4% of the aggregate CO2 emissions, we will need to note historic temperature gains to be 0.04 degrees per year, 1980-2000. This rate should, in theory be slightly increasing with time, and it is hard to get a good fit either way.
But since 99.6% of CO2 emissions are reportedly from rotting flesh and farting cows and things like that, any acceleration due to man’s 0.4% would be pretty inconsequential in the next century, so we will assign an acceleration coefficient of 1.002, so, behold the temperature modeling equation:
Temperature Rise (t) = 0.5 + 1.002^t
With:
t = the number of years since 2002; and
Temperature Rise (t) = predicted temperature rise above 20th Century average, degrees Celsius
You can keep the Nobel, but I would like a stimulus check please.
Proper Gander
that chart you put up showed a linear rise for the last 50 years, by the way
Exactly my point, BOB. It’s a graph of an exponential function, and you point to the vertical asymptote and call it linear. So why should anyone continue to listen to you when you’re simultaneously misinformed and dishonest?
TheHatOnMyCat
Well, I thought Arizona was that world, until recently. But alas, the stuff has found its way into our Safeway stores.
Nutella, and car boom boxes. A hellish modern world awaits us.
Brick Oven Bill
Correction:
Temperature Rise (t) = 0.5 + 0.04t + 1.002^t
And we note that this is not happening. I agree with Joe that we have data scatter, but within this data scatter, we have a relatively stable trend line which is flat or cooling.
This is not consistent with the predicted outcome based on the Temperature Rise equation, which is based on the data from 1980-2000. Something seems to have changed, I suspect it is the activity of the sun.
p.s. Proper Gander; my original point was that emissions were roughly linear over the last 50 years. I based this on a near-linear rise in fuel consumption last century. I believe that we are making the same point. I make no claims about pre-1903 fuel use.
joe from Lowell
People don’t raise cattle? You sure about that, Bill?
…but within this data scatter, we have a relatively stable trend line which is flat or cooling. Over a very short period of time, which is indistinguishable from dozens of other short-term trends which occurred within the overall warming trend.
Once again, you are looking at something which is no different from 1980-1987, or 1943-1950 (a short-term cooling trend which one can easily find throughout the century by picking a particularly warm year as a starting point) and arguing that THIS one means there has been a reversal in the century-long warming trend, while none of the previous ones did.
JGabriel
Brick Oven Bill: :
The problem with your reasoning here, BOB, is that you are: completely full of shit.
In case you are interested in looking at real data:
Global Land-Ocean Temps (1880-2007)
Hemispheric Temperature Change (1880-2007)
Those graphs show that 2000-2007, temperatures continued to rise on a mean basis at pretty much the same accelerated rate as the past 25 years. The hemispheric graph shows that the change is particularly acute in the Northern Hemisphere.
Now, BOB, you keep going on about cooling or stable temp in the past 7 years, and frankly, it’s not there. There’s no such trend. There is variation, such that, for instance, 2007 was cooler than 2006. But even 2007 was higher in avg. temp than every historically recorded yearly temp up till 1998, and two of the years since then. In other words, it was a local low but still fits the steep and unmistakable trend of increasing global temps.
.
kilo
@DRD 1812:
Seconded.
I suggest masturbating. With sandpaper.
BrickOvenBill
With remarkable science, the CO2 levels can be reduce to a near dribble while maintaining that 02 levels will vary based on both human consumption and minor migratory periods of soft birds. This will reduce the pressure on remote regions of the world and oversample the particle movement towards genuine texteriousness of the alter planet lumbar material and more towards a gaseous riboflavin flavored malt beverage that is both two-toned and can bear new hypotheses. Conversely, the metaphysical state of the quantum levels of CHeVy2 will have an inverse effect on monkey nutrition in South African nations not beginning with a Z.
Brick Oven Bill
#76 Is An Imposter!
You have no argument from me Joe from Lowell about people, cattle, and CO2. The number of people on the planet, like CO2 emissions, has gone up linearly with the use of oil. Here is the equation:
Number of People on Earth (BPY) = 1,000,000,000 + (BPY/4.5)
Where BPY is the numbers of barrels of oil consumed per year. This equation very closely matches the population growth in the 20th Century, from 1 billion to 6 billion people. Energy is very important.
Xel
Meekly I ask – if these models keep ending up looking naive and optimistic in the face of the actual situation, why the hell do global-warming deniers still think they can score points by saying that models are "inaccurate"? Look, you bastions of free thought, our last echelon in the face of this eco-religious, (I see mouth-breathers everywhere saying they don’t like environmentalism because it is a cult, is there some kind of gene that allows people to say something so absolutely made-up and stupid or do you take a course?) anti-development crusade; why are you not fazed by the fact that the models always end up having *down-played* the impact of AGW?
I think we are pretty screwed. If we don’t do anything but just keep going on the graph we’ll have nine-digit casualties by 2109.
Well, humanity was once down to a few thousand individuals, and that was in teh Ice age
Jeepers-creepers, for how much did you pawn your peepers?
Fern
@BrickOvenBill:
Now THAT was funny.
TenguPhule
Because it technically is true. All of the modelings are turning out to be TOO OPTIMISTIC.
But GW deniers only see that the models didn’t get it exactly right.
joe from Lowell
For someone without a strong opinion about global warming, BOB, you certainly are familiar with the talking points of the denialists.
Petroleum-based energy is teh awesomme 4-evah!
joe from Lowell
You know, I don’t think you can create a model that will accurately predict the scatter pattern of two hand grenades tied together and thrown, rotating, into a room.
Ergo, we probably don’t need to worry about being in that room.
Go on, show me a computer model that accurately predicted the scatter pattern in the past. I dare you.
You can’t.
Pwned!!!1!!1
Wile E. Quixote
My problem with global warming is with the wingnuts on the left. OK, let’s assume that AGW is a fact. Great, let’s stop burning carbon based fuels and build nuclear power plants. "Oh noes" the leftist shitheads cry. "Nuclear power makes green-baby gaiajesus cry." Instead the leftists tell us that we must "…learn to live within our means" which is code for "people need to stop doing things that concerned eco-nuts like us don’t like." Things like driving cars, watching television, eating meat or living past the age of 30. Fuck that. I like living in a high-tech society. I like taking hot showers in the morning and keeping my house at 68 degrees and drinking a cold beer when it’s below 20 outside and snowing. I like the internet, iPods, computers and all of that good manufactured stuff and it’s only moronic leftists who think that third-world peasants have a richer and more fulfilling lifestyle than we do in the west. Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Hobbes was referring to political systems, or the lack thereof, when he wrote that, but it’s no less applicable to life in the natural world.
The problem with AGW is that it’s a lot like the AIDS crisis that started 30 years ago. When AIDS started there were two ways to deal with it. One way was rational and reality based, recognizing the fact that people were going to have sex and that if you’re fucked up on drugs getting an incurable disease is only going to make your problems worse and using public health policies to educate people about safe sex and allowing IV drug addicts access to clean needles. The other way was puritanical. Condemning those with the disease, condemning gays, condemning IV drug addicts and insisting that they stop behaving in such an ungodly fashion. Look now at which approaches worked and which ones didn’t. The puritanical horseshit was great for the people dispensing it, they got to get up on a high horse and feel good about the fact that they weren’t gay or IV drug addicts, it didn’t do a lot for the people who actually were at risk for the disease, or who had it, but then again that was never the point.
