Reconciling Cold Weather and a Warming Climate

What’s interesting is that here in France, MeteoFrance, reported that this winter is the WARMEST since 1950, and the 10th warmest since 1900. Sorry, I forgot we are on another planet…

We’re coming off of 8 years of denial and self-delusion and a century of hyperindustrialization. Old habits are hard to break.

The deniers use rhetoric against science. I’ll side with science every time.

Better safe than sorry is the grandaddy of all conservative values.

Actually, when the earth is 4+ billion yrs old, a 100yrs worth of data (which is all the *accurate* data we may actually have) is just as insignificant as 1yr and hardly equates to a “trend”. Its liking looking at 999 trillionth of a second’s worth of s&p data instead of a billionth and trying to extrapolate out a long term trend. The only way to predict would be to have accurate models. To say the current models out there are in their infancy would be an insult to multi-cell zygotes. Weather and climate modeling is as complex a system to model as you could conceive of, with billions of unknown, confounding variables that we have no idea about. This is why they are laughable wrong constantly (i.e. hurricane predicting, this yrs record snow, backdating to known data). While it’s certainly worth exploring, to put any stock into it would be foolish. People seem to forget, that scientists have as much of an agenda and bias as anyone. Do you think the government will fund research into climate modeling if someone tells the truth and admits we have no idea if the earth is warming/cooling, if it’s bad, if we can change it, etc? Of course not, but if your *science* corresponds to a political agenda, well then the money comes pouring in.

Anyway, great site. Keep up the good work.

Posted by: Socalcool | Mar 2, 2008 1:15:43 PM

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The ice cores you mention are instructive as to the the amounts and percentages of atmospheric gasses present at any point in history represented within the sample. Not only is the long term trend measurable, we have witnessed a sudden spike in C02 unprecedented in the ice-bound record.

additionally, you don’ necessarily have to measure temperature in order to predict the effect of the changing chemical composition of a gaseous mixture. Example: If you remove the oxygen from a room inhabited by a human, the human will die (probability: 100%).

As for the motives and opportunities of the scientists involved, not everybody is looking for an angle. The science types I know usually don’t think about profits, first.

What are you – some kind of Luddite, or something?

“People seem to forget, that scientists have as much of an agenda and bias as anyone. Do you think the government will fund research into climate modeling…”

What’s the total budget of NOAA? (~$4 billion and facing cuts)

What’s the total market cap of Exxon? (~$460 billion a climbing)

Follow the money.

This is why I prefer climate change to the term gloabl warming, which is confusing to a lot of people who expect it to just be warmer all over all the time. That isn’t what happens.

What does happen is changes to weather patterns, including more extremes. Some places might be the warmest ever, some the coldest ever, some might get tornadoes in February. I look for the variations in intensity and the truly unexpected weather extremes that are popping up.

And politics does indeed enter into every issue. It is always to someone’s advantage to keep others ignorant. Rather than denial or acceptance, we all need to start looking to facts and data, not anecdote.

There are 23 documented 11 year solar cycles. Cycle 24 should have fired up already- nothing! Check sspace weather or NASA. Cycle 24 was expected to peak 2010-11. I have no doubt human activity has contributed to some global warming but we have to keep in mind that the sun is what keeps us from being an ice ball. Where incremental changes in solar activity stack up to incremental changes in human activity I don’t know. It is an hypothesis that should be at least entertained.

Why do so many people want to argue over this?
Let’s say there is no global warming, man made or otherwise, and that all the denial-ists on this comment page are much more and better informed than 98% of the world’s scientists. We have 2 choices (whether the scientists are right or wrong):
1 – do nothing, or 2 – do something. If the planet is heating up and we do nothing – whoops, we’re screwed (and the rest of the world – which isn’t arguing over this point by the way – leads the way in technology and business that we will have to try to purchase, utilize and catch up with). So we lose by doing nothing in this case. If the world is heating up and we try do something – we have a chance to win. But, if the planet isn’t heating up and we do something – like LEAD the world in technology and business development and the PROFIT from a cleaner, healthier environment – we win big time (the rest of the world are fools who think the world is heating up – lets sell them the technology that they think will save us all!). IF WE LEAD WE WIN EITHER WAY! Get your heads out of you POLITICAL butts and think like a business person (if that’s what it take to make you care about what’s right).

Sorry if I am repeating something someone has stated earlier, I haven’t had time to read through all the comments.

Solar cycles are about magnetic activity on the Sun (as the field lines get twisted), and end when the magnetic poles reverse. These are correlated with sunspots (caused by magnetic fields) and coronal mass ejections (same), neither of which affect the luminosity of the Sun in any significant way. Climate scientists are not idiots. If they could explain away global warming, the entire world would be grateful to them. (Contrary to bizarre popular belief, the Sierra Club et al. don’t like global warming.)

“Actually, when the earth is 4+ billion yrs old, a 100yrs worth of data (which is all the *accurate* data we may actually have) is just as insignificant as 1yr and hardly equates to a “trend”.”

This is not true, and that’s actually the point. The warming we’re seeing is unprecedentedly rapid. And correlated with a large increase of the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Hence the belief it’s human-caused.

And also, as pointed out, we have accurate data extended further back. On CO2 levels as well.

“but if your *science* corresponds to a political agenda, well then the money comes pouring in.”

My ass. You’ve never tried to get paid as a scientist, have you? And anyway, climate science has no political agenda. (People viewing the results might, since they think making our planet unsuitable for humans just might be a bad thing.)

People who think climate scientists are rolling in money are… remarkable. Especially since they tend to be in business, and rather well off. The only scientists who ever get a shot at being a millionaire are those who win the Nobel Prize. And the CEO of a major corporation can make 100 times more by fucking up his job and being fired.

Other posters have mentioned the similarity of the tobacco/cancer “debate” and the climate change debate.

As a poster on gristmill has opined, there is a boiler room inside the beltway where an astroturf group has hired a bunch of H1B visa immigrants to crank out denialist dreck 24/7/365.

There is simply too much money to be made in delaying.

Having said that, on this topic I agree with Winston Churchill who said “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing, after exhausting all other options.”

BR – “Using recent weather fluctuations to disprove climate change was like looking at the minute by minute S&P500 chart to determine long term markets trends”

IMHO, it’s even worse. At least a 1 min tick chart shares the same underlying supply/demand, fear/greed mechanics as a monthly chart.

In the case of climate, the underlying forces at work are different. On the short term, local weather phenomena interact in apparently random ways to affect climate patterns. These phenomena tend to be self-limiting and cyclical. The longer term chart reflects changes in the climate system which apparently tend to be self-reinforcing.

It’s surprising how little thought is being put into dealing with the likely impacts of climate change. Even if we drop carbon emissions to zero tomorrow, the path of change in our lifetimes is unlikely to be affected much. Sea levels, crop patterns, etc. are likely to be impacted (some good, some bad), and there doesn’t seem to be much discussion of how to exploit the good parts to offset the cost of dealing with the bad parts, or even in developing a better understanding of what we’re in for.

Go to http://climate.umn.edu/HIDradius.asp (University of Minnesota) and you can get a time series of average monthly high and low temparatures for each month back to November. 1869. Graph them in Excel (e.g., all Novembers from 1869 to present). Create a trend line for each series. What do you know -every single trend line is upward over that period. Anecdotal? Sure. Supportive of a human role in climate change? Yeah, I would go along with that.

Showed the graphs to an acquaintance who’s a denier. His response: “Well, that’s only because there are a lot more people around the Twin Cities now than there were in 1869.”

Screw “logic” or “evidence” or “science” – even irony is wasted on these morons.

I’m not surprised there are so many Americans that deny the affects of climate change. After all there many out there that deny the theory of evolution.

I am surprised though, there are that many deniers who read your blog. That’s surely gotta change the demographics for your advertisers. Less Cartier more Zales?

