The Great Barrier Reef and the prophets of doom
south west |
the environment |
opinion/analysis
Wednesday January 07, 2009 23:09
by Vax
The Consensus on Global Warming does not exist anywhere - certainly not in the SW of the UK
The absence of ongoing global warming over the past decade and pronounced global cooling of the past year cannot credibly be dismissed as simple local variability in weather. It is clearly global and contrary to all predictions of carbon dioxide governed global warming.
The media are beginning to find news value in anthropogenic global warming doubts and the costs of ill-conceived countermeasures. Skeptical scientific opinions are increasingly being heard and conflicting new evidence appearing.
The alarmists have gone too far out on a very long limb for any retreat. A cooling trend in climate would be disastrous for the whole anthropogenic global warming ideology and result in a catastrophic loss of credibility for a large sector of the scientific community. The escalating fears they express appear to be based not so much on any important new evidence as on their own increasingly desperate hopes.
As we freeze in the SW with the coldest temperatures for decades this article from Dr Walter Starck has a PhD in marine science including post graduate training and professional experience in fisheries biology and makes the following comments on the hyped up article from Charlie Vernon that wrongly predicts the normal doom and gloom nonsense from the Church of Chicken Little hysteria merchants.
The comments once again belies the believers spin that a scientific consensus actually exists – it does not. They lie. This is important to all in Bristol and the SW as the proponants of GW would have us believe that a barrier accross the Severn is required. All iin the name of a false belief.
We in Bristol and the South West deserve better.
“I would like to make the following points in response to Charlie Veron’s article. Although Charlie Veron is a highly respected coral taxonomist many of the statements he made regarding climate change are at best doubtful. Like most biologists he appears to have accepted the "consensus" view of catastrophic climate change without being aware of a vast body of peer reviewed non-biological research that casts doubt on or directly refutes all of the major climatic claims he asserts as unqualified facts.
Here are some examples followed by my comments:
"… there have been several major episodes of mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef since this began in the late 1980s. Since then the frequency of bleaching events has increased ..."
Living, subfossil and fossil corals all indicate that bleaching associated with high temperatures is a common occurrence in reef corals. There is no evidence to indicate that either the frequency or severity of such events has increased.
"As the greenhouse effect from elevated carbon dioxide has increased, the oceans have absorbed more and more greenhouse heat."
Over the past several years global oceanic temperatures have in fact decreased.
"We are seeing abnormally heated water pulsed onto the Great Barrier Reef during El Niño cycles. When this happens, the ocean is further heated, to levels that corals have not experienced for millions of years."
Abundant uncontested evidence from numerous sediment studies indicates that the oceanic surface temperatures were higher than the present during the Medieval Warm Period about 1,000 years ago. There were even higher ones during the Holocene climate optimum 5,000-9,000 years ago and higher still during the last interglacial period about 125,000 years ago.
"Unfortunately, El Niño cycles appear to be becoming more frequent. This is because the oceans are reaching their upper temperature limit more and more frequently. In a couple of decades, every year will appear to be an El Niño year.”
Five hundred years of historical records and several millennia of sediment records indicate that the recent frequency and intensity of El Niño events is well within past limits and some the strongest events occurred during the cooler period of the Little Ice Age.
"The frequency and severity of bleaching events will continue to increase. That is certain."
The severe global bleaching event of 1998 has not been repeated in a decade despite an ongoing increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and oceanic surface temperatures have markedly decreased. Projections from highly dubious climate models are anything but certain.
"On present forecasts, the worst bleaching year we have had to date will be an average year by 2030. And it will be a good year by 2050."
This is an assertion based solely on an unqualified faith in the projections derived from unverified climate models which differ widely among themselves. These projections are also constantly changing with new "adjustments", are highly dependant on numerous uncertain assumptions and estimates, incorporate greatly simplified treatments of complex poorly understood phenomena and can be readily adjusted to produce a broad range of equally plausible projections. Most such models, in fact, predict little warming in the tropics but much greater increase at high latitudes.
"If we keep increasing greenhouse carbon dioxide, by 2050 at the very latest, the only corals left alive will be those hiding in refuges such as deep outer reef slopes. The rest of the Great Barrier Reef will be unrecognisable. Bacterial slime, largely devoid of life will be everywhere."
This isn't even supported by any model but might better be described as emotive dramatisation. Even the more extreme model projections only depict tropical oceanic warming still well within the limits that thriving reefs now tolerate in the Red Sea. Warmer water could also be expected to expand the geographic extent of reefs to higher latitudes.
"I cannot escape the conclusion that ocean acidification has played a major role in all five mass extinctions of the past."
"Cannot rule out the possibility …"
would be the strongest statement sound science could support. It is entirely unclear whether past acidification episodes caused the mass extinctions or were simply one of a number of disastrous accompaniments to massive volcanic or impact events which were the primary cause of the extinctions.
Three widespread studies of reef coral calcification rates in South-East Asia, on the Great Barrier Reef and in the Caribbean, all found substantially increased calcification rates during the past half century: however, the reef catastrophists have now come up with a much smaller scale study that found reduced average calcification during a 16-year period encompassing two bleaching events in a few specimens from inshore reefs on the Great Barrier Reef. Much has been made from this barely detectable trend in a very limited, highly varied, sample. Without the tenuous suggestion of a link to global warming it is doubtful the study would have even found publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
During the Cretaceous period when vast marine carbonate beds were deposited carbon dioxide levels were far higher than anything projected in connection with anthropogenic emissions.
"Corals speak unambiguously about climate change. They once survived in a world where carbon dioxide from volcanoes and methane was much higher than anything predicted today. But that was 50 million years ago. The accumulation of carbon dioxide then took millions of years, not just a few decades. Then there was time enough for oceans to equilibrate."
Many current reef coral genera survived this event. The idea that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide associated with massive vulcanism or meteoritic impact events took millions of years is only a convenient but unlikely assumption.
"… the rate of carbon dioxide increase we are now experiencing has no precedent in all known geological history."
Again, an unlikely assumption unsupported by any evidence. Although there is credible evidence for past carbon dioxide levels greater than any increase we may experience before all fossil fuel is consumed there is no evidence to indicate that past such increases took place much slower than the present one or that slower or faster would make any real difference
"Reefs are the ocean's canaries."
The canary in the coal mine analogy has been so overused for so many different things it is almost embarrassing to see any literate person employ it, all the more so for something as vast, ancient and tenacious as coral reefs.
"Climate change is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced."
Only in the event that it proves to be both real and as damaging as the prophets of doom proclaim. On the other hand, if it is indeed real but it prevents another ice age it could be the most fortunate event in human history.
"A brief look back at the staggering and accelerating technological advances of the past century is persuasive evidence that humans can find solutions if the political will is there to focus innovations in the right directions. We must buy ourselves time. Time for the innovators to do their job, to develop solutions and to create a future that is not dependent on fossil fuel. We, the citizens of the wealthy countries, are capable of achieving 50 per cent cuts in greenhouse emissions virtually immediately."
Australia's annual carbon dioxide emissions are about 1.5 per cent of the global total and barely equal to China's increase in six months. Estimates of natural uptake in our land and EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) area are greater than our emissions. As a nation we should be accumulating surplus carbon credits.
Without liquid hydrocarbon fuels for transportation and mobile machinery our existing economy cannot continue to function or to even feed the current population. It doesn't run on hypotheticals. At least several decades will be required for development and widespread implementation of alternative energy solutions. Premature attempts to adopt immature, unproven technology fostered by ill conceived subsidies and regulations entails a high risk of resulting in more harm than help. The emerging bio-fuels disaster is an example.
The biggest problem we face is not an unquantifiable risk of climate change at some unknown future time. It is keeping the economy functioning until energy alternatives are a functional reality. Inability of current fuel supplies to meet growing demand is confronting us now. Production of synfuel from coal is a proven technology that could fill the energy gap we face. The only obstacle to implementation is objections arising from the hypothetical danger of anthropogenic global warming.
The emerging choice is becoming more and more apparent. Do we adhere to the dogma of the climate change cult and endure consequent mass economic hardship including global hunger or risk a dubious prophesy to take a clear path to the future? Do we take the direct route down Easy Street or a detour through Jonestown?
The absence of ongoing global warming over the past decade and pronounced global cooling of the past year cannot credibly be dismissed as simple local variability in weather. It is clearly global and contrary to all predictions of carbon dioxide governed global warming.
The media are beginning to find news value in anthropogenic global warming doubts and the costs of ill-conceived countermeasures. Skeptical scientific opinions are increasingly being heard and conflicting new evidence appearing.
The alarmists have gone too far out on a very long limb for any retreat. A cooling trend in climate would be disastrous for the whole anthropogenic global warming ideology and result in a catastrophic loss of credibility for a large sector of the scientific community. The escalating fears they express appear to be based not so much on any important new evidence as on their own increasingly desperate hopes.
As for coral bleaching, the central fact never mentioned is that the high surface water temperatures associated with bleaching events are not the result of exceptionally high air temperatures. They result from extended periods of calm weather during which mixing from wave action ceases and surface layer becomes exceptionally warm. Such warming is especially marked in very shallow water such as on reef flats. At the same time the absence of waves also eliminates the wave driven currents that normally flush the reef top.
Bleaching conditions require at least a week or more of calm weather to develop and this may happen every few years, only once in a century, or never, depending on geographic location. On oceanic reefs it is less common due to ocean swell and currents even in calm weather. In coastal areas it is more common due to the absence of swell and reduced currents.
There is nothing to link extended periods of calm winds with global warming. In fact the climate models project increased winds.
Incidentally, I am a great admirer of Charlie Veron's outstanding work on coral systematics and have high regard for his knowledge of reefs but feel compelled to respectfully disagree with his pronouncements on climate change.
About the Author
Dr Walter Starck has a PhD in marine science including post graduate training and professional experience in fisheries biology. He is the editor and publisher of Golden Dolphin, a quarterly publication on CD focusing on diving, underwater photography and the ocean world.
The article may be from Australia - but the message to us all - even us here in Bristol and the SW is clear.
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131Here we have an impressive sounding man with credentials writing informed comment. Apparently. Except that if you apply a bit of scepticism and look behind the curtain all is not as it seems: Search Google Scholar for Walter Stark and you do find some science - done back in the 60s and 70s, a couple of papers and books - then nothing - for years - until in the 90s he resurfaces, not as a professor or attached to a research lab, no he is instead writing not science but opinion pieces. Coincidently all of his opinions - about how fishing quotas should be scrapped, why pollution is no threat to the wild life in the seas etc and are all the same positions of the business lobby in Australia. Then you discover that Walter Stark is a fellow of the Australian Environment Foundation and it all makes sense.
Walter Stark is a shill for a business front that pushes a pro-business case across the board, from pollution levels to nuclear power. It's hard to take seriously somebody who is paid to give a set opinion. It is interesting while he makes grand claims (such as the above) he does not produce actual research to back it up. It's easy to gush on about this and that - it is much harder to empirically prove it. Which he does not. For example in 2006 he was pushing the AEI's line on fishing and pushing to relax the rules, claiming;
"Well, the over-fishing thing doesn't have a shred of credibility, as an overall thing. I mean, you can always have an individual species that's particularly vulnerable in some way, that may be over-fished, but overall, the idea of our fisheries being over-fished just has no basis in reality."
Then you look at the science (as opposed to what the lobby group says) and it looks bleak and that Stark was wrong, as the top scientists in the field who actually do research (as opposed to cashing the oil industry cheques) for a living write;
Historical abundances of large consumer species were fantastically large in comparison with recent observations. Paleoecological, archaeological, and historical data show that time lags of decades to centuries occurred between the onset of overfishing and consequent changes in ecological communities... (Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems in Science Vol. 293. no. 5530, pp. 629 - 637.)
The last denialist post on the newswire ended with:
Be skeptical
It is the Scientific way.
But all they have not posted a single bit of real science, all they have posted is ill-informed and bias opinion. The epitath should read:
Ignore the science
It is the oil industry way.
As for the typical responce from BIM's resident priest of the Church of Chickin Little
I think the bit that says:-
"The alarmists have gone too far out on a very long limb for any retreat. A cooling trend in climate would be disastrous for the whole anthropogenic global warming ideology and result in a catastrophic loss of credibility for a large sector of the scientific community. The escalating fears they express appear to be based not so much on any important new evidence as on their own increasingly desperate hopes."
- sums up the predictable responce very very well.
I am surprized evidence "proving" he only uses Exxon fuel in his fleet of 4x4's wasn't listed as yet more of his crimes against the new religion.
"The escalating fears they express appear to be based not so much on any important new evidence as on their own increasingly desperate hopes."
Yes you are right, if only we had some industry shills who've not published any science for 30 years, we might have something to argue with.
Sadly the Church of Global Warming only has masses of empirical peer-review research. Oh, and the mass socialist conspiracy pulling the wool over your eyes by (somehow) getting 99% of climatologists to lie and manipulate research and invent data - right under Bush's nose too!
I could cite the Nature report summarising what the science learned in 2008:
http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0901/pdf/climate.pdf but we all know the climatologists who did the research are all on the take.
I could cite how the Arctic summer sea ice is in rapid decline, interestingly 2008 was the 2nd lowest extent on record after 2007 http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews but we all know the anarchist polar bears are to blame, chopping up ice for use in their G&Ts.
I could cite the ongoing changes in species distribution changes that show it is happening now http://www.aussmc.org.au/warming_changing_world.php but we all know voles are socialists.
I could point to how Glacier National Park has gone from somewhere between 120 and 150 glaciers 100 years ago to a couple of dozen today. http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=6448061 but we all know that Glaciers are communists.
Any how got to go and write my sermon for the Sunday service at St. Gore's Church.
You may like to ponder this. Now I know it is from the Torygraph and that will immediately make some go all unnecessary but please take on board that such comment is just the tip of the iceberg. Other sources are saying much the same.
In particular - read the comments.
But it is good that you recognise - even via an attempt at humour - that there is a deeply religious fervour to the shrill cries of the Climate change catastrophe fanatics.
Cries that ring very hollow as more and more data pile up each and every year that indicates anything but what the wild computer generated predictions say and which have been taken as a "gospel" truth by those that "believe"
...............
Global warming: Al Gore's convenient untruth freezes over
Posted By: Gerald Warner at Jan 7, 2009 at 18:09:34 [General]
Posted in:
Tags:Al Gore, global warming, Kerry Emanuel, Lewis Pugh
You have to wrap up well against this global warming. Over the past 48 hours the temperature has fallen as low as -12C in Dorset, with the sea at Poole Harbour frozen up to 20 yards from shore, and parts of Britain colder than Greenland. Phew, what a scorcher! Might be a good idea to start up the car (if it will start) and pump some more CO2 into the atmosphere before we freeze to death. What did the media warn us about climate change?
"There is very important climatic change going on right now, and it's not merely something of academic interest. It is something that, if it continues, will affect the whole human occupation of the earth - like a billion people starving. The effects are already showing up in a rather drastic way."
That apocalyptic warning came from Fortune magazine - in 1974, when it was alerting readers to an imminent new Ice Age. By 2006 it had conformed to the latest fashion and had revised its doomsday scenario to: "The media agrees with the majority of scientists: global warming is here. Now, what to do about it?" So much for the media as climatic arbiter.
In the current climate, Fortune's earlier scenario seems more plausible. A few months ago, Lewis Pugh set off on a much-hyped journey paddling a kayak to an "ice-free" North Pole: he was stopped by ice 600 miles from his destination and 100 miles south of where a canoeist had reached a century earlier. As this egg-on-face setback for climate alarmists illustrated, there was 9 per cent more ice at the Arctic last autumn than the year before. After a record ice melting there was a record freeze.
Although Arctic sea ice last summer reached the lowest level recorded since satellite observation began (an important qualification), Antarctic ice reached the highest, but Al Gore was not shouting about that. Global average temperatures hit a peak in 1998, but have been declining since. Now, to the further embarrassment of alarmists, Kerry Emanuel, professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, who first advanced the thesis of a connection between global warming and hurricanes, has rejected his own theory after further research.
Bad luck for Al Gore, who used the image of a hurricane emerging from a smoke stack to promote his fantasy extravaganza An Inconvenient Truth. The core ice samples featured in Gore's film actually proved that increased CO2 emissions have historically followed 800 years after warm periods - but what the hell, this ain't science, it's politics. Just how we are supposed to influence carbon emissions when mankind is only responsible for 3.5 per cent of them is unclear.