With AGW you have some people trying to figure out how we can produce what we need without dumping a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. Even if AGW doesn’t exist this is still a good idea. If we don’t, as the wingnuts (right wing) claim, to understand the atmosphere enough to make long-term predictions about its behavior, one of the biggest arguments made against AGW, then why the fuck do we want to dump massive amounts of shit into it? If the atmosphere is too complex to model with current technology then fucking around with it is the last thing that we want to be doing. That’s the rational approach. The realization that people want to live long, healthy and interesting lives and don’t want to spend them doing stoop labor raising organic brussels sprouts on a collective farm somewhere. Unfortunately most of the environmental movement is composed of puritanical fuckwits who are more no more interesting in realistically and rationally dealing with these problems than the puritanical fuckwits of the religious right were in realistically and rationally dealing with AIDS because that’s not the point, feeling good about yourself is. Plus boosting your self-esteem by putting on an air of aggrieved moral superiority and pointing fingers is a lot easier than actually working.
TheFountainHead
The Black plague only killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe’s population because it didn’t have cars, buses, high speed rail, and most importantly, air travel as methods of spreading itself. Not to mention the fact that it was actually a fairly swift killer compared to many other viruses out there. Pandemics could easily reduce the Human race to a shell of it’s current self, possibly reducing populations so low in some areas as to make them unrecoverable.
TheFountainHead
@joe from Lowell: Actually, not to be a jackass, you could produce some VERY accurate computer models of that scatter pattern. The variables are known and their interaction is very well understood.
The problem with the climatological models, and climate science in general, when it comes to PROVING or DISPROVING AGW, is that there are several variables which are incredibly difficult to model, such as clouds and the possible effects of a shifting magnetosphere. On top of that, in order to create a control for that model, you have to input some data from historical observations, which is great for the last two hundred years or so, but starts to get kinda iffy past that. Any true scientist will tell you that models are great for using to form hypothesis, and they may very well be right, but they are only as accurate as the data put into them and the number of variables they have to solve for, the fewer the better.
Tonal Crow
You forgot to credit Rush Limbaugh for that "statistic". The actual percentage is ~4.5%. http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/tg/guide_glue.jsp?rd=lu&ds=7.1 . Before you spout nonsense about how it’s impossible for such a small percentage increase to have any effect on earth temperature, atmospheric CO2 inflows and outflows were roughly balanced until we began large-scale fossil-fuel burning. Since then, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen from ~280ppm to ~380ppm, basically all of it attributable to our input. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter2.pdf p.135.
As for the rest of your "math", it’s laughable. You don’t even use a thermodynamic model. Further, global temperature does not have a linear relationship to the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere. The atmospheric/terrestrial/oceanic system is filled with feedback loops (e.g., CO2 emissions -> polar temperate rise -> CO2 emissions from permafrost -> lather/rise/repeat. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/14/AR2009021401757.html?hpid=topnews). Also CH4 emissions have an important effect on global climate, since CH4 is ~20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/emission/168.htm ("global warming potential").
If you want the real story on CO2 and climate change, from real climate scientists (instead of talk-radio bloviators) try http://www.realclimate.org .
Ed Marshall
I’m completely agnostic on nuclear energy and think there are emerging technologies that have promise. That said the anti-nuclear movement isn’t holding anyone down (fucking obviously). That’s not why we aren’t going to nuclear nirvana. The costs involved are insane, there is a finite sum of uranium to be had anyway. Hell, there is a finite sum of the parts you need to build a reactor and they are booked out for the next decade.
Have fun beating on your strawman DFH, but it’s nothing but masturbation.
jcricket
The same reason "creationists" think they can "win" the "war" against evolutionary theory. Back in the late 80s/early 90s I spent a lot of time on the talk.origins newsgroup and was amazed at the lengths to which creationists would go to try and poke holes in something that was only getting stronger (support for evolutionary theory) every passing year.
The global warming denialists and evolution denialists are reading from the same playbook (and in many cases are the same people).
Their questions have been asked and answered, 100 times over. But it doesn’t matter. People who have a world view invested on rejecting science whenever it’s inconvenient will be the ones "left behind" (ha!).
Again, echoing what I said on other threads. I welcome Republicans embracing creationism and global warming denialism, along with opposition to immigration and gay marriage. Sounds like a winning combination.
Brick Oven Bill
Tonal Crow:
That Columbia University link you put up indicates 3.5% (5.5/(60+90+5.5+1.6)) = 3.5%, not 4.5%. Columbia University is probably about as reputable as Rush Limbaugh on Global Warming. This is because Columbia is funded by the government Global Warming programs, and Rush Limbaugh is funded by oil, in my opinion.
No, my number was from a reputable source, Wikipedia. Better get to work. But:
Temperature Rise (t) = 0.5 + 0.04t + 1.002^t Does have an error. Thank you. It is instead:
Temperature Rise (t) = [0.5 + 0.04t]* 1.002^t
This is a solid equation and fits the 1980-2002 data plus includes the accelerating effects of a more insulated atmosphere. You mention a ‘thermodynamic’ element. I imagine you refer to heat loses to space from a warmer planet. This would act to mitigate a temperature rise on the earth so, to appease you we will add a thermodynamic element, 0.999^t. Thus:
Temperature Rise (t) = [0.5 + 0.04t]* 1.002^t * 0.999^t
Then you mention biomass and methane that will be exposed by receding ice. You could argue that this would be counteracted by biomass sheltered by advancing ice in Antarctica, but I won’t. I will instead take into account the biomass exposed by probably twenty feet of retreating ice, in comparison to the biomass of the earth’s tropical rainforests, northern woods, and lush prairies, 0.0000001t. Thus:
Temperature Rise (t) = [0.5 + 0.04t+ 0.0000001t]* 1.002^t * 0.999^t
So, based on this improved, fancier, equation, we shall predict the temperature in 2008:
Temperature Rise (6) =0.74 degrees Celsius, up from 0.50 degrees Celsius.
The real problem with my equation is it doesn’t fit the real-life data. Temperatures have gone down ~0.2 degrees Celsius. The earth is cooling. I would like my stimulus money regardless. Everybody else is getting paid.
jcricket
Nice false equivalence (or misdirection, I can’t tell which). It’s like saying doctors are funded by money from insurance claims/companies, so the fact that they tell you smoking causes cancer is equivalent to a cigarette manufacturer telling you smoking causes immortality.
But frankly, it’s not he funding isn’t what matters, is that Columbia’s scientists put out papers have falsifiable, testable sets of conclusions. It’s just that their conclusions and supported by thousands of experiments and papers from scientists all around the world, with similar conclusions. Rush Limbaugh has a big fat mouth and makes money when his base listens to his show, which they do because Rush makes fun of liberals or scientists, or whatever. Exactly nothing Rush says is supported by any credible scientists.
Try again.
El Cid
Some information from the actual scientific consensus (IPCC 2007 Chapter 2 PDF here), rather than more back of the napkin ‘figgerin’ by overly confident engineering types proud that one time a brick wall was built:
low-tech cyclist
Meanwhile, George Will is saying that global warming is bullshit because some people 35 years ago thought there was a threat of global cooling.
Will has an obsession with the global-cooling ‘scare’ of the 1970s. He’s written about it in columns today, last year, in 2006, in 2004, 1997, and whaddaya know, all the way back in 1992.
And each time, the point has been that because we aren’t now on our way to an ice age, global warming isn’t real either. (As RealClimate notes, even in the 1970s, there were substantially more articles in refereed journals predicting global warming than global cooling. In today’s column, Will’s numerous cites for the global cooling scare of the 1970s include only one refereed journal, and he quotes it badly out of context.)
Brick Oven Bill
OK, I’ll try again and make it easier this time.
The earth is not warming.
You can tell by looking at thermometers.