Deborah,

Having also lived in the NWT for a time, I think I can safely say that there isn’t a whole lot of difference between -38 with the wind howling, and -58. The extra few seconds it takes for the wind to rip your face off aren’t all that pleasant anyway.

When summer comes, do remember to keep your mouth closed. The vast but short-lived cloud of wind-driven bugs tend to get stuck in your throat otherwise.

Strangely beautiful country in its own way though.

Barry,

Love the fact that you’ve addressed this topic, but I strongly disagree on your observations of the comments. Specifically, comments from the preceding post (the one with 125+ comments) were full of some of the most inane banter this side of Fark.

What makes an expert re: global warming? A PhD in chemistry for starters. From MIT or Cal Tech or Mellon. And LOTS of peer-reviewed research.

The mental miscreants that have invaded your blog recently do a disservice to both you and your research. I for one would not abide a History PhD lecturing me on the finer points of Poisson distributions because she got Statistics for dummies any more than she would allow me to pontificate on the fall of the Roman Empire because I played Civilization as an undegrad.

Why in the hell are you allowing morons – and that is most assuredly the right word – to twist and distort the science of global warming when their last science class was in 9th grade?

Or, is our arrogance so great that we as a public give as much weight to the Internet Troll as we do the Harvard-educated molecular chemist?

Great posts,

I am in the camp of not really believing in the global warming due to manmade items. But hey who cares. What I really like though is that there is finally a push for technology to improve the old gas driven engine after almost 100 years of use. Get us off of oil and suddenly Iran and Venezuela become much less significant. Now that sounds like a great idea.

It’s called pushback.

People who exist in the old paradigm feel insulted that the way of like they have known is being criticized and re-evaluated by a new generation. There is an element of disdain that is inherent to the rejection of a previous way of being. It’s unavoidable.

The racial and sexual mores of the early part of the 20th century were rejected by the Baby Boomer generation. And the parents of some boomers felt just as insulted by and hostile to those ideas. Now, some boomers are hostile to and disdainful of the green movement — “Are you saying that this amazing standard of living you’ve had has been a waste? Grow up you ungrateful &%*$*#!” Or something to that effect.

The undeniable reality is that we are the world’s lone superpower. With that privilege comes a responsibility to hold ourselves accountable for the global impact of our economy — because no one else truly can.

The Global Warming debate should be vigorous in this country. Resistance to it is healthy because it sharpens the terms of the discussion. So bring on the naysayers, it’s all good.

I think part of it is that the blogs (comments sections) are what denialists have these days.

When the National Review says:

“It is no longer possible, scientifically or politically, to deny that human activities have very likely increased global temperatures; what remains in dispute is the precise magnitude of the human impact. Conservatives should accept this reality — and move on to the question of what we should do about it.”

Where are people left to go? I guess the blogs, where you can throw out a quick “ice” or “water vapor” and hope it sounds good.

Go

Major Tom, Socalcool, and PKUT…what you said…kudos.

I’ve only one observation to add: If CO2 causes global warming, which is, I believe, the claim of the global warming supporters, then one year, or even ten years (like we’ve actually had) of temperatures that weren’t warmer than before, yet when CO2 concentrations have increased every single of those years, whether due to our activity or not, means that correlation can not logically equal causation.

Every year CO2 levels go up, but temperatures do not. The argument that CO2 causes warming is a logical fallacy.

Perhaps temperatures are going up and perhaps we are causing them to go up, but it is logically impossible to claim that their cause is increased levels of CO2, because temperatures are not going up, in either the magnitude, or with the consistency, that C02 levels are.

Now, the answer for the alarmists will be that it is a complex system w/ many different factors impacting the climate. Which is precisely my point–and we don’t know what the factors all are, nor what their impacts are.

Incidentally the post about the IPCC being a good source of information is dead on. But don’t fail to read the letter of 100 physicists, climate scientists, et al., to the IPCC detailing their skepticism that the conclusions of the latest report were correct.

Had to chip in. My simple (very) view is that anything that is so politically correct can’t be right. Further, remember that the guru of Global Warming is Al Gore!!!!! Yes, the same guy who invented the internet!! That’s like asking Roger Moore about design criteria for the new Corvette engine
Thanks anyway.

The argument that CO2 causes warming is a logical fallacy.
—

Wow, lots of scientifically ignorant people here.

There is no such thing as “politically correct” physics.

Reality, however, does have a liberal bias.

Would you please find a quote anywhere where Al Gore claimed to invent the internet, rather than lead in Congress for it’s creation.
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

It’s my view that anything that the Right is so opposed to has to be correct.

Al Gore the man who was right about Iraq, Al Gore the Noble Prize winner.

You should just keep worrying about not being politically correct. And continue to take your clues from Rush Limbaugh and Pres. Bush.

Actually, when the earth is 4+ billion yrs old, a 100yrs worth of data (which is all the *accurate* data we may actually have) is just as insignificant as 1yr and hardly equates to a “trend”.

———————–

However, our species has only existed for 100-200 thousand years. That first few billion years probably would have really sucked for us. So the relevant climate for our species is in the last couple hundred thousand years. I don’t think data from the early Earth would be very helpful to us given the conditions then.:)

However, it is only in the last 8000 years of civilization (and REALLY in the last 200) that we really became dependent on the current sea levels, weather patterns, and crop distributions.

I had been ingnorant and ambivalent about the global warming debate until a recent discussion with a physicist altered my views.

Bottom line is I am convinced it is occuring – but more importantly is the explanation of man’s contribution and what that portends.

Accordingly, he explained that the natural phenomenon of natural warming has become unbalanced due to mankind’s contributions, whereas the natural phenomenom may have been expressed by (x)(y)=C, we have now added a new variable to the equation, (x)(y)+h=CC.

It is not unlike chaos theory, in that small changes in the variables can dynamically affect the outcome.

Walker: “My experience is that you find a disproportionate number of these on economics blogs.” That may be because good traders are always a little contrarian and have seen too many times that when “everyone” knows that something is true and you are ridiculed for being sceptical, then a sea change in reality or perception may not be far off. We are not deniers, we are sceptical.

“Scientists don’t have biases”…. Oh really? Then as a whole, they must have a “normal distribution” on political and economic topics. Just like members of the media. Evidence does not support that contention.

CO2 is the product of “clean, complete combustion”. The definition of CO2 as a pollutant is political, not scientific. So is the substitution of one fuel that produces CO2 (Ethanol) for other hydrocarbons that produce CO2 as a result of a combustion process. The politics of bias is fouling our ability to engineer anything that might look like real, economic progress in “solving” these and related problems. The support of “concerned scientists” does not change that. Often, it means that dissenting views have been suppressed.

Global population is doubling about every 50 years. That would seem to me to have a lot more to do with climate change than how many Americans drive SUVs and pick-up trucks. So we have a bait-and-switch. Kyoto doesn’t reduce “carbon emissions” because it exempts the largest sources — like coal fired power plants in China — a new megawatt plant every week. What the carbon tax does, and is intended to do, is to transfer wealth from developed countries to developing countries — to feed and sustain their growing populations.

Tax legislation and regulation in the developed countries rewards the production and maintenance of children, and discourages the saving and compounding savings. Government social welfare programs are built on an ongoing shift of things like pensions and healthcare from private savings to the redistribution of current income and wealth. “Global Warming” becomes another excuse for people with agendas to tell other people how they must live their lives and spend what money is not taxed away “for higher purposes”.

If the global population was not doubling at a rapid rate, we would probably experience none of the issues that dominate the politics of our time. But it is. So we criticize people for driving SUVs on gasoline. Bait-and-switch. This is more about who has political control than anything else. We may be forced to choose between bureaucrats and Jihadists. Will we choose between the freedom to own and use SUVs, pick-up trucks, and large suburban houses or the right to have three, four, five, or more children? Doesn’t every working family DESERVE a higher per child exemption or tax credit?

