The Bawdy Hand Of The Dial Is Now Upon The Prick Of Noonan
Timmy the Global Warming Tugboat discovers Richard Lindzen, the lonely MIT professor who disputes anthropogenic global warming:
The Global Warming Non-Crisis
By Mark Noonan at 12:11 AMFirst, lets get the authors credentials up:
Professor Lindzen is a dynamical meteorologist with interests in the broad topics of climate, planetary waves, monsoon meteorology, planetary atmospheres, and hydrodynamic instability. His research involves studies of the role of the tropics in mid-latitude weather and global heat transport, the moisture budget and its role in global change, the origins of ice ages, seasonal effects in atmospheric transport, stratospheric waves, and the observational determination of…
It goes on like that for several hundred words. Executive summary: Lindzen is a for-reals scientist.
According to the article I’m quoting, Lindzen has never received any funding from any energy company. That said:
Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it? Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we’ve seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators—and many scientists—seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth’s climate history, it’s apparent that there’s no such thing as an optimal temperature—a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman’s forecast for next week.
Huh. Something seems wrong here. If only there were some way to look things up on the Internet.
[Zeerp!] Hello, dum-dums.
Oh hi, Great Gazoogle. Say, what’s this?
The Heat Is On:
The warming of the world’s climate sparks a blaze of denial
by Ross Gelbspan.
HARPER’S MAGAZINE December, 1995[…]
The people who run the world’s oil and coal companies know that the march of science, and of political action, may be slowed by disinformation. In the last year and a half, one of the leading oil industry public relations outlets, the Global Climate Coalition, has spent more than a million dollars to downplay the threat of climate change. It expects to spend another $850,000 on the issue next year. Similarly, the National Coal Association spent more than $700,000 on the global climate issue in 1992 and 1993. In 1993 alone, the American Petroleum Institute, just one of fifty-four industry members of the GCC, paid $1.8 million to the public relations firm of Burson-Marsteller partly in an effort to defeat a proposed tax on fossil fuels. For perspective, this is only slightly less than the combined yearly expenditures on global warming of the five major environmental groups that focus on climate issues—about $2.1 million, according to officials of the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the World Wildlife Fund.
For the most part the industry has relied on a small band of skeptics—Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Dr. Pat Michaels, Dr. Robert Balling, Dr. Sherwood Idso, and Dr. S. Fred Singer, among others—who have proven extraordinarily adept at draining the issue of all sense of crisis.
[…]
Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled “Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,” was underwritten by OPEC.
Was Noonan played for a fool again? We’re running out of ways to say so! According to the article he quotes, Lindzen’s ‘research’ has always been funded by the U.S. Government — as opposed to, oh, well, his ‘consulting services,’ for instance — and he ‘receives’ no funding from any energy companies. As of, like, right at this exact moment. Because these days, his wingnut welfare comes pre-laundered through ‘pro-business’ foundations such as the Cato Institute. Oh, that bawdy hand of the dial!
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/a-tale-of-three-interviews/#more-432
—
Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist, gives a nice description of the climate scientist being interviewed by “the media” and an insight into how the news media frames debate …
Good schtuff …
P.S. herring are running on Cape Cod.
The oil and gas companies have EVERY RIGHT to fund scientists who will say there is no global warming … or that it is caused by cows … or that there is nothing we can do about it … or that it’s not that big a deal any way … or whatever the talking point of the day is. (I don’t know where the goalposts are today because I haven’t read Thomas Sowell this week.)
Just as the terrorists and the communists and the French have EVERY RIGHT to fund the liberal scientists and Al Gore and all the other people who hate America who want to keep peddling the myth of global warming.
And if it turns out that global warming is real and we all die from a global disaster, then I’m sure all the conservatives will … BLAME THE LIBERAL MEDIA.
Liberals. Hmf.
Nice post.
It’s always good to fact check the clowns. One comment: I think the argument about the recent temperatures and their implications for global warming misses the point. One has to subtract out non-human effects to see the human signature. I blogged about this here. If you do that, you get quite a different answer.
At any rate, I suspect 2007 will exceed 1998, and then the clowns will say, “only one year has exceeded 1998 …”
_
Hmmm.
The media are all collectively lying about the “progress” being made in iraq. (BTW, why is that progress they love to cite always being made “on the ground”? There cannot be progress that is not on the ground? If you happen to live on the second floor, like that poor woman Luca, you’re well and truly screwed? Just curious.)
There is no scientific consensus about global warming.
There is no evidence to support the theory (and remember, that’s all it is, a stinkin little theory with no hope of ever becoming a scientific the…er, never mind) of evolution.
NAFTA good.
Outsourcing good.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are our friends, and allies in the war on terror.
Iraq is the main front in the war on terror. And we can’t leave because think how bad it would be if we weren’t there.
9/11 changed everything.
The constitution is not a suicide pact.
Muslims are our enemy.
Y’know, the stupid assumptions made by teh right are frightening in their disconnect from observed reality. Thanks again, Mr. Gazoogle…
mikey
Standing Ovation for the Post Title
If Mark Noonan were any more teh stupid, The Dan Riehl Time-Space-Stupid vortex would collapse and we’d be winked into Crazy World (aka Swankland.)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/richard-lindzens-hol-testimony/
A very good take down of Mr. Lindzen from his climate science peers.
Out upon you! what a man you are!
Let’s add a little to Noonan’s listing of Lindzen’s credentials:
From the above link, a pithy conclusion from Mr. Lindzen’s scientific peers:
“Throughout his testimony, Lindzen refers to the global warming ‘alarmists’. In my dictionary an ‘alarmist’ is defined as ‘a person who alarms others needlessly’. However, Lindzen appears to define as ‘alarmism’ anything that links human activities to climate change. For instance, when discussing the statement from the NRC (2001) report (which he co-authored): The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability., he states that “To be sure, this statement is leaning over backwards to encourage the alarmists”. To my mind, this statement is actually a fair assessment of both the NRC report, and IPCC report to which it was referring. To claim that this is ‘alarmist’ is such a gross overuse of the term as to make it useless except as a rhetorical device.”
Timmy the Global Warming Tugboat
Teh Awesome
Thanks J– for the additional references:
To put this into scientific perspective, you don’t see many Op/Eds titled:
“The Atomic Fission Myth”
Or “There is no consensus on what powers stars.”
Or, “The Universe: No one can prove it is not a glass sphere suspended above an un-moving Earth”
Ummm, you do know that Richard Lindzen was a contributor to the IPCC’s Second Assessment, so is one of those guys you are talking about whenever you say the IPCC proves a “unanimous consensus” on anthropogenic global warming. However Dr. Lindzen’s experience with the IPCC showed him just what a sham the IPCC is.
He is not the only IPCC contributor to be against global warming, either. Dr. John Christy, who is one of the most important scientists behind NASA’s satellite temperature studies is another skeptic and was a lead author for the IPCC’s third assessment in 2001. Paul Reiter is another example of a (former) member of the IPCC who is opposed to it, although he is an expert on tropical diseases and was flabbergasted when IPCC reports shows that malaria-carrying mosquitos could only survive in tropical environments, completely ignoring the fact that places as far north as Siberia continue to have problems with malaria carrying mosquitos. A few years ago the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics did what is probably still one of (if not the most) comprehensive studies of reports on climate trends over the past millenium which showed quite conclusively that the IPCC’s hockey stick graph is complete and utter crap and that the Medieval Warming Period was in fact warmer than temperatures we are seeing today, without the expected catastrophes predicted by the IPCC and other bodies. There are plenty of scientists all over the world who do not believe in global warming and disagree with the so-called “consensus,” besides these couple of examples just off of the top of my head, I would highly doubt that Dr. Lindzen is all that “lonely” in his beliefs.
You’d think, as an actual scientist, he’d do some actual science to back up his point.
If the debate is portrayed as one-sided, maybe it’s because on the one side you have thousands of climate scientists publishing in peer-reviewed journals, and on the other side you have the same half-dozen guys writing op-eds for the WSJ. Hey, I’m an open-minded guy. All the skeptics have to do is show me some actual science they’ve done.
All the skeptics have to do is show me some actual science they’ve done.
Just because somebody has better science doesn’t mean they’re a better scientist.
Liberals. Hmf.
Ummm, you do know that Richard Lindzen was a contributor to the IPCC’s Second Assessment, so is one of those guys you are talking about whenever you say the IPCC proves a “unanimous consensus� on anthropogenic global warming. However Dr. Lindzen’s experience with the IPCC showed him just what a sham the IPCC is.