El Cid
I still want to know which new method of Earth-to-space heat release has been discovered by the global warming ‘skeptics.’
Currently we only know of one single, solitary method of any energetic significance for the Earth to release heat to space from heat gained from the Sun: the escape of longwave infrared photons from the top levels of the atmosphere into space.
We know that the rate of escape of those outgoing longwave IR photons is conditioned by the makeup of the atmosphere; and we know that CO2 is among the gases which slows the rate of escape of outgoing longwave IR photons.
So I’m really curious as to how, given no significant change to the level of energy coming from the Sun to the Earth (something we obsessively measure and need not guess at, especially not by fools who ‘figger’ something has changed), how the addition of gases to the atmosphere which slow the release of outgoing longwave IR photons to space can result in anything else but an overall increase in the heat energy budget of the Earth.
Either that, or some global warming skeptics are about to unveil their discovery of a new, heretofore unconsidered method by which the Earth releases heat energy into space.
Tonal Crow
Read it again. The 5.5 GT/y is from our fossil-fuel burning and cement manufacturing. The 1.6 GT/y is from our forest-burning, forest-clearing, and other land-use changes.
On thermodynamics, the fundamental basis of the problem is thermodynamic. You cannot "fix" the problem by adding a SWAG factor. For those who care about science, David Archer (U Chicago ocean chemist) has written an excellent introduction to climate science that introduces, then builds upon, a basic thermo model. http://forecast.uchicago.edu/ But, no doubt, U Chicago is "funded by the government Global Warming programs" and thus lacks credibility.
On "This is a solid equation and fits the 1980-2002 data", I’m almost, but not quite, inclined to believe that you’re really aping a climate-change denialist. The concept that a (purported) fit of 22 years of data validates a climate model is so preposterous that I can’t begin to laugh enough.
On "I will instead take into account the biomass exposed by probably twenty feet of retreating ice", I am again wavering on whether you’re aping. The issue is not biomass exposed by retreating ice, but millions of square km of biomass warmed enough to substantially raise CO2 and CH4 emissions.
As for "the earth is cooling", you badly (badly!) need a course in statistics. But congratulations on the rhetoric. You’ve earned your PhD (piled higher and deeper) from the Dittohead School of Deception.
El Cid
@low-tech cyclist: George Will better be god-damned thankful that there is in fact a small ‘global cooling’ effect from particular pollutants, since without the increased pollution-based albedo (which unfortunately carries with it other harmful consequences), the Earth would be heating even more.
Fern
@Brick Oven Bill:
Okay, I’ve decided. B O B has to be a spoof. Because it is not possible to be this stupid and live.
Tonal Crow
@Fern:
You haven’t been watching the GOP nearly closely enough to say that. If you don’t have a citation to a peer-reviewed journal, I call B.S. ;-)
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
For what its worth, I attended a part of one of the largest energy conferences in the world last week. The CERA conference in Houston. One thing that was notable compared to even just a couple of years ago was all the talk of climate change and impending carbon legislation and how the industry should deal with it etc.- they were even saying this in the coal conference I attended. In addition to energy companies, there were dozens of reps from technology and engineering companies actively working on carbon reducing technology. The overwhelming theme with regard to climate change was one of acceptance that it is real and how does the industry deal with it.
Now many would scoff at this awareness coming from executives in the energy sector, but if one had attended this conference even five years ago, NOBODY would have been even talking about it except in a mocking manner.
I am not going to say that this is great progress, but I will say that the rhetorical battle is being won and that is important. I think Al Gore is to be commended for helping make awareness "mainstream," despite his girth and overly large house.
PS: CERA is Dan Yergin’s consultancy and industry research firm. He is the guy who wrote The Prize. A fantastic read if you are interested in a great overview of the oil and gas industry over the past 150 years.
PPS: BOB – long pier, short walk. GO.
Ben
I was going to post something along the lines of "but there’s snow on the ground outside my window," but I see BOB has beaten me there, and I’m not even sure he’s kidding.
Fern
@Tonal Crow:
Nah, it was just bullshit that I make up all by myself.
I am fortunate to not live in the US, so I am somewhat sheltered from the full wingnut onslaught.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
In retrospect, my advice to BOB would not have the desired result. Must be the wine…
Brick Oven Bill
There once was a time when there were dinosaurs and it was very hot in North America. Then there was a time when there were glaciers and it was very cold in North America.
More recently, from the link I first posted above, temperatures rose from 1840-1880, fell from 1880-1920, rose from 1920-1950, fell from 1950-1980, rose from 1980-2002, and have started to fall again. It is really frickin cold tonight outside, and I had to take out the garbage. I believe this has to do with cyclical sun activity more than the distribution of a fixed number of carbon molecules back on earth.
I get in trouble when I talk about friction and energy. But all types of electromagnetic energy can leave the earth El Cid. As can beta, neutron, and alpha particulate radiation. These are all energy.
Solar power is binding energy from the sun transferring power to the earth in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Same thing with the light of the harvest moon. The sun’s binding energy is reflected off of the moon and provides us light to pick our potatoes.
Our earth emits energy to space in the same way. When this energy hits mass, it then warms it by making atoms wiggle, causing friction, yielding warmth.
JGabriel
Brick Oven Bill:
NASA does exactly that. And guess what?
They find that the earth is warming:
Annual Global Mean Temperature, 1880 – 2007
Ignoring the data isn’t going to make your claim any less of lie, BOB.
.
Tonal Crow
And the overall trend has been like this (Fig. 2.20). Notice that sharp knee-like thing around 1860?
I’ll say, especially based upon:
So your "theory" is what now? That the photons that CO2 traps get re-emitted as alpha particles?
Ed Marshall
Is that the real BOB?
Do you really think atoms wiggle together and create warmth like rubbing sticks together?
gwangung
Yup. That insures that it’s the real BOB.
JGabriel
Ed Marshall:
Yes, believe it or not, BOB has used that "atom wiggling" explanation before. And he was ridiculed for it then, which is why he included the disclaimer about getting "in trouble when I talk about friction and energy".
.
TheHatOnMyCat
The earth is a big thermometer, Bob.
Brick Oven Bill
1. Temperatures stopped rising in 2002, and this year is cold. Here is a thermometer for you TheHatOnMyCat. This could be a short-term trend, or it could be a long term trend. But these real temperature drops become hard to explain, if rising CO2 levels were the cause of the heating we experienced from 1980 to 2002.
2. Electromagnetic energy does not heat outer space because it does not encounter the atoms that constitute mass. When electromagnetic energy finally does encounter mass, the energy in imparted to its atoms, who wiggle, rub against each other, and release heat through friction. It is elegant, when you think about it.
3. Betas (electrons) travel through space too. Did you ever wonder what a beta-blocker was in Coppertone tan cream? It is a substance that stops the electrons from the sun at a shallower layer in your skin, making you age with perkier skin.
joe from Lowell
Brick Oven Bill February 15, 2009 2:09
I don’t know enough about Global Warming to have a strong opinion on it.
Fern
@joe from Lowell:
Well, part of that statement was true…
joe from Lowell
This could be a short-term trend, or it could be a long term trend.
Every single one of the other 7-year periods where the global mean temperature was lower in Year 7 than in Year 1 was not even a trend at all, but statistical noise. But this one could be different!
But these real temperature drops become hard to explain, if rising CO2 levels were the cause of the heating we experienced from 1980 to 2002. As opposed to every other 7-year period that had higher temperatures in Year 7 than in Year 1, which were quite easily explained as statistical noise that characterized highly-variable yearly temperature data, regardless of the robustness of the overall warming trend.
joe from Lowell
I love this talk about ice caps allegedly growing.