“Oh.. OK… and which “longer term” trend would that be? The long term 1000 year trend (which is against you), the longer term 5000 year trend (which is also against you)? Or do you mean the “long term” trend over the past 100 years, which is the one that works for your argument?”

Jason has it right. Barry, I love your market commentary, but on this one, you’re making exactly the same mistake you are accusing others of, taking a little blip in the data and calling it a trend.

What I haven’t seen here is the point that those of us who follow the solar models know that this downturn was predicted. Theodor Landscheidt’s model predicted a peak in solar activity in 1990 with the temperature high lagging 8 years to 1998, then a long drop off to a low around 2030. This recent drop, then is right on schedule, as is the predicted drop-off in solar activity.

If we seem overly certain, it is only because events have been following the predictions so well to date, that it seems only a matter of time until even the most obstinate truth denier (i.e. global warmist) will have to admit the AGW hypothesis is and always has been a crock.

“It’s my view that anything that the Right is so opposed to has to be correct.”

Spend any time doing some simple Google fact-checking in any blog debate about AGW pretty much sums this up to be true. I can’t tell you how much deceptive quote-mining I’ve caught, or supposed references to certain non-existent “facts” that fail to materialize when you do the footwork and dig up a PDF of a cited research paper.

What surprises me is the insane amount of hostility and invective directed towards Gore and Hansen as “liars”, when the thinktanks fuel these denialists with nothing but dishonest lies.

And therein lies the rub – the scientists will revise as they learn more. Therefore earlier incorrect information is easily attacked as “lies”. But the thinktanks aren’t hamstrung by having to revise their position to match reality. They have phalanxes of bloggers ready to perpetuate their disinformation straight to Armageddon.

How does one prove that a hundred year trend in warming is due to homo sapiens sapiens when the evidence points to thousands of years of global climatic changes?

Also, why does everyone automatically assume that a warmer earth is a worse place to live? I would think that the northern US, Alaska, Canada, Russian, and the Antartic would provide a hedge against total death and destruction. Who knows, if global warming pans out, maybe people will stop moving south by the millions.

http://www.globalwarming.org/primer/scienceFAQs

More on (meaningful pun) global warming…

BTW – another site I found contributed the effect of cattle emissions to be more than vehicles due to the amount of cattle demand. The methane has a much higher warming effect than other forms of emitters.

“It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.”

http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html

What would we do without research…

Kurt,

Then his research should be very easy for you and others to discredit. Read the report, then rebut the findings.

Also, the paper I linked to produced results that were inline with two other, independently produced studies.

Read then rebut, if you can. The IPCC could not, but maybe you and Red Pill can.

Good luck.

Forgot to add, unlike many in the climate science field, McKitrick and Michaels have published their data sources and computer code so anyone who is interested can perform independent verification of their findings. I’m sure they would be happy to know if you find errors or inaccuracies in their computer code or findings.

“People seem to forget, that scientists have as much of an agenda and bias as anyone. Do you think the government will fund research into climate modeling…”

You bet scientists have an agenda! They want to know how things work, NOT how they SHOULD work.

That means they must be critical of their own theories and hypotheses.

That is a frame of mind that present a constant challenge to those who can’t do better than anchor themselves into a belief system for emotional and thalamic (the reptilian brain) reasons. Of course, that include anyone on the left and on the right of the political spectrum.

I’ll take science (laced with a good dose of ethic thank you) over socio-political beliefs any day of the year.

Yes, he got his degree, but never practiced medicine and has been a novelist/producer for the last ~30yrs.

On Michaels,
Research Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute. Visiting Scientist, Marshall Institute. State Climatologist, Virginia. Advisor, American Legislative Exchange Council.

Dr. Patrick Michaels is possibly the most prolific and widely-quoted climate change skeptic scientist. He has admitted receiving funding from various fossil fuel industry sources. His latest book, published in September 2004 by the Cato Institute, is titled: Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.

Michaels is the Chief Editor for the “World Climate Review,” a newsletter on global warming funded by the Western Fuels Association. Dr. Michaels has acknowledged that 20% of his funding comes from fossil fuel sources: (http://www.mtn.org/~nescncl/complaints/determinations/det_118.html) Known funding includes $49,000 from German Coal Mining Association, $15,000 from Edison Electric Institute and $40,000 from Cyprus Minerals Company, an early supporter of People for the West, a “wise use” group. He received $63,000 for research on global climate change from Western Fuels Association, above and beyond the undisclosed amount he is paid for the World Climate Report/Review. According to Harper’s magazine, Michaels has recieved over $115,000 over the past four years from coal and oil interests. Michaels wrote “Sound and Fury” and “The Satanic Gases” which were published by Cato Institute. Dr. Michaels signed the 1995 Leipzig Declaration. In July of 2006, it was revealed that the Intermountain Rural Electric Association “contributed $100,000 to Dr. Michaels.” (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GlobalWarming/story?id=2242565&page=1) ALEC advisor. http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=11310 and http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3558

A.B. and S.M. degrees in biological sciences and plant ecology, University of Chicago Ph.D. in ecological climatology , University of Wisconsin at Madison. Former President of the American Association of State Climatologists, and Program Chair for the Committee on Applied Meterology of the American Meterological Society.

There is no historical data that supports the premise that human activity has any significant effect on climate. The observation of glaciers melting may look dramatic on TV but does not show that human activity is the cause. There is, however, substantial evidence that atmospheric carbon dioxide level does not significantly influence climate. You can check out the global warming issue yourself. Credible websites are included in my post at http://hypsithermal.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/to-those-who-will-fight/

Kurt,

Take the time to read Crichton’s testimony before the Senate Committee and then let me know if you agree or disagree with his recommendation to establish a medical research-type process for climate science.

This is not a scientific/political debate, as there is no such thing. This is a scientific subject polluted by political opinion. The same can be said of any discussion regarding science, religion, culture, morals or ethics over the past 8 years.

The startling thing abut the past two days of comments on this subject is the sudden emergence of what can only be described as right-wing, Neocon, zealots who persist in denying scientific evidence – as if this were a matter of political opinion.

This is how we got into Iraq (we’ll be liberators greeted with roses and it won’t cost us a penny). This is how we mismanaged our national finances (deficits don’t matter/go out and shop/homeowner society). This is how we came to torture people in the name of freedom (there has never been any doubt that waterboarding is torture, yet we have been drawn into a debate about it, as if there were). This is why we don’t do stem cell research. This is why we have school boards pushing “intelligent design” as science.

This is why our Senate and President would convene after midnight to “save the life” of a woman deemed brain dead by her own physicians. (the Schiavo case is particularly enlightening when viewed against the global warming comments of the past several days).

In the Schiavo case, the right wing was up in arms about a specific scientific fact. Their opinions were presented as being just as valid as those of the woman’s doctors. Their opinions were stated with authority and couched in pseudo scientific terms. There were appeals to emotion and accusations of the doctors and “liberal media” having the agenda of destroying a vital human life (and enjoying it). The woman’s family family was drawn into it. Her ex-husband was accused of having a profit motive. A faux expert (Frist) was trotted out to give his “professional” opinion of the extent of Ms. Schiavo’s condition.

Ms. Schiavo’s autopsy confirmed what everyone had known all along – she was brain dead.

No political argument could change the scientific fact.

So now we have the same people the same intellectually dishonest crap regarding global warming science, except this time, there might be no one to conduct the autopsy if we screw up.

The right wing is intellectually, morally, and ideologically bankrupt. Their track record is abysmal. Their opinions should be discounted, accordingly.

Why should we believe a word they say?

For once, I’d like to make it through the day without someone bringing up ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.

Dogwood I read the McKitrick and Michaels paper.