But the cash from UN grants, wind farms, carbon trading and all the billions squandered on a politically useful (to totalitarians) superstition is very clear indeed: this is big bucks. "Man-made" global warming is the new sub-prime commerce of the planet. Meantime, wrap up well.
You may like to ponder this. Now I know it is from the Torygraph and that will immediately make some go all unnecessary but please take on board that such comment is just the tip of the iceberg. Other sources are saying much the same.
Thanks for the link. I have read it. Again - there is a problem, this is not science. It is a media report of some science and the media often (due to a mix of lack of understanding, need for sensationalism and political bias) mis-interpret what the science says.
The torygraph in particular is notorious for mis-reporting the science of global warming. Take the example of the story based on Professor Ian Fairchild's work where the paper misrepresented his research then refused to correct it when he asked them and refused to allow him to post comments below the story that corrected it. You can read the whole sordid saga here: http://www.badscience.net/2009/01/the-telegraph-misrepr...them/
So on to the article - the usual mix of misinterpretation. The opening gambit about global cooling to set the scene - so a media outlet reported that and they were wrong - hold the front page! As to if the science backed the claims - it didn't and this 'they predicted global cooling' myth has been debunked: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/03/t...mole/
Now to the work of MIT's Kerry - I assume as a 'sceptic' you didn't take somebody else's word for it and read the source itself? ftp://texmex.mit.edu/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/Emanuel_etal_20...8.pdf and I would recommend it, a fascinating piece of science. If you read it, there are a couple of important bases of past research it uses to build upon -
1. that global warming is real and happening.
2. that the models work.
Assuming (as I do) you have read and understood the evidence for these, and that (as I do) to accept these precepts he goes on report that recent techniques show that global warming might lead to less not more hurricanes, however in some localised areas there might be more.
If you have argued that global warming is not happening and/or don't believe in climate modelling - this report is no use to you.
As to the its-cold-now-so-how-can-it-be-warming stuff - again I have dealt with that before, but here is a good breakdown of why it is wrong using the torygraph as an example http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/the-torygra...lism/
So the MIT research - yes it is interesting - yes it adds to our understanding of global warming and the conclusions thus far are not 100% - more research on modelling and more data is needed. But it is completely at odds with the torygraph article's push that is trying to suggest 'it is not happening'.
As to the 'religious' claim - me thinks the lady doth protest too much - global warming denialism is being championed alongside creationism by the same groups;
Senate Bill 320 (document), prefiled in the Oklahoma Senate and scheduled for a first reading on February 2, 2009, is apparently the first antievolution bill of 2009. Entitled the "Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act," ... The only topics specifically mentioned as controversial are "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."
With friends like these... http://ncseweb.org/news/2009/01/antievolution-legislati...03647
Now do you have any current science as opposed to media stories and random polemics that back your case....
The summer will be a good one and you cane then come back and proclaim "we're all gonna die!"
LOL!
You will - because it is no longer all going your way.
The catastrophic porn type fantasies of some were tolerated when all was going well.
Now that it isn't, the world and his wife are looking in far greater detail at the truth. After all if you do not have the odd few $billion sloshing arround anymore - you are unlikely to want to waste what you do have on some unproven idea drummed up by those on a mission, those who want grant money and those who are failed US Presidential Candidates.
"A satellite image of a hurricane emanating from a smokestack featured prominently in promotions for Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. [...] In the new paper, Emanuel and his co-authors project activity nearly two centuries hence, finding an overall drop in the number of hurricanes around the world, while the intensity of storms in some regions does rise. [...] By publishing his new paper, and by the virtue of his high profile, Emanuel could be a catalyst for further agreement in the field of hurricanes and global warming, Curry said.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/news/5693436.html
Update: RE: Hurricane expert: ‘Models are simply not faithfully reproducing what nature is doing’
Emanuel told the NY Times: “The models are telling us something quite different from what nature seems to be telling us. There are various interpretations possible, e.g. a) The big increase in hurricane power over the past 30 years or so may not have much to do with global warming, or b) The models are simply not faithfully reproducing what nature is doing. Hard to know which to believe yet.”
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/hurricane-...link/
Enjoy the ride - it is going to be a bumpy one for some.
"It is a media report of some science and the media often (due to a mix of lack of understanding, need for sensationalism and political bias) mis-interpret what the science says"
and you Mr606 and every other believer joined the rat pack some time ago!
All reports on climate change are partisan; the subject has vested interest written deep within it on every side, none of it can be trusted, none of it is beyond reproach and most sensible people meet it with due scepticism.
So what does that mean to the ordinary Joe if climate change is indeed happening?
Is it nothing more than nature taking care of itself;? up to a billion or more may starve; umpteem more billion may die from disease or flood or heatwave or cold; over months or years or centuries.
Thus nature will remove what ails it which is afterall humanity which equates to consumption which brings about climate change; if you are to be believed.
Those that survive will be those who can afford the houses on the hill or other means to dodge the calamity that comes their way, same as any other day. Mostly the poor will perish, which is why it means so much to the comfortable, liberal, western, middle classes. What they forget is that these poor people they have never met face these same challenges day in and day out every day of their lives.
and what of polar Bears? well what of em ? Dinosaurs the lot of them.
Halve the population of the world and you will have half the emissions. If you do not address that point by managing it you are merely delaying the inevitable, because try as you might to reduce everyones impact on the world you will never overcome the single impact of population growth.
So personally, i am not bothered; the CC=catastrophe debate will rage on and on, but in the end it will be nature that takes care of things, it always does.
I guess the short answer is, 'no we don't have any science to back our claims'.
The problem is, I have not seen a denailist tackle as yet is the issue of the science. The only actual science paper offered (re polar bear numbers) was full of evidence for global warming.
You see, During discussions, often I see people with little or no scientific background debating the subject of climate change as they seem convinced just a little "common sense" definitely is more than sufficient to join a debate on a scientific issue. http://jules-klimaat.blogspot.com/2009/01/loose-thoughts-on-some-frequent.html
Because what we have is a mass of data - temperatures, ice-core samples, climate models, ecological movements, geological data tec and more arrives all the time, so here is a sample of a few bits of science done - in just 1 week...
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Ocean_Observations_Re....html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/0812311318...3.htm
http://www.enn.com/sci-tech/article/38959
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/sicp-gs1...8.php
and more here; http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2009/01/gw_news_j...9.php
We are seeing loads of odd activity - with the weather cycles, with temperatures, with ecological systems and so on all over the world - global warming caused by human activity is the only theory we have that accounts of the huge amount of data gathered. As science works on the basis of falisibility - this theory stands until the mass of data is either overrun with a new mass of data telling us something different or a new theory that explains the data is postulated.
Denailism and its close cousin creationism both seek to overthrow a theory with voluminous masses of data by sniping away in a PR battle. For all the flack posted - none of it is science and none of it threatens the theory.
The theory of global warming is based on so much, much, much more data that the link between hurricanes or the water levels of Australian reservoirs.
If you want to prove your case, you need to stop spinning and do some science.
You are rather missing the point.
And that point is that there are scientists that now question, openly, the belief that you and some others take as fact. And now more and more are feeling comfortable enough to say what they think rather than keep stum for fear of a backlash by the “believers”.
You just have to look at the likes of Lomborg (and please spare us the normal diatribe you spout everytime this worthy economist is mentioned because the vicious attacks on him by the Believers Church have been seen for what they are.
The “desperate hope” (a bit like the “Forlorn Hope” platoons in the Peninsular wars) quoted earlier and truly applies to virtually all of your posts because as soon as a dissenting voice appears, so do you – ever desperate to tear down, disprove, deny and denigrate. The desperate nature of your various responses is just highlighted, underlined and capitalised in the typical wordwoose you give.
Never mind the quality – just pile it on.
As you are let protesting away it reminds one of the “Sing them another song Donna” laugh on Saturday night TV.
No the point is that the models predicted quite the opposite of what is happening and what has happened since 1998.
The Aqua Satellites now indicate that there is a negative feedback loop not a positive one that all the alarmist computer models assumed.
When you talk about Spin – talk about the 9 inconvenient truths in the Gore film that rather than make him a laughing stock and figure of pity, the scientific community think that such behaviour warrants the Nobel Prize.
Think about the IPCC and how it obtains its consensus and the fact that the alarmists write the conclusions regardless of the input from the scientists. Many Scientists have now resigned from the IPCC in protest at how the science is “politicised” and spun.
Have a look at the House of Lords report on the politicisation and monopolisation of truth within the IPCC – it makes for stunning reading!
Look at the fact that the Oceans have cooled of late rather than got warmer? – that was not in your predictions
And now we have an economic crisis born of silly bankers who believed they could do and say what they wanted and it would all keep going their way.
But the best thing about this economic crisis is that without the excess $’s and £’s sloshing about, people are now asking difficult questions of the “believers” and the conclusion is similar to that which we have with bankers.
We have silly alarmists who believed they could do and say what they wanted and it would all keep going there way.
Well it isn’t. The gravy train is slowing down and pretty soon it will stop. And once again, when faced with a truth that cannot be dealt with – we get the old “They are paid by the oil industry” nonsense. So, so, so, predictable. The schoolboy/girl wish for economic chaos is only tolerated when the world was rich. Now it has to watch its pennies - your claims come under far closer scrutiny.
Time to get real – not live in a false computer model world. As I said last year – all we sceptics have to do is to sit back and watch what unfolds – the believers have to hope that their doom and gloom predictions are true! – What a way to live!!!!
I wish I could welcome you to the real world but you seem determined not to enjoy it – so you had better just make the best of it. Because as someone said earlier – for some it is going to be a bumpy ride!
No doubt as our resident Priest of the Church of Chickin Little (I do love that!) you are already forming a response, based upon yet more biased science designed to prove that you are right and those of us with a question are wrong even to think differently to you.
So you have to ask yourself the question – is this a good use of your time?
'up to a billion or more may starve; umpteem more billion may die from disease or flood or heatwave or cold; over months or years or centuries.
Thus nature will remove what ails it which is afterall humanity which equates to consumption which brings about climate change; if you are to be believed.
Those that survive will be those who can afford the houses on the hill or other means to dodge the calamity that comes their way, same as any other day. Mostly the poor will perish,..'
So personally, i am not bothered; the CC=catastrophe debate will rage on and on, but in the end it will be nature that takes care of things, it always does.'
...Yep, got it. You don't care about poor people. You aren't poor, therefore if a billion poor people starve to death you don't give a shit...
...What a lovely person you are...
...The reason no one here can take you seriously is that as activists we do care about other people, and about trying to make our communities (both local and global) a nicer place for everyone to live.
You need to get out more matey.
More people die of cold and cold related illnesses.
And any way - its is getting colder - bugger it!
Just when we all thought it was going to get nice and warm, we are now told that it will be cooler for a decade or so.
What a pisser.
Err - it is not us that needs proof.
This is a fair debate, You get to make any claim you want and don't have to offer any proof. Nice. Climate David-Ike-ism.
And that point is that there are scientists that now question, openly, the belief that you and some others take as fact.
Links? Evidence? Also I think you need to read a little more about the scientific method. The facts are the data gathered, the theory is explains the facts. The theory stats until either an alternative that accommodates the facts or new data emerges. Perhaps this is why denialism is struggling so much. Here's a pointer 'cos I am nice... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
You just have to look at the likes of Lomborg
I get do tired of repeating the same points. Lomborg does not depute the facts, he accepts the IPCC and thinks global warming is happening and that we are causing it. He disputes what should be our response.
It would help if you gave references to the science for all your claims. Oh, I forgot, you don't need to prove anything....
Again..(join in on the chorus)...
The Aqua Satellites now indicate...
What do you mean? Spencer's non-peer reviewed work? From the figures he has shown he is using different averaging periods for the data and the models (12 month running mean vs. 91 running mean) and is not stated whether he is looking at analogous periods. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/f...08616
Many Scientists have now resigned from the IPCC in protest
Links? I assume you mean Reiter and Landsea - so two, not what I would call many....and Reiter's an Exxon funded shill.
Look at the fact that the Oceans have cooled of late rather than got warmer?
Again - links to the science? I assume this is Lyman (2006) - however the cooling trend was found to be exagerated when Lyman et al updated their results in Correction to “Recent Cooling 1 of the Upper Ocean” (Willis 2007). Systematic measurement biases introduced a spurious cooling trend since 2003. http://www.skepticalscience.com/cooling-oceans.htm
Well it isn’t. The gravy train is slowing down and pretty soon it will stop.
Err evidence? Oh I forgot, you don't need to prove anything. Given that Obama accepts the science (unlike Bush, who failed to expose the socialist conspiracy...) Given that Exxon, who has funded $100,000 into denail now accepts the reality of the data and even Frank Luntz, the guy who wrote the strategy book on denailism has accepted the science. Sorry, I can't see any evidence for the change you hope for.
But I forgot, you get to claim what you want and don't have to prove anything...
However as a Deacon of the Church of Chickin Little (not priest, I got promoted by Pope Gore) - is this a waste of my time? I guess as much as it is of yours. But it is fun.
Doomed to a fatal delusion over climate change. Now there is a surprise.
What is not surprising is the number of articles appearing now openly questioning the Church of Chickin Little. This is just one from our friends in Oz. No doubt the Priest with similar delusions of grandeur will be along in a minute with suggestions that all were paid by Exxon to break wind in church and demanding that they be shot at the crack of nuts.
Article from: Andrew Bolt
July 09, 2008 12:00am
PSYCHIATRISTS in Australia have detected the first case of "climate change delusion" - and they haven't even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global warming guru.
Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children's Hospital say this delusion was a "previously unreported phenomenon".
"A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events."
(So have Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, Profit of Doom Al Gore and Sir Richard Brazen, but I digress.)
"The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies."
But never mind the poor boy, who became too terrified even to drink. What's scarier is that people in charge of our Government seem to suffer from this "climate change delusion", too.
Here is Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday, with his own apocalyptic vision: "If we do not begin reducing the nation's levels of carbon pollution, Australia's economy will face more frequent and severe droughts, less water, reduced food production and devastation of areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu wetlands."
And here is a senior Sydney Morning Herald journalist aghast at the horrors described in the report on global warming released on Friday by Rudd's guru, Professor Ross Garnaut: "Australians must pay more for petrol, food and energy or ultimately face a rising death toll . . ."
Wow. Pay more for food or die. Is that Rudd's next campaign slogan?
Of course, we can laugh at this -- and must -- but the price for such folly may soon be your job, or at least your cash.
Rudd and Garnaut want to scare you into backing their plan to force people who produce everything from petrol to coal-fired electricity, from steel to soft drinks, to pay for licences to emit carbon dioxide -- the gas they think is heating the world to hell.
The cost of those licences, totalling in the billions, will then be passed on to you through higher bills for petrol, power, food, housing, air travel and anything else that uses lots of gassy power. In some countries they're even planning to tax farting cows, so there's no end to the ways you can be stung.
Rudd hopes this pain will make you switch to expensive but less gassy alternatives, and -- hey presto -- the world's temperature will then fall, just like it's actually done since the day Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth.
But you'll have spotted already the big flaw in Rudd's mad plan -- one that confirms he and Garnaut really do have delusions.
The truth is Australia on its own emits less than 1.5 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide. Any savings we make will make no real difference, given that China (now the biggest emitter) and India (the fourth) are booming so fast that they alone will pump out 42 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases by 2030.
Indeed, so fast are the world's emissions growing -- by 3.1 per cent a year thanks mostly to these two giants -- that the 20 per cent cuts Rudd demands of Australians by 2020 would be swallowed up in just 28 days. That's how little our multi-billions of dollars in sacrifices will matter.
And that's why Rudd's claim that we'll be ruined if we don't cut Australia's gases is a lie. To be blunt.
Ask Rudd's guru. Garnaut on Friday admitted any cuts we make will be useless unless they inspire other countries to do the same -- especially China and India: "Only a global agreement has any prospect of reducing risks of dangerous climate change to acceptable levels."
So almost everything depends on China and India copying us. But the chances of that? A big, round zero.
A year ago China released its own global warming strategy -- its own Garnaut report -- which bluntly refused to cut its total emissions.
Said Ma Kai, head of China's powerful State Council: "China does not commit to any quantified emissions-reduction commitments . . . our efforts to fight climate change must not come at the expense of economic growth."
In fact, we had to get used to more gas from China, not less: "It is quite inevitable that during this (industrialisation) stage, China's energy consumption and CO2 emissions will be quite high."