He is not the only IPCC contributor to be against global warming, either. Dr. John Christy, who is one of the most important scientists behind NASA’s satellite temperature studies is another skeptic and was a lead author for the IPCC’s third assessment in 2001. Paul Reiter is another example of a (former) member of the IPCC who is opposed to it, although he is an expert on tropical diseases and was flabbergasted when IPCC reports shows that malaria-carrying mosquitos could only survive in tropical environments, completely ignoring the fact that places as far north as Siberia continue to have problems with malaria carrying mosquitos. A few years ago the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics did what is probably still one of (if not the most) comprehensive studies of reports on climate trends over the past millenium which showed quite conclusively that the IPCC’s hockey stick graph is complete and utter crap and that the Medieval Warming Period was in fact warmer than temperatures we are seeing today, without the expected catastrophes predicted by the IPCC and other bodies. There are plenty of scientists all over the world who do not believe in global warming and disagree with the so-called “consensus,� besides these couple of examples just off of the top of my head, I would highly doubt that Dr. Lindzen is all that “lonely� in his beliefs.
This seems to have gotten eaten up before, so I am reposting it.
Ummm, you do know that Richard Lindzen was a contributor to the IPCC’s Second Assessment, so is one of those guys you are talking about whenever you say the IPCC proves a “unanimous consensus� on anthropogenic global warming. However Dr. Lindzen’s experience with the IPCC showed him just what a sham the IPCC is.
He is not the only IPCC contributor to be against global warming, either. Dr. John Christy, who is one of the most important scientists behind NASA’s satellite temperature studies is another skeptic and was a lead author for the IPCC’s third assessment in 2001. Paul Reiter is another example of a (former) member of the IPCC who is opposed to it, although he is an expert on tropical diseases and was flabbergasted when IPCC reports shows that malaria-carrying mosquitos could only survive in tropical environments, completely ignoring the fact that places as far north as Siberia continue to have problems with malaria carrying mosquitos. A few years ago the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics did what is probably still one of (if not the most) comprehensive studies of reports on climate trends over the past millenium which showed quite conclusively that the IPCC’s hockey stick graph is complete and utter crap and that the Medieval Warming Period was in fact warmer than temperatures we are seeing today, without the expected catastrophes predicted by the IPCC and other bodies. There are plenty of scientists all over the world who do not believe in global warming and disagree with the so-called “consensus,� besides these couple of examples just off of the top of my head, I would highly doubt that Dr. Lindzen is all that “lonely� in his beliefs.
Doesn’t seem to want to go through the spam filter, so here is try #3.
Ummm, you do know that Richard Lindzen was a contributor to the IPCC’s Second Assessment, so is one of those guys you are talking about whenever you say the IPCC proves a “unanimous consensus� on anthropogenic global warming. However Dr. Lindzen’s experience with the IPCC showed him just what a sham the IPCC is.
He is not the only IPCC contributor to be against global warming, either. Dr. John Christy, who is one of the most important scientists behind NASA’s satellite temperature studies is another skeptic and was a lead author for the IPCC’s third assessment in 2001. Paul Reiter is another example of a (former) member of the IPCC who is opposed to it, although he is an expert on tropical diseases and was flabbergasted when IPCC reports shows that malaria-carrying mosquitos could only survive in tropical environments, completely ignoring the fact that places as far north as Siberia continue to have problems with malaria carrying mosquitos. A few years ago the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics did what is probably still one of (if not the most) comprehensive studies of reports on climate trends over the past millenium which showed quite conclusively that the IPCC’s hockey stick graph is complete and utter crap and that the Medieval Warming Period was in fact warmer than temperatures we are seeing today, without the expected catastrophes predicted by the IPCC and other bodies. There are plenty of scientists all over the world who do not believe in global warming and disagree with the so-called “consensus,� besides these couple of examples just off of the top of my head, I would highly doubt that Dr. Lindzen is all that “lonely� in his beliefs.
The truth will be told.
The IPCC seemed impressed enough by Dr. Lindzen to make him one of their contributors for the Second Assessment. Dr. John Christy has won many awards for his work in temperature recording using satellites, as well as been a lead author for the IPCC Third Assessment. Dr. Bill Gray, as another example, has been heralded for years as one of the best hurricane forecasters around yet today is derided because he refuses to believe in global warming or the hooplah that it will increase hurricane intensity. They have done quite a bit more science than many of the “global warming” scientists.
The IPCC seemed impressed enough by Dr. Lindzen to make him one of their contributors for the Second Assessment in 1995. Dr. John Christy has won many awards for his work in temperature recording using satellites, as well as been a lead author for the IPCC Third Assessment. Dr. Bill Gray, as another example, has been heralded for years as one of the best hurricane forecasters around yet today is derided because he refuses to believe in global warming or the hooplah that it will increase hurricane intensity. They have done quite a bit more science than many of the “global warming� scientists.
The truth will be told.
Very true. But you also don’t see many major political activist movements which seek to completely redefine all modern industry based on atomic fission or what powers stars, now do you? Global warming is an inherently political discussion as much as it is a scientific one. Just look at who is the poster boy for spreading global warming hysteria: Al Gore, a lifelong politician. Fortunately most science is not done in such a high media coverage and strongly political environment.
If Unseen Handâ„¢ is going to be in the discussion for awhile, we can definitely start up a bingo game.
The truth will be told.
Ummm, you do know that Richard Lindzen was a contributor to the IPCC’s Second Assessment, so is one of those guys you are talking about whenever you say the IPCC proves a “unanimous consensus� on anthropogenic global warming.
Your search – “unanimous consensus” site:sadlyno.com – did not match any documents.
The existence of one or two doubters does not undermine the consensus, although that’s basically the partisan Republican argument – “as long as any human being on Earth says otherwise, that means we still need to wait for all the science to come in!”
The IPCC seemed impressed enough by Dr. Lindzen to make him one of their contributors for the Second Assessment in 1995.
I didn’t say he wasn’t a real scientist. What I said is that he hasn’t done any science to back up his point – in other words, he can’t point to any study he’s done and say “see, this is proof that the other scientists are wrong about climate change!” Instead of employing the scientific method, he attempts to cast doubt on the peer-reviewed conclusions of other scientists through exclusively political means, such as writing op-eds.
All he has to do is point to a study he’s done that generates different results than the IPCC’s consensus. One study, that’s all I ask. Do you have any?
“The Hockey Stick is broken” — that’s a bingo number!
One study, eh? How about this study done by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics?
20th Century Climate Not So Hot
Just for an example.
Also, to debunk Mr. Gore’s thesis that CO2 is the primary determinant in climate change, looks like the Met Office in Britain disagrees with him:
Of course they then go on to say that solar activity and volcanic activity can’t explain recent warming, but they seem to ignore the fact that solar activity is higher than it has been in a millenium. If solar heatingis by their own admission one of the two major forcings in climate change over the past 1,000 years, why aren’t current solar levels a factor in their climate models? Because it goes against the CO2 thesis!
Gavin playing bingo. That’s a paddlin’
The IPCC seemed impressed enough by Dr. Lindzen to make him one of their contributors for the Second Assessment in 1995.
Umm, I think it’s fair to say that an awful lot has been learned in the intervening 12 years, a lot of it due to much more effective computer climate models that are being refined monthly and adding to the consensus. No science is ever “unanimous”, but I tend to believe a vast global majority over a few dissenters, especially because so many of those dissenters have been shown to happily take money from industries that have a vested interest in creating confusion and contraversy (remember the tobacco scienctists?).
Beyond that, come on. Every 4th grader learns what happens when you increase the amount of inert greenhouse gasses in a system. The system retains heat to a greater degree than it when the concentrations of these gasses was lower. It’s just plain obvious, it makes sense, and there’s no point in arguing against it unless you have a particular agenda.
While were on the topic, I cannot understand why it’s so important for industry to challenge the validity of global climate change. Nobody I know (short of a few fringe loons) is calling for the western economies to shut down. We are simply saying that NOW is the time to beging to take small, obvious steps toward a.) Reducing the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and b.) Mitigating the climate effects of that carbon already in the atmosphere. These steps need not be destructive to the economy, indeed, the process of transitioning to a green economy using alternative fuels and modern methods of conservation will generate a great deal of wealth for the early developers/adopters.
The whole discussion seems, to me at least, to have slipped completely out of hand. The industries don’t want to lose profits, the rest of us don’t want to see human life become untenable on the planet. It seems to me that there are a LOT of things we could be doing right now to improve the situation. Why do you suppose the assclowns on the right are so opposed to doing anything?
mikey
Now as to the solar activity and sun being the primary determinant of climate change, here are a couple of scientific experiments you yourself can do, Steve. For example, if the hypothesis that the sun is primarily responsible for changing temperatures on the surface of the earth, I ask you to study temperatures in the northern hemisphere during the period we like to call “winter” between the monts of December and March when the earth is tilted so that the northern hemisphere is further away from the Sun. My hypothesis is that because there is less sunlight hitting the earth at this period of time temperatures in the northern hemisphere will be cooler than in the “summer” months, between June and September, when the northern hemisphere is receiving more sunlight because this part of the earth is tilted closer to the sun.