I have to say, it is very interesting. I am quite pleased at how rigorous their mathematical presentation was (they even tested for correlations in the residuals to see if the model should be nonlinear, which I was very happy about). I think it was a very good paper in showing that there is a correlation between socioeconomic trends and observed temperatures.

Then they made a huge mistake. Their conclusion has nothing to do with their tested hypothesis. I believe the hypothesis, I don’t believe the conclusion.

“Peterson (2003) shows that US data can, in principle, be adjusted to remove extraneous biases of significant size. On this basis we postulate that countries with public sector resources and general public skill levels comparable to those in the US would be, in principle, able to provide uncontaminated climatic data. We therefore generated an adjusted vector of predicted values under the assumptions that all countries have GDP density and educational levels equivalent to those in the USA and that all other surface and inhomogeneity effects were set equal to zero”

and they said that the warming is less than half of what’s reported. Basically, they just made a completely wild assertion that has absolutely no backing and then produced a number.

They state that most of the lower GDP areas had higher levels of warming. Well, those are mostly in Africa and South America. Those climates are completely different than North America and Asia. Of course they will respond quite differently to warming than other areas.

They make a HUGE mistake (or a deliberate lie) and assume that temperature increases will be equal across the globe.

In fact, the models show that it is widely differing, and what do you know — the poorer countries are going to have the worse effects.

They completely break the first law of science, correlation does not imply causation.

Poorer areas reporting larger increases
does not imply poorer areas report larger areas BECAUSE they are poor.

Also, I’d like to point out the tons of references about scientists trying to correct all the stuff (and I commend them for bringing up something else to look for…as I said I just disagree with their 50% less warming part) to show that there is a ton of work in this area.

Barry,

Doesn’t opening a can of worms cause global warming?

Dogwood: no.

If you are going to get in an argument with a scientist you better damn well be able to back up what you’re saying. Although I think my criticism is perfectly valid if I was intent on confronting them I’d want to read about a few things since it’s not my field.

Specifically:
Their picture clearly shows a “positive bias” in western Europe and SE Asia, including Japan. If the basic hypothesis is that rich countries are better at making corrections (the whole point of the re-computation of temperature) then why do those areas have such a large and relatively uniform adjustment?

They point to the troposphere to validate their claims, but I know that there is very recent research about how that acts differently. I just don’t know what it is specifically.

They also don’t have a picture of the trends themselves, only the change of their correction, so I would have to find that out.

I also don’t get this: “This result mirrors that in McKitrick and Michaels 2004, as well as the findings in deLaat and Maurellis (2004, 2006) and Kalnay and Cai (2005), all of whom found the overall effect of surface processes to be a positive bias to observed temperature trends.”

whereas earlier it said
“For example, Feddema et al. (2005a,b) estimate that global land surface changes since before industrialization have yielded a net cooling effect on the climate system.”

So I’d have to learn about that.

Scientists are almost always open to criticism but it has to be very pointed and very informed. Almost any one can learn some basic principles and raise some questions, but they won’t be able to evaluate whether the response is adequate.

If you are really interested, I would send it to the realclimate people and say what they say since they will have all the information readily available, but I don’t want to spend all that time learning things for myself. The paper just came out too. If it goes nine months without any one confronting it maybe I would consider it worth my time to learn it enough to gauge whether their response makes sense.

We ‘know’ one millionth of one percent of nothing…perhaps I’m showing my age but I distinctly remember these same ‘experts’ predicting another ‘ice age’ back in the 70’s

I’m puzzled about this data point. Is this US only or world wide. Europe has (again) had an unusually mild winter (in fact spring has started already).

I have to admit that the responses surprised me. First, I had no idea so many people rabidly disbelieve that 1) climate change is occurring and 2) we Humans are responsible for some of that. Truly eye opening to me.

Barry, with this statement you struck a chord with me. I have been amazed at my own experiences when taking controversial positions, about 90 percent of the time: otherwise perfectly intelligent and educated people instantly disagree with me, they get upset, they impulsively throw around silly uninformed arguments — but the one thing they don’t do is to take a look at the evidence I point to. Note I don’t say they are taking the wrong position! Only that rational responses include looking at the evidence, or conceding inability to evaluate the evidence, or simply asserting disinterest. But knee-jerk disagreement is not a rational response.

As you say, it has been truly eye-opening.

(By the way, here is an example of the kind of information I am talking about: see the article “Is US Health Really the Best in the World?” in JAMA, 2000;284:483-485. Here it is essentially asserted that as of the year 2000 the American health care system is the third leading cause of death in America, after heart-disease and cancer, with 225,000 deaths. A significant portion of these, about 106,000, are ascribed to adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs, the rest going to hospital-acquired infections and medical errors.)

I see two main groups of comments from the skeptics above.

The first is that climate has always changed, change is not dangerous. As evidence they talk about 10,000 year or even 1,000,000 year timeframes.

Well, if that’s all we were talking about I wouldn’t worry either. The climate can do what it wants over the next 10,000 years.

Unfortunately we are talking about a sudden shock to the system (and the food systems upon which we depend) over a few decades. You can find such sudden shocks in the historical record, and they do cause stress to human civilizations (particularly long-term droughts).

The other argument seems to be a gut-feel thing. Since CO2 doesn’t feel like a pollutant, it isn’t.

Well sure, CO2 doesn’t feel that way. That’s why it was not immediately obvious. That’s why it took some serious math (and decades of study by thousands of scientists).

The question you’ve got to ask yourself is whether you are going to stick with your gut, or trust the numbers?

I choose the numbers because the alternative is to live like Aristotle’s beast in the field. It would be to take whatever we get.

Humanity is supposed to do better than that.

Odograph,

The entire warming trend is .7 degrees celsius over 100 years, roughly half, give or take, prior to 1940. Sorry, but that is not much of a shock to the planet.

The right wing is intellectually, morally, and ideologically bankrupt. Their track record is abysmal. Their opinions should be discounted, accordingly.

MA, you sniping again? Did you put your Lilly White Robe on before you began your sermon? LOL! Thank God for the left? ROFLMAO!

There are lots of engineers here. I got a chem degree, went into medical programming, environmental programming, and finally business applications. In that time I’ve worked with a lot of engineers.

Tell me guys, would you trust your retirement planning and investment to any random co-worker you’ve had over the years? Would you trust any random member of your team to cast your presidential vote? To make your medical diagnosis?

Yes, we engineers have skills, especially when focused on the the tasks we have experience with. But, in my experience that does not make us Renaissance Men, balanced and wise in all manner of art and science.

(Put more simply, you wouldn’t hire a civil engineer to do your database schema … so why do you assume that YOU have an intuitive sense of climate change and its impact on environmental services?)

“Put more simply, you wouldn’t hire a civil engineer to do your database schema … so why do you assume that YOU have an intuitive sense of climate change and its impact on environmental services?”

It’s called logic, and applying it to the circumstances that surround you and that you observe.

what is logic without domain-knowledge rj?

“Plus it makes tremendous intuitive sense. What are we doing when we burn fossil fuels? It’s like bringing all the forests of the past above ground and burning them every day. It kinda makes sense that this is not a climatologically stable practice.”

Yes, it’s true. I’m not sure if you listen to the Financial Sense weekly podcast. If not, I’d recommend it. They talk about energy weekly and the coming energy shortage due mainly to emerging countries’ development and their resultant energy needs. They’ve always said that anyone that worries about global warming will be a fan of peak oil once it finally comes.

What happens when fossil fuels are used up or become more scarce? Simple, the price goes up and the standard of living declines for us normal folk unless you’re rich enough to not care about the cost of gasoline. What in our society is not dependent on fossil fuels? Take food for example, unless you live in “flyover country” as New Yorkers derisively call it, all your food gets shipped in. So if the price of gasoline goes up 20%, all food you buy will go up 20%. The standard of living continues to go lower and lower, and that is what will eventually happen in this country, sadly.