THERE IS A FREAKING NORTHWEST PASSAGE.
Do these deniers know so little of their own country’s history that they’re entirely unaware of the historical significance of that fact?
Dash RIPROCK III
Gores film An Inconvenient Truth is full of lies. Not exaggerations. Not errors.
Lies!
Al Gore air brushed out the little ice age and the medieval warming periods from his graphs in AIT. We wouldn’t want people knowing that the earth was two degrees celsius warmer than it is now during the medieval warming period. Somehow man survived without the use of central cooling. Gore left off the little ice age because he wouldn’t want to demonstrate that the warming trend he talks about began at the end of an ice age.
He also stated that sea lever would rise by 20 feet by the end of the century. Even the UN IPCC (harldy conservative on this issue) estimates only 4 to 36 inches.
Gore also suggested that the Aral Sea has dried up because of global warming. In actuality it has been drained for the irrigation of cotton crops.
Gore claims that for the first time ever, a significant number of polar bears had drowned. First of all, they can swim around fifty miles. Secondly, the researchers at one of America’s most respected think tanks the Competitive Enterprise Institute tracked down the study Gore was quoting and found that only four polar bears had drowned during severe storm conditions.
Furthermore, he quotes a quickly debunked paper suggesting there is a 100% consenus among scientists that athropogenic global warming is real. Here are a few scientists who must have missed the memo:
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/GlobalWarming.html
It is worth noting that a UK Court ruled that AIT contained many errors and should not be shown in public schools without a warning about the errors.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/10/09/court-identifies-eleven-inaccuracies-al-gore-s-inconvenient-truth
I find it interesting that Al Gore talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk. He jets around the world in his private plane. He rides around in gas guzzling limousines, and has a compound so wasteful of energy that it needs its own power grid. His houseboat more than likely isn’t that energy efficient either.
I suppose conserving energy and fighting global warming is for the little people. Let the peasants drive the small dangerous energy efficient cars, I’ll drive what I want.
Al Gore was worth about $2 Million Dollars when leaving office and is worth over $100 Million now. He’s laughing all the way to the global warming bank. It’s a pity some are too gullible to see it. As one of my favorite SNL characters might have said "global warming has been bery bery good to him."
By the way, the flat earthers were the ones who refused to debate. "The debates over, we have a consensus." Sound familiar? If anyone is a flat earther, it’s Al Gore.
Everyone who has seen An Inconvenient Truth should view The Great Global Warming Swindle in order to get a more balanced view of the true state of the science on this issue.
You may view it by visiting:
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/Videos.html
It is the first video listed.
Happy Viewing,
Dash RIPROCK III
Brick Oven Bill
Joe from Lowell. The Internet is very powerful, and I have learned many things this Sunday.
The way I now see it, the Global Warming argument is like the frog in the water in the pot on the stove argument. The frog gets warmer and warmer, the longer he stays on the burner.
If CO2 is the cause of the 1980-2002 Global Warming, we should keep getting warmer too. But we’re not. Although many people are collecting money on their Global Warming theories. Not me though, I’m just cold. So call me a bitter man, clinging to my thermometer.
JGabriel
Brick Oven Bill:
Aaand, according to NASA, in 2002, after very nearly tieing the all-time record high, up-to-that-point, global mean temp of 1998, the temp went down in 2003.
But it went back up in 2004, above the 2002 temp, and even breaking the record set in 1998. Then it went down slightly in 2005, back up slightly in 2006, and down again in 2007.
Now gosh, who should I believe? NASA or BOB?
What a dilemma!
.
JudasIscariot
B.O.B. is actually JC’s alter ego, me thinks ( designed to keep y’all agitated). Truth is, we all gonna die, sooner or later, and the species, she gonna extinct sooner or later ( bettin’ on sooner, way we be playin’ it, mon). Had our golden opportunity
to get all our eggs outa one basket, but had to do the cold war instead ( yeah capitalism, triumphant death spasm).
Conservatively Liberal
Your ‘full of shit’ gauge topped out with this whopper. Spoof!
JGabriel
Brick Oven Bill:
… But looking at the pretty NASA graph, it looks like the heating trend starts back in 1965! And really goes all the way back to at least 1910, with merely a levelling off period from about 1943-1963.
C’mon, BOB, look at the pretty NASA graph, and explain how it doesn’t contradict just about every damn thing you’ve said regarding historical global mean temperatures – especially your alleged "coolling period" since 2002. A record high temp in 2004 kind contradicts that, haina?
.
Brick Oven Bill
Sigh, click on the 110 link JGabriel. It shows temperatures by month. The trend is clear. Believe me! Do not believe NASA!
The beta-blocker is a no kidding reality Conservative Liberal. I respect your rejection of the system, but betas can only cause physical damage to the lens of the eye. This is why the federal limit is 15,000 mrem/yr. Our skin stops ‘em.
But stoppin’ too many betas at too deep a level causes cosmetic problems, like wrinkles, thus the Coppertone commercials. This is true.
JGabriel
@Brick Oven Bill:
Comedy Gold! Especially when your source (i.e., the link you provided) is the global warming deniers at World Climate Report (Chief Editor, Patrick J. Michaels of the Cato Institute):
The Cato Institute. Damn, that’s some real unbiased sourcing there, BOB.
.
Bill D.
Brcik Oven Bill, you need to learn more about the basics of climate. Increased C02 is not the only thing going on. There are always a lot of short-term fluctuations due to various factors, so it should be no surprise if temperatures go down for 10 years during a longer-term warming trend, or vice versa. If you get a cold spell in April, do you use that as proof that summer is not coming?
We are in an overall warming trend for the last 150 years. As to the scientific basis for assigning causes to that, the information is out there on the internet. You can start with the National Academy of Sciences. Oh, but I forgot… their scientific information on this one topic is not conservatively correct, so therefore it can’t be believed.
Bill D.
Conservatively Liberal
Billy Boy, "beta-blocker" is the name for a class of drugs. If you want to refer to the ‘B’ in UVB as a "beta-blocker" (or ‘beta’), go right ahead and do so. It makes it easier to totally dismiss you as the spoof you obviously are.
There are no "beta-blockers" in Coppertone, period. There are chemicals that help to reduce UVB exposure though. One other note Billy Boy: All forms of excessive UV exposure are bad for your skin and health, not just UVB.
Read up before you open your mouth, you look less foolish that way.
Brick Oven Bill
You know not of what you speak Conservatively Liberal. Skin stops betas cold, but the skin pays a price. Alphas do not extract a price as they are stopped at the surface. Betas have to contend with Coppertone.
Older TV commercials do not lend themselves to Google searches, as I have found, so I will refer you to me. Beta-blockers and tanning babes. I know because I have seen it. The state recognizes me. This costs me $50/yr. Somewhere around seventeen cents each and every day. Sleep well, my friend. Beta-blockers.
Person of Choler
"This stuff is starting to scare me."
Scaring you is the purpose of this stuff. It is the present-day equivalent of the Book of the Apocalypse.
Martin
What!?
Beta particles are used in bone cancer radiation therapy. How the fuck do they get to the bones if skin stops them cold?
Holy shit you are stupid. Go microwave a beer. Leave the top on so the freshness doesn’t escape.
Conservatively Liberal
Billy Boy, yer brilliance shines forth like the glint of the sun reflecting off a five hundred foot geyser of diarrhea.
It’s overwhelming. Take a shower.
Brick Oven Bill
To another day, my debating partners.