Another easy to do experiment: park your car in the sun, then park your car in the shade. See which one is warmer and which one is cooler. If my hypothesis is correct, the car parked in sunlight will be significantly warmer than the car parked in the shade.
It doesn’t matter if “global warming” is anthropogenic. It doesn’t matter if its even is happening. What does matter is that we anthros are taking more than our ecosphere has to offer. We live outside of our means. Natural resources are not unlimited. So stop shitting where you sleep.
How about this study done by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics?
I didn’t see Richard Lindzen’s name anywhere at that link. Help me out, show me how he was involved, and then show me how this study calls into question the IPCC consensus on climate change?
I already linked to something about this.
I can debunk Global Warming in four words.
It’s cold outside today…
“…during the period we like to call “winterâ€? between the monts of December and March when the earth is tilted so that the northern hemisphere is further away from the Sun. My hypothesis is that because there is less sunlight hitting the earth at this period of time temperatures in the northern hemisphere will be cooler than in the “summerâ€? months, between June and September, when the northern hemisphere is receiving more sunlight because this part of the earth is tilted closer to the sun.”
Wrong!
Not less and more sunlight. Sunlight at different angles.
Unseen Hand? More like The Stranger. Embarassing, deluded, wankery.
I didn’t see Richard Lindzen’s name anywhere at that link. Help me out, show me how he was involved, and then show me how this study calls into question the IPCC consensus on climate change?
It calls into question the entire idea that we are currently experiencing temperatures greater than any time during the last 1,000 years, which is patently false, which shows that such minor increases in temperature do not create the horrifying effects which are currently being blamed on global warming. Hell, if someone breaks their foot these days it is blamed on global warming.
At first you did not just mention Lindzen, you mentioned all skeptics (universally). There are many more skeptics than just Dr. Lindzen. There is also, for example, Dr. Nir Shaviv is currently doing several studies advancing his own theory for the cause of global warming: solar activity and its influence on clouds. Khabibulo Absudamatov from Russia is even predicting global cooling beginning in 2012 because under his studies solar radiation is expected to start decreasing in that year, and has done numerous studies and is doing more. (And of course increases in solar radiation and solar activity pretty much match global warming over the past 150 years or so, so it would make scientific sense to link the two).
Still based on sunlight, nothing more and nothing less.
You’re gonna respond with “same difference!”? We’re talking about basic understanding of reality and you are talking out your ass.
Ummm, you do know that shoelimpy was a contributor to the ICPP’s Second Awesome Paper About Stuff, so is one of those guys you are talking about whenever you say the ICPP proves a “unanimous consensus� on anthropogenic global dumbing. However Dr. shoelimpy’s experience with the ICPP showed him just what a sham the ICPP is.
He is not the only ICPP contributor to be against global dumbing, either. Dr. Unseen Hand, who is one of the most important science dudes behind NASTY’s alimentary aperture studies is another skeptic and was a lead author for the ICPP’s third awesome paper about stuff in 2001. Mark Noonan is another example of a (former) member of the ICPP who is opposed to it, although he is an expert on mad coward disease and was flabbergasted when ICPP reports showed that right-wing idiots could only survive in tropical environments, completely ignoring the fact that places as far north as the Arctic Circle continue to have problems with right-wing idiots. A few years ago the Harvey-Smithson Center for Astrodumbasses did what is probably still one of (if not the most) comprehensive studies of reports on idiocy trends over the past millenium which showed quite conclusively that the ICPP’s hockey stick graph is complete and utter craparoonie and that the Medieval Dumbing Period was in fact dumber than dumbasses we are seeing today, without the expected catastrophes predicted by the ICPP and other bodies. There are plenty of science dudes all over the world who do not believe in global dumbing and disagree with the so-called “consensus,� besides these couple of examples just off of the top of my head, I would highly doubt that Dr. shoelimpy is all that “lonely�.
The truth will be told. Sometimes.
Olaz: I am hardly talking out of my ass. Sunlight angles does make a difference on warming, as does amount of sunlight. In case you haven’t noticed, it is cooler at night than it is during the day (I wonder why?). Al Gore makes a claim that CO2 is the most important determinant in global temperature when looking at the historical, even a global warming activist organization such as the Met Office in Britain isn’t going to defend that sort of claim, yet they conveniently ignore the fact that solar activity has been increasing steadily for over a century and we are currently seeing far more solar activity than we have in 1,000 years. Why is one of the most important components in determining temperature for the last 1,000 years suddenly irrelevant? Because activists like Al Gore say it is?
Scroll troll Shrimpyâ„¢.
Likes pie. As long as it’s warm.
Unseen hand is playing the same game they all do. We learned how to deal with these sorts in the evolution “debates” over the last ten years or so. He’s using WEATHER data to try and bamboozle you, but we’re talking about CLIMATE, not WEATHER. Every time one of these assclowns talks about last year, or winter, or observables, they are ascribing value to invalid data points.
This is precisely why it’s taken so long to begin to understand the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on CLIMATE. Climate is wicked hard to model, and trying to get a model that can ingest the vast number of variables and process them properly has taken a lot of time. Fortunately, we’ve learned a great deal about complex modeling from High Energy Physics and Cosmological models, and we’ve also been able to take more extensive samples of oceanic and arctic behavior.
So these corporatist thugs will continue to try to obfuscate, to mislead and to make moot arguments that appeal to people who don’t read, but the die for this one is cast. The world is already moving to a more green approach, and while it may very well be too late, the idiots like unseen here are not going to have much of an impact. They are to obvious, and the evidence is overwhelming…
mikey
By the way, my friend broke his foot just the other day, and not a single person was heard to blame it on global warming. Most of us blamed it on the evil alien Larb-Nar, from the planet Noddles. My friend says he was just a little tipsy and stepped off the curb wrong, but what does he know?
Shoe, you really ought to follow the link I gave. It would save so much trouble.
Scroll troll Shrimpyâ„¢.
You can blame Gavin for that. You see, he decided to mark anyone named Shoelimpy or linking to Blogging Points as spam. After realizing this I changed my name and removed the link so that my voice could be heard despite being marked as spam (which I hardly am). Gavin, being the comment moderator, could have easily deleted the double posts (which would be the normal thing to do) but instead decided to force them onto the board in order to make Shoelimpy look foolish for double posting or something. Real clever, Gavin! That’s a paddlin’
Khabibulo Absudamatov from Russia is even predicting global cooling beginning in 2012 because under his studies solar radiation is expected to start decreasing in that year, and has done numerous studies and is doing more.
Could you provide a link to some of these “numerous studies”?
Google doesn’t seem to be able to tell me anything about this gentleman’s credentials, let alone provide me with any studies or papers he has published.
He seems to be some astronomer from Russia who reportedly said something that global warming skeptics want to hear, and was immediately seized upon by every conservative blogger on earth. Since you obviously know something about his studies, I’m interested to see more.
Here let me quote myself from earlier.
# Olaz Says:
April 10th, 2007 at 1:06
“It doesn’t matter if “global warmingâ€? is anthropogenic. It doesn’t matter if its even is happening. What does matter is that we anthros are taking more than our ecosphere has to offer. We live outside of our means. Natural resources are not unlimited. So stop shitting where you sleep.”
I was just pointing out that you grasp on the way things work is weeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaak.
Or for an alternate and far more parsimonious explanation, see the note on the post directly below this one.
We don’t shit where we sleep, we shit where the Third World sleeps.
I actually waited for my post to appear: it did not come “right along.” And it seems very interesting that only the ones marked “Shoelimpy” or “http://bloggingpoints.blogspot.com” were effected yet the exact same post by another name and without the Blogging Points link works? Very interesting.
Hmmm… the limp one isn’t so much spam as he is pie.
I’m a little concerned that he threatened to spank Gavin above. It adds a whole new level to his obsessive trolling on S,N!
It’s almost cute that he’s trying to play Dr. Science though. A pathetic and sad sort of cute.
The magnitude, eh? Well, that would upset all the scientists who spend so much time saying that temperatures today are warmer than ever (why do they waste so much time trying to prove that, anyway?) Of course, one could also point out, just by looking at a simple graph like this one to see that we have not for the last 1,000 years seen solar activity rising at such a rapid rate. Could it be a coincidence? Of course! It is all CO2!
Uh oh, not another authoritarian loving wingnut running straight for Dennis the Peasant mode? Whoda thunk it!?!1111!
Gavin, yur repressin’ me! Look everyone, I’m being repressed!