Less people will have cars because they cannot afford the gasoline needed for trips. And then carbon emissions from cars will decline because less people use cars because they can’t afford it. It’s a good side-effect of a bad situation. A blog such as this, which ridicules Fed inflation cause of its effects on the dollar and it’s buying power, should understand that.

Barry,

I’m awaiting your lawyer’s take on the arguments here.

Not that lawyers know anything about climate science particularly, but that lawyers should know something about rhetoric, and about making logically defensible arguments. (Disclosure–I am a lawyer.)

In my estimation, were CO2 given the same benefit of the doubt as we give criminal defendants, (and if you could find a jury that hadn’t already made up its mind), it should never be convicted of causing the earth’s temperature to warm. It lacks the “but-for” causation, because, as I noted previously, if you claim A (CO2) causes B (climate warming), but then more of A, does not result in more of B, your argument fails. Logic dictates that A can’t be the sole, or perhaps, any, cause of B if more of A does not yield more of B.

Of course, that’s not saying CO2 couldn’t in reality be convicted. Legions of defendants that happened to have the wrong skin color have been convicted of crimes they never committed just because of fear. Fortunately for some of them, DNA offers the opportunity for exoneration. CO2, having, in many respects come to represent the latent fear that mankind has always had about its future, might well be convicted on that basis (fear) alone. If convicted, it’s hard to see a similar scientific savior like DNA coming to CO2’s rescue, short of a new ice age.

Alas, I learned only one abiding truth about human nature in three years of legal training–that, as Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, “the life of the law is not logic.” Neither, it seems, is it the life of climate science.

rj, the well-to-wheels figures I have don’t show “double” for diesels, at least not cars:

15.5% diesel internal combustion engine cars
12.4% gasoline internal combustion engine cars

(gasoline hybrids rise to 15.3% efficiency, putting them in spitting distance to a plain diesel. hybrid diesels would be king … but none are on our market.)

DonKei, IANAL, but the question I’d ask is simple: would limiting the CO2 limit the harm?

Is there law for that kind of question?

Odograph–

I don’t necessarily think so.

Even though I fall in the denialist camp (I prefer “skeptic”, but you say tomato, I say tomatoe), I believe that CO2 is a fine proxy for the notion that we are extremely wasteful in our use of energy, and if conserving energy means also limiting its output, so much the better.

I believe that energy consumption in the US is vastly subsidized in that its true externalities are not captured by its price. By my reckoning, considering the cost to the US of ethanol subsidies, wars in the mideast, a vast naval presence the globe over to keep the oil shipping lanes open, etc., gasoline alone should cost about $10/gallon.

Instead, we borrow money to fund wars, we borrow money to subsidize inefficient agricultural energy production, etc., ad nauseam.

The fall of the dollar (i.e., inflation at home and abroad) has been the direct result of this subsidy by government borrowing/dollar printing.

As the dollar continues to fall, we might in fact get $10/gallon gasoline in the not-distant future, which would do more than any carbon-limiting regulation I could imagine to limit CO2 output–by dint of the energy conservation measures it would make imperative. Will that be good to help forestall global warming? Well, I think you know I’m skeptical on that score. But would it help the US survive and prosper in the long run? You bet. That it would also do what the global warming crowd wants is okay by me.

I’d just never convict CO2 for warming.

“My point yesterday — which several commentors elected to ignore — was that confusing the short term trend with the longer term trend was simply wrong.”

That’s entirely true — and the length of a human life in geological time is so utterly “short term” as to be laughable. Even generations don’t amount to much on that scale.

The “Little Ice Age” began in the Middle Ages, lasted for several hundred years, and ended only after the birth of the United States.

Whether or not the earth is now “warming” in an alarming way is a matter of some interest, and taking a close look at the technical means of gathering these “rising temperature” data doesn’t bear close scrutiny in a large number of cases. (Weather stations once remotely located are in some cases now surrounded by concrete buildings or located directly in the blast of air-conditioning exhaust.)

Add to this the fact that even the two guys in charge of the climate temperature data themselves “deny” they see any necessary inference the observed rise is related to human activity.

This opinion would, of course, place these gentlemen outside the circle of herd opinion by “qualified scientists” we are repeatedly told “all agree” (an anomaly in real “science”) as evidenced by their “peer reviewing” each other’s work to a fair-thee-well and disdaining any other equally informed opinion which may even so much as question their collective and mutually-reinforced “opinions” based on objectively inconclusive facts. Faith usually trumps facts.

The important thing to grasp about global warming — whether or not eventually confirmed by conclusive facts — is that it’s fundamentally a polito-economic movement, and certainly not “science”. It fuels a new government gravy train which may be increasingly relied upon to lard funding on shameless academics willing to cooperate in partaking of the spoils. At the top of this heap is the thoroughly corrupt United Nations, with its hand out on any pretext to tax the world for its benevolent works (never mind the permanently built-in fraud and corruption).

I say these opinions are not “science”, properly speaking, because the very “weather experts” in charge of the various flawed “models” cannot predict even short-term trends like next years hurricane season — but we are to believe they know what will happen in a decade or century. It’s really too funny for sober consideration.

They also frankly admit they cannot account for some observed climate mechanics — but they are no less confident in their predictions than any other anointed priesthood.

No different than any other markets, the “global warming” trend is on in the market of ideas. And like those other false “scientists” called economists, these guys (also merely trend followers) will never foresee any change in the present trend before it actually happens. Their predictive ability is no better than that of economists, who can be collectively relied upon to be less accurate in their predictions than are ordinary people (per Taleb, et. al., whose observations also gall “experts” who cannot tolerate any other view but their own)

These experts will likewise continue to insist “this time is different” and pout truculently and theaten excommunication of anyone who so much as as remotely questions their monolithic collective wisdom (oxymoron).

Basically, these folks are no more than weather bulls who will hoot and yelp their “forecasts” on even the flimsiest evidence, ever insisting the trend direction is inevitably “up” — forever!!! — regardless of any newly arrived and contrary evidence.

None of us will live long enough to discover whether they are in error (and laugh at them if they are) — but in the meantime, beating the drum of war against “global warming” will handsomely reward those on the “right” side of the prevailing and ever-rising hysteria.

A more cautious and contrarian evaluation may suggest that hastily throwing massive money overboard to abate this presumed “emergency” makes about as much sense as the current corn-to-ethanol “solution” imposed by equally sterile political minds to “solve” our energy problem (at a net loss of BOTH energy AND food supplies to a world increasingly starved of both).

It is worth mentioning that the previous generation of “weather scientists”, upon receiving evidence of a cooling trend, attempted to stir up the same hysteria about “global cooling” and expressed the notion we would all end up huddling at the equator in the fact of advancing walls of ice clam-shelling us from north and south. Oh, woe! Fortunately, the general public at that time wasn’t so gullible, having lived a bit closer to the real world, and ignored them.

That “crisis” soon passed away when it didn’t bear any immediate financial fruit for its proponents, nor Nobel Prizes. This generation of ordinary citizens may prove more gullible.

Obviously climate is religion to some people.

“Bud” is a marvel of psychological projection, scientific illiteracy and painstaking avoidance of any factual content.

1. Scientist William Connelley provides here a lengthy refutation of the myth that scientists in scientific journals in the 1970s were predicting imminent “global cooling.”

2. The “urban heat island effect” is fully accounted for and compensated in the temperature records. See: Parker, D.E., Large-Scale Warming is not Urban, Nature 432, 290, doi:10.1038/432290a, 2004. Further overview discussion and literature cites can be found here.

3. The “opinions” that “Bud” said are not “science” are actually science, given that they are drawn from actual scientific research and published in peer-reviewed and refereed professional scientific journals, such as Nature and Science. According to “Bud’s” standard, all scientific knowledge is just ‘fashionable opinion’ including the underlying physics of the computer his is typing on.