Xel
Environmentalism is not a religion, it is not a political ploy designed to… Hurt Ronald Reagan’s ghost (I don’t fucking know do I) and it is not created to scare us into… Fuck, wait, what goes in this spot again?
TenguPhule
Shorter Wiley: Let’s not die from AIDS, let’s catch Syphilis instead!
Large Scale Nuclear = Teh Fail.
Wind, Solar & Wave.
trollhattan
@ A lot of blather above.
I’ve little doubt our Australian friends could testify to how fucking cold it’s been lately. Brrr, the George Will memorial ice age is neigh.
Attention wingnuts: CO2 is a pollutant and shall henceforth be treated as such. Deal.
Person of Choler
Help me out, here, DougJ. The permafrost is only 6000 years old, but it is frozen today. That implies (I think) that was not frozen, say, 7000 years ago. Therefore (follow me closely here) it was warmer 7000 years ago than it is now.
So, what were the causes for the relative warmth that went away 6000 years ago when the permafrost froze up? Why did these causes go away?
There were, I think, rather fewer coal-fired power plants back then so it must have been for non-anthropogenic reasons.
Could the return of these causes account for current and future temperature changes?
TheLorax
I live in a cold climate so I could use a global warming
I understand your point and the humor being passed. However, I am tired of this said even as a "humor" point. Reason? Far too many fucks actually believe it.
Its not global warming, its climate change. It will (already is) changing weather patterns dramatically. More extreme weather events and some places will get much colder.
I know most here know this, but it needs to be said. Again and again and again.
Being the spouse of a well published scientist doing actual climate related research, we’ve been talking about the patterns, feedback loops and permafrost for years now. All the while being laughed at.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe."
If humanity disappeared tomorrow, we will leave one artifact that will last hundreds of thousands of years. It is possible that the next species to evolve will be able to identify the modern era in rock strata through it.
For all of our science, all of our art, all of our hopes and dreams, our most enduring legacy will be a layer of plastic shit floating in the sea.
Person of Choler
JGabriel 121:
"The Cato Institute. Damn, that’s some real unbiased sourcing there, BOB."
Damn, that’s some real fine ad hominem argumentation there, Gabe.
dbrown
@Brick Oven Bill: You really don’t know when to quit – your equation is only what someone who does not have a clue to what a scientific equation really is, nor how equations of State are generated. Looking at a plot of data and trying to fit some minor pre-canned purely linear equation to someone’s data is not a model of the Earth system (first off, if you understood calculus, you would have realized that you have to integrate a mathematical relationship that is based on equations and parameters that relate to the underlining cause of the data. Of course, I’d love to then see how you solved for the constants of integration that would then be generated. What you did is NOT the correct method used for generating a equation of State for any system.)
Go to a book on solving first and second order differential equations as applied to scientific problems and learn how useless your approach is to solving the Earth-climate issue.
Also, how can you then talk about scientist’s models with thousands of parameters and vast arrays of non-linear equations that do a fair (but far from perfect job) of modeling the earth’s real climate is wrong but the trivial equation you did is some great insight?
You state that a local thermometer proves the earth is cooling – that is a point? You fail to understand even the simplest idea of what the words ‘earth’s climate’ mean – the earth’s climate just for a given year is an average temperature for the entire planet over a year. Climate requires taking all such data over all time that the researcher deems usable and relevant. If measuring a single day at your house is what defines climate then the extent of one of your arguments is beyond ridiculous and you are really a very stupid person (However, I hope you were joking.)
Your attempts to use science is laudable but so simplistic I realize that you really never have mastered a real subject in any scientific field and continuing to discus any scientific fact based on generating real equations for scientific models with you is like talking to a creationist about evolution. As I tried to tell you, if you want to talk about this subject, please learn basic math as applied to the issue you want to talk about in an intelligent manner. Then, prove your points; otherwise, you look like a fool.
El Cid
And like many stupid engineering types who like to play at being scientists, you mistake inane trivia for serious processes.
I didn’t say that no other types of radiation could leave the planet.
However, none of those other forms of radiation significantly enter into the heat energy budget of the planet.
But idiots like you don’t give a sh*t, because you think your inane, rambling napkin calculations make you a scientist. They don’t.
Marc
Person of Choler: Scientists are well aware of natural climate variations; they’re an essential component of the models. In fact we understand the origin of ice ages quite well, right down to why changes in temperature lead changes in CO2. (They are caused by periodic changes in the orbit of the Earth which cause changes in the pattern of solar heating; as the planet gets covered with more ice there is a reduction in CO2.) What we have been seeing in the last 50 years is something different and it can easily be demonstrated that the usual suspects (e.g. the Sun) cannot be blamed.
We understand the basic mechanism extremely well (CO2 trapping heat because it absorbs light which the Earth would otherwise re-radiate into space.) We know that people are responsible for these changes. We observe a steady warming trend, and we see accelerating changes in CO2 which strongly suggest that there is now positive feedback in the system.
If you look at the climate record you also see a band of "noise", e.g. natural variations induced by things like changes in ocean currents (El Nino). It is not meaningful to point at the spikes, or valleys, and to pretend that there is some contradiction. Weather is not climate. We are very worried because science is conservative, and in this case it is becoming extremely clear that we have underestimated the rate of climate change. The real debate is 180 degrees away from the talk radio and libertarian discussion, which is frankly surreal to a scientist.
JGabriel
Person of Choler:
Hardly. Links are provided to both the Cato Institute’s web site and a Wikipedia article on them, so people can ascertain for themselves that the Cato Institute is a conservative/Randian/libertarian think tank, with an extensive record as global warming deniers.
Then links are provided to NASA – certainly a less biased and better funded organization with far more expertise – that show global and hemispheric mean temperature data contradicting BOB’s and the Cato Institute’s assertions.
That’s reasoned argument providing evidence to back it up.
This is what ad hominem argument looks like: You stupid shit.
.
Ash Can
LOLZapalooza! What a great thread! These guys are good. I always believed that Person of Choler was a bona fide right-winger until that second gem showed up smack in the middle of a string of run-of-the-mill Limblowisms. Beautiful setup.
I’m beginning to think the only genuine wingnuts around here are the one-time hit-and-run posters sent here from some Crittenden pingback.
SGEW
@Person of Choler:
Just to make this clear . . . (spoof or no!)
WorldClimateReport is the online newsletter of the "Greening Earth Society" as well as "New Hope Environmental Services," both paid offshoots of the Western Fuels Association, a coal industry group.
It’s not ad hominem when the identity of the source is directly pertinent to the validity of the statement. Also, you’re a poopy head.
Sources:
Greening Earth Society.
Western Fuels Association.
SGEW
@Person of Choler:
Just to make this clear (spoof or no!):
WorldClimateReport is the online newsletter of the "Greening Earth Society" as well as "New Hope Environmental Services," both paid offshoots of the Western Fuels Association, a coal industry group.
It’s not ad hominem when the identity of the source is directly pertinent to the validity of the statement. Also, you’re a poopy head.
Sources:
Greening Earth Society.
Western Fuels Association.
[hrmmm . . . comment posting fail? Hope this doesn’t repeat]
Person of Choler
Marc, I remain unconvinced by the "Appeal to Authority" argument. There are numerous scientists who do not agree that the mechanisms of climate variability are well enough understood to warrant economy-crippling burdens on the world’s energy provision systems.
Now, just to save typing, someone will say "name some of these scientists" and I will refer to the list of signatories of the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change or participants in the upcoming Heartland Institute conference. And then someone else will insist that these folks are, for various reasons, not scientists and anyway, are paid-for tools of Big Oil’s conspiracy to toast the planet.