Me, I’m all in favor of banning your troll act, shrimpyâ„¢.
Gee, I bet the UN is sorry that they didn’t consult the good dr prior to releasing the latest global warming report.
Mountaineers are also reporting changes to places like Ben Nevis, the Matterhorn and other famous climbing sites due to global warming effects.
Note: both the links are to articles in the Baltimore Sun
Oh right, I forgot to unban you after the last time you and Annie put on a huge boring clown show, driving people away from the comments section, and then pranced around using different addresses all night to prove that you’d do whatever you wanted no matter what anyone said.
Yes, so in that light, I guess I’m sorry I approved your comments which were stuck in the spam filter.
Yes, so in that light, I guess I’m sorry I approved your comments which were stuck in the spam filter.
So say we all!
Mount Kilimanjaro is another mountain where they have been seeing reduction in glaciers, although this reduction began at the end of the 19th century and seems to have causes other than CO2. This according to Dr. Claude Allegre, who was one of the early proponents of global warming theory but has now himself become a skeptic after looking at the evidence.
P.S. On another note, the same folks who couldn’t wait for teh smoking gun in Iraq are pretty sure that we can wait until both Poles melt before we worry our pretty little heads about global warming.
Surprisingly, their pocketbooks get fatter with both stances.
Gavin M. said,
April 10, 2007 at 1:51
Oh and Gavin, why don’t we just drop this and stick with the topic at hand, instead of trying to make this thread all about me instead of being about global warming.
Jebus Christ. Shut the fuck up already limp.
The Center for Big Words Which Really Scare Those Of Us Who’re Less Smart Than Mr Hours A Day Trolling Online says they need those 50,000 words on how the world is really flat cause some sell out PR flacks with PhDs say so for money asap, limp.
So how do sunspots correlate with rising global temperatures? I mean either specifically or generally.
Come on, man, this is just about as tired as saying that all global warming skeptics are being paid by big oil. Get some new material, dude.
It’s all related to the number of pirates anyway.
Well, basically the more sunspots the warmer temperatures are, the less sunspots the cooler the temperature. One well-known example is that of the Maunder Minimum, where sunspot activity was least and corresponds with the coldest temperatures of what climate historians refer to as “The Little Ice Age.” The graph I pointed out showing solar actually fits fairly well with temperature records.
To be more specific, this is still being worked out, one theory is that of Dr. Nir Shaviv I pointed out earlier, who is working with data showing that solar activity effects cloud cover of the earth. This is just one theory and one still in development, but it is one possibility.
Gavin,
Shoe will not go to http://www.realclimate.org because they will give him the credibility he deserves as self-recursive sock puppet.
Shoe, publish some papers in Nature and Science, then we’ll talk.
Yes, I know, Biological Evolution is all a big liberal scam too. So is gravity. Einstein was a liberal Jew, after all. A traitor to Germany. James Clerk Maxwell was a fucking heathen Scot — good thing we took care of them during the Highland Clearances.
Just for the record, btw, Annie never ONCE changed her address. I mean really. Despite your “back door” theories, she played no games and simply posted normally and it worked just fine regardless of your attempts with the spam filter, since you didn’t actually know what you were doing (and as current problems suggest you still don’t know what you’re doing with the spam filter). But please, don’t attack Miss Annie for things that I did.
Shoe comes here because if he actually presents his “theories” at http://www.realclimate.org he will be attacked in 1,000 directions and be shown to have no scientific knowledge whatsoever.
So go over there, loser. Afraid to actually converse with real climate scientists ?
Of course you are.
I screwed up the second link regarding what climber’s are seeing.
This one should work: http://tinyurl.com/2t3b7x
Kilimanjaro is just one many places with vanishing ice caps. What are the non CO2 causes for the rest of the places?
OK, that pisses me off. Here I thought it was some new troll, and it was that pussy boy limpy? I want to make a deal right now. If either of those motherfuckers starts posting in a thread under some other name, let me know right away so I can change the ignore script. I don’t want to engage either of them unless it’s dark and raining and I have a machete…
mikey
Unseen Hand Wankingâ„¢ stomps his feet in the dust over and over to obscure the fact that, yes, sho ’nuff, his hero, Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, “charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels,”
Making this Lindzen cocksucker the modern-day equivalent of an RJ Reynolds- employed cancer scientist.
The Unseen Handâ„¢ is in his pants…
Unseen Hand Wanking™ stomps his feet in the dust over and over to obscure the fact that, yes, sho ’nuff, his hero, Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, “charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels,�
And yet even so the IPCC still put him on the IPCC’s Second Assessment in 1995…. interesting. Seems to me he has something on the ball according to just about everyone regardless of whether or not he is doing work for the IPCC or for some big oil company.
I have not mentioned global warming being a liberal conspiracy once, but I guess you just have to try to construct some ridiculous straw men attacks.
Global warming is an inherently political discussion as much as it is a scientific one
“Inherently”? Conservatives seem to have made it into a political issue, but that was their choice.
Shoe, baby, you’re cold busted on this one. Give it up.
These aren’t my theories. These are the theories of scientists who have studied climate and climate change. In fact, during the modern scientific revolution of the past few hundred years, the most important natural effects on climate change studied were based on volcanic activity and sunspot activity. This has pretty much all been thrown out the window in modern times, though, because it is a preconceived notion that carbon dioxide is the primary driver of modern climate change. Unfortunately preconceived notions can be a pretty strong bias even for a scientist, especially with such a politically charged issue as global warming.
This is part of why I think not as much work has been done to show how solar activity influences climate, because so much focus has been put on how carbon dioxide influences climate.
So, wait, I’m confused! Do I have this straight?
annieangel is Shoelimpy is also Unseen Hand?
Oh, boy! I love sock puppet shows!
Yes, inherently, and not due to conservatives. Any time that scientists are telling governments that they need to make all new laws and change all sorts of things because of something, when the primary body set up to study this was created by the United Nations and is designed SPECIFICALLY for informing governmental policy on an issue, yeah I would say that is something that is pretty politically charged. Much more so than, say, atomic fission.
I’ve been thinking, should I bother responding to Shoelimpy or not? Then I think, even if he’s right and there’s this big unexplainable conspiracy to hide the truth that all the CO2 we pump into the air doesn’t do squat compared to the sunspots which we can’t do anything about but won’t kill us anyways so we just all drive hummers or something… I then gag at both the idea of considering shoelimpy right about the time more than twice a day and the length of this run on sentence. I then think, hmm, wouldn’t not using so much middle eastern oil HELP the US and western economies to be not dependent on the islamofascists? Wouldn’t using energy more efficiently make the western economies function better? Seems to me that using energy efficiently would help us, even if it did nothing for the weather. Yet the people who argue against global warming also seem to argue a lot that changing our energy habits is some great betrayal or something. So remind me what Shoelimpy is “arguing” for again?
The truth is…THERE ARE NO ATOMS
when the primary body set up to study this was created by the United Nations and is designed SPECIFICALLY for informing governmental policy on an issue, yeah I would say that is something that is pretty politically charged. Much more so than, say, atomic fission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Energy_Agency
A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Lindzen, along with Michael Chricton and Dr. Philip Stott (a well-known liberal opponent of global warming), debated with three fellow scientists (one of whom was from the RealClimate web site you mentioned, Watts) in front of a live audience covered by NPR. During the event the audience was fairly well swayed by the anti-global warming crowd, once they were able to hear both sides of the argument.
Here is a link to the NPR page on the event You can listen to the entire debate, the edited debate as well as read transcripts. Pretty interesting stuff.
in case anyone is interested in something more than unseen hand’s poorly sourced assertions:
the lure of solar forcing
myth vs. fact regarding the hockey stick
dummy’s guide to the hockey stick controversy
did the sun hit record highs over the last few decades? (hint: the answer seems to be no)
and there’s lots more there.
also, i have to say that the fact that lindzen doesn’t believe in the current global warming consensus doesn’t really trouble me. he probably wouldn’t believe in it even without the incentive of thousands of dollars from coal and oil companies. after all, einstein never really believed in quantum theory (even though he was one of the people who invented it) — that’s what his famous quote about god not playing dice with the universe is about — and if there had been any monetary or political advantage to be gained from disputing quantum theory sixty years ago, those people could have gone to someone with absolutely impeccable to credentials to cast doubt on some predictions while not really disputing the underlying science, even though quantum theory is far more testable (and in many respects simpler) than climate science. and they would still have been wrong.
the fact is that no one denies the existence of anthropogenic global warming any more, they just claim that it’s really not a big effect. i imagine that over the next decade or two the denialists will slowly ratchet up the size of the effect we can expect while still disputing that it will be as large as the mainstream thinks or that the consequences will be as dire as the consensus states. and you know, it’s probably good to have these people as checks on the consensus thinking, scientists not being entirely unsusceptible to groupthink. it’s just kind of unfortunate that they’ve been completely hijacked by a movement that absolutely refuses to believe in global warming in any shape or form.