4. There is a common logical fallacy that somehow, the fact that Earth’s climate has changed in the past (w/o humans) somehow proves that humans cause climate to change. This is like saying because people die of natural causes it’s impossible for this gun I’m holding to kill you if I pull the trigger.

5. “Bud’s” analysis has all the intellectual rigor of a guy at a bar telling me why it’s obvious the sun goes ’round the Earth.

typo:

There is a common logical fallacy that somehow, the fact that Earth’s climate has changed in the past (w/o humans) somehow proves that humans cannot cause climate to change.
—
Urban heat island and meterological instrument overview here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/07/no-man-is-an-urban-heat-island/#more-454.

Anecdotal:

A friend of mine and I were having a discussion on global warming. He picked a globe up off of his office shelf and pointed to LA, and said, “you mean to tell me that you believe that this little dot could pollute all of this,” as he moved his hand around the globe to demonstrate the expanse of the atmosphere. The globe was about 14″ in diameter, he was holding his hand about 2″ from its surface. I pushed his hand to about 3mm from the surface of the globe and answered, “yes.”

For a recent reminder of the behavior of crowds in the face of opinions contrary to the popular belief, consider the “housing bubble” and the (admittedly small) number of us who said it was a false trend that would end in tears. I use the term “false trend” deliberately — Soros may be wrong about many things, but on balance he’s been richly rewarded by his own advice to “find the false trend and bet against it.”

As to the poster who pilloried any who would dare “deny” the theory of evolution, I’d point out that arguing against a theory (strictly speaking) is what commonly happens among real scientists engaged in real science, and that a theory cannot be “denied” by anyone simply because anything less than what is demonstrated as conclusive scientific law is, by definition, subject to debate about the meaning of the facts that underpin it.

Absence of debate is not characteristic of “science” but rather the opposite.

Pause to recall that not too many decades ago, the “theory of continental drift” was ridiculed by most establishment scientists and thought by most of them to be entirely daft. New evidence forced them to accept that theory as the best explanation of earths evolution — and it’s probably safe to assume the former “deniers” now defend this theory as unassailable.

A team of scientists recently reported they had experimentally proven the speed of light is not a physical limit in the universe. Is the theory of relativity wrong? Right? Only time will tell if these experiments can be reliably duplicated by others, but in the meantime it’s probably wise to be uncertain of even the most compelling “stories”, whether in the marketplace of science or finance.

Even the most compelling story, while enjoying lack of any apparent facts to contradict it, can suddenly be confronted by evidence which eventually renders it entirely unsalable — even to fools.

As to this previous expression of faith:

“The ‘opinions’ that ‘Bud’ said are not ‘science’ are actually science, given that they are drawn from actual scientific research and published in peer-reviewed and refereed professional scientific journals, such as Nature and Science. According to ‘Bud’s’ standard, all scientific knowledge is just ‘fashionable opinion’ including the underlying physics of the computer his is typing on.”

Scientific inquiry (experimentation, search for facts, etc.) is entirely separable from “scientific opinion”, and conflating the two is the banal habit of an undisciplined mind.

One obviously cannot argue against established facts (though established facts may very disagreeably argue with each other), but prevailing opinions about those facts typically constitutes ‘scientific knowledge’ which enjoys a notoriously short half-life.

Bud, some consensus answers of science have been overturned and some are still held valid. You are suggesting that the overturned ones favor your position.

Isn’t that like looking around a bar and saying “some of the people here are tall, and so the next person that walks in the door will be tall”?

(Some of the currently contested theories will be overturned, but we cannot on that basis judge them all false.)

I didn’t say “immutable” Bob.

Science does not, in fact, have “immutable” truths.

But if we tried to take no action, ever, based on our current scientific judgment, I think we’d suffer.

Shorter Chester: Since someone cried wolf in the 70’s (probably Newsweek rather than the broad scientific community(*)), there are no wolves.

* – The National Academies of Science quote in Chester’s article supports this:

“Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.””

Extra credit if you spot the spin in the word “concedes.”

It is also interesting to note what the National Academy thinks they’ve learned in those 30 years.

1. Barry, you are correct–of course one point does not disprove a trend.

2. As far as global warming goes–of course it is happening. It has been happening for, what, 400 years after-all.

3. The causes of global warming are many and varied but the overall picture of how it occurs and how these causes interact is largely unknown. It is not called a THEORY for nothing. The fact is that what is being interpreted as fact by some is really probabilities of probabilities in a model with thousands and thousands of variables–some of which are known, some of which aren’t, some of which are measured within a large probability of error relative to the other variables, and some of which are ASSUMED. Why don’t you go fly on an airplane that was built with such a model and see how long you last, huh?

4. There is only one factual position that one can hold with true certainty–WE DON’T KNOW. Yes, you can argue one side or the other and suggest probabilities and argue probabilities. BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY WE DON’T KNOW YET. Give it a rest.

5. For those on either side of the argument to insult someone’s intelligence or “scientific literacy” (whatever that means) is insulting and, frankly, stupid. Thanks, but some of us have degrees in the sciences and mathematics and are amazed that either side of the argument gets argued so rabidly. We who are undecided because the models and data are so poor find it amazing that some of you act like you know everything and think that the ENTIRE WORLD is convinced of your side. Do you know what being convinced of a theory is? It’s measuring an electron’s weight to within 14 decimal places of the theorized value. What’s not being convinced is your weather man not being able to tell you a rough approximation of the weather more than 60 minutes in advance.

The fact that some of you can say “lol anyone who watches the discovery channel knows the truth!” and “scientific literacy” in the same sentence is laughable.

6. There are clear political and economic reasons for pushing either argument. It’s the best ploy–a global issue that will impact what everyone in the world eats, drinks, consumes, does, grows, etc., all pandered about under the guise of the greatest moral flag: SAVE THE ENTIRE WORLD. Want to have more than 2 kids? Nope, gotta save the world. Want to produce more than xxx KW from coal to power your country? Nope, gotta save the world. Wanna raise your living standards to the developed world level? Nope, sorry, gotta save the world. Want to institute legislation to cut down all your trees and dig up all your rocks and export them to pay for universal education and health care? Nope, sorry, gotta save the world.

Personally, I find the whole man-causes-global-warming-and-it-is-going-to-screw-us-all argument to be both unknown and unlikely. Face it: both the data and the models SUCK. I also find it, compared to other issues, to be irrelevant. Thanks, but I’m just a LITTLE more concerned that I’m going to wake up tomorrow with a mushroom cloud over my neighbor’s porch, witness WW III, or get cancer from whatever.

And last but not least: I would like to point out that Life On Earth will be just fine. We could nuke the entire planet over 30 times and in 2 billion years the bacteria in the deep sea vents will have evolved and covered the entire earth with another trillion species of who-knows-what. You’re not that important to Life on Earth and you never will be–so don’t kid yourself that somehow we’re ruining the earth or are some sort of aberation or whatever. We could be, but that’s a human and ethical viewpoint, not a scientific one. Life goes on.

MA, 60 Trillion Dollars in unfunded liabilities, and the best part is you think it’s a vast right wing conspiracy. How’s the Kool-Aid indeed. LOL!

Patrick — it is not a “theory” that CO2, methane, water vapor and certain other gasses have a “greenhouse” effect of capturing and retaining solar radiation in the atmosphere. It is just as proven as water being composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. And it is not a “theory” that human activities are putting X tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every minute and what that atmospheric concentration is today as opposed to other times. And it is not a “theory” that the temperature graph Barry showed shows the trend that it shows.

“But if we tried to take no action, ever, based on our current scientific judgment, I think we’d suffer.”

That is only true if the proposed action is suitable, effective, and achievable.