Last month, India likewise issued its National Action Plan on Climate Change, and also rejected Rudd-style cuts.
The plan's authors, the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, said India would rather save its people from poverty than global warming, and would not cut growth to cut gases.
"It is obvious that India needs to substantially increase its per capita energy consumption to provide a minimally acceptable level of wellbeing to its people."
The plan's only real promise was in fact a threat: "India is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no point exceed that of developed countries."
Gee, thanks. That, of course, means India won't stop its per capita emissions (now at 1.02 tonnes) from growing until they match those of countries such as the US (now 20 tonnes). Given it has one billion people, that's a promise to gas the world like it's never been gassed before.
So is this our death warrant? Should this news have you seeing apocalyptic visions, too?
Well, no. What makes the Indian report so interesting is that unlike our Ross Garnaut, who just accepted the word of those scientists wailing we faced doom, the Indian experts went to the trouble to check what the climate was actually doing and why.
Their conclusion? They couldn't actually find anything bad in India that was caused by man-made warming: "No firm link between the documented (climate) changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established."
In fact, they couldn't find much change in the climate at all.
Yes, India's surface temperature over a century had inched up by 0.4 degrees, but there had been no change in trends for large-scale droughts and floods, or rain: "The observed monsoon rainfall at the all-India level does not show any significant trend . . ."
It even dismissed the panic Al Gore helped to whip up about melting Himalayan glaciers: "While recession of some glaciers has occurred in some Himalayan regions in recent years, the trend is not consistent across the entire mountain chain. It is, accordingly, too early to establish long-term trends, or their causation, in respect of which there are several hypotheses."
Nor was that the only sign that India's Council on Climate Change had kept its cool while our Rudd and Garnaut lost theirs.
For example, the Indians rightly insisted nuclear power had to be part of any real plan to cut emissions. Rudd and Garnaut won't even discuss it.
The Indians also pointed out that no feasible technology to trap and bury the gasses of coal-fired power stations had yet been developed "and there are serious questions about the cost as well (as) permanence of the CO2 storage repositories".
Rudd and Garnaut, however, keep offering this dream to make us think our power stations can survive their emissions trading scheme, when state governments warn they may not.
In every case the Indians are pragmatic where Rudd and Garnaut are having delusions -- delusions about an apocalypse, about cutting gases without going nuclear, about saving power stations they'll instead drive broke.
And there's that delusion on which their whole plan is built -- that India and China will follow our sacrifice by cutting their throats, too.
So psychiatrists are treating a 17-year-old tipped over the edge by global warming fearmongers?
Pray that their next patients will be two men whose own delusions threaten to drive our whole economy over the edge as well.
..........................
Pray that we in the SW see the reality and not the Chickin Little spin.
No doubt the Priest with similar delusions of grandeur will be along in a minute with suggestions that all were paid by Exxon to break wind in church and demanding that they be shot at the crack of nuts.
I'm Deacon, not a Priest. Please, if we're going to use imaginary made-up titles, can we use my correct imaginary made-up title? Thanks.
As to the article...come on Andrew Bolt - please! A conservative newspaper commentator - not a scientist...Is this the best you can drag up? Blot. Oh man....he can't even get the most basic fact right:
Andrew Bolt has come another cropper after he posted a graph showing a cool April [2007] in Australia and implied that this was evidence against global warming. Unfortunately for Bolt, the cool April was in 2006. http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/05/bolt_pranked.php
and
[Andrew Bolt] posts graphs of falling stratospheric temperatures, which are predicted to occur when [CO2] increases, and claims this somehow indicates anthropogenic global warming is a fraud, when it actually occurs exactly as theorised. ...Note that he's now removed the graph from his post. http://n3xus6.blogspot.com/2007/05/whatits-2007-surely-....html
And there is more of Blot's D- understanding of Science.
Yours, Deacon606
Meanwhile back at the ranch. Gore sets up a carbon trading company and laughs at the sillyness of some for allowing him to make a film with 9 certified untruths for which the believers give him the Nobel Prize!
Do come on!
Please!
This is the problem with denailism, there are important issues to be debated, such as the deeply flawed ideas of a carbon market, but we can't debate what to do about climate change easily, because denailists are still trying to go on about if it is happening.
It would be great if we could move on to the real issues....
My post stating that labelling sceptics "denialists" - a stupid idea born of Monbiot who wished to licken sceptics as those that bwould deny the WW2 Holocaust - has been deleted.
What a surprise.
Labelling an ACC=Catastrophe sceptic a "denier" is akin to the furore born of the Paki and Sooty labels used in the gutter press story a few days ago.
So some on BIM want to build a better world do they?
And you better world includes censorship of those who do not think as you do does it?
How very Stalinist.
Not sure that stalinist is the right description.
As BIM has taken to publishing photos of people who don't agree with 'The Truth' I'd have thought that Redwatch was the more appropriate comparison......
@Jog, I think you'll find that the photo you are referring to has been hidden.
While yet another thread go's off topic thanks to the capitalist troll - I think I'll throw something in to the mix.
In the last week or so you have accused BIM volunteers of being both the Stasi and Stalinist.
I think even for a capitalist like you this is going from the stupidly sublime to the irrationally ridiculous.
I never heard of either the Stasi or Stalin giving their time free gratis and for nothing in order that EVERYONE could have a voice.
Your posts are always boring and mostly downright misleading to say the least, but lately even you have become just another hysterical denier of the truth.
The truth is BIM gives even trolls and capitalists like you a space to spout your pro-capitalist irrelevant garbage, deny THAT!
I was simply a curious student before I started reading BIM, thanks mostly to the rantings of biased and close-minded capitalists like you - I now know which side I'm on.
Personally I think that you are the best advert for anti-capitalism Bristol has ever seen.
What a great recruiter you are to anti-capitalism, well done Mr. Capitalist, keep up the good work Captain Mainwaring!
Good to see that the photo of a 'zionist' has been taken down ...... eventually.
It really shouldn't have gone up in the first place (what is the 1 hour delay for ??) & stayed up for far too long.
Sadly this sort of behaviour is what we have come to expect from BIM. The high minded ethical ideals compromised in the name of spin and propaganda.
Clearly the message regarding the obvious prejudice and name calling shown by some against those that simply do not follow “the Truth”, as Jog puts it, hit home.
Why else would a simply post that questions the right and wrongs of name calling prejudice be censored?
And how come such a post is removed when BIM states it wants a better world?
A better world for whom?
Just those that subscribe to a mutual admiration society and need to manipulate the facts it seems
"Labelling an ACC=Catastrophe sceptic a "denier" is akin to the furore born of the Paki and Sooty labels used in the gutter press story a few days ago."
You see race is something you can't pick, so to judge a person on the basis of their skin colour is wrong. Denailsim is a propaganda position and nothing to do with race. How does Quink conflate the two? You tell me, I have no idea of the logic being applied to make this comparison, but it is fun to read....
Anyway they are labelled as denailists because they deny one side of the argument and are not sceptics because a true sceptic applies scepticism across the board. It is a odd reading of the word to be a sceptic only to one side of a argument.
To end this post consider; http://jules-klimaat.blogspot.com/2009/01/loose-thoughts-on-some-frequent.html
"During discussions, often I see people with little or no scientific background debating the subject of climate change as they seem convinced just a little "common sense" definitely is more than sufficient to join a debate on a scientific issue.....Actually, a lot of lobby arguments consist of cherry-picked conclusion, where the flaws aren’t in what they wrote, but in what they didn’t write. While everything written in the article can be 100 % correct, the paper can be wrong. Not having the background [in science] makes it impossible to detect such faulty science."
So how an individual who fails to say, grasp the most basic scientific premiss of the debate - difference between 'climate' and 'weather' (see http://anarchist606.blogspot.com/2009/01/denialist-war-....html ), and accept verbatim of the push of a lobby group ever be considered 'sceptical'.
Logically they can't. Logically they are in denial.
For example...
I said, "If you want to prove your case, you need to stop spinning and do some science."
Che replied "Err - it is not us that needs proof."
This is the mother of all logical fallacies - the idea that one side in a debate does not need proof. There are so many points why this it wrong that it is hard to know where to start - and such fun because you couldn't make it up if you tried! There is a mental-path that the Denialist world view follows to arrive at this point that is very interesting, it goes:
Does Scientific Study Give Evidence for Global Warming - Yes/No
- If 'yes' declare all scientists to be corrupt and on the gravy train.
- If 'no' claim victory.
I call it as I see it - this is denialism.
... yesterday if you dared to disagree you were a 'zionist', now we're back to calling people 'capitalists' if they deviate from the party line... how sweet....
All the posturing and bleating in the world does not cover up the fact that some on here - and we have a suspicion as to who that might be - are quite capable of removing what they feel others should not see in order to make the facts fit their version of the truth.
You either have a moral core or you don't.
Such manipulation of the truth proves you don't.
While yet another thread go's off topic thanks to the capitalist troll - I think I'll throw something in to the mix.
In the last week or so you have accused BIM volunteers of being both the Stasi and Stalinist.
I think even for a capitalist like you this is going from the stupidly sublime to the irrationally ridiculous.
I never heard of either the Stasi or Stalin giving their time free gratis and for nothing in order that EVERYONE could have a voice.
If everyone has a voice – how come some posts get deleted?
................
Your posts are always boring and mostly downright misleading to say the least, but lately even you have become just another hysterical denier of the truth.
No – I just have differing views that some – including you it seems as you have difficulty in comprehending that free thought and the right to free speech is something to be proud of – but instead we get posts that disappear!
..................
The truth is BIM gives even trolls and capitalists like you a space to spout your pro-capitalist irrelevant garbage, deny THAT!
I too hoped that BIM would provide that service for all of us – But whatever the quality of what is posted and whatever other people think of it – YOU CANNOT DENY THAT MY POST HAS DISAPEARED BECAUSE SOMEONE DID NOT LIKE ITS CONTENT! –(not shouting but did want to emphasise this point). And it was not defamatory – nor was it rude – nor did it have any obscene language. It was just censored on its content – Do you deny this?
.....................
I was simply a curious student before I started reading BIM, thanks mostly to the rantings of biased and close-minded capitalists like you - I now know which side I'm on.
Yeah right. We had a fridge magnet that said “Teenagers please leave home now whilst you still know everything” – it must be nice to live in a bubble where you know absolutely that you are right. Had you thought of invading a country? - I hear that is what people with your mind set do in their spare time.
......................
Personally I think that you are the best advert for anti-capitalism Bristol has ever seen.
Year right 2 – meanwhile the world gets on sorting out the greedy bankers and soon it will be situation normal.
......................
What a great recruiter you are to anti-capitalism, well done Mr. Capitalist, keep up the good work Captain Mainwaring!
You wish! - You constantly ignore the intelegence and education of the majority who see the similarities of how some so called anti-capitalists spin the facts, censor the truth and bully the weaker into a “belief” system.
As for my “good work” – it is paying dividends! - but that is a capitalist concept (dividends that is) I doubt you have any notion of.
And that is to your detriment.
I take it all that translates as, "We've got no science to post here so we'll change the argument and (again) claim persecution..."
---
Holmes: Think Lestrade, the complete absence of evidence, the hysteric claims that everyone else is part of a conspiracy, the false claims of credentials and misrepresenting others?
Lestrade: Of course! Monsieur Climate Denier! How did I not spot that....
Why is it that as soon as a comment gets hidden, some cry 'conspiracy'? AND USE CAPITAL LETTERS TO MAKE THE POINT?
I remember when another user (or possibly the same one) claimed conspiracy because some posters were using the EM tags - it was claimed this proved the bias. When it was pointed out that anyone can and does use the EM tags to make things in italics - well no apology to the hard working volunteers at BIM.
I also remember when another user (or possibly the same one) claimed conspiracy because some people were able to read posts before the hour limit was up. This, we were told was proof of a conspiracy. When it was pointed out there was a flaw in the hiding system that allowed anyone who figured it out could do this - well no apology to the hard working volunteers at BIM.
Here we are again with a cry of conspiracy and I would ask - if you are so censored, then why can I read your writings here?
Given the state of the global environment .............. should not the title read ........... "The profits of doom" ........... not prophets?
How many times do you need to be told?
Comments are only hidden if and when they breach BIM guidelines.
You have been banned in the past for breaching BIM guidelines many times.
Have you still not bothered to read them yet?
Which part of the guidelines can you not understand?
leaving a post for over three days and then deleting it?
The post was virtually the same as that posted by me earlier today - and that is still there. So I do know the Guidelines and I do follow them. But just look at yourselves!
"play the ball not the player"
None of your posts above do that. So who breaks the guidelines then?
But let's face it. If I and my fellow sceptics were not right about things like the attitude of some towards the reality of the true lack of any Global Warming and how a lot of people are now having distinct wobbly feelings about exactly WHAT (that was for "Emma") is going on, they would not get anywhere near as annoyed with the regular sceptical posts as they do.
The way some respond to posts of a sceptical nature, bears all the hallmarks of someone who has been accused of things that they know are completely true and does not like it one little bit! - So is it my fault that they are so ashamed? I hardly think so.
But they are. Hence their over the top reaction.
So so predictable you are
We have the science - you just have the beleif. A selection :-
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global...nthly
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Hansen_etal.pdf
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_...2.txt
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/taylor/indermuehle00grl.pdf
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarcti...2.txt
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/vostokco2.html
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/weekly/RecentIndices.txt
http://www.joelschwartz.com/pdfs/Holgate.pdf
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS/...EARLY
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119987971/ab...tract
http://www.scribd.com/doc/904914/A-comparison-of-tropic...age=6
Should take you a few googles to Church of Chickin' Little sites to trash that lot.
But I am sure you have the "faith" to do just that.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" - repeated time and time again throughout history by those who feel the need to engender panic and fear.
".........there is no absolute right when it comes to interpreting scientific data. For example..... when the London Times was reporting on the "The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894", it seemed all the world was doomed by unsavoury emissions and based on the facts of the day... "one writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure."
In the US....
"- At the end of the 19th century, there were an estimated 20 million horses used for transportation in the United States"
"- On a typical day in New York City, the streets were awash with 60,000 gallons of horse urine and buried beneath 2.5 million pounds of manure."
"- Today's federal environmental standards limit automotive tailpipe emissions of all regulated pollutants to less than 5 g/mile driven; a horse emits from its 'analogous points' 640 grams of solid waste and 300 grams of liquid waste per mile walked."
"- Tetanus, dysentery, and respiratory infections were serious urban health problems, especially for city children, stemming significantly from unsanitary conditions created by horses."
"- The annual cleanup cost of the mess for New York alone, including the removal of 15,000 horses who died annually on the streets, approached $100 million (in today's $)."
"- One quarter of the farmland in the US was used to grow food for horses."
But ........ In 1900 there was the crisis of 20 million horses in suburban American streets. By 1920, they were gone. Replaced by the motor car.
http://www.crumbtrail.org/mt/archives/000621.html
So you see, over and over again, history has shown that "the sky is falling" type fear mongering was unnecessary in solving environmental problems.
It's also interesting that the voice of the environmental crusade so often claiming the high moral ground, over the evil corporate world, actually draw fat executive wages through these wealthy environmental groups.
All from the fear monger dollar.
It's important to be aware that at big decision making level, all players have some sort of political of corporate agenda even if they claim pure morality.
By the way...... did you know that the Kyoto protocol costs $150 billion per annum to maintain?
Hmmmm! God bless bureaucracy and the IPCC. Without it all those civil servants would surely starve.
Picking a few at random...
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt is just a table of data values - no context so not sure what this proves.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Hansen_etal.pdf is a 2001 study about improving temperature data, it also notes that global mean temperatures are on the rise. It is part of the ongoing body of research that supports the current theory of global warming.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global...nthly - More data tables.
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2 - More data tables.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/taylor/indermuehle00grl.pdf Supports the models use by adding more data from historical ice cores that back up temperature reconstructions used.
Before I go on, did you actually read any of these links? Did you just pull it from a list that another denialist posted online claiming this supports your view? In a few minutes reading I can see nothing that contradicts the science; only papers that re-enforce it...if this is your evidence...
Not even needed Google yet. C'mon, you can do better than this...
This made me chuckle! But it does define the distinct increase in GW scepticism - a truly healthy thing in my view!