Ahhhh, Herr Doktor, but the controversy here is not whether or not atomic fission exists (it obviously does) but rather the effects of atomic fission and its potential use. Particularly interesting since nuclear power is pretty much the best source of power we have right now to combat the potential dangers of global warming, if it were really of human origin.
Rather than read the quite biased accounts of RealClimate (who recently even tried to attribute global warming to lessening sheep albedo (and yes I know this is a joke, I thought it would be funny to mention, but let’s see how many people jump all over me for saying it anyway)), why don’t you look at the solar data for yourself, Wikipedia has quite a few different models and data graphs you can look at showing recorded levels of solar output, pretty much all of which show increased activity for the past 60 or so years.
Considering even the Met Office in the UK, along with most other global warming scientists, are going to agree with the importance of solar activity in past temperature changes, I think we can assume that solar activity is pretty important. As for increased activity, most scientists studying the sun agree that activity has increased.
also, i’m sorry but a debate is not a scientifically valid way to settle competing claims about anything, especially not one containing michael crichton, who’s training is in medicine and anthropology, not climate science. the fact that the anti-global-warming side saw fit to bring him to a scientific debate really hurts their credibility: what, they couldn’t find 3 real scientists? and i’m not surprised that the crowd was swayed either: who are you going to believe, some nobody scientists or michael crichton? incidentally, crichton doesn’t doubt the existence of anthropogenic warming either, he just thinks that its a small effect. i wouldn’t care if the crowd had been completely swayed by the anti-global warming side and had chased the pro side out of the room: until peer-reviewed research sways the majority of climate scientists against global warming, i know who i’m sticking with.
also — and this is a difficult argument, so follow me closely — one reason that the effects of carbon dioxide on climate only became prominent recently could be that it was only recently that humans began putting vast amounts of c02 into the atmosphere. just a thought.
That is of course assuming temperatures continue to rise, something that is not at all for certain. Temperatures have only been rising since about 1975 or so, not that much, really, and there are predictions we are going to be seeing a cooling trend only a few years from now. Obviously that has yet to be seen, but 2012-2015 is not that far off.
I wouldn’t believe Michael Chricton at all, actually, and thought myself that he was more a weakness than a strength during the debate, which surprised me even more when I heard the results after listening to the program. However there are several scientists who disagree with global warming, Dr. Lindzen and Dr. Stott are both scientists, obviously.
I agree that scientific fact is not determined by debate, but I think it shows that when people are allowed to listen to the facts of both sides of the issue rather than only having one crammed down their throat the average person can see that there is not quite so much evidence as the global warming community would like to claim supporting their theories. And there are many scientists who were once global warming supporters who are now skeptics, such as Dr. Shaviv and Dr. Allegre whom I have already noted.
I think the smartest course to take is to believe the handful of scientists who receive money from the producers of Co2, and reject the hundreds of peer-reviewed scientists.
ok, last post and then i’ll stop arguing, cause it’s kinda pointless. however, this is taken from the first paragraph of the wikipedia article that unseen hand points us to (after asserting, on the basis of nothing, that realclimate is biased, all the while having ignored obvious evidence of bias on the part of prof. lindzen):
“A 2006 study and review of existing literature, published in Nature, determined that there has been no net increase in solar brightness since the mid 1970s, and that changes in solar output within the past 400 years are unlikely to have played a major part in global warming. It should be stressed, the same report cautions that “Apart from solar brightness, more subtle influences on climate from cosmic rays or the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation cannot be excluded, say the authors. However, these influences cannot be confirmed, they add, because physical models for such effects are still too poorly developed.” [5]
now, this seems pretty definitive to me. but then, i haven’t spent several decades studying climate science, so what do i know?
You will note how I am modeling my new I-am-totally-insane-while-writing-in-grammatical-sentences look, borrowed from Instapundit, of course. Blogging fame awaits this farmboy!
Unseen hand my ass. More like unseen intellect. Why I oughta…
If I can ever get outta moderation, I’m gonna….
Ahhh, Phucket. These people aren’t worth my blood pressure. What a dork. I’m gonna make a meatloaf…
mikey
Well duh, that is what most climate scientists will tell you (although not Al Gore, if you have watched An Inconvenient Truth). Thus, historical impact of CO2 on climate is pretty much meaningless in the current debate, because we are in an entirely new situation. However, considering that the global warming trend began before the major influx of CO2 by humans, we have to wonder whether or not CO2 is the driving force or something else. We don’t have historical data to show precedence, thus CO2 is a guess that many scientists believe is a pretty good one, since it is the one major change in the system that is pretty easy to guage since we are the ones responsible for the increase. However, this does not mean that it is the primary cause of recent temperature increases. I mean, pretty much every planet in the solar system, including Mars, is currently experiencing global warming. If it were solar activity opposed to CO2 causing it on earth, this would also explain why we are seeing global warming on the other planets in the solar system as well.
I like how Shoe keeps throwing out misrepresentations and faulty arguments that have been dealt with in the Realclimate.org links — some of which have been posted twice already.
Yes, inherently, and not due to conservatives… yeah I would say that is something that is pretty politically charged.
I’m interested in this side-issue, in an abstract way. I suggest that the smoking / lung-cancer link, and the CFCs / ozone-layer link would both be analogous to the climate-change business.
With lung cancer, after Doll published his 1954 paper confirming that there was some sort of connection to smoking, obviously there was a huge amount of stalling and denial from the tobacco industry over the next 4 or 5 decades, but I don’t remember it as being politically polarised. The tobacco lobbyists were happy to pump their money through left-wing or right-wing politicians. If there was an intrinsic link between smoking-denial and conservatives, it was a weak one. Smoking denial never became a left-wing / right-wing shibboleth (second-hand smoke, and whether to ban smoking, are separate issues).
In the case of CFCs and ozone depletion, again the chemical industry put a huge amount of money into denial and spurious skepticism, but there I remember it as being more politicised. The lobbyists found it more congenial to buy right-wing politicians (Tom DeLay, Reagan) and right-wing think-tanks (the Cato Institute) to channel their arguments. But in the end, President Bush #1 signed the Montreal Protocol, so the polarisation was not absolute.
Going on these analogies, I’m arguing that there’s nothing intrinsically political about climate-change skepticism. In a lot of countries, the right-wing parties are jumping on the bandwagon — calling for action on greenhouse gases, and blaming the left-wing parties for not having succeeded in doing anything up to now.
Bingo. Its basically Cheney’s batshit-insane “One-Percent Doctrine” in reverse: “If there’s even a one-percent chance that those Dirty Fucking Scientists are wrong we shouldn’t do anything that might disrupt the status quo”.
You know, it must really suck to be a Conservative shill. Whipsawing from one position to the next, one epistemological system to another, based on nothing more than what their Straussian “betters” (who have told them up front that they have no compunction about lying to them) declare to be The Immutable Truth (that day) has to be exhausting.
I mean, imagine if the only intellectual “payoff” in your life was a headful of discredited tropes whose only marginal value lies in their power to prove to you how the rest of the world is all part of a coordinated plot to make you look stupid. That’s just gotta suck.
So, one scientist > consensuses of a few thousand scientists doing several international studies.
Not unlike how my level 17 Warrior/Mage can kill dozens of Orcs with a single shot of my Magic +3 Orc Slayer bow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFLEakMpQWA
Apologies if S,N! or anyone had the same thought beforehand.
Gavin M. said,
April 10, 2007 at 5:27
I like how Shoe keeps throwing out misrepresentations and faulty arguments that have been dealt with in the Realclimate.org links — some of which have been posted twice already.
—
Thanks Gavin.
When it comes to Monsieur Shoe, http://www.realclimate.org is the equivalent of an enormous Mass. State Police “spike mat” at the Route 3-93 split in Braintree and Quincy.
Shoe ain’t never making it to the Sagamore Bridge …
The price paid for outstanding and scintillating satire by SN is the deer-tick and tape-worm and head-lice infestation of the Shoe.
This might require a Lindane Dip.
I mean, pretty much every planet in the solar system, including Mars,
(Mars, bitches!)
Global warming hits Mars too: study
PARIS (AFP) – Global warming could be heating Mars four times faster than Earth due to a mutually reinforcing interplay of wind-swept dust and changes in reflected heat from the Sun, according to a study released Wednesday.
Glistening Martian dust lying on the ground reflects the Sun’s light — and its heat — back into space, a phenomenon called albedo.