SGEW
Just to make this clear (spoof or no!):
WorldClimateReport is the online newsletter of the "Greening Earth Society" as well as "New Hope Environmental Services," both paid offshoots of the Western Fuels Association, a coal industry group.
It’s not ad hominem when the identity of the source is directly pertinent to the validity of the statement. Also, you’re a poopy head.
Sources:
Greening Earth Society.
Western Fuels Association.
[hrmmm . . . comment posting fail? Hope this doesn’t repeat]
El Cid
More insights from Brick Oven Bill:
Electromagnetic energy does not have to HEAT OUTER SPACE in order to carry energy representing heat AWAY FROM THE EARTH.
The Earth’s heat budget does not care what the heat energy (in the form of outgoing longwave IR photons) does when it leaves.
Energy which affects the heat budget of the Earth arrives in electromagnetic (photons primarily) form and leaves in electromagnetic form. Only bizarre nutcase pseudo-scientists who think that because they built a brick wall once or had friends with Chevy Malibus that they get to do wild reckoning on the friendships of heat throughout the universe.
Would you please stop being a folk scientist basing your bullshit theories on what you ‘reckon’ to be the case?
Good lord you’re an idiot.
I think you ought to start up a conversation with Gary Novak. The two of you can share crank nutball theories and interpretations together. Maybe you can get all close and disprove Einsteinian relativity together, or if you really want to make a friend you can help him argue that yeasts are evolving into mushrooms ’cause he took pictures where one looked like ‘e other one.
JGabriel
Hep me, I’ve been modereratered!
.
Nancy Darling
@wile e quixote
I am not an aging DFH—just an aging former DH (dental hygienist) who loves books, gardening, and the out of doors. Yes, there are left wing nuts in the environmental movement; I try to rein them in. I do admit that Edward Abbey is one of my heroes—he was right about the folly of damming Glen Canyon.
My new definition of affluence after being without power for three days in our recent ice storm is flipping a switch and getting light and opening a spigot and getting water. Sleeping three nights in front of the fireplace —cat on one side, dog on the other—is not my idea of nirvana.
My goal for myself and my country is to build resilience at all levels and connectivity at the local level. Too much complexity and connectivity can lead to blackouts affecting fifty million people as happened in 2003 in the northeast and Canada.
Nuclear energy will not save us. If you started a plant today, it would be 10 years before it came on line. Also the EROI is debatable when you factor in the cost of decommissioning the plants at some future date. We have been passing on these kind of problems to future generations for too long. Also, I think the Saudis may be lying about their reserves since the number never seems to go down.
The quickest way to reduce our reliance on carbon based fuels is conservation. We can do a lot without affecting the quality of our lives. I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t hop a plane to Los Angeles or NYC to visit my kids or take in some plays. Conservation is not the solution, but it will buy us some time as we work on renewables, etc
I won’t waste words trying to convince people that global climate change is real. Forty years in the garden will convince anyone of that. The robins stay here year round now. We also have armadillos (known as Hoover Hogs during the Depression) and Road Runners. Both are new to our area.
A few tips for surviving a blackout seem in order. Run a bath tub full of water for flushing. Get a decent light source other than flashlights or candles. Buy a single burner Coleman cooker. Make sure one of the adapters on your emergency radio actually fits your cell phone—mine didn’t and the car cigarette lighter didn’t work—or have good neighbors who will recharge it for you. If you use beans instead of pre-ground coffee, you better think about how you will grind them—again I was rescued by neighbors who brought me coffee and the cooker. The most important thing to have in an emergency is good friends and good neighbors.
We can build a world where we don’t have to give up the good life. I would put artificial hips at the top of my list since I flew to L. A. last August to get one. What I don’t consider part of the good life is cheap plastic sh*t from Walmart.
We need to get started. I am reminded of the USC (my alma mater)/Notre Dame football game of 1974. SC was losing 24-0, but scored a touchdown at the end of the first half. After half time, SC came roaring out on the field and Anthony Davis returned the opening kick for a 102 yard touchdown. I am told that the only thing Coach John McKay said in the locker room was "Gentlemen, if you go out and block and tackle, Mr. Davis will carry the ball, and we’ll go on from there". The final score was 55-24.
We are blessed with a new leader who can think about complex scientific questions as well as existential ones. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride! We need to help him where we can, and criticize where we disagree.
So, let us begin. Ladies and gentlemen, if we go out and block and tackle, President Obama will carry the ball, and we’ll go on from there.
TIKKUN OLAM
Paul L.
So when will the crisis of Global
WarmingClimate Change become so critical that Sporting events(Superbowl) and Award shows(The Oscars) will be canceled.When that occurs I’ll take the Global
WarmingClimate Change alarmism seriouslyjoe from Lowell
Brick Oven Bill February 15, 2009 2:09
I don’t know enough about Global Warming to have a strong opinion on it.
The very first statement you made on the subject was a lie.
Ergo, nobody should care what you have to say.
Xenos
@Paul L.: The Olympics won’t be canceled. But having the swimming section of the 2024 summer Olympics take place in the Northwest Passage would be a good indication that you ought to be alarmed.
El Cid
There is no such thing as global warming because the planet you see acts like a big bubble and rubs up against the other bubbles and that’s how I figger this one time they was growin’ grapes in Greenland and the permafrost was actually leftover from Noah’s flood.
Iowa Housewife
Maybe someone can explain this to me because I have been wondering about this for a long time. Why is it the right wing is so married to the idea that global warming is trumped up science and a hoax invented by Al Gore? I don’t understand their investment. The people who call in to those wacky right wing radio programs are certainly not oil tycoons protecting their money. What gives?
jcricket
Remember the "well mannered concern troll" who used to populate these parts a while back – scs, I think. Used to pretend to be nice and genuine, but really was obstinate – I think mostly about evolution (this was back in the Terri Schiavo days, IIRC).
Maybe BOB is scs reincarnated? Or the Villagers "id" come to life, where civil debate is somehow more important than, you know, actually being right?
Person of Choler
Gosh, JGabriel,
saying "…Cato Institute is a conservative/Randian/libertarian think tank…" is name calling besides ad hominem argumentation.
And then you close your argument with "You stupid sh!t."
Is that Newspeak for "quod erat demonstrandum"?
Paul L.
@jcricket:
Population Bomb
Global Cooling in 1970
Ozone Hole
Global Warming
Climate Change
Strangely the Solution from the experts for all the above problems: More Government control and regulation.
jcricket
The same reason they’re married to opposing gay marriage, evolution, government-run healthcare, the stimulus, etc. Any time they end up on the "wrong side of history" and their "end is nigh" rhetoric doesn’t pan out, they start losing elections. The GOP has:
1) Latched itself to the declining segment of the population that’s reactionary and backwards looking.
2) Wedded its fortunes to the idea that government is always the problem.
So social progress and successful government intervention are like a kick in the junk for the GOP.
Go back to the New Deal. They virulently opposed that. When the government programs helped people, and the public knew the Republicans were against those programs, it helped cement their minority status for 40 years.
If the stimulus works – the GOP knows people will like the results, blame the GOP for opposition, and favor the Democrats electorally for supporting these policies. I think the Democrats could be in charge another 50 years if they get any kind of serious healthcare reform passed, esp. over the objections of Republicans.
gwangung
Now point to their peer reviewed research that supports their position. I think their RESEARCH is more important than what they say.
And, uh, their names?
Marc
Person of Choler: you have no substantive rebuttal; you dismiss the outcome of an entire discipline as an appeal to authority. Dealing with libertarians on climate change is like dealing with creationists on evolution. You may believe that your ideology is the primary source of truth, but the scientific method begs to differ.