If it looses definition - then please read the original.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2009/01/16/gl...-post
By P.J. Gladnick (Bio | Archive)
January 16, 2009 - 08:06 ET
Please pay no attention to the evidence right outside your windows! Despite the fact that we are experiencing the coldest weather in decades, Kevin Grandia blogging at the Huffington Post wants you to ignore this and start worrying about the growing trend of global warming skepticism. According to Grandia, questioning the holy theology of the Church of Global Warming is a seriously disturbing heresy. He even catalogued the increased levels of global warming skepticism by analyzing Google search stats in excruciating detail:-
.........
Our 2008 analysis of global warming misinformation finds that there was a very significant upswing in online activity.
This trend should be troubling to US policymakers and campaigners wanting to implement new greenhouse gas reduction strategies.
Here's the stats I've generated as evidence of my conclusions:
"Global Warming" hoax
A Google blog search for the term "global warming" hoax between January 1, 2008 and January 1, 2009 reports 49,719 page results. The same search for the previous year reports only 22,077 page results."
Eeek! The number of global warming thought crimes more than doubled in just a year. Grandia continues to give us more "grim" Google statistics about this growing heresy:
"Global Warming" skeptic
"A Google blog search for the term "global warming" skeptic between January 1, 2008 and January 1, 2009 reports 73,956 page results. The same search for the previous year reports only 38,346 page results. Fancy graph.
Outside of a small band of ideologically motivated outlets, the majority of the mainstream media is unwilling to cover the nonsensical junk science of the right-wing think tanks and their cadre of scientists for hire. With this the case, the Internet is exploding with such information. And at the same time that we're seeing significantly more of this misinformation being spread about global warming online, we're also seeing more people than ever using the Internet as their main source of news and information."
But..but Kevin. How can we keep the majority of mainstream media, who are in the tank with you over global warming, from preventing their weather people from delivering reports about the record cold temperatures? Grandia delivers more sad news about why the global warming ideology is crumbling:
"Here's some recent findings that should trouble anyone working to implement new laws to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:
1) The Internet is now a larger source of news for people than newspapers.
Research conducted in December, 2008 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that the Internet is now used as a news source by more Americans than newspapers. The report found that: "for the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the Internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). Television continues to be cited most frequently as a main source for national and international news, at 70%.
2) Millions of people are seeking global warming information online.
In an average month more than 2.2 million people in the United States search for the term "global warming" on Google and another 368,000 people search for the term "climate change." The more climate misinformation that is posted on the Internet, the more likely that people searching for information on global warming will be exposed to it. In fact the number 2 search result for "global warming" on Google is currently a website run by the thoroughly discredited Competitive Enterprise Institute."
.......
Gasp! How dare people search for global warming information on their own outside of the reliable mainstream media which continues to support this climatic notion despite evidence to the contrary! Grandia concludes that in order to combat the growing global warming skepticism, more propaganda is going to have to shoved down the throat of the public:
"If this is going to be the year that we have the political leadership in the United States with the will to take real action on climate change, we're all going to have to double, or even triple our efforts to dispel the myths and lies being spread online about the realities of the situation."
Of course, in order to promote the global warming ideology, Grandia might want to start by silencing Harold Ambler who wrote this incredible heresy in his own Huffington Post:
" Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind."
So the first place to send in the global warming Thought Police would be right there in the Huffington Post. In fact, Kevin Grandia might want to send some of the comments on his own Huffington Post blog down the Memory Hole:-
"Man and Climate Scientists don't understand the earth's thermostat. Precipitation events have a cooling effect on the climate. 75% of the earth is covered by water, and we don't have accurate records of the precipitation events. The 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is not nearly as impressive as the name sounds. They have thrown out all conflicting data with their theory, and most have a political agenda of a one world government run by the United Nations."
No scientists doubts that global warming and global cooling exist. It is fact that there has been periods of warming and cooling in earths past due to ice core data and other types of research. What no one can truly claim is that this warming....possibly cooling phase now is man maid. Seeing as how the earth has been warming up and cooling down for as long as it's been a planet i'm going with a natural reason.
I tend to suspect apocalyptic theories because of their great popular appeal, particularly ones that make human beings culprits in our own demise. For me the jury is still out on global warming, and the internet will continue to be a source of information pro and con. I"m a skeptic rather than a dissenter.
Over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) and former Vice President Al Gore. This new 231-page U.S. Senate Minority Report -- updated from 2007"s groundbreaking report of over 400 scientists who voiced skepticism about the so-called global warming "consensus" -- features the skeptical voices of over 650 prominent international scientists, including many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN IPCC. This updated report includes an additional 250 ( and growing ) scientists and climate researchers since the initial release in December 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists ( 52 ) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.
And remember, Kevin, the above replies to your blog were made on that dreaded Internet where you ironically posted your complaints about using the Web as a source for climate information.
..........................
The belief model is all going wobbly!
So there is more denialist activity online - I was not aware that science is a popularity contest? This proves nothing, after all around 135 million Americans believe in creationism and that god created the world around 10,000 years ago. http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/creation/evol...l.htm - That's a lot of people who are wrong.
The article you post also repeats the same denialist claims that have been proved wrong time and time again, so the grand sounding '650 scientists' I assume is a reference to the list maintained by Oil industry funded Senator Inhofe. There are people on the list who are not scientists and people on the list who are and have asked to be removed and Inhofe refuses to do so...
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/more_on_inhofes...o.php
http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/11/inhofe-morano-rec...gain/
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/650_internation...e.php
Anyway, back to the point - you posted the link to http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/taylor/indermuehle00grl.pdf
Perhaps you could explain to us;
1. what your position is - global warming is/is not happening and we are/are not to blame and it's impact will/won't be serious (you can prove a position without stating it!)
2. How the quoted study backs your position.
Deacon606 over and out!
“Picking some at random”!
Hardly! - and you "hardly" read them either!
As for the data arrays - they show a great deal - but not what the Church of Chickin Little would have the rest of us believe. No wonder you were so quick of the mark to do what you normally do as a true believer, out on your limb, with no way back. Must be getting increasingly uncomfortable out there.
For years every little storm every hurricane, every flood, every early spring was leapt upon by the Priests of the Church of Chickin Little as true evidence that Global Warming was going to kill us all. Then the warming stopped so we had a name change to Climate Change and then we saw that over time the Climate has always changed! - so we had another change to Climate Destabilisation.
Now we have a had a cold period that was not predicted and with much sucking of teeth and rather worried frowns the Priests of Chickin Little Church try to convince us that single events are not a prediction event. Why not!!!! - Has this not been EXACTLY (that was for Emma again xx) what the Church of Chickin Little has based its whole belief system on for the last decade or so?
You missed this by the way. You might have spotted it if you bothered to read and understand.
"Our data show no unequivocal correlation between warm periods (on a decaal to centennial time-scale) and accelerated sea-level rise".
Shame your Archbishop Go(re)d did not read that before he made his Disneyesk frightener of children (of all ages it seems!) that spoke of 20 ft walls of water killing men women and children.
I read the stuff on global warming with interest. And I was convinced for a long time but the lack of sensible debate and people saying that the debate is over is not what i want.
This article and others like it are more how I feel now. I post it because of the truly awful toadying article on hansen in the Guardian a few days ago. My god that made me feel sqirmy - what some say about the desperate talk of those that say global warming is real actually seems far more logical to me.
"A Desperate Man
Radicalism: In another example of junk science run amok, NASA scientist James Hansen wants oil executives put on trial for giving "misinformation" about his global warming theory.
Is this where society is headed?
If so, we are headed for a dangerous place. Only in totalitarian systems is dissent a criminal offense.
Hansen, who 20 years ago Monday cranked up the global warming scare with his congressional testimony, is a clever promoter. By fusing his pseudo science with the wild-eyed efforts of eco-activists, media dupes and pandering politicians, he's been able to convince the public that his flawed theory is actually holy writ.
Out of this has emerged a madness that has divided Westerners into "us," the believers, and "them," the skeptics who are looked down upon as socially irresponsible reprobates.
That's not enough for Hansen, though. He now wants to ratchet his machine up a few notches.
Put the oil men on trial, he says, because it's "a crime" for them to "have been putting out misinformation" that places doubt on his unproved — and unprovable — premise that man's use of fossil fuels is warming Earth.
We wonder: Will it be up to NASA's secret police to make the arrests that will be necessary to drag these men before the tribunal?
Al Gore, the most famous face of the global warming-industrial complex, has been saying for years that the debate is over, that science has declared humans are responsible for climate change.
He, of course, is wrong. There are skeptics in the scientific community, literally thousands of them.
Many are on the leash, however, afraid to speak out for fear of being bullied, denied research grants and ostracized for expressing politically incorrect doubt. For them, the debate is indeed over.
Those who refuse to be browbeaten, though, are in danger of seeing their careers ruined or, perhaps someday, sharing a prison cell with the oil executives Hansen wants to try.
Criminalize dissent: That's one way to ensure the debate is over.
Hansen's comment is revealing. It's the sort of declaration made by a desperate man trying to hang on to his declining relevance.
Hansen knows the climate of fear he has stoked is receding as more people start to see through his nonsense. He's just trying to stir up some storm clouds."
I simply had not see your post as it was well within the hour delay - if you refer to the timings you would have realised that. But then perhaps you did but just wanted to make a point?
Anyway - Vostock. - The paper shows that the correlation coefficient "R" was 0.83 for a time lag of 900 years.
Hmmmm! Spooky that.
Then it also says that another simulation they ran with a wider data array yielded a time lag of 1200 +/- 700 years.
THAT (for Emma again - bless her) is why this paper is of interest to us sceptics.
But no doubt you have all the trashing ability of an Alistair Campbell at your disposal to crap all over it.
I can't wait.
Yawn.
I do not do "side stepping"
Fair point on the timings, however I'd really like to know what your position is - global warming is/is not happening and we are/are not to blame and it's impact will/won't be serious.
Now we have a had a cold period that was not predicted...
It was, for the umpteenth time:
http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/article/689516?&conden...41757
As for:
"Our data show no unequivocal correlation between warm periods (on a decaal to centennial time-scale) and accelerated sea-level rise".
Bit of cherry picking going on here? From the same paper: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119987971/ab...TRY=0 The second period of accelerated sea-level rise occurred during the period of modern global warming that started at the end of the last century. I don't have a link for the full paper, but it seemed to me that this shows the 'little' warming and cooling periods of the past don't correlate with the sea rises. However this is for the past and it offers no conclusions (other than the quoted) for the future as the accelerated rate of greenhouse gas production of now in such a short period of time has no past precident.
As for Pope Gore's film - I can't comment as I've not seen it, but that is a film and we are talking science.
As for Vostock - the time lags quoted seem in accordance with the study thresholds: 900 as a mid point of 700±1200 on the scale of the overall 60 to 20 thousand years period of study. As they also say, it meets their expectations as it corresponds with Fischer et al's 1999 study. This study offers no evidence I can see that refutes the global warming theory.
Try this link and the ones below because humans contribute less than 1% of all gasses contribution to the poorly misunderstood green house effect.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckt...
When their predictions of a new ice age proved false back in the 70s the climate "experts" shifted from disastrous cooling caused from excess Co2 to excessive warming caused by Co2. Then things leveled off and started cooling after 2000 and the failure to make the expected profits off of Y2k so they played it safe this time by saying Co2 causes disastrous climate change.
This way no matter which way the climate shifts they feel they can still make a sizable profit off of it by securing grants and public money. There is nothing humans can do with our current level of technology to alter the world’s climate. We are unable to make any major adjustment either hotter or colder at this time despite the claims of godlike powers by the believers. Knowing the history of the world reasonably well helps a lot to see the outright lies the promoters of AGW continually make.
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spen...
http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105/1425chap...
First lie.
In the last 50, 100 or 150 years temperatures have risen faster and higher than any time in history.
Truth is, in every previously recorded climate optimum period it has gotten hotter faster than it has currently. In fact the year 1400 warming went from the bottom of the wolf minimum to a peak 3c hotter than our current maximum and down to the bottom of the Sporer minimum the coldest part of the little ice age in about 100 years. Also the current climate optimum is the coldest ever recorded and is as cold as at least one historical climate minimum the Oort the came in the early part of the MWP.
Second lie.
It has never been this hot in all of history.
Truth is that at least 3 times in the last 1,000 years it has exceeded our current temperature by up to 5c, once for several hundred years.
Third lie
The Arctic Ocean has never been this ice free in history.
Truth is that during the Holocene, Roman and Medieval periods the Arctic Ocean was navigable most of the year most of the time. It was even more navigable during WWII than it is currently.
So it is not very difficult for anyone with a decent basic education to put the lie to any point the AGW crowd use to sell their pogrom to the less well educated.
The real problem here is believers cherry pick the evidence they want made public while skeptics feel that the general public should be allowed to learn the full truth about climate variations. Believers on the other hand only want the public to know about selected items that can be spun to favor their political pogrom.
Interesting point here is that skeptics provide evidence and discuss it as to its relevance while the faithful believers make smart guy remarks and try to trash those who take what they see as heretical positions. How long before the faithful drag out the stretching racks dipping chairs and guillotines to bring the heretics into line with the consensus doctrines?
Hansen threatening show trials and jail for energy company CEO's just underlines how absurd and flaky round the edges those that truly believe can become and how divorced from reality they are.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3312921/The-....html
The comments especially.
Forgive my obvious frustration - but I REALLY (that was for Emma again - bless) would have thought that my position as someone sceptical that the doom and gloom of GW/CC/CD is pretty much understood.
But then perhaps i overestimated you.
would have thought that my position as someone sceptical that the doom and gloom of GW/CC/CD
I see that but, as you cite a whole mish-mash of sources that range from global warming is not happening to that it is, from it is happening but it's the sun, to it is happening and we are causing it but it is not a problem and states between. So no, I am unsure.
What would help is;
Is it happening? Yes/No (I am 'yes').
Are humans causing it? Yes/No (I am 'yes')
Is it a serious problem? Yes/No (I am 'yes')
Thanks, Che.
As for the other links from Capt Picard/Milton - do keep up! We have been through this above and before, its the same old same old...
There was no consensus on global cooling within science; http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/689538?&condense_c...41817
The Telegraph is well know for false and inaccurate comment peices on global warming; http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/689538?&condense_c...41817
Christopher Booker is not a scientist which is why he gets his facts wrong and lies about the science; http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/11/mountains_out_o...s.php
Monkton is an amateur climatologist who gets the science and maths wrong; http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/moncktons_tripl...g.php and http://tamino.wordpress.com/2006/11/27/warming-up-to-ic...re-49 but there is loads more...
Roy Spencer is an oil industry shill http://www.desmogblog.com/roy-spencer and an advocate of 'intelligent design' (shows where he is on real science!) - and his science is just wrong; http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/roy_spencer_and...t.php
PS. New survey shows 97% of climatologists agree with consensus on global warming http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/97_of_active_cl...g.php - so much for the consensus collapsing that the denailosphere keeps promising...
97% of all those "actively" on the Global warming Bandwagon!
As for the Torygraph articles quoted by some - not surprised you try to deride them. But make no mistake - they do have a following. As do the others.
But I do laugh at your continued statements re accuracy and then you go all shy over Gores Inconvenient untruths.
And you cannot deny that the IPCC bastardises science by allowing political summaries that bear little relationship to the actual reports.
As you ask again - I will give you a potted outline of my thoughts for what they are worth.
Does Climate Change? - yes, it always has.
Does man have an influence? - yes, ever since we first used agriculture and fire.
Are there other factors that influence climate? - yes, particulate matter from volcanoes, the "wobbly" orbit of earth and the suns output are all factors that "the believers" would have us believe are constant - that way they can blame man. Talk to those that study these events and they will tell you that Climatologists are little better than weathermen and the models used to foretell catastrophe are crude, alarmist and used by a mutual admiration society to back slap each other because the rest of the scientific world looks on with disdain at a group that predicts catastrophe and states that the debate is over. It's just not science mate!
Do we have a serious problem? - only if we continue to use oil like there is no finite supply. But the real problem is if we waste $billions on carbon trading schemes that do nothing but put huge sums in Gores pocket and harm our economy whilst places like India and China just get on with it.
A question for you Anarchist!
Are you more interested in destroying Capitalism than saving the planet?
Does Climate Change? - yes, it always has.
Come on Che, that was not what I asked. Of course the climate changes (unless you are a young-earth creationist) - what I am asking is; is the climate changing now the research in the IPCC reports suggests. Yes/No please.