But when this reddish dust is churned up by violent winds, the storm-ravaged surface loses its reflective qualities and more of the Sun’s heat is absorbed into the atmosphere, causing temperatures to rise.
The study, published on Thursday by the British journal Nature, shows for the first time that these variations not only result from the storms but help cause them too. Its authors, led by Lori Fenton, a planetary scientist at NASA, describe the phenomenon as a “positive feedback” system — in other words, a vicious circle, in which changes in albedo strengthen the winds which in turn kicks up more dust, in turn adding to the warming.
No, Douglas, Lindzen’s the dip.
Exactly what kind of scientist takes money from oil and coal interests, anyway?
My dad’s a physicist; he probably could be on the corporate teat selling teh horseshit like Lindzen.
But he’d rather die!
And speaking of corporate cocksuckery…
wow i check wunderground for my forecasts, bookmarked for my area even! I had no idea they had a climate blog
“My dad’s a physicist; he probably could be on the corporate teat selling teh horseshit like Lindzen.
But he’d rather die!”
The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth!
Scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth!
It is the guiding principal upon which Starfleet is based!
Now if you can’t find it within yourself to stand up for the truth,
You don’t deserve to wear that uniform!
wow shoelimpy you are amazingly stupid
you write that temperatures have only been increasing since 1975 but that is not true! While there was a dip in temperature prefacing that, the overall trend in the whole twentieth century has been an increase. Why you ignore this fact is baffling.
Your sunspot analysis is weak as even the wikipedia graphs show that over the last few years that activity has dropped. Did temperature drop?
Before people continue debating you, I think you should answer this query: do you believe in the theory of evolution? or is that also junk science?
Really, this is pretty much why I’m going to stop reading comments on blogs. I just can’t take ’em any more.
The world is flat! And there’s no proof the sky is blue! So there!
Following on from kingubu’s comment: why don’t more people make the analogy between the threat of terrorism and the threat of climate change? Remember the argument that we needed to prevent Saddam from giving WMDs to terrorists? “We’re not sure it will happen — it might never happen — but it if does then vast numbers of people could be killed, so we’d better act now rather than waiting until we’re certain and it’s too late.” Sound familiar? And the self-same argument is given when people ask why the government needs the power to wiretap phone calls without a warrant, or why you have to take your shoes off in airports: with risks like these, it’s better to be safe than very, very sorry.
And yet the same people who lap these arguments up — and who denounce anyone who doesn’t as a foolish terrorist-loving traitor — refuses to apply the same logic to the global warming question. All of a sudden, as soon as we’re talking about icebergs collapsing instead of buildings collapsing, all thoughts of prudent risk assessment disappear. Somehow, the risk of a few thousand people being blown up is worth any expenditure, but the risk of several million people being flooded/made homeless/left unable to grow the crops they depend on, etc. is a problem to be passed on for future generations to deal with.
Oddly, there’s a pretty clear correlation in this too: those who most shrilly champion the “One Percent Doctrine” with regard to terrorism are often the same ones who stick to the “One-Hundred-and-One Percent Doctrine” on climate change — “sure, you could believe what the vast majority of qualified climate scientists say, but what about this economist from the AEI who says the summer of ’68 was pretty hot too?”
So what’s the reason for this disconnect? A few obvious conjectures (in roughly increasing order of fairness): (i) the climate change argument is made by dirty fucking hippies and Al Gore, and is therefore a priori wrong, while the threat of terrorism is real enough to worry manly men like Dick Cheney; (ii) accepting climate change would force us to park the hummer, make lifestyle changes, and generally feel bad about ourselves, while the threat of terrorism provides war-pr0n and targets to hate, and makes us feel uber-patriotic and good about ourselves; (iii) taking care of global warming would cost too much and be bad for the economy, whereas… er, anyway; (iv) the supposed consequences of global warming are diffuse, far off in the future, hard to pin down on any particular cause, and will happen to someone else, whereas the consequences of terrorism are specific events happening now, are self-evidently terrorist events with definite causes, and could happen to me.
I think this last reason is perhaps the most important. The threat of terrorism gives a kind of solid certainty that is very appealing to a particular mindset, in contrast to the climate problem which is full of uncertainty, probability and complexity. And maybe it’s not entirely unreasonable to worry more about the prospect of having your flight blown up than about the fate of some stupid polar bears. But these things should surely be elements that go into the risk assessment calculation, not reasons to ignore the whole idea of risk assessment.
So I still don’t fully understand. If you go along with the whole “smoking gun/mushroom cloud” line of argument, what’s so different about the threat of global warming that leaves you holding out for more evidence, even while the world’s experts are running around with their hair on fire?
That’s not a rhetorical question — I really want to know.
Shoe ain’t never making it to the Sagamore Bridge …
But he would be right at home on the Cape, if he did.
I prefer taking the Bourne, because there’s that IHOP right on the other side of it. Mmm, lingonberry.
My thinking is that other than the energy companies, who refuse to develop new or alternative energy sources and so will be late to the table for any new energy tech profits when the oil starts to dwindle, that Business and Republicans argue about anthropogenic climate change only because Al Gore and liberals are concerned about it.
So, they see it as a way to oppose and anger liberals, so they don’t care about the repercussions. I tend to beleive that if you gave Exxon, free, a completely viable renewable energy source that they could distribute cheaply and still make trillions of dollars, they would destroy the information just because it would piss off the libruls.
The trolls in this thread a born n bred authoritarians, and since the authoritarians say this is so, why would they believe scientists? After all, scientists believe in objective reality, and reality has a clearly demonstrable librul bias.
Sheesh.
If you go along with the whole “smoking gun/mushroom cloud� line of argument, what’s so different about the threat of global warming that leaves you holding out for more evidence, even while the world’s experts are running around with their hair on fire?
Interesting point. To me, the difference is in the actions that are taken to prevent the smoking gun from being a mushroom cloud.
In the terrorism case, there were different actions to take, and I think that was the problem – people didn’t so much disagree on whether action was necessary so much as what action was necessary. Many agitated for continued weapons inspections, UN sanctions, diplomacy, etc. (and were branded as traitors and weaklings). Others, who got their way, pushed for bombings and invasion. The bombings-and-invasion route was harmful for reasons we’re now seeing – large numbers of people killed, destabilization of the region, wasting of resources that the U.S. could have used for constructive things.
With global warming, the actions that can be taken are things like driving less, consuming less, designing and using more efficient power plants, and so on. These can cause economic upheaval here if handled stupidly, but the perception is that they’ll be bad for business’ bottom line. More precisely, they’ll threaten the rate of increase of energy companies’ already record-setting profits and CEO pay. That’s why we’re seeing so much funding for the global warming skeptics. If the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is handled non-stupidly, there’s no need for business to be hurt, though it might be that executives will only be able to buy 8 yachts this year instead of 9, but no one said there wouldn’t be sacrifices.
Are you guys done playing with pie yet?
If you go along with the whole “smoking gun/mushroom cloudâ€? line of argument, what’s so different about the threat of global warming that leaves you holding out for more evidence…
Um, could the answer possible be that wingnuts are only interested in “solutions” to problems that involve use of the police and/or military?
Because by a remarkable coincidence, they all seem to think that the onlylegitimate reason for a government to collect taxes is so we can have the biggest, baddest weapons, armies, prisons and police on the planet.
Ok, enough pussy-footing around. Here is a link to a Science article that throughly debunks the solar forcing myth. Not that this will make a bit of difference anyway. These people didn’t come to their views by way of any rational process and no rational discourse will change that. The extreme right is fundamentally irrational. It’s useless to try arguing with them. They are dishonest liars who prop up their bizarre belief systems through lies and deceit. when that fails they simply use force.
On possible drivers of Sun-induced climate changes
We tested the validity of two current hypotheses on the dependence of climate change on solar activity. One of them states that variations in the tropospheric temperature are caused directly by changes of the solar radiance (total or spectral). The other suggests that cosmic ray (CR) fluctuations, caused by the solar/heliospheric modulation, affect the climate via cloud formation. Confronting these hypotheses with seven different sets of the global/hemispheric temperature reconstructions for the last 400 years, we found that the former mechanism is in general more prominent than the latter. Therefore, we can conclude that in so far as the Sun–climate connection is concerned tropospheric temperatures are more likely affected by variations in the UV radiation flux rather than by those in the CR flux.
I just hope the formatting gets through. And like I said, none of this really matters because they’ll just come up with more bullshit reasons that… blah blah blah. So what’s the point of having them here?
Because the enjoy watching others suffer.
Whatever course of action (or lack thereof) that created the greatest amount of suffering to OTHERS is the course to be followed.
Double checked and the links is working fine. Science Direct is a great way to do a little research if you’ve a mind for that. I would also recommend the forums at PhysOrg. Search for your favorite crackpot idea and there is likely a thread that completely demolishes it. Another refreshing site is Deltoid.