People are changing the composition of the air around us; that is a fact, and your opinion on the subject is irrelevant. There is well-understood physics behind the consequences, and you are basically gambling that there is some mysterious feedback that will make it go away. The data suggests otherwise. So do detailed studies by people who are dedicating their lives to understanding the matter. And on the other side? Ideologically motivated people and people paid by special interests who benefit from the status quo.
And, ironically enough, delaying action will only make it necessary to undertake even more drastic action later – so the path of minimum government intrusion is acting sooner and not later.
Person of Choler
Marc, I’m not rebutting, I’m questioning. And phrases like "You may believe that your ideology…." are not answers.
gwangung: here is a summation of the essential characteristics of science:
1. It is guided by natural law;
2. It has to be explanatory by reference to nature law;
3. It is testable against the empirical world;
4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and
5. It is falsifiable.
This says nothing about peer review.
Theories of AGW meet criteria 1 through 3.
Criterion 4 suggests that saying "the science is settled" may not be very scientific.
I am interested in testing the falsifiability of AGW theory, hence my questions.
Evinfuilt
This I feel is because we always have to push fairy tale style everything is okay options into all our models. There are plenty models that have been accurate, its just they have to include the "creationist" version of AGW, the one that says God will make it all better.
And anyone wanting to falsify AGW, please do, use this as your handy guide.
Taken from the 28th comment here.
gwangung
@Person of Choler:
I repeat: WHAT IS THEIR RESEARCH? That IS their science.
And, again…what are their names? At least, that allows me to look up what their research is.
Otherwise, you’re pretty much admitting you don’t know what the hell they’re talking about…which throws into doubt that YOU know what you’re talking about.
Person of Choler
gwangung,
Here is a link to the names of the signers of the Manhattan Declaration:
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=63
And here is a link to the upcoming Heartland Institute conference:
http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/newyork09.html
Person of Choler
gwangung,
And here is a link to the upcoming Heartland Institute conference:
http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/newyork09.html
Evaluate away.
TenguPhule
Hate to burst your bubblehead, Paul L (well, no, not really),
but banning CFCs worked.
Marc
PoC: Until you have something concrete to talk about I’m afraid this is a waste of time. You’ve already indicated that you have ideological reasons for being skeptical of climate change. You’ve had the underlying logic explained and you have nothing scientific that you’re prepared to discuss. Instead you just say that science is never settled – in a technical sense perhaps, but we’re not revisiting the flat earth theory nor are we revisiting the falsified hypothesis that doubling atmospheric CO2 has no consequences for global climate.
What we do about it is a different matter, but libertarians won’t even have a place at that discussion if they can’t accept the same data about what is occurring that everyone else does. Scientists are by their nature cautious; I’d have adopted a different measure when our temperature records were not consistent and all of the data wasn’t in. But you have to adjust your discussion to account for the cold stubborn data, and if you can’t you’ll be ignored by working scientists.
El Cid
What is this nonsense being pulled out about "natural law"?
joe from Lowell
Because their political ideology renders any plausible solution to the problem unacceptable.
Look, they tell you that themselves:
They reject the science, because they don’t like the political implications of that science.
This, btw, is why their efforts to argue scientifically are so laughable – they don’t actually care about following the data wherever it leads.
joe from Lowell
It would be as if liberals rejected the "theory" that anthrax spores cause disease, because of an objection to spending money on counter-terrorism and national defense.
Except, we don’t do that.
jcricket
Some good data refuting George Will and other global warming denialists.
First from Nate Silver; Second, this from Zachary Roth at TPM MuckRacker and last a good take down from Ezra Klein (breaking down the whole "scientists previously argued for global cooling" canard).
At any rate, like every other issue, Republicans are wrong and are lying to you about any statistics or summary they present, unless it’s when they say "Republicans can’t be trusted" (Michael Steele) or compare themselves to the Taliban. Then you can believe them.
jcricket
The counter-example would be a continued embrace of gun control regulations, despite evidence they do nothing to reduce illegal gun ownership/violent crime.
I’ve become increasingly pragmatic about stuff like that over time. I think most elected Democrats are similarly pragmatic (even if they come to different conclusions on a variety of issues).
That’s the main difference. Democrats, when push comes to shove, can be pragmatic. Republicans, increasingly, cannot. And since they’re wrong about everything, they’re totally hosed :-)
TenguPhule
Difficult to prove a negative, it is.
Of course we have all these wonderful news stories of careful screening at gun shows where guns are purchased for use.
It’s not like they’d just sell to anyone with money right?
person of choler
El Cid says "What is this nonsense being pulled out about "natural law"?"
The 5 points come from a Wikipedia summary of a court case, McLean v. Arkansas, January 5, 1982, which determined that "creation-science" is not "science"
Check the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_science
for further information
El Cid
@person of choler: Okay. For a second I thought you were one of the "Natural Law" party type nuts.
ChrisS
PoC, the fact that you used the 6,000 years quip from the post as an argument that climate change is natural and not anthropogenic just shows how much credibility you have (i.e., none).
Lemme break it down for you: DougJ’s point was that permafrost wasn’t frozen more than 6,000 years ago because, according to the fundamentalists, the earth is only 6,000 years old.
QED, or some such.
dbrown
@Person of Choler: Either you are the second most stupid person to post or you are a real nutcase. Try to understand that people signing a piece of paper does not prove anything about a scientific question – please, get people to sign that gravity does not exist and jump off a ten story building and see what happens.
Not one single, peer reviewed climatologist is to be found on any list of people who deign AGW. Yet if some were, what in the fuck would that prove? Science is not an opinion poll, it is only based on empirical fact (read as often as needed until you understand it.) If you don’t understand that very simple, middle school level idea then you really are not fit to discus this subject. Try reading people whose brains are not in their asses. Instead, try reading experts in the field and then form an opinion and talk like you have an education level close to high school.
Comrade Darkness
Will mankind destroy the earth to move on?
Is that his destiny?
Ask yourself a question people . . .
are you humble before god?
Gus
And I don’t have a problem with that. I have a problem with taking so many innocent species with us.
gwangung
Well, that’s something.
I note that there are VERY few climate scientists in that list for climate science center conference. And that for the climate scientists that are there, I could not find any recent scientific papers by them. For example, Timothy Ball has not published for the last 12 years.
That’s an important point; if they are not publishing, they’re not doing research. If they’re not doing research, then they simply are not contributing to the scientific debate. If they’re not contributing to the science, then their word is no more valuable than a marketer or a theologian (plenty of examples of these in the people you’ve cited).
Perhaps you can help; are there recent scientific papers on this?
Perhaps you
person of choler
Marc, some things to talk about:
1) Global climate models are extremely complex systems of highly nonlinear partial differential equations. Results of such models are highly dependent on initial conditions, the accuracy of equations themselves, the solution conversion methods, and various constants (e.g. surface reflectivity as a function of cover and wavelength) that are not well known. Henri Poincare, in the 19th century, already pointed out that there are limits to computability of complex systems, citing the great difficulty of solving the relatively simple 3-body gravitational problem. The MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz re-discovered this in the 1960s when he tried on two successive occasions to run a weather model and got two wildly varying results with the same input data. He traced the cause of the discrepancy to small rounding errors in the input parameters (initial conditions again). His thoughts on the matter led to the beginnings of chaos theory, which posits that it is very difficult to make accurate long range numerical forecasts of complex systems.
The instability of complex forecasting models is my reason (1) for being skeptical of AGW theory. Again, to save typing, someone will tell me that the models accurately reflect what happened in the past. To which I reply that accurate reproduction of the past is necessary – but not sufficient – to validate a set of equations.