Getting all three of these right based on well informed but nevertheless speculative theorizing by those who stand to benefit (while studiously ignoring others equally qualified and well informed — but entirely unconvinced) is something few people would endorse unless funded by other people’s money.

That is not an argument to do nothing, nor to ignore possible dangers of continuing our present course unabated. Yep, go to work on alternate fuels, energy saving technologies, and less fuel-intensive methods of powering our lives. High prices are always the solution to high prices. (If it were not so, we’d still be burning wood in stone circles and huddling under animal skins — exactly what some of our more progressive “thinkers” would reckon we should return to in order to “save” the earth from humankind.)

Accepting the need to adapt with all due diligence most certainly does NOT recommend being stampeded to join the ruminating herd in blind panic.

And I entirely agree with the “laugh my ass off” comment above. Anyone who believes the modern university system promotes only big-brained, always wise, always honorable, truth-seeking, truth-telling “scientists” whose motives cannot be questioned is frankly ludicrous.

There are many fine people who make their way through this process, but it tends to deliberately weed out heretics no less thoroughly than the ancient church. Modern academics declared heretics after having been annoited (particularly when big funding is at stake) tend to be just as readily burnt at the stake without mercy, and robed scientists who look strikingly like clerics when attending commencement will pay any price to preserve whatever delusion has been canonized in accordance with their cultural zeitgeist, no matter how obviously such canons may be based on a plainly false premise (AIDS “research” comes to mind as a sterling example).

If one needs no other example of the really big-brained and highly accomplished liars which even the most distinguished Ivy League ivory towers graduate with distinction, please consider FED board members (individually or collectively) and ask yourself whether you really believe what ANY of these people say publicly. Of course you don’t. You’d have to be an idiot. Or they would have to be — take your pick.

But I digress from the glow of the global warming “debate”, such as it is …

Intellectually shameless people now wish to insinuate an attachment of their “cause” to the tragedy of the holocaust, aiming to wrap themselves in a self-righteous defense against any critique of their truly preposterous claim that “all responsible scientists agree” about BOTH the trend AND the inevitable human cause of global climate change.

If that is true, then why did one highly regarded climate scientist have to literally SUE to get his name removed from the list of said respectable scientists who all allegedly “agree”?

The present kabuki drama is not about reasoned science. It’s simply about fear-driven politics, the invariable hallmark of shallow claims erected on obviously shaky foundations by all the usual suspects.

Does that mean a majority of scientists who believe in human-caused “global warming” are surely wrong in that claim? Nope, it doesn’t mean that at all. It just means it ain’t necessarily so — an important distinction when deciding how best to allocate scarce resources to best assure long term prosperity and safety for mankind here on planet earth.

Has anybody ever considered that a warmer climate will benefit countries like Canada, Russia and Northern United States? Why is this never taken into account?

One prominent atmospheric scientist (I wish I could remember who or where) said: “One of the reasons global climate change is so difficult to do anything about is that there are both winners and losers. Not everybody loses.”

Wonder if they’ll make Gore give back his prize?

Recent article:
Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age
Lorne Gunter, National Post
Published: Monday, February 25, 2008

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January “was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.”

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its “lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.

But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter’s weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.

And it’s not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.

According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona — two prominent climate modellers — the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.

“We missed what was right in front of our eyes,” says Prof. Russell. It’s not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind’s effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.

But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as “a drop in the bucket.” Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to “stock up on fur coats.”

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

It’s way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it’s way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.

Quantum mechanics is clearly crap, because nothing in my everyday experience substantiates that it could be possible.

Relativity is also clearly crap for the same reason. I mean, what if I’m driving a car at the speed of light and turn the headlights on? What happens then, Mr. Smartypants Science Dude???

Bud, just for yucks I tried to find out who the scientist was who “sued” to get his name removed from the IPCC report. Couldn’t find one. Of course, that meme is repeated across all kinds of climate-related posts on the Intertubes, stating it like it is a fact. The closest I could come was a Paul Reiter, who says he had to threaten to sue in order to get his name removed, although the IPCC denies that. In fact, another source says that Reiter was nominated to work on one of the IPCC reports but did not. So, not completely clear.

Paul Reiter says that the IPCC is overstating the idea that global warming will lead to an increase in malaria.

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

So, at best it is a rumor that a scientist specializing in tropical diseases was unhappy about what the IPCC was saying about his field, and threatened to sue so that he was not included in the report. Far cry from “one highly regarded climate scientist have to literally SUE to get his name removed” — especially since he is not a climate scientist.

If you have any other documentation on that topic, feel free to share, obviously.

Has anybody ever considered that a warmer climate will benefit countries like Canada, Russia and Northern United States? Why is this never taken into account?

Because that type of “thinking” leads one to conclude that setting your house on fire is a good way to prevent frostbite.

Or buying a huge life insurance policy and then killing yourself is a great way to pay for your kids’ college tuition.

“So, at best it is a rumor that a scientist specializing in tropical diseases was unhappy about what the IPCC was saying about his field, and threatened to sue so that he was not included in the report. Far cry from “one highly regarded climate scientist have to literally SUE to get his name removed” — especially since he is not a climate scientist.

“If you have any other documentation on that topic, feel free to share, obviously.”

My pleasure.

I find it exceedingly odd you should refer to a statement made in public by Reiter as a “rumor” on the sole merit those threatened with suit (and you are correct about that) say it isn’t so.

You would expect this august body of selfless scientists to admit his statement is true? That a “scientific” group had not even the professional courtesy to withdraw a name when civilly requested and had to be threatened with suit? I bloody doubt it.

And if he was not a “climate scientist” — then why would his name have ever been associated with this steaming political document to begin with? Either it should never have been included to begin with, or else what he had to say was considered relevant. You cannot have it both ways.

Moreover, your fine point attempts to detract from the overarching fact that all (previously) respected scientists most certainly do NOT agree with the man-caused-global-warming thesis, a fact which you do not appear willing to dispute.

Do you dispute it?

That requires only a yes or no answer, though I’m certain it will come back so richly qualified with conditionals that it will be no answer at all.

In the interest of time, therefore, let me offer a readily available and related wiki link:

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

While I’m perfectly willing to debate matters of informed opinion, I’m not prepared to debate matters of established fact.

What is a well established fact is that hundreds of scientists have opined they were not convinced by established scientific fact that global warming owes significantly to activities of mankind.

Those who dismiss these foks as “deniers” simply hope to finesse a quick conclusion to any further debate by pretending no valid basis for such debate exists. They operate on the bully brown shirt strategy of defaming and traducing their opponents to diminish their voices.

If they succeed, the self-organized planet-posse will then be free to move forward unimpeded with the fore-ordained political agenda they judge admirable (with or without any basis in fact) owing solely to their presumed superior judgment.

As a general rule, these folks tend to think of themselves as “progressives”, a term which amply attests to their hubris.

Unfortunately, others tend to see their rather raw agenda as no more than the usual hokum which inevitably arises when science is forced into servitude as the whore of politics.

Climate Skeptics Are Really Denialists and Alarmists are Misnamed

This week, New York City is playing host to an international conference on climate change different from any other that has gone before. The people convening it, and those making presentations, are all self-proclaimed “climate skeptics.” And here is the purpose of the conference, in words taken verbatim from the invitation letter sent by the sponsor, the Heartland Institute:

The purpose of the conference is to generate international media attention to the fact that many scientists believe forecasts of rapid warming and catastrophic events are not supported by sound science, and that expensive campaigns to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not necessary or cost-effective.

In other words, it’s a media event designed to promote a fixed point of view with a negative agenda of opposition.

That, ladies and gentlemen (of the media especially) is not a “skeptical” agenda but a denialist enterprise.