Does man have an influence? - yes, ever since we first used agriculture and fire.
Again, you're being a little evasive - I am asking if you answered 'yes' to the question above, then is this change due to human activity?
Thanks.
A question for you Anarchist!
Are you more interested in destroying Capitalism than saving the planet?
I don't think the capitalist system we have today is one that is either just or sustainable and we need alternatives - as to what they are, to be honest, I don't know. We will need to evolve them.
The planet will be fine until the sun dies. If you mean if I was forced to choose between saving people/the environment or destroying capitalism - I'd choose the former as life/nature is more important than my personal ideology.
The questions are answered and answered truthfully and well, covering the issues.
Just because the answers are not to your liking - you really cannot expect someone like me to pander to your need for certainty and “tunnel vision” thinking.
If you are certain that man and his activities will destroy the planet - then you carry on.
Just don't expect us sceptics who have been around a bit to accept the faith that you subscribe to.
As you well know - I do not believe that ACC=Catastrophe.
I do believe that to accept just one singly problem affects us here on this planet and ignore all others is absolute bloody madness!
Like I say - you are good at fishing for the answers you want. All you believers do that. Anyone that says different is attacked as a “denialist” with all those awful holocaust associations.
Trouble is - we are all now far wiser to the deception.
As for the IPCC, some of its “predictions” are not that worrisome – sea levels rising what was it 4 to 17 inches over many years? - Sea levels have varied far more than that in the past.
But then we have Gore who scares the children of today to death with his certain belief that 20ft of water is on the way.
We also have the like of Prof Reiter who demolishes the process of IPCC report generation. As do many others.
Interestingly a very recent BBC report on the Ice sheets stated that bits were breaking of. I expected the usual gleeful BBC treatment that “this was all down to man and CO2 and that it is all catastrophic!” – but no. The final words were that “some scientists believed that Climate change could be linked to man made emissions”
So very different to a few months ago when the BBC was abso-bloody-lutely convinced that it was all down to man and his excreting CO2 from every orifice.
When the BBC backs off – your biggest partner in crime - you should reappraise your stance.
Just a suggestion! ;0)
BBC 'Backing off' - Pull the other one!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7843186.stm
(New evidence on Antarctic warming)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7786910.stm
(Changes 'amplify Arctic warming')
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7669143.stm
(Alaska village faces eroded future)
http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0901/full/climate.20....html
The BBC ran a story on the warming Antarctic last night actually, so where on earth do the denialists get their 'facts' I wonder?
The continent of Antarctica is warming up in step with the rest of the world, according to a new analysis.
Scientists say data from satellites and weather stations indicate a warming of about 0.6C over the last 50 years.
Writing in the journal Nature, they say the trend is "difficult to explain" without the effect of rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, scientists in Antarctica say a major ice shelf is about to break away from the continent.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is said to be "hanging by a thread" from the Antarctic Peninsula, the strip of land pointing from the white continent towards the southern tip of South America.
Most of Antarctica's scientific stations are located along the peninsula, and scientists have known for many years that this portion of the continent is getting warmer.
But trends across the bulk of the continent have been much harder to discern, mainly because data from land stations is scarce.
It is somewhat insulated from the rest of the world's weather systems by winds and ocean currents that circulate around the perimeter.
In the new analysis, a team of US scientists combined data from land stations with satellite readings
"We have at least 25 years of data from satellites, and satellites have the huge advantage that they can see the whole continent," said Eric Steig from the University of Washington in Seattle.
"But the [land] stations have the advantage that they go back much further in time.
"So we combined the two; and what we found, in a nutshell, is that there is warming across the whole continent, it's stronger in winter and spring but it is there in all seasons."
They conclude that the eastern region of the continent, which is larger and colder than the western portion, is warming at 0.1C per decade, and the west at 0.17C per decade - faster than the global average.
The 2007 assessment of the global climate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded: "It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic (human-induced) warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent except Antarctica", with the word "likely" in this context meaning "at least 66% probability".
The scientists said this study did not change that picture, with natural climatic cycles probably involved as well as elevated greenhouse gas concentrations.
"It's hard to think of any situation where increased greenhouse gases would not lead to warming in Antarctica," said Drew Shindell from Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) in New York.
"We're almost certain that greenhouse gas increases are contributing to this warming, but what's difficult is to attribute this warming and so say how much is down to natural warming and how much down to anthropogenic causes."
Last year, scientists from the UK Met Office used climate models to attribute trends at the poles, and concluded that human emissions of greenhouse gases were largely responsible for the observed warming.
Gareth Marshall from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), who was not involved in the analysis, commented: "This study shows that, similar to the other six continents, Antarctica has undergone a significant warming over the past 50 years.
"The magnitude of this warming is similar to the rest of the southern hemisphere, where we believe it is likely that human activity has played some role in the temperature increase, and therefore it is also likely that this is the case regarding an Antarctic warming."
Cool analysis
Over the last 30 years, satellites have also shown that sea ice is slowly growing in extent around Antarctica, which some observers say indicates a cooling across the continent or at least in the surrounding seas.
But Walt Meier from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, which follows ice trends at the poles, said wind patterns were probably the main reason.
"Around Antarctica, the winds play a much bigger role than they do in the Arctic," he said.
"If they're blowing northwards you can grow ice quite quickly and in contrast if they blow southwards the ice can contract quickly, whereas in the Arctic it's much more constrained (by land masses).
"So this positive trend in the Antarctic is certainly not an indication of any cooling trend."
One region that has seen spectacular losses of ice in recent years is the peninsula.
A BAS team currently on site is reporting that the Wilkins shelf, about 15,000 sq km in area, is probably about to break free.
"It really could go at any minute, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the final cracks started to appear very soon," said BAS's David Vaughan.
If it does, it will follow the course of other shelves that have made breakaways in recent years, such as the Larsen B in 2002.
Although spectacular, such events are not necessarily due to man-made climate change.
A much bigger question is whether the new analysis of Antarctic warming heralds any major melting in the West Antarctic ice sheet, which could lead to big changes in sea level and global impacts.
"The vulnerability is higher than we thought, but still we face uncertainties in understanding these processes that make it very difficult to forecast when these changes would occur," said Drew Shindell.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7843186.stm
Denialists LIE!
Denialists - Trolls and shock horror probe! - Capitalists!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All names that some think will be so impactful that us sceptics will just crawl away.
Yawn!
Names are for the playground sonnyboy. Why don't you act like an adult and stop mud slinging hoping some of it will stick - it doesn’t - it just make the name caller look puerile.
Lindzen has a few comments on those of a mind set such as yours:-
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf
At one time the BBC had a stance of stating that the debate was settled.
They are no longer pushing that view.
Why is it that when someone simply differs in viewpoint to a believer they are in the eyes of the believers "Lying"
What is it about those that believe that makes them think that only they can possibly be right?
Some would call it arrogance.
It is going to be an interesting few years - I feel sorry for those who will have to change tack - like the Global Cooling advocates of the 1970's and those populationists that said we would all be starving by 2000 because the food would have run out.
The world has been full of scare stories over history. Some seem to need the fire & brimstone of disaster to give their lives meaning. Some in the past had to have sacrifices to ensure that the sun came up the next day.
Ridiculous notion we see that as know.
I wonder how all the believers will look back on this ACC=Catastrophe hoax in decades to come when we all look fondly back and say "my word that was when the world was hoodwinked".
Perhaps we could have a show trial and fine them just like Hansen wants to have a show trial for energy company CEO's for crimes they have not committed or is it the crime of just not agreeing with the High Priest of spin in the Church of Chickin Little.
The main person that has been shown in a court of law to be lying was Gore and his 9 certified untruths!
And yet according to the histrionics of those that believe - those that simply have a different view to them must be labelled "Denialists" which as a label is backfiring on them badly as the holocaust association is seen to be a really under the arm tactic, and must be accused of lying!
You have no idea of the damage you do to your own "cause" by acting so aggressively!
Like I say - you need to reappraise your position before you leave all credibility behind as you accelerate away on your journey above and beyond the reality horizon.
You did not "touch a nerve" as you so blatantly 'spin' it, what you did do however, was to LIE.
Pure and simple.
"The absence of ongoing global warming over the past decade" ?
You neglected to tell us which planet you are writing about, are you referring to a planet in our Solar -system?
The evidence of your post would indicate exactly the opposite of what you try to infer.
As for which planet?
Only someone unsure of their own wherabouts would ask that question.
So well done!
Another belligerent post that simply underlines how uncomfortably out on a limb you are.
No amount of your usual squirming – spinning - obfuscation – disinformation or verbal wriggling changes the fact that you told a lie.
You wrote that the BBC had ‘backed off’ from such reporting, yet within hours they posted a new story.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7843186.stm
On a scale of one to ten your credibility on all things environment related is in negative numbers, well done popsy!
"Church of capitalist pig large! - I SO love that one - brilliant!
No lie was told. I stated exactly what was said. The 10 o’clock news showed an enormous crack in an ice sheet and rather than the breathless doom and gloom certainty from the BBC that we have all got used to, the closing remark was that "some" climatologists linked this to CO2 emissions.
There was and there is no lie.
You are simply underlining the fact that you are deeply concerned about loosing credibility - which you are and such antics as running round accusing someone of lying when everyone that watched the news that night heard what was said is spin of the highest order.
As for the same old same old boring anti capitalist rant, again you just underline to all that your agenda is not anything to do with saving the planet, it is more about destroying the society that you feel isolated and divorced from. You have an Anti-capitalist agenda that has little to do with saving the planet. That is why “you” (collective - not aimed at an individual) consistently remove posts that you cannot deal with, (Quinks seems to be yet another sad example – I remember reading it then suddenly it was gone! – deleting evidence is just as much a lie!) and attack the individual against all the so called respect guidelines of BIM.
You have resorted to the morals of the despot.
I feel sorry for you.
When you are in a hole, mate - stop digging! The truth will out. All we sceptics have to do is sit back and wait and watch the believers squirm. It is going to be a good show based on the above warm up acts!!
Capitalists are hysterically funny!
Capitalists are not, and never can be 'skeptics' in the true sense of the word.
The bias inherent in capitalism itself makes true skepticism amongst its adherents impossible to achieve.
Capitalists cannot possibly be 'skeptics', denialism they do brilliantly.
The self-proclaimed capitalist that posts here is essentially dishonest, because his Capitalistic bent makes it impossible for him to discern the truth about anything.
If he cannot know the truth, how can he ever tell it?
Capitalists do however have the perfect motivation to deny anything and everything which might interfere with their exploitation of everything and everybody for profit, regardless of the costs to life on earth and to the environment generally.
Money-making business as usual is all they are interested in.
They have no interest in intelligent, beneficial and sustainable development for all locally or globally
They can put a price on everything, yet cannot perceive the true value of anything.
A capitalist cannot ever tell the truth essentially - because it is impossible for them ever to know the truth.
Their bias guarantees their inability to perceive the truth about anything, or to tell it.
Hence their denial of their own denialism.
They are blind to their own hypocrisy.
Capitalist are seriously afraid of what the global population will do when they wake up to what capitalism has done and is doing to the planet.
What thinking person would want to be in any capitalists shoes when all the people know the true extent of capitalists damage to mother earth and to future generations?
The United Nations say "Life on earth is under threat"
The capitalists say "Fuck that shit, I want loadsa money now and I don't care what I have to do or what damage I have to do to life on earth to get it"
"Fuck the planet and the people for profit" is their primitive guiding principle.
Church of the Capitalist Pig Large - That is SO funny!
How many times do you need telling ?
Posts are hidden if and when they breach BIM guidelines, as you should know very well by now, its why you were banned for a month, remember?
Read the guidelines slowly.
Try to understand them please.
Having to repeat the basics to you over and over is a waste of our time and very boring.
So please stop. This is not the playground.
For my part as i say, I used to be very concerned about Global Warming but there is lots of evidence and debate on what is really happening.
This article I found interesting.
“Global” Warming Consensus Forgets Two-Thirds of the Landmass
25
07
2008
More figures to understand how awfully incomplete is the current knowledge of global climate.
And it’s very clear for all to see in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report - Working Group 2 (AR4-WG2), in Chapter 1 and in the Summary for Policymakers.
A bumper 96% of reported changes are from Europe and Europe alone. And what does that mean?
It means that for the whole of Australia/New Zealand, the IPCC could find only 6 significant changes (SC). For the whole of Africa, 7 SCs. For the whole of Latin America, 58 SCs. For the whole of Asia, 114SCs.
In terms of SC per square kilometer, Europe has:
1- 11,978 more than Africa
2- 85 more than North America
3- 853 more than South America
4- 1066 more than Asia
5- 3,702 more than Australia/New Zealand
6- 270 more than Antarctica
But one may reply to that, I am putting too much emphasis on the 28,000+ European biological SCs.
Let’s recompute the above with reference to North America then. In terms of SC per square kilometer, North America has:
1- 142 more than Africa
2- 10 more than South America
3- 12 more than Asia
4- 43 more than Australia/New Zealand
5- 3 more than Antarctica
It is blazingly blatant that before we can speak of global warming, more data has to be collected at least about Africa/Asia/Australia-New Zealand/South America .
We are talking 67% of the total land area of the planet.
Is anybody in the IPCC/Al Gore/James Hansen/Tim Flannery crowd pushing hard to get a complete picture of what is changing where and how?
our planet, our environment, life on earth generally is not just an opportunity for greedy selfish dishonest uncaring capitalists to get rich at everybody else's expense.
dishonest greedy old capitalists have all but destroyed any hopes for the next generation to have a clean and green or fair future.
the air we breathe has been made dirty, our water has been made dirty, the land has been polluted making our food dangerous to eat thanks to low minded capitalists.
greedy selfish capitalists are responsible for degrading our planet and damaging our future.
then they have the bare-faced effrontery to come here and whinge incessantly about how they treated.
poor little bishop of the church of capitalist pig large.
i wont be able to sleep tonight worrying about your ever so sensitive feelings being hurt by those lefty / greeny / fair-worlders of bristol indymedia.
Selfish greedy small-minded capitalists busy fukking up mother earth just so's they can get rich come into BIM expecting respect.
Respect for capitalism here is rarer than rocking-horse shit.
And rightfully so.
Personally, (and it is only my opinion), BIM has indeed become 'smaller' in terms of the number of contributors, and in the quality of articles, especially those to do with environmental concerns.
I would put that down to the likes of Clive Hammond and his assorted 'relations' - with his toxic and sarcastic style of communication designed to discourage sharing and exchanging of info.
Maybe thats why he commands so little respect in this space.
Some of my mates no longer participate @BIM, preferring instead to work and discuss stuff in groups and at social centres and within the community instead.
i've given up on bim, or more accurately those who post to it, because you never really do get a sensible debate about the future of the left, just a defensive rump which takes any criticism as an attack, while it continues in the same old dysfunctional, anti-intellectual ways, which keep it firmly stuck as a defensive rump, even at a time of environmental and economic crisis.
While you have to treat all posters equally and fairly, and knowing that your job cant be a whole lot of fun, might it not be a good idea to allow Hammonds primitive writing and obnoxious posts to stay up so that readers can have first-hand live and direct knowledge of just how stupid and brutal capitalists can be?
The truth will out. All we sceptics have to do is sit back and wait and watch the believers squirm.
So I guess all this stuff that is happening now...is not?
Threatened with encroaching seas, dwindling water supplies and fiercer storms, Bangladesh is already suffering the ill effects of rising global greenhouse gas emissions. http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0902/full/climate.20....html
Not only has the average global temperature increased in the past 50 years, but the hottest day of the year has shifted nearly two days earlier, according to a new study by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University. http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Seasons_Arrive_Two_Da....html
Watching Treeline Advances In Canada’s Arctic http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/0901221623...2.htm
Nazca lines get a soaking http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/01/naz....html
Research published in BioMed Central's open access International Journal of Health Geographics links outbreaks of this rodent-borne disease to known effects of global warming. http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Global_Warming_Linked....html
50 Years Of West Antarctic Warming http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Satellites_Confirm_Ha....html
Boy, are we squirming...
The truth will out. All we sceptics have to do is sit back and wait and watch the believers squirm.
So I guess all this stuff that is happening now...is not?
Threatened with encroaching seas, dwindling water supplies and fiercer storms, Bangladesh is already suffering the ill effects of rising global greenhouse gas emissions. http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0902/full/climate.20....html
East Pakistan and now Bangeledesh is built on a flood plain – poor planning is the main reason for its ills. And I note Hansen gets in on the act trying to ramp up the doom and gloom – Nature is a almost by definition a partisan voice.