It is really amazing that you even let those responsible for the DoS attacks against you to even post here, wow.
One thing I’ve never understood is what agenda the “global warming enthusiasts” supposedly have. Why are all these scientists complicit in this grand conspiracy? What do they have to gain?
Anti-warming advocates are typically tied to industry funding, making them quite obviously biased. Pro-warming folks are funded by our government – which is also anti-warming!
When someone is paying you to say something, it’s pretty obvious what incentive you have to say it. When someone is paying you and you indirectly contradict them the incentive isn’t so clear.
Also cutting down on emissions can have only beneficial effects. Let’s pretend for a moment that humans have nothing to do with global warming at all – fuel efficiency still makes our gas last longer and lower emissions reduces acid rain, smog in LA, etc. How anyone can be against conservation and against a cleaner environment is beyond me. It’s like being pro-littering.
Its tempting to want to do so, isn’t it? I mean, just look at what the Wingnuts have “achieved” in terms of shifting the nation towards their vision of an authoritarian Christianist utopia under the cover of the supposed threat by islamocommienazis, right?. Ultimately I think it would be a bad idea, though.
Scaring the shit of people may be effective for shifting public will in a given direction in the immediate term but it is never sustainable. People will do (or tolerate) a lot to make fear go away, its true; but unless you deliver a solution almost immediately that addresses that fear, they often simply just block it out. You’re left, then, ratcheting up the fear to get a similar response but its always a net loss: each cry of “the sky is falling!!!” yields less and less energy, and more and more people start to clue into the fact that they are being manipulated.
In the case of global climate change, there is no such short-term Big Fix that could even be rammed through under the even the gravest perceived threat, so spreading panic is counterproductive from the get-go, and is the sure path to greater resistance in the longer term. Not to mention, as a practical matter, scared people tend toward authoritarianism and the last thing we need as a nation is more people running around in a moral panic and looking for a Big Strong (Republican) Daddy to make them feel safe.
No, sadly, (heh) change will only come the old-fashioned way: by laying out the realistic threat that climate change poses, offering boring solutions that can be implemented over time, and then inspiring people to go along.
To me, the smart political play to snatch up the public will among those not already committed to change lies in 1) focusing on the “getting the US off the ‘foreign oil’ teat” part of the story. and 2) co-opting the various Christian evangelical groups that have strong “stewardship” missions that focus on green issues.
Jingoism sucks, but if John Q. Wingnut gets a hit of self-righteous spite for “hitting Abdul where it hurts” everytime he puts in a new long-life lightbulb or plugs in his hybrid electric, I’m cynical enough to say “so be it”.
Also cutting down on emissions can have only beneficial effects. Let’s pretend for a moment that humans have nothing to do with global warming at all – fuel efficiency still makes our gas last longer and lower emissions reduces acid rain, smog in LA, etc. How anyone can be against conservation and against a cleaner environment is beyond me.
This is the kind of thing I was trying to say – there’s no good reason not to make the changes necessary to combat global warming even if global warming weren’t caused / exacerbated by human activity. It still surprises me that environmental advocacy has any political dimension – it’s good for everyone, not just liberals, so why the opposition? CEO paychecks are always involved.
I swear I’m not making it up, but there are actually large numbers of people who truly believe that the UN is a “satanic” organization, bent on world domination. To these Very Special Wingnuts, the issue of global climate change (and the restrictions that any global solution would require) is the Trojan Horse that those Evil Satanic One-Worlders at the UN are using to bootstrap their nefarious plan for world dominance.
Think I’m making it up? Consider the fact that the recent “Left Behind” video game (based on the millions-selling books of the same name) pit armies of Christian “Tribulation Forces” against the Anitichrist, and his “Global Community Peacekeepers”, who are coincidentally based in the UN building in NYC. Yep, Christian kids racking up points by killing or “converting” the Antichrist’s UN-like peacekeepers on the streets of an American city. Nice, huh?
While its true that there are evangelical groups that don’t go in for that nonsense (and who even have “stewardship” groups who work and advocate for environmental issues) we shouldn’t underestimate the role that Teh Batshit-Crazy is playing on the other side of the “debate”.
You people crack me up. Argue, argue, argue.
The sad reality is that NOBODY can make any reliable predictions about climate change because…(wait for it)…there is no precedent for what is occurring with global climate today, and therefore we do not have the knowledge to construct models that that can accurately predict any climate changes or trends. In other words, no scientist can say with any level of certainty that the current warming trend would not be happening anyway even if humans were not pumping greenhouse gases into the environment.
But that is no reason not to search for and use more enviromentally friendly sources of energy.
And finally, please, please, please…quit citing wikipedia!!! It is not a factual resource. It is a collection of entries by anyone who wishes to enter information. Wikipedia only removes offensive material, and does nothing about non-factual information.
Some people may not realize that one of the earliest and still strongest arguments for industrially-accelerated global warming (or global climate destabilization) does not have to do directly with models of past climates, but with a physics calculation of the ‘heat’ or ‘energy’ budget of the Earth.
You measure & study the amount of energy entering the Earth from outside (from the Sun), and then you measure and study the ways & rates at which energy leaves the Earth (in the form of outgoing longwave infrared radiation, which is the only major method in which heat can leave the Earth given the vacuum of space).
Turns out that increasing the levels of various greenhouse gases (which are already present & active, that’s why the Earth is warm enough for temperate life-forms as opposed to a frozen world) slow the rate at which outgoing longwave infrared radiation (heat) leaves the Earth.
Note that if your model is correct, you know that something is happening even without models of past & future environments: when you have a fairly constant arrival of energy & heat from the Sun but a depressed rate of heat release, it’s not too difficult for scientists to realize that a greater overall level of planetary heat will result.
So even before you go looking into the ‘hockey stick’ debate, you’ll want to explain how something measurable by satellite (i.e., decreased amounts of outgoing longwave infrared radiation, aka heat) will somehow not contribute to an overall increase in the heat of an otherwised closed system.
When I made that comparison earlier, it wasn’t to suggest we should start bombing Exxon because of global warming.
It was to point out the hypocrisy of those who stampeded us into war with Iraq, while actively working to discredit real science about global warming.
And to note why they behave this way.
kingubu has it right. We aren’t in rational-scientific debate land. Wingnuts believe in their bizarre ideas because that’s what daddy taught them and beat the shit out of them until they did. No amount of debate is going to convince them that the theory that the earth revolves around the sun isn’t a jewish kabbalistic conspiracy. It’s useless to even try.
We are in pure lizard-brain territory here.
Mikey said:
The sad reality is that NOBODY can make any reliable predictions
You don’t know that.
no scientist can say with any level of certainty that the current warming trend would not be happening anyway even if humans were not pumping greenhouse gases into the environment.
Ummm, actually, they can and they have. Resoundingly so. They even have models to back it up with. despite what you read in the Exxon Times.
And finally, please, please, please…quit citing wikipedia!!! I
I haven’t. I quoted a scientific article from a respected journal. Other references I have seen here come from well known and reputable web sites.
But by all means Mikey, quote me some real scientific data from a real journal could you? Or maybe a quote from a science blog like maybe pharyngula. Or maybe a thread from PhysOrg or any other science forum.
Could ya do that huh? No?
Didn’t think so.
Umm, excuse me, noen, but I’m quite a long way down the road of
BEING ON THE SAME SIDE OF THE “DEBATE” AS YOU!!
I’m not sure how you decided I’m a wingnut troll, but you might try reading something I’ve fucking WRITTEN, youngster.
That linky thing associated with the screen name? Here’s some tech news, pal. You can “click on it” (I’m sure somebody can help you if you don’t know how) and read my position on, oh, just about everything.
Jeez, I no wonder the wingnuts have most of the power. They at least know who their opponents are…
mikey
Confronting these hypotheses with seven different sets of the global/hemispheric temperature reconstructions for the last 400 years, we found that the former mechanism is in general more prominent than the latter. Therefore, we can conclude that in so far as the Sun–climate connection is concerned tropospheric temperatures are more likely affected by variations in the UV radiation flux rather than by those in the CR flux.
I read that as “of the two possible components of solar radiation-induced climate change, the UV flux makes a greater contribution than the CR flux and is more likely to be a cause of tropospheric temperature change.” It’s hard to conclude from the abstract anything definitive about the validity of either hypothsis, and nothing at all about their status viv-a-vis the theory of CO2 global warming.
I bring this up because you can’t get past the abstract with the link you provided; instead of “full free text” you get the $30/copy dunning (which, alas, happens to me all the time when I search the literature for my own work). Do you have a link to the full article, or a copy of the pdf you can send? If you post a link in a forum debate to “a thorough debunking” of your opponent’s point of view, you should make sure that we peanut gallery denizens can read it.