And here is what is most sinister: they are out to deny the validity of the most organized and effective form of skepticism we know — empirical science, in the present instance put in the service of studying the earth’s climate. They have turned reality upside-down. They have stolen the name “skeptic” from its rightful owners and given them another name instead — “alarmists.”

Skepticism implies a rational process of evaluation based on empirical evidence, and a willingness to allow the mass of evidence to persuade. This is precisely what the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change –the largest, collaborative scientific enterprise in human history — have done.

If you trace their findings from their first assessment report through the fourth — a period of scientific inquiry spanning almost two decades — you will see the gradual and careful evolution of their thought as evidence of global warming has accumulated. Only in the very last report released last year do they say with certainty that global warming is human induced and urgent action is needed.

What took them so long? Their skepticism, which is practiced through the scientific method to which they are devoted.

Hired Denialist Guns

What about the Heartland Institute? On what is their skepticism based? The scientific method? Peer-reviewed science? Actually, no. They have circulated petitions and collected signatures and written op-eds and convened a conference and published pseudo-science and done many other things to deny the findings that have emerged out of the true scientific process. They use the methods of political operatives, not scientists.

They do claim they have scientists on their side. But these are not scientists qualified to conduct climate research, or to pass judgment upon it. Perhaps they have one or two qualified scientists on their roster of paid attendees. But one or two paid scientists do not a conference make. IPCC has more than 2000 independent scientists working without professional allegiance to political ideology. (Media please take note of this ratio when you insert balance into your reporting.)

Let’s remember a few other things about Heartland. Before taking up the cause of global warming denialism, they worked to help the tobacco industry deny that smoking causes cancer. Their primary agenda appears to be this: protect the right to put smoke — in your lungs or in our air.

And they are guns for hire. They’ve received $800,000 from Exxon since 1998 to mount their denialist campaign. Please recall, it was in 1998 that we saw the disclosure of that famous oil industry memo — the one that kicked off a deliberate campaign to sow doubt on climate science in order to protect industry profits.

The Wall Street Journal’s Denialism

So step one is to make sure that we do not let Heartland and its comrades-in-arms at the John Locke Foundation and many other places use the noble title “skeptic.” They are not skeptics in the least. They demean the tradition.

By calling themselves “skeptics” they engage in a form of propaganda that would make Stalin proud. Because this conference and their intensifying denialist campaign is murdering truth to serve ideological ends.

What is also worth noting is that they have the support of one of the great organs of denialist propaganda — the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. The editors there — led by Paul Gigot — have long supported the denialist enterprise, and last week wrote in support of the Heartland conference. It has required the Journal to be in denial of the action afoot to put a price on carbon and to capitalize upon the opportunity, the hottest business story there is.

Yet these editors refuse responsible engagement with this reality and prefer to turn it on its head. They support denialism and so force themselves into adopting an anti-business position. Isn’t that odd — the Wall Street Journal, America’s financial newspaper of record — anti-business? It would be like Johnson & Johnson, known for Band-Aids and baby powder, campaigning to promote assisted suicide.

Alarmists

Not only have the denialists stolen the noble name that belongs to the Earth’s honest scientists, they have coined a term to unfairly label the true scientists and skeptics: “alarmists.” It is amazing that we let the denialists get away with this crime. If they tried to do the same thing in the realm of medical science instead of climate science, we’d have thrown them in jail a long time ago.

Would we call a medical doctor who diagnoses a terminal disease and prescribes a difficult cure an “alarmist”? Are the doctors who identified AIDS and SARS and other epidemics — alarmists?

Let’s say you were an HMO intent on denial — of coverage — for these conditions, and you bankrolled a campaign so you wouldn’t have to pay for the cures — as Exxon has bankrolled Heartland. That would be called practicing medicine without a license. And we would all be horrified by the callous disregard for human life, lock up the offenders and throw away the key.

So let’s not be fooled by the false dichotomy that the fossil fuel propaganda machine has succeeded in selling to the media and the American public. It looks like there is a debate between skeptics and alarmists over global warming. There isn’t. It’s a manufactured illusion.

What’s really going on is this: there’s a war being waged by denialists against scientists, who are the true skeptics, and against humankind and against the earth.

It is a war that the media has yet to cover, and it is a war that should be the cause of universal alarm.

Endnote:

computer models are not “empirical science”, and the only evidence of future climate change (with or without dire consequences) is based on output of computer models.

How much faith one should put in this output is doubtful. Quoting from a posting above:

“We missed what was right in front of our eyes,” says Prof. Russell.

Glad to hear you’re making progress with your little toy, Doc. Do get back to us when you guys have at least located the right planet.

Here’s Patrick: The fact the items are correlated doesn’t prove causation and that is precisely what a theory would have to accomplish. Furthermore you would have to use the theory to accurately predict future climate as well as it’s effects on wildlife, humans, etc., as well as the rate of change. We’re not even close to showing all this, hence, “theory.” Posted by: Patrick | Mar 3, 2008 6:37:14 PM

Patrick is a man who, if he was given an F in high school algebra for not applying a quadratic equation correctly, would accuse the teacher of being biased toward the “politically correct” theory of multiplication and failing to consider other competing, free market theories.

Did you work for Arthur Anderson, by chance ?

Patrick is a man who, if he was given an F in high school algebra for not applying a quadratic equation correctly, would accuse the teacher of being biased toward the “politically correct” theory of multiplication and failing to consider other competing, free market theories.

Doug, LOL WHAT. I’m not sure where this whole BS hate fest thing came from. Here I am, commenting generally, and you decided that I’m some liberal POS. Actually I’m not sure you think that. Apparently you think I work for The Man at Enron. Thanks for letting your politics show through though.

But whatever, you’re obviously not listening to me. Have fun continuing to flame people over the internet.

And for what it its worth–I have an undergrad degree in mathematics and politics (double) and a grad degree in computer science. I spent a year doing statistics. I am versed enough in the details to be able brush off your inane comments in about a half second.

Maybe you should learn how to read sentences?

Wow.

I’m beginning to appreciate how Galileo must have felt surrounded by the unenlightened multitudes.
.

MA, character flaw? LOL! Your liberal closet is full, and you act like the rest of the high priests of the left with your hypocrisy. Unsoiled my arse.

Do you ever talk economics, or are you here for comedy?

Whammer wins the debate.

Both Political Juntas are corrupt to maximum potential. It’s hysterical to think that sheeple actually pin their hopes on one group or another. You are sheeple who are easily led without well reasoned thought of your own. Who among the elites is for the J6P’s of the world? As per usual, not a damn one of them, but by all means delude yourselves with supposed saviors who will magically make it all better and right for everyone.

Meanwhile they steal us all blind. “Saps” is the word that comes to mind for your religious zealotry to the Juntas. McCain, Clinton, Obama for the J6P’s of the world is laughable. You have a better chance of finding Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers.

Last!

Having not seen the program you refer to, I’ve no basis to comment on either its contents or your analysis of its various flaws.

However, where you say “and while we may have vineyards and a wonderful time here in the UK, […]”, I believe that would simply return Britain to the exceedingly warm and cheery weather prior to the Little Ice Age which wiped out the many British vineyards planted during the Roman occupation.

It is difficult to quarrel with the assertion that the earth changes over time, though that certainly cannot lead to any sense of comfort. Indeed, the earth has evolved through prior extreme climatic periods which — if repeated — would surely eliminate most or all human life on this planet.

Those conditions may very well come again, whether or not mankind does or does not change its evil ways.

That leaves an interesting puzzle to ponder: if whatever we invest in time and energy to overcome a long term trend that will arrive no matter what, then would that not eventually prove to be a classic (and fatal) misallocation of resources?

After all, if the planet eventually will go to hell in a ball of fire, in any case, then the appropriate human action going forward would be to figure out how to migrate elsewhere — a completely different set of technological skills than figuring out how to reduce carbon emissions or abate rising sea levels.