…………………………
Not only has the average global temperature increased in the past 50 years, but the hottest day of the year has shifted nearly two days earlier, according to a new study by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University. http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Seasons_Arrive_Two_Da....html
Again you lie Anarchist – either that or you fail to read the paper – I quote:-
“Stine noted that the study limited its focus to non-tropical regions because the seasons are more pronounced outside the tropics.”
So hardly Global.
…………………………
Watching Treeline Advances In Canada’s Arctic http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/0901221623...2.htm
Like I have said before – Canada and Siberia will benefit from a few more degrees C – if it happens – just think – more people could be making all gooey statements like:-
“Dr. Harper recalls an unforgettable moment that happened near the treeline at the MacMillan Pass in the Mackenzie Mountains. A large group of caribou gradually grazed their way over the crest of a hill toward her, ending up passing only about 20 metres away from where she was standing.
“I was so mesmerized, I forgot to take a photo,” she laughs.
With perseverance and insight, these studies will generate knowledge that provides a clear picture of what will transpire within this fragile ecosystem in the years ahead.”
Yeah! – more wildlife may actually benefit if the ice retreats – certainly our ability to feed the world would!
………………………………
Nazca lines get a soaking http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/01/naz....html
My God! – I thought you said a one of event (you know like the past decade not actually getting any warmer – and 2008 being distinctly “cool”) cannot be taken into account in the great big global warming hysterical theory?. So what is different about a particularly bad rain storm in South America. (and incidently I do remember a TV program years and years ago that actually showed local people resetting the stone outlines after storms)
……………………………….
Research published in BioMed Central's open access International Journal of Health Geographics links outbreaks of this rodent-borne disease to known effects of global warming. http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Global_Warming_Linked....html
Yes I can see the research grant application now – with and without reference to “Global warming” – the one "with" gets the grant – the one without does not. Did they actually test for any other reason or had they already decided the result before the “research” took place?
………………………………….
50 Years Of West Antarctic Warming http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Satellites_Confirm_Ha....html
And only you Anarchist could possibly ignore the reality that is mentioned in the paper but because it does not say what the shrill Church of Chickin Little believers want to here – After all the blog is hardly a true sceptical site – they have already made up their minds!
“While some areas of East Antarctica have been cooling in recent decades, the longer 50-year trend depicts that, on average, temperatures are rising across the continent.”
.........................................................
Boy, are we squirming...
You may not want to – but the odds are that you will be.
We just have to wait. Because we sceptics never denied that Climate changed - it always has done.
What we object to is the silly notion that we have to through away all that we have achieved on the whim.
What are you going to do if the globe continues to cool?
The prediction is that warming will not start again until 2015 'ish. But so far the only way the models work is if they are fiddled to fid the reality.
Because you guys are on one side of the sceptics and we have the like of the following on the other:-
The Vostok ice core data graph
The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years.
Ice cores, ocean sediment cores, the geologic record, and studies of ancient plant and animal populations all demonstrate a regular cyclic pattern of Ice Age glacial maximums which each last about 100,000 years, separated by intervening warm interglacials, each lasting about 12,000 years.
Most of the long-term climate data collected from various sources also shows a strong correlation with the three astronomical cycles which are together known as the Milankovich cycles. The three Milankovich cycles include the tilt of the earth, which varies over a 41,000 year period; the shape of the earth’s orbit, which changes over a period of 100,000 years; and the Precession of the Equinoxes, also known as the earth’s ‘wobble’, which gradually rotates the direction of the earth’s axis over a period of 26,000 years. According to the Milankovich theory of Ice Age causation, these three astronomical cycles, each of which effects the amount of solar radiation which reaches the earth, act together to produce the cycle of cold Ice Age maximums and warm interglacials.
Elements of the astronomical theory of Ice Age causation were first presented by the French mathematician Joseph Adhemar in 1842, it was developed further by the English prodigy Joseph Croll in 1875, and the theory was established in its present form by the Czech mathematician Milutin Milankovich in the 1920s and 30s. In 1976 the prestigious journal “Science” published a landmark paper by John Imbrie, James Hays, and Nicholas Shackleton entitled “Variations in the Earth’s orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages,” which described the correlation which the trio of scientist/authors had found between the climate data obtained from ocean sediment cores and the patterns of the astronomical Milankovich cycles. Since the late 1970s, the Milankovich theory has remained the predominant theory to account for Ice Age causation among climate scientists, and hence the Milankovich theory is always described in textbooks of climatology and in encyclopaedia articles about the Ice Ages.
In their 1976 paper Imbrie, Hays, and Shackleton wrote that their own climate forecasts, which were based on sea-sediment cores and the Milankovich cycles, “… must be qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends - and not to anthropogenic effects such as those due to the burning of fossil fuels. Second, they describe only the long-term trends, because they are linked to orbital variations with periods of 20,000 years and longer. Climatic oscillations at higher frequencies are not predicted… the results indicate that the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate.”
During the 1970s the famous American astronomer Carl Sagan and other scientists began promoting the theory that ‘greenhouse gasses’ such as carbon dioxide, or CO2, produced by human industries could lead to catastrophic global warming. Since the 1970s the theory of ‘anthropogenic global warming’ (AGW) has gradually become accepted as fact by most of the academic establishment, and their acceptance of AGW has inspired a global movement to encourage governments to make pivotal changes to prevent the worsening of AGW.
The central piece of evidence that is cited in support of the AGW theory is the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph which was presented by Al Gore in his 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth.” The ‘hockey stick’ graph shows an acute upward spike in global temperatures which began during the 1970s and continued through the winter of 2006/07. However, this warming trend was interrupted when the winter of 2007/8 delivered the deepest snow cover to the Northern Hemisphere since 1966 and the coldest temperatures since 2001. It now appears that the current Northern Hemisphere winter of 2008/09 will probably equal or surpass the winter of 2007/08 for both snow depth and cold temperatures.
The main flaw in the AGW theory is that its proponents focus on evidence from only the past one thousand years at most, while ignoring the evidence from the past million years — evidence which is essential for a true understanding of climatology. The data from paleoclimatology provides us with an alternative and more credible explanation for the recent global temperature spike, based on the natural cycle of Ice Age maximums and interglacials.
In 1999 the British journal “Nature” published the results of data derived from glacial ice cores collected at the Russia’s Vostok station in Antarctica during the 1990s. The Vostok ice core data includes a record of global atmospheric temperatures, atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and airborne particulates starting from 420,000 years ago and continuing through history up to our present time.
The graph of the Vostok ice core data shows that the Ice Age maximums and the warm interglacials occur within a regular cyclic pattern, the graph-line of which is similar to the rhythm of a heartbeat on an electrocardiogram tracing. The Vostok data graph also shows that changes in global CO2 levels lag behind global temperature changes by about eight hundred years. What that indicates is that global temperatures precede or cause global CO2 changes, and not the reverse. In other words, increasing atmospheric CO2 is not causing global temperature to rise; instead the natural cyclic increase in global temperature is causing global CO2 to rise.
The reason that global CO2 levels rise and fall in response to the global temperature is because cold water is capable of retaining more CO2 than warm water. That is why carbonated beverages loose their carbonation, or CO2, when stored in a warm environment. We store our carbonated soft drinks, wine, and beer in a cool place to prevent them from loosing their ‘fizz’, which is a feature of their carbonation, or CO2 content. The earth is currently warming as a result of the natural Ice Age cycle, and as the oceans get warmer, they release increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Because the release of CO2 by the warming oceans lags behind the changes in the earth’s temperature, we should expect to see global CO2 levels continue to rise for another eight hundred years after the end of the earth’s current Interglacial warm period. We should already be eight hundred years into the coming Ice Age before global CO2 levels begin to drop in response to the increased chilling of the world’s oceans.
The Vostok ice core data graph reveals that global CO2 levels regularly rose and fell in a direct response to the natural cycle of Ice Age minimums and maximums during the past four hundred and twenty thousand years. Within that natural cycle, about every 110,000 years global temperatures, followed by global CO2 levels, have peaked at approximately the same levels which they are at today.
About 325,000 years ago, at the peak of a warm interglacial, global temperature and CO2 levels were higher than they are today. Today we are again at the peak, and near to the end, of a warm interglacial, and the earth is now due to enter the next Ice Age. If we are lucky, we may have a few years to prepare for it. The Ice Age will return, as it always has, in its regular and natural cycle, with or without any influence from the effects of AGW.
The AGW theory is based on data that is drawn from a ridiculously narrow span of time and it demonstrates a wanton disregard for the ‘big picture’ of long-term climate change. The data from paleoclimatology, including ice cores, sea sediments, geology, paleobotany and zoology, indicate that we are on the verge of entering another Ice Age, and the data also shows that severe and lasting climate change can occur within only a few years. While concern over the dubious threat of Anthropogenic Global Warming continues to distract the attention of people throughout the world, the very real threat of the approaching and inevitable Ice Age, which will render large parts of the Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable, is being foolishly ignored.
– Gregory F. Fegel
(who no doubt gets a cheque each month from Exxon via its outer planets representative)
You may not want to – but the odds are that you will be.
This is the evidence from just 5 links from 1 week of reports from science work. You cite no evidence in your claims, only your opinion. You don't rebut change in Bangladesh, the tropical regions, Canada/Alaska, South America, Antarctica (except for some areas of the east.)
So to translate your comments - "I have no rebuttal of the evidence, so I'll go for the old opinion spiced with the 'research grants' conspiracy claim but I'll cite no evidence." http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/denier-conspi...thou/
Then the article you quote - oh joy!!!! I was hoping you'd pop this one out. It has done it's rounds on the denialosphere. Gregory F. Fegel's article is not not science, he has no training in the area he writes about and it has not been peer reviewed and ....wait for it....it was originally published in Pravda!!! http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-earth_ice...age-0 Yes, you really are citing the Russian state newspaper, an organ of propaganda, as evidence!!!
And he got the science wrong http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/01/read-on-checkout-lin....html
But what you fail to realise is that you’re ever strident defence of what people see as suspicious alarmism is no longer receiving the rapturous response that it once did.
Two reason - a) the world is cooler than your models predicted and yet CO2 continues to rise
b) People are saying "prove it" ever more strongly when politicians state that the populace must endure more taxes and more control, less freedom and more restrictions all because Mann and Gore fiddled the figures.
And they did.
What comes after that is a gravy train.
You are on it and so you protect it and your position.
If you were not so worried about the role us sceptics play in getting the reality and truth out there to people you would not even bother to converse.
And yet you do.
You have to find yet another bit of "science" to prove you are right and that due to mankind’s greed and preference for a free market system we are all going to hell in an Exxon powered 4x4.
Sorry mate but the strident rhetoric and the ever more desperate shouts of "The Debate is Over" just does not cut it any more.
Out on a limb you are - enjoy it while you can. One of the most significant events of late WAS (Emma - for you!) the BBC stating that "some scientists linked this .... to Climate Change due to greenhouse gases" - whereas last year the reports were that the IPCC had proved etc.
We still have the likes of the Guardian referring to the Stern report as tho' it had not been trashed by Tol et al - but the left always does things like that which is why they never get anywhere as soon as people start reading around the subject.
If the latest indications are correct then we are entering a period of cooling and that will put you on the spot ever increasingly over the coming years.
Let me give you some advice.
If you want to be taken seriously - stop labelling everyone who questions your take on the Climate Change scenario "Denialists".
Most sceptics do not deny man has an influence on climate - what we question is the likes of Sterns remarkably stupid spin report that took every worse case scenario as well as double accounting of some factors to produce a dodgy document in the same light as the dossier on Weapons of mass destruction that Tony Blair also took at face value and took us to War with!!
Then we have Mann's Hockey stick graph that has been denounced.
Gores 20 ft wall of water
When you keep crying "Wolf" - there come a point when people start to turn off. We are at that point now.
House of Lords – Prof Reiter - all these examples are powerful and yet you are certain that they are “denialists” and in the pay of the Oil Company’s – and that is not true. Which will come home to haunt you, at great cost to all those alarmists, who have, like Stern, Mann, Hansen and Gore for example, overstated the issue.
Final bit of advice - if you are an Anarchist - then what the heck are you doing getting into bed with those that want to see yet more government control - not less.
Sorry mate but this does not indicate free thought and self resilience - it smacks of nothing short of seedy opportunism.
Because can you not see the disquiet people have when politician lectures us on using less fuel then we are told that he does nothing of the sort and in fact is going to male millions out of the Carbon Trading scheme.
People also have problems with the likes of Hansen saying that CEO’s of Utility Companies should be put on trial. People do not like that – it smacks of the very worst of the McCarthyism. It also scares some because that is what fascists have done.
Mann fiddled the hockey shaft to show no change and the stick increasing. We now know that this is false.
I suspect we shall have even more ever desperate statements by the alarmists that it is all “getting worse” but in reality, after about 5 years of no real change – we will see a quite change and a fair bit of embarrassment.
After 10 years, we will have programs like Panorama “investigating” how politicians of this era could possibly have been duped by so called “scientists” and all will promise that it could not happen again.
Should be fun. – For some.
A long reply - but oddly no links to any scientific evidence to back your claims. Just more of the same claims.
a) the world is cooler than your models predicted and yet CO2 continues to rise
Sigh - again, for the umpteenth-umteenth time. They did.
http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/article/689516?&conden...41757
How you can decide the models are wrong while citing research papers that use them (here http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/article/689538?&conden...42040 ) while missing the difference between 'weather' and 'climate'? Perhaps we should ask Pravda?
Then we have Mann's Hockey stick graph that has been denounced.
Denouncing? Since when was that evidence - anyone could denounce any theory - here we go, I denounce Quantum Mechanics! You need to disprove not denounce. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence.
House of Lords ... huh? what is that proof of? An unelected group of rich people dispute the figures - so what? - so where is the research coming from this? It was back in 2005 and we've seen no peer reviewed papers emerging from it. Zilch. Zero. Nowt.
Not sure the house of lords is such a great place to cite as proof given the corruption probe going on - but then is it better than Pravda!
Prof Reiter ... A biologist, not a climate scientist - and not all the experts in his field agree with him:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/0603221421...1.htm
http://www.mindfully.org/Air/Global-Warming-Health20aug...0.htm
And others take apart his view of the IPCC process:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/10/stossels_tall_t...b.php
Final bit of advice - if you are an Anarchist - then what the heck are you doing getting into bed with those that want to see yet more government control - not less.
You see that is where the problem lies: you confuse ideology with science. It does not matter what we believe, if the facts are that human produced CO2 is heating the planet, then that is what is happening - if I stop believing in it, it does not go away.
I've love this to be a debate about what to do about it - love it - important point - but while the denialosphere is busy claiming it is not happening we can't debate it fully. If this matters to you, stop posting junk science...
Here's more up-to-date science, not opinion...
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uadb-pma...9.php
http://www.clim-past.net/5/1/2009/cp-5-1-2009.html
http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/5/237/2009/cpd-5-237-2....html
for starters, and there's another 14 or so journal entries from one week alone here! http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2009/01/gw_news_j...rnals
This while the denialists are clinging to a 2005 event in the house of lords and articles in Pravda.
Pravda....still can't get over than one. Did you know they've got an article about how aliens forced the US to abandon the moon? http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/03-10-2007/9...oon-0
Nobody trusts the biased science anymore!
The Climate "scientists" have lost most of the credibility they ever had.
As for same old same old - just look at how you deal with those that disagree - you still keep trying to trash them! You deal with any science that you do not agree with by lying about their being in the pay of Exxon or whatever and trying to make out that people like Reiter has no valid say because he is not a Climatologist when all of those who know about him know he is a world leading entomologist that objected to the IPCC using non qualified people to write the entomology report on insect vectored diseases. He had to threaten the IPCC with legal action to get his name removed as one of the IPCC experts.
The UK House of Lords confirmed all of this. And yet you still bleat on about his not being a valid individual because he is not a Climatologist. He never said he was, what he said was that the IPCC spun the facts about insects (entomology) and insect born diseases. The IPCC used unqualified hacks to spin the lie that malaria and dengue fever were worse because of Climate Change when in fact Prof Reiters research said anything but!!
When you have the UK House of Lords stating that the IPCC is overtly a politicised organisation that spins the truth, some of us who already had concerns about the bias so far seen sat up and took notice.