By the way, is the Gathering of Buzzards still pissed at you guys? Because at least half the time I try to get on here, it’s “The Silence of teh Funny.” It’s got to be something besides gay hamster fatigue. Maybe the solar radiation flux is affecting the cloud cover over your server. Damned sunspots…
I love Sadly No!
I was laughing so hard when I saw that picture of Google “If only there were some way to look things up on the Internet.”
Keep up the good work!
Miguel.
Please to put up more postings now.
LOLTRex is all out.
Lahey: “You know what a shit barometer is, Bubs?”
Bubbles: “…No.”
Lahey: “Measures the shit pressure in the air. You can feel it!
Listen Bubs, hear that?
Bubbles: “…I don’t hear anything.”
Lahey: “Oh but you will, my sorry little friend. When the old shit barometer rises your ears will implode from the shit pressure.
Hey noen,
Pretty sure Mr. Mike isn’t the same as mikey — and that’s as close to this “argument” as I’m getting.
Is there a new post yet?
[…] Yes, he does work at MIT. He also used to get scratch from the oil industry: But while the skeptics portray themselves as besieged truth-seekers fending off irresponsible environmental doomsayers, their testimony in St. Paul and elsewhere revealed the source and scope of their funding for the first time. Michaels has received more than $115,000 over the last four years from coal and energy interests. World Climate Review, a quarterly he founded that routinely debunks climate concerns, was funded by Western Fuels. Over the last six years, either alone or with colleagues, Balling has received more than $200,000 from coal and oil interests in Great Britain, Germany, and elsewhere. Balling (along with Sherwood Idso) has also taken money from Cyprus Minerals, a mining company that has been a major funder of People for the West—a militantly anti-environmental “Wise Use” group. Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled “Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,” was underwritten by OPEC. Singer, who last winter proposed a $95,000 publicity project to “stem the tide towards ever more onerous controls on energy use,” has received consulting fees from Exxon, Shell, Unocal, ARCO, and Sun Oil, and has warned them that they face the same threat as the chemical firms that produced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), a class of chemicals found to be depleting atmospheric ozone. “It took only five years to go from… a simple freeze of production [of CFCs],” Singer has written, “. . . to the 1992 decision of a complete production phase-out—all on the basis of quite insubstantial science.”(via) […]
I now see I shouldn’t have referred to this as a “debate” in my post above. Looking back through the comments, it’s just the regulars slapping Limpy around. My bad. Fun, though.
By the way, still slow. Run hamsters! Run!
Sorry Moxie
What I posted went to the claim temperature variations on Earth are in “strikingly good agreement” with the length of the cycle of sunspots. (Someone upthread had mentioned a question about the sun being responsible for global warming.) This was first proposed by Dr. Friis-Christensen who then tried a different tack and made a more general claim that the sun was responsible for global warming, not people. He was paid 1.3 million by Exxon for that BTW. The article is pretty specific to his theory that cosmic radiation influenced by the sun and global cloud cover were responsible for observed temp increases.
It was the best I could do, I don’t have access to the full article. Modern science is very narrowly focused and often answers only specific, precise questions. It is easy then, for dishonest people to take advantage of that and game the system.
Fuckit, man. Don’ mean nothin
I think we’re naive to only see 2 sides to this global warming issue.
It’s being largely perceived as the global warming deniers versus the global warming fighters.
But does anyone really think that there’s only one big team on the global warming fighters’ side?
Do we really believe that the rich and powerful people who think ‘we’ should fight global warming (whether they feel that way now, or a year from now, or 10 years from now) are going to volunteer to share their fair share of the debt?
Sure, it’s in all of our interests to fight our additions to global warming. But I wasn’t born yesterday. If I know my elites like I think I do, they’re going to want me and you to be the main schmucks paying for doing something about global warming.
Who usually ends up paying for the environmental cleanups from disasters caused by industrial activity? Those industries? Their investors? Their owners? Their executives?
And when we start engaging on remedies that could result in entire new economic sectors — green transport, green power, etc. — who do you think is going to elbow in for the lion’s share of the benefit? You & me, the schmucks? Or the same type of people who profited from global warming in the first place?
Sure, right now the oil cartel is funding the deniers. They’re also putting a lot of money into green technologies because when those big dollars start flowing into that, they want it to go straight to their accounts.
You & me might be able to think about ways of using these new technologies & investments to produce a renewal in a just and fair U.S. economy, but so far, it looks like we are just going to let the technocrats sing us a lullaby and promise us that they’re working for ‘all’ our interests.
S’all right. I’m just not comfortable drawing conclusions on the basis of an abstract, since I know that a lot of scientists are lousy writers and their “executive summaries” don’t always adequately delineate the contents of a paper. And I just hate hitting that $30/pop roadblock when I do my own literature searches (and I once had to pay it for a reference I needed for a class paper). I didn’t know that the oil majors were throwing that kind of money around to climate dissenters (I picked the wrong field, dammit!). I know it’s pretty standard in the Peak Oil controversy, though. I’d really love to be that CERA creep Yergin who gets paid to lie about oil reserves…
By the way, does anybody remember the good old days when DOS meant “disk operating system?”
I wish it didn’t take an Unseen Hand scratching his ass in order for this to come to a heated debate. But I suppose willful ignorance has its place.. I saw this above and I feel compelled to render the same argument again- if its not true, great. That’s really lovely. If it is true.. well then, lets do something. Just in case, mind you. Because it would be important if it was. Yep. Really important. The kind of important that doesn’t do well with mistakes. The sort of thing that impacts not just us but future generations ( hey- any predictions about that?) perhaps in such a way that we will be cursed as the most self serving and wilfully blind segment of humanity that ever walked this earth.
Crap! AG is always a day late and a comment short.
AG knew the guy was off when we learned he’s at MIT. Come on, a place that hires that self-hating Jew, Chomsky and Mr. Bobby-Sands-wanna-be, James Sherley.
MIT needs to rethink the tenure and hiring process.
We will be cursed as the most self serving and wilfully blind segment of humanity that ever walked this earth.
That would be so awesome! I thought the Randians had that IN THE BAG!
Sorry some posters have confused me with someone else (sorry to mikey…although not my fault). To answer noen’s comments…
But by all means Mikey, quote me some real scientific data from a real journal could you? Or maybe a quote from a science blog like maybe pharyngula. Or maybe a thread from PhysOrg or any other science forum.
I can’t quote any source because I’m not talking about a specific tenet of global warming, I’m talking about how science works in general.
The sad reality is that NOBODY can make any reliable predictions
You don’t know that.
I do know that. It’s called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which states that the act of measuring something changes the thing that is being measured. Although originally meant for the microscopic world of electron orbitals, it has applications in the macroscopic world as well.
no scientist can say with any level of certainty that the current warming trend would not be happening anyway even if humans were not pumping greenhouse gases into the environment.
Ummm, actually, they can and they have. Resoundingly so. They even have models to back it up with. despite what you read in the Exxon Times.
To any scientist who makes that claim, I would have one question…what was used as a control set of data? If you don’t understand what is meant by control set then you don’t really understand how science works. And do you know what a scientific model is? It is a set of matrices and algorithms based on observed data. Since global warming caused by human fossil fuel emissions has never been observed before, then the math upon which these models are based is speculative at best.
And finally, please, please, please…quit citing wikipedia!!! I
I haven’t. I quoted a scientific article from a respected journal. Other references I have seen here come from well known and reputable web sites.
I didn’t mention you by name, so I don’t understand why you took such offense to that statement. I was speaking of the posters in this stream who have cited Wikipedia.
But that is no reason not to search for and use more environmentally friendly sources of energy.
Funny how you didn’t have a snide remark about this statement. My main point is that there is propaganda coming from both sides of the global warming argument (granted, much more from the nay-sayers). We do need to limit our use of carbon fuels, because it is having an adverse effect on the environment and the planet. But the doomsday scenarios are nothing more than educated guesses and speculation. You should learn to tell what is good science and what is dubious science put forth to perpetuate a political agenda. And please, don’t launch into a name-calling tirade…I’m no troll and I don’t work for Exxon or any other oil company. I’m just a regular guy who reads a lot but doesn’t believe everything he reads.
“When I made that comparison earlier, it wasn’t to suggest we should start bombing Exxon because of global warming.”
No, we should bomb them for being a bunch of asstards…and it’ll make me feel better for 3.294 seconds.
It’s called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle… it has applications in the macroscopic world as well.
Ye cannae’ change the laws o’ physics, Captain!
And I’m thinking in particular about the laws of thermodynamics. In the macroscopic world, Boltzmann trumps Heisenberg.