Tonal Crow
And it’s an equally-good reason for being skeptical of climate-change denialism, which posits that humans are not substantially modifying global climate, or that the modifications will be harmless. That is, the denialists are "predicting" future states of the same complex system that climate scientists are predicting. But instead of using peer-reviewed scientific processes to do so, they’re using talk-radio propaganda.
person of choler
Marc, something else to talk about:
2) Estimation of trends in temperature depends on accuracy and consistency of historical data. Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.org. has spent much time and effort in analyzing the methods used to gather temperature proxy data (e.g. tree ring studies) and transform these proxies into time series of temperature data. He has found many errors, statistically questionable methods and outright fudges in this transformation. He raises serious questions about the quality of this data. McIntyre professes not to disbelieve in AGW, he just points out that the underlying data acquisition methods could use some improvement.
Anthony Watts, with his volunteer group evaluating the quality of data gathering at US meteorological stations (surfacestations.org), has pretty conclusively demonstrated that quality control of data gathering, instrumentation, and record keeping for the US meteorological stations is slipshod, and the data so gathered is too suspect to base world-energy-economy-shaking decisions on.
At least to my mind. You are welcome to disagree.
dbrown
@person of choler: Now you are bringing up good, valid points. Much better. This is more like someone that is reading real people.
First, as for the models dealing with nonlinear equations, that is beyond my paid grade but I do know that for some cases, these systems can be solved exactly. More often, nature allows systems of second order D.E.’s to be used to solve most systems and the nonlinear parts are not big system drivers and can be ignored (In quantum this is true but in Earth Climate models I have no idea and that may be a weakness.)
As for the very famous three-body problem, as you mention, can only be approximated but can not be solved exactly; this point is critical.
An answer can be obtained that is highly close to an ‘exact’ value; this answer can be made as close as desired but is never exact (where, might you ask does the answer for the exact solution come from? Real systems like the planets – the Sun, Mercury, and Venus form a three body problem (or as close as possible) when the other planets are far, far away (really the case most of the time) and/or behind the Sun. Measure this systems positions and get what nature says is the solution. Now try and calculate and see how close you come (and they can land a space probes with in a few kilometers after traveling a few 100 million kilometers using these approximate solutions! That is close enough for any reasonable person.)
What’s the point? That models can address and get highly accurate answers for complex, non-linear systems. Does that mean that climate models are right? Hell no. Only that your point does not really invalidate AGW models at all. Keep trying but don’t reference that people who signed a sheet of paper and say they can prove division by zero is easy to solve (Please, no Dirac Delta functions here!!!)
Person of Choler
dbrown,
Agreed that some n-body gravity problems can be accurately solved for long times and distances. Isaac Newton nailed the theory for that quite a while ago. The gravitational constant G is well known (Eotvos and his torsion balance for starters) and corrections for solar wind (in the case of a satellite) are pretty accurate.
Unfortunately for climate modeling, there is no simple
f=G*M*M’/r2 for the complexities of the earth / sun energy balance and mass transfer processes that drive behavior of the earth’s atmosphere.
I remain skeptical.
Person of Choler
dbrown,
I forgot, Henry Cavendish first measured G. Eotvos came later.
LanceThruster
It should actually be called "Climate Intensification" instead of "Global Warming." Additionally, look into "ocean acidification" to see just how bad things are about to get.
ChrisS
Steve McIntyre’s "findings" are repeatedly smacked down by actual climate scientists. See realclimate.org.
jcricket
@TenguPhule: I was trying to think of an example of Democrats clinging to a belief due to ideology even though the facts are consistently showing them (us, me) to be wrong.
Gun control is the best/biggest example I can think of, but as you point out, we’re not even "as wrong" on that as Republicans are on all the issues we’ve been discussing.
Plus the consequence of being wrong on gun control (i.e. advocating for stricter gun regulations) is, possibly, less focus on real crime solutions. Of course Democrats are also generally pro-poverty-amelioration, which is the best crime prevention there is, so we’re barely screwing anyone even if we’re wrong.
The consequence of being wrong on global warming is death of the planet. Being wrong about gay marriage hurts millions of gay people and their friends/families. Etc and so on.
Marc
Oddly enough the dependence on initial conditions turns out to be very well studied in the field, and it is the reason for the error bars. This is not a justification for sweeping dismissal of an entire field – not in the slightest. There are 6 x 10^23 hydrogen atoms in a gram, and measuring their detailed properties is in principle impossible. Statistical mechanics nonetheless allows us to specify their average behavior rigorously and with high precision.
You’re essentially arguing that it’s impossible to study complex systems and know anything about their properties. Newsflash: you depend on the extreme reliability of such calculations when you drive over a bridge, fly on an airplane, and so on. Climate models are extensively tested; there are uncertainties in the physical ingredients used but chaos theory does not mean what you think it does in the climate context.
As far as McIntyre and Watt: good lord, where to begin. Scientists spend a lot of their time worrying about systematics, and there were long debates (recently settled with satellite data) about the calibration and errors in the temperature record. Folks like McIntyre have an incredibly embarassing string of mistakes to their "credit". e.g. adopting unphysical temperature weighting schemes that yield different answers for C and F scales by misunderstanding the physical basis for temperature averages at a foundational level; reading spreadsheets of data incorrectly and accusing others of fraud; and so on. They compound their documented incompetence with arrogance and accusations of dishonesty. The list of bad behavior is so brazen and well-documented that they fall into the "not worth paying attention to" category. If you must I’d head over to Deltoid and RealClimate to see what the folks there have to say – it’s really far too much to give justice to in one sitting. There is real physical meaning to something like temperature; it’s not just a set of numbers you throw in a box.
Xel
Denialists are made out of a top layer of people who don’t care about the environment nd strictly want to make more money and stay in power, maintain the status quo. The next layer are pundits and morons who think they are cool red-coats who stand up against elitist scientists, attention-hungry scary leftists and power-hungry politicians. The last layer is the biggest and is made out of people who actually would care about Africans dying and the world going FUBAR but are stuck in the mire of bad science, fear-mongering and doubt the upper layers of the denialist movement spreads.
The best solution is to stop pretending the two upper layers are worthy of attention and respect of any kind, try to hammer the truth into the lowest layer until we win some of them over and once we have enough people to ignore the denialist pyramid we railroad them, drive through every legislation, edict and change deemed neccessary and don’t spend one second trying to convince the other side.
Same thing with civil unions and adoptions for all homosexuals – this isn’t a debate human beings are supposed to be having. Sometimes you have to drive through your solution and your opinion with any moral means at your disposal without pretending there is dissent or any need for scepticism.
Person of Choler
Marc,
"Newsflash: you depend on the extreme reliability of such calculations when you drive over a bridge, fly on an airplane, and so on."
Static and dynamic analysis of structures like and bridges and airplanes are vastly simpler than decades-long forecast models of the earth’s atmosphere. The fundamentals of analyzing structures like airplane fuselages and bridges are well understood and verified (the Euler – Bernoulli beam equation goes back to the 1750s). Relevant properties of the materials analyzed are well known (modulus of elasticity, shear modulus, safe working stresses,,,). Also, for airframes, physical tests of stresses and deflections are performed during design, assembly, and pre test-flight inspections. As for flight behavior modeing, again the equations are well known and are continuously verified by instrumentation on actual test flights.
Modeling of the earth’s atmosphere is not this simple or quickly verifiable.
I don’t argue that analysis of complex systems is impossible. I do contend that some systems – among which is the long range behavior of the earth’s atmosphere – are too complex to be reliably analyzed with today’s techniques.