We had the same with the Tornados.
We have the same with the Aqua satellite data, re the negative - not the assumed positive feedback loop of all the Climate Models.
And also the same with the Aqua buoy data, that shows the oceans to be cooling not warming.
When are you going to realise that the spin and lies the believers spread have never really worked and slaging people off is now about as effective as Gordon Brown saying "Trust Me!". When are you going to get it? - Nobody believes the spin anymore - they are looking to how to get through the Credit Crunch, not pander to some alarmists that predict the world is going to end because we all respire and produce CO2, Cows fart methane and Water vapour is not friendly cows but exists only to produce a psycho response when combined with CO2 that will cook us all. Oh and all this when we only produce about 3.5% of the earths CO2 and CO2 is itself a very small %'age of the overall atmospheric gases.
Like I say - in good times such nonsense is tolerated - but now? - Wake up to reality my friend. The Church of Chickin Little produces dodgy dossiers. We all know that now. The evidence of Stern Gore, Hansen and all the other spin merchants is slowly but surely coming to light. Another few years of cool temperatures and we will see quite a change.
As for this year! From us sceptics viewpoint - looking at all those outrageous predictions for death doom and despondency! yet what we are going to get is yet more low temperatures. Oh! but I forgot - you are allowed to quote a rain storm in South America as proof that supports your case as is apparently an increase in the vole population, despite the fact that the paper seemed to ignore all the usual reasons who any population can shift into a growth phase. But then that is exactly what we have come to expect from the Church of Chickin Little and its devotees.
But with no warming overall since 1998 and 2007, 2008 being very cold indeed and 2009 shaping up to be as cool it seems, then we are going to be "cool".
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090128/tuk-temperatures-t....html
Wrap up warm - I predict you will feel the cold quite soon - and I am not talking just about temperatures!
It will be quite cold out on that limb.
You wrap up warm – you hear!! – I would hate to think of you catching cold!!! You don’t seem ready for it.
Have you heard that James Hansen has been Busted.... Big Time?
Has Al Gore's climate advisor been outed?
"James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic
Says Hansen ‘Embarrassed NASA’ & ‘Was Never Muzzled’
Gore Faces More Scientific Blowback
Washington DC: NASA warming scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice President Al Gore’s closest allies in the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA.
Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fears soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.” Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of anthropogenic global warming fears.
Theon declared “climate models are useless.”
“Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.
[Note: Theon joins many current and former NASA scientists in dissenting from man-made climate fears. A small sampling includes: Aerospace engineer and physicist Dr. Michael Griffin, the former top administrator of NASA, Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and is formerly of NASA, Geophysicist Dr. Phil Chapman, an astronautical engineer and former NASA astronaut, Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist and Moonwalker Jack Schmitt, Chemist and Nuclear Engineer Robert DeFayette was formerly with NASA’s Plum Brook Reactor, Hungarian Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Ames Research Center, Climatologist Dr. John Christy, Climatologist Dr. Roy W. Spencer, Atmospheric Scientist Ross Hays of NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility]
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?F...
The piece you are referring to was posted by Marc Morano.
No self-respecting denialist would use anything from such a character.
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2007/morano.html
An interesting Post Avia - that elicits the same old same old tired response from the believers.
This attacking the messenger just does not work anymore does it?
Do you think they will ever realise that such tactics do them more harm than good?
An interesting post Frank - that elicits the same old same old tired response from the denialists.
Their attacking the critics just does not work anymore does it?
Do you think the denialists will ever realise that such tactics do them more harm than good?
Coldest winter for 13 years
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7858104.stm
Te he he
Marc Morano is not a credible source. He has a long history of attack politics from going after John Kerry in 2004 for Hansen now. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marc_Morano
The link provided is also to the committee co-run by Senator Infore, who we have covered before - an oil funded man. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=James_M._Inhofe and http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/inhofe_less_hon...i.php
The sources of the denialoshere are getting worse - Inhofe is also a youn earth creationist - that is he thinks the plannet is only about 10,000 years old and evolution does not exist! Yes this really is the source denialists are using for 'science'!!! http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/21/inhofe-gore/
Prior to this we had Pravda, the Russian state propaganda outlet - who have an article about how aliens caused a meteorite strike around 1900. http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/104631-tungu...ite-0
"Tee he he" .......... whats that about Bloggs?
Joe Bloggs does not strike me as being the kind of person that cares for those who will suffer as temperatures dip.
I wonder how many pensioners will have to die of Hypothermia before he stops his juvenile tittering.
His insensitivity to others has no place amongst caring humans which make up the overwhelmingly compassionate BIM 'family'.
Also, I don't suppose it would ever occur to him that this extra-cold snap might be due to Climate Destabilistaion,
Thanks Joe Bloggs for proving to us all just how inhumane Denialist's are! - as if proof of that fact were needed.
I feel sorry for all of the old and poor and vulnerable people who are going to have a bitterly hard time trying to keep warm when the temperatures drop!
One cold snap means nothing.
Here we have it folks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As if we did not know it was coming!!!
This cold snap "could be due to Climate Destabilisation!!!!!
You could not make this up
We have had Global Warming which patently didn't in the way predicted so we then had
"Climate Change" and then we had a cool period which was also not as per the alarmist models and now, with more cold to come it seems so now we have:-
"Climate Destabilisation".
Not only is the heat escaping out the windows - but the believers credibility is heading out past the reality horizon and accelerating!
Oh! and before I forget.
Teh hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee. You make I laugh.
If anyone thinks that we sceptics do not care about the elderly and the cold - just ponder the fact that some of us have been quoting the geriatrician from Scotland that welcomed Global Warming (remember that? - the spin merchants of doom have renamed this alarmist view at least twice now!! ;0) because less of his patients would die of cold related illnesses.
So what are you saying "Troll Educator"? - are you saying that Global Warming could be a good thing for the elderly in northern climes?
If so you are in good company because those in Canada and Siberia would agree!
Well done for seeing the light!
There be a cold snap on the way!
Better make friends with those nice 4x4 drivers for the next week or two or you might find your going nowhere.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090129/tuk-uk-faces-colde....html
Not only is the heat escaping out the windows - but the believers credibility is heading out past the reality horizon and accelerating!
No word on the reliance on Pravda and Creationists to back the denailist case?
So you cite an article written by a 911 conspiracy theorist published in Pravda as 'evidence' - did you see the article Pravda published on the Russian fishermen who caught an alien? http://www.thechumslick.com/index.php/2007/07/03/pravda...aper_ Yes, they really did cite this source....
Then Senator Inhofe - who argues that the IPCC left out the data from Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum which showed a 13 degree increase in global temperature rise 55 million years ago...while simultaneously being a young earth creationist who maintains that the earth is less than 10,000 years old - ??? http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/21/inhofe-gore/ uh???
All the argument you have left it seems is, "it's cold now, so global warming can't be true." - this is that basic difference between 'weather' and 'climate'.
I will kindly explain: For example if I said the average roll of 2 six-sided dice was about 7, to prove this you could roll the dice say 100 times and record each roll, add the numbers up and divide by 100 - you'd get a number of about 7. So each individual dice roll is 'weather' and the average is 'climate'. What you are doing by saying "it's cold now, so global warming can't be true." is rolling the dice once, your roll coming up 5 and so you saying, "the average can't be 7 because I just rolled a 5."
No, your sample size of one is too small. I hope this explains it.
Here's more;
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/western-sizzlin/
and
http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/global-warmin...r-so/
We know all about small samples in data arrays.
That is what has made us laugh over the actions of the Church of Chickin Little believers when they tag every flood, every storm every early spring every warm summer as "proof" that we are all going to hell in an Exxon powerred 4x4.
Welcome to the real world.
Get used to it.
There is more to come.
This w/e for a start!!!!
LOL!!!
you believers have been using anything and everything to prove your case
and the post above proves it!
climate destabilisation!!! and little old ladies freezing because of it???
Double standards???
Yep - nothing differs, nothing changes in the believers camp!
We know all about small samples in data arrays.
I wish. A couple of examples of using small scales/data set to obfuscate scientific evidence by the denialosphere... (there are lots more!)
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/04/a_new_flavour_o...n.php
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/11/vikings_dispr...n.php
http://www.dailygotham.com/blog/mole33/the_latest_globa...rivel
That is what has made us laugh over the actions of the Church of Chickin Little believers when they tag every flood, every storm every early spring every warm summer as "proof" that we are all going to hell in an Exxon powerred 4x4.
If that is the case - what is jumping on any report - no matter how dodgy the source to 'prove' the denailist case? Examples of the company your 'evidence' keeps...
Petrified scull of an alien found in Russian province
http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/22-08-2006/8...ien-0
Young earth creationists find 'fossil'!!!
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/transparent_...y.php
A real sceptic, being sceptical would have checked the paper and the source (.e.g looking at Pravda or Inhofe before you cite them) - but no....
LOL!
Just look at your desperate words!
You trash Reiter with no knowledge or appreciation of what he is, what he said and what his area of expertise is. All you can say is that his opinion does not count because he is not one of your little band of brother “Climatologists”. Well no he isn’t – he was charged as lead author for the IPCC to look at insect vectored diseases and to see if Global Warming was affecting the spread of these diseases. What he found was that deforestation was the biggest reason.
But that was not what the alarmists wanted and so the summary from the IPCC ignored Reiters careful findings and stated all sorts of bollocks about Nairobi about to be ravaged by Dengue Fever and Malaria and it was all down to the ACC = catastrophe scenario.
In contrast Reiter found his expert opinion was ignored. So no he is not a “climatologist” – I think he has a far higher standing than that pseudo science that up until recently had never had it so good. But they do like to trash real science as it produces “inconvenient truths” they find hard to deal with. So like them or perhaps because you are one of these glorified weathermen ;-
You just trash.
Anything you don't want others to see - trash it.
One thing is certain - all us sceptics - and there is an ever growing number! - made a prediction and that was that some true religious fanatics would get ever more desperate and start pulling quotes that suit and trashing everything that challenges them!
And we were right.
That is exactly what you do.
"Sing em another song Donna" as you get led quietly off, exit stage left.
;o)
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090130/tuk-brrr-itain-bra....html
If that was the warmest summer for 13 years the Climate Change gurus would be having a crazy time runnning arround shouting about "proof". Now the boot is on the other foot, we have a them shifting and shuffling there feet and saying "don't mean anything" Well maybe it does and maybe it doesn't.
But you cannot deny that when it was hot that fact was used to support Global Warming.
Now we have the coldest winter for 13 years and there seems to be a fair bit of egg on faces.
Seems to me that some only like it one way and have difficulty dealing with what the climate can surprize us with.
Why do denialists insist on nit-picking all the time?
Why do they do the constant distraction - side-stepping?
Why do they repeat the same petty arguments endlessly week after week?
Why do they always bluster and lie and smear and seek to bore us off the topic?
Why do they merely use the topic of global warming as a vehicle to spout their opinions and prejudices?
After reading this thread its become clear to me that denialists are more interested in stopping people from thinking about the issues than they are in intelligent debate!
Is the Church of the Apopleptic Capitalist Dishonest Massive full on Sundays?
That's a very good point Flogger has made. If we had an unusually hot summer you all wouldn't hesitate to hold it up as proof of global warming.
So, we sceptics can do the same with a cold winter. You can't have it both ways and you just haven't got an answer for the fact that the weather is currently bucking the trend. You can go on about small data sets all you like but if the models are so accurate this just shouln't be happening.
You can twist and turn and make personal attacks as much as you want but you just can't get away from the facts, which are, that right here and now the weather is not doing what it's supposed to do.
Amazing double standards
All you accuse the "denialits" of doing - you are the very people that are more guilty than anyone else!
Even tho you have been criticised for doing so - you still lie about us sceptics being "denialists" - we are not. You use the term "denialist" to try (but you fail and in fact it rebounds badly on you) to engender the same horror levelled at those who are holocaust deniers.
Could there ever be a bigger lie!
We sceptics only question your assumption that ACC=Catastrophe and are concerned that the tunnel vision that is the Church of Chickin little will waste time effort and resources to the opportunity cost of the worlds populations.
The only thing we "deny" is that you Church of Chickin Little types have got it right with your doom and gloom scenarios. The fact that the Watermelon Politicos hijacked the gravy train is underlined by the vitriol and bile levelled at anyone who dares to poke their head above the parapet and says "Excuse me - I do not think you are right on that"
And that is what is causing you Church of Chickin Little religious fanatics to loose credibility.
The latest critiscm levelled is this
Q Why do denialists insist on nit-picking all the time?
Errr! - because we do not believe you and we want to make sure we get it right before those on a mission spend $billions unnecessarily
Q Why do they do the constant distraction - side-stepping?
I do not think we do - if anything it is the "believers" that come up with distraction techniques.
Q Why do they repeat the same petty arguments endlessly week after week?
because we believe in what we say, and our quite repeating of our message is getting more people interested. In marked contrast your strident bullying tone pisses people off.
Q Why do they always bluster and lie and smear and seek to bore us off the topic?
Sorry but that really is pot calling kettle black. The very fact that you label us "denialsts" is evidence of that.
Q Why do they merely use the topic of global warming as a vehicle to spout their opinions and prejudices?
Oh and so the watermelons don't use the ACC scenario as a stick to try to beat the greedy capitalists? You believers just use the GW scenario as a sop for your broader agenda. That last sentence shows everyone just how you twist and spin the truth to suit.
Q After reading this thread it’s become clear to me that denialists are more interested in stopping people from thinking about the issues than they are in intelligent debate!
That is a laugh considering only a few short months ago - the phrases "The debate is Over!" - "The Scientists have spoken" were being rammed down everyone’s throats! - I would say at long last we are only now starting to get an intelligent debate - at the Church of Chickin Little believers is very upset about that because they thought they had very nearly managed to perpetrate the biggest con in history.
Q Is the Church of the Apoplectic Capitalist Dishonest Massive full on Sundays?
Not sure about any "church" being full, because us sceptics come from all walks of life and all beliefs. But once again this reference to a church seems nothing more than a rather sad mimicry of the pertinent and relevant reference to the Church of Chickin Little believers. - Chickin Little in the fairy tail believed the sky was falling.
As such a s a simile it works.
But in contrast the phrase "Church of the Apoplectic Capitalist Dishonest Massive" just come across as a made up nonsense rhyme.
Now you tried to use a simile - in calling us "Denialists" - and whilst it is incredibly abhorrent and mindblowingly bad taste it did have a tenuous link to those twisted people that deny the Holocaust ever happened. The fact that this simile backfired on you should not be a surprise to any sensible person.
I have absolutely no doubt that the Climate will change again - it always has done regardless of man being their or not.
I hope that we have a scorching hot summer! I will enjoy a beer out on the lawn with the rest of humanity. And I will put up with the Church of Chickin Little types running around saying "Global warming is back! as just part of the summer madness (assuming we get one this year)
It will be a kind of occupational hazard for us sceptics.
because as said above - you really cannot have it both ways and the most amusing thing I am looking at right now is the stunned look of amazement on the faces of the Church of Chickin Little congregation as they bump up against reality and they begin to realise that!
'That's a very good point Flogger has made. If we had an unusually hot summer you all wouldn't hesitate to hold it up as proof of global warming.
So, we sceptics can do the same with a cold winter. You can't have it both ways and you just haven't got an answer for the fact that the weather is currently bucking the trend. You can go on about small data sets all you like but if the models are so accurate this just shouln't be happening.'
Perhaps Jog Bloggs/Flogger/Che/Art/Quink/Clive Hammond/Insert new pseudonym here hasn't been watching the news recently
South-eastern Australia is experiencing its worst heatwave in decades, with temperatures in excess of 43C
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7860776.stm
or
High-temperature records fell like imaginary raindrops in the Bay Area on Monday, among the warmest mid-January days ever.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/0...N.DTL
But are these isolated local temperatures held up as irrefutable proof of global warming by anyone here?
Of course not.
When you have hundreds of peer reviewed papers worth of data to quote allied with global temperatures over a multi-decade timescale there's no need to resort to anecdotal theories of I feel cold so the planet can't be getting hotter.
But please... Go ahead and keep on digging yourself that hole.
Remember the post about Hansen? http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/689538?&condense_c...42257
I (and others) doubted the source. Looks like we were right to be sceptical.
Dr. Theon left NASA 15 years ago!
Dr. Theon was not Hansen's supervisor.
Dr. Theon did not say sea level claims are not 'even physically possible', he said 'at the upper boundary of what many glaciologists and oceanographers together see as realistic'
Ooops. A bit more sceptisism is in order!
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/so_who_is_john_...#more
Pravda update!
France unveils secret images of aliens and their spaceships (photo) - Pravda.Ru
http://english.pravda.ru/photo/report/UFO-1584/2/
Oz has extrem weather - always has done - the drought around sydney broke a while back piccys here:-
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/gallery/0,23816,5036....html
Still drought around Victoria though.
As for the heat wave - it happens.
How come some think this proves their case whilst a cold spell does not for the sceptics.
As for Anarchist with your constant belittly of others and your obsessive need to prove that you are right?
Methinks you dost protest too much.
The denialosphere loves to cite old-funded US Republican senator Inhofe as a source of credible information. They recently cited a report on Inhofe's website trying to belittle climate scientist James Hanson which turned out to be misleading and wrong...(see http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/689538?&condense_c...42312 )
Inhofe maintains a list of 'scientists' that dispute the consensus on global warming. There are around 600 to 650 people on the controversial list (which incdes people who has asked to be removed but Inhofe won't, and people with no real relevant scientific knowledge) which sounds impressive until...
You realise the creationist equivalent attacking evolution has 751 names. http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/lies-from-th...ight/
How sad a day it is when the denialosphere can't get more 'scientists' that the creationists to back their point of view?
Answers on a postcard.
The silly linking of sceptical thought to holocaust denalism was an own goal.
Now that the believers are smarting badly over the "Church of Chickin Little" monicker, they now try to link scepticism to the creationists!
If anything underlined just how worried they are it is this truly desperate ploy.
It won't work, people are to smart to be fooled by such a juvenille ploy.
Now that the believers are smarting badly over the "Church of Chickin Little" monicker, they now try to link scepticism to the creationists!
Don't have to try very hard;
Having failed to do so in science, religious fundamentalists try to push through thier view by law - guess what areas of science they target? biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-latest-face-of-...=true
Same people who sign the 'global warming is all wrong' petition also sign the 'evolution is all wrong' petition. http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/inhofe_less_hon...i.php
global warming and creationism all part of the same anti-intellectualism says top economist http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/0....html
Now try this gem, Inhofe's list of 300-odd 'scientists' who dispute global warming. (his 'project' was cited here http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/689538?&condense_c...42257 for example)
Here's what one 'expert', Chris Allen - not a climate scientist, but a weather director at WBKO (a US local TV station). Here's what he has to say;
My biggest argument against putting the primary blame on humans for climate change is that it completely takes God out of the picture. It must have slipped these people's minds that God created the heavens and the earth and has control over what's going on. ... He created? Of course, if you don't believe in God and creationism then I can see why you would easily buy into the whole global warming fanfare. http://gristmill.grist.org/print/2007/12/29/125741/46?s...ts=no
Well gosh darn it, and you call us 'believers' from the 'church of chicken little'!! lol
Pravda update - Just for you, Che, you do remember citing Pravda here? http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/article/689538?&conden...42225 Then check this out - you'll love it...
Aliens live on Earth, under the ground...A lot of respectable scientists and writers believed that Earth is hollow inside http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/378/14269_aliens....html
Enjoy!
As it snows, I am sure a denialist will pop up with this as proof of their position. Sadly it is not. A localised effect that while siginificant in weather terms, is not in climate terms.
“One year doesn’t tell us much, it’s really these long-term trends that help us to understand what’s going on,” Michael Zemp, a researcher at the University of Zurich’s Department of Geography, said in an interview.
On another thread, the denalists posted a cherry-picked argument under the title 'selective science by the believers' suggesting that glaciers were growing; http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/689516?&condense_c...41752 this was shown to be wrong http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/689516?&condense_c...41753 but new evidence confirms that the glaciers are in serious retreat;
“The new data continues the global trend in accelerated ice loss over the past few decades.” The rate of ice loss is twice as fast as a decade ago. http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/30/world%E2%80%99s-g...ndes/
Here's the data on a graph; http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/g...9.jpg
Anarchist - if there was ever a blatant smear campaign against people who have differing views to yours - your posts underline that fact.
What are you on about?
Creationists?
Aliens?
Are you desperate or what?
Also funny how abusive posts from some seem to hang around a fair bit - anything that challenges Anarchist gets pulled pretty damn quick it seems to me.
No doubt EMMA will appear now saying how silly it is to think conspiracy.
The congregation of the Church of Chickin Little is dwindling and those still there are getting pretty desperate if all they have left is to try to label us sceptics as believers in aliens and creationism.
Get real please. You used to raise a chuckle but now? - just a side order of pity if you think such manipulations are actually going to work.
Moved from an article to a comment. IMCVol
This Global warming is a bugger!About 8 inches outside now.
Role on Global warming/Climate change/Climate destabilisation.
Could it be the turn of Global Cooling now?
The SW is having its worst snow fall for 18 years.
What fun.
Thanks to Mike for highlighting the inability of so called sceptic to read simple English. It certainly helps everyone else understand why digesting scientific papers pertaining to complex dynamical systems is utterly beyond you...
a post is written highlighting a couple of incidents of current unusually hot weather in different part of the world at the moment saying that...
'are these isolated local temperatures held up as irrefutable proof of global warming by anyone here? Of course not. '
reply from Mike...
'How come some think this proves their case whilst a cold spell does not for the sceptics'
Can you see your error now or do you need to have it spelled out further?
But the truth is that everything from floods to tornados to cow farts to rainfall to hot summers to early springs etc etc were all cited as proof. You were caught out a while ago.
You know it, I know it, the whole world knows you believers ran around with gleeful faces predicting the end of the world as we knew it.
Now we have a cold spell.
Congratulations you have found the phrase in a paper that you never applied to yourselves but seek to apply to others.
Just sit back and enjoy the bumpy ride - We know and appreciate it is an unusually bumpy ride and you believer types are not used to being challenged, but we do know that some warm weather will be along in a while.
Like buses climate can be unpredictable.
The complete tosh predicted for now by the so called Climate Modellers proves that. They would do better with Airfix or possibly Revel.
I am sorry if you feel a bit got at, Che. It is nothing personal, just a difference of opinions.
Sad to see you retreat to conspiracy around the comments - seems to me a sign of a weak argument? Blame the forum...
Aliens? You cited Pravda as a source. A real sceptic would have checked it out first. It is notorious for printing Sunday Sport type articles - not credible at all. It was ironic that you wrote about the author, "who no doubt gets a cheque each month from Exxon via its outer planets representative" given Pravda's love of alien stories!
Creationism? It is hard to deny that many of the organisations and prominent people promoting creationism are also involved in promoting creationism. Using the same political lobbying people, techniques and methods. As the 'expert' cited by Inhofe says, "Of course, if you don't believe in God and creationism then I can see why you would easily buy into the whole global warming fanfare."
Anyway - some updates to share...
Here's a great video explaining the difference between 'climate' and 'weather'; http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=l0JsdSDa_bM
Some info on the situation in Australia http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/03/is-there-a-link-b...ming/
And more on the Glaciers..
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/a...date/
Have fun in the snow!!
Sick and tired of denialists using everything related to the climate and environment to push forward their quack assumptions and personal opinions all the time.
How about some proper facts for once, if you can find one that is.
Look out of the window Bored, at the enormous accumulation of snow. The worst for 20 years, and then reconcile that with the climate models that say such events should not happen in a warmer climate. That's a proper fact.
But what is more important than what I think - or you for that matter - is that the tide is most certainly turning - that is why the desperation sets in. The constant posts with more "Sing them another song Donna" links to try to prove your now rather wobbly position is the correct one.
End of last year Sammy Wilson - Environment Minister since June 2008 - and brought into combat the Watermelons that had infiltrated during Blair’s tenure at number ten- said the following:-
"Spending billions on trying to reduce carbon emissions is one giant con that is depriving third world countries of vital funds to tackle famine, HIV and other diseases, Sammy Wilson said."
Full report available -
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/environment/envi....html
And his previous comments really got up the nose of the Church of Chickin little congregation:-
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
"Debate must replace scaremongering of green climate alarmists
Environment Minister Sammy Wilson
Published Date: 05 September 2008
Opinion: Sammy Wilson, DUP MLA
For the first time, Environment Minister Sammy Wilson spells out his scepticism about man-made climate change, in an exclusive article for the News Letter
At the height of the floods recently, when those whose homes had been destroyed were trying to clean up the mess, the councils were trying to get emergency payments processed and departments were assessing what lessons could be learned from the events, all the Green Party could do was prattle on about climate change.
It seems that there is a branch of the environmental movement which almost rejoices in every environmental disaster be it local or international. The bigger the disaster the better because it helps reinforce their demands for more government regulation, restrictions on individual economic freedom and their anti-business agenda.
Their ire has been particularly directed at me because I refuse to blindly accept the new pseudo-religion that we must dramatically change our economy in order to stop climate change. The tactic used by the "green gang" is to label anyone who dares disagree with their view of climate change as some kind of nutcase who denies scientific fact.
First of all can I make it clear I accept that we are experiencing climate change. Indeed climate change has been a feature of the history of our planet. The most modern history of the earth shows that these changes occur in regular cycles. From 200BC to 600AD we had what was known as the Roman warming when grapes grew in the open as far north as Scotland. The Dark Ages between 600 and 900AD was a cold period. Then came the Mediaeval warming period from 900 to 1300AD followed by the Little Ice Age between 1300 to 1850 AD when the Thames regularly froze over and fairs were held on the ice. From 1850 to 1940 we had another period of warming followed by a period of cooling from 1940 to 1975. When I was at school, scientists were confidently predicting that we were entering another ice age. From 1976 we have experienced gradual warming again. Significantly the most progressive and prosperous periods in world history were during the periods of global warming.
We have never clearly understood the causes of these changes and despite what some environmentalists say there is no scientific consensus around the causes. Some claim that recent climate change is due to CO2 production from industrialisation, our energy use, our love affair with the car and foreign holidays by jet airplane. The difficulty with this explanation is that climate change occurred even when we did not have the increase on CO2 emissions experience in the last 200 years. Another difficulty they have is that the increase in CO2 occurs after the increase in temperatures.
Other scientists have produced research based on analysis of ice cores, and study of changes in the sun's radiance which they claim proves that the changes in Earth's climate are primarily caused by solar activity. Readers may ask what the relevance of such a scientific debate is to them and given the esoteric nature of the subject may dismiss it as nothing to do with them. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact the reason why environmentalists have a fit of apoplexy when their claim that the scientific jury is still out on the cause of climate change is that there are massive implications for policy depending on which view you take.
To date governments across the world seem to have caved in to the demands of well-placed environmental lobby groups and the political hysteria they have generated and have introduced a wide range of measures to reduce CO2 emissions in an attempt to stop climate change. These measures are already impacting on our pockets every day through the imposition of so-called green taxes, price increases and regulations. We pay more for petrol because the Greens have persuaded the government to make it dearer so we buy less. Road tax on cars over seven years old is set to soar to £450 per year and my department estimates that over 100,000 drivers in Northern Ireland will be affected. The reason for the tax is that these cars produce too much CO2. We pay more for electricity for the same reason. Already the climate change levy and the demand that more power is generated from wind have sent electricity bills soaring.
We are already losing jobs to China and India as the government seeks to chase away industries which produce CO2 in order to achieve our Kyoto target on CO2 reductions. The irony is that the CO2 is simply produced in a different part of the world where the governments have decided not to sign up to the international agreement on emissions. So our adherence to the green political correctness damages our economy while doing nothing to deal with the perceived problem.
These are the consequences of a policy which ascribes to the view that climate change is man-made. If climate change is indeed caused by changes in solar activity then clearly the billions of pounds currently spent on reducing CO2 is being wasted because they will have no impact on what happens to the world's climate. The changes are beyond our control and resources should be used to adapt to the consequences of climate change rather than King Canute style vainly trying to stop it.
This would require resources to be used to improve flood defences, develop GM crops which can enable the production of food in changed climatic conditions and of course putting money into technological research to help us deal with changing climatic conditions. This would make more sense than the massive financial burdens we are placing on our economy and individuals in the vain hope that these burdens might have an affect in 50 to 100 years' time, when conveniently those who imposed the policies will no longer be around to be accountable if the measures either prove unnecessary or fail to achieve their ends.
The climate change debate is relevant to us all. It is something politicians should be dealing with and talking about.
Reasoned debate must replace the scaremongering of the green climate alarmists.
..................................................................
I agree - but reasoned debate with a true believer just does not seem possible. The smear and spin tactics are now well known.
The labelling of sceptics as "deniers" has religious and holocaust associations that make peoples minds up for them - and not in the way the bully boy believers assume their actions think.
The smear that you Anarchist are trying to apply now is attributing scepticism to creationism and Aliens.
I never said anything of the sort and you know that. But the truth never stopped a "believer" from trying to trash a sceptic.
But please! - carry on do.
The desperation you show, whilst not particularly pleasant, does mean that your responses when shown together with the entirely sensible actions and opinions of the Environment Minister just make getting the sceptics view that the debate is NOT over and that we SHOULD be looking to justify every £, every $ every Euro with hard fact before the alarmists push us down the wrong road and the poor nations of the world suffer as a consequence, far easier to air.
Thanks for all your help.
We could not do it without you.
The worst for 20 years, and then reconcile that with the climate models that say such events should not happen in a warmer climate. That's a proper fact.
It's not - it is an opinion and it is wrong. If you had read any of the science you'd know that rather than relying on sources such as websites that report on aliens and the political push of creationists. The models have the oscillation of the weather cycles built in; http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/689538?&condense_c...42250
That's a proper fact.
As for the DUP guy - again, there is no scince here just opinion, anyone can have opinion, I could write that super-string theory is wrong or that genetic drift does not happen but not being a physicist or a biologist, there would be not point because I'd not know what I was talking about beyond a layman's POV.
And all the points the makes are the usual denialosphere mix of inaccuracies, lies, propaganda and myths, for example...
Yes we know the climate has changed before; http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-i...d.htm
There is consensus on global warming; http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientif...s.htm
It's not the sun; http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots...g.htm
I am saying very clearly - you are not sceptics. If you were you were you'd not have fallen for ruses like Pravda and not be repeating the same disproved points over and over. On this thread alone the point about the models has been repeated three times - each time I give evidence to say why this point is wrong and each time you ignore it and simply repeat the same claims.
Then you post an article repeating the same (sun/no consensus) claims we have debated before - and I have shown to be wrong.
Anyway how can you post an article by the DUP saying the warming is down to the sun and also post an article from Pravda saying we are going into an ice age? Huh? In one thread you have posted two contradictory positions. That my friend is denial.
A sceptic has evidence. A denialist has propaganda.
Anarchist - you try to smear by making fictitious links to aliens and creationists. But you know I nor any other sceptic on here did anything of the sort. Once again you just made it up by reading what you wanted to read not what was there.
But once again this reaction from a believer is simply a knee jerk against the very real critiscm that the believers have exalted their belief to a religious status.
And not being able to deal with this very real analysis - they simply try to pin the same faults as they have on us. But the trouble is it does not work. A sceptic is a sceptic and is sceptical about the belief mode of the Church of Chickin Little congregation. But someone who "believes" - just does it seems.
This article from the LA times on Gore - who after all set the new religion off on its path of smear, spin and inconvenient truths:-
" The church of green "
A kind of irrational nature worship separates environmentalism from the more fair-minded approach of conservationism.
Jonah Goldberg
May 20, 2008
I admit it: I'm no environmentalist. But I like to think I'm something of a conservationist.
No doubt for millions of Americans this is a distinction without a difference, as the two words are usually used interchangeably. But they're different things, and the country would be better off if we sharpened the distinctions between both word and concept.
At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It's a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. "If you look carefully," author Michael Crichton famously observed, "you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths."
Environmentalism's most renewable resources are fear, guilt and moral bullying. Its worldview casts man as a sinful creature who, through the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, abandoned our Edenic past. John Muir, who laid the philosophical foundations of modern environmentalism, described humans as "selfish, conceited creatures." Salvation comes from shedding our sins, rejecting our addictions (to oil, consumerism, etc.) and demonstrating through deeds an all-encompassing love of Mother Earth. Quoth Al Gore: "The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."
I heard Gore on NPR the other day. He was asked what he made of evangelical pastor Joseph Hagee's absurd comment that Hurricane Katrina was God's wrath for New Orleans' sexual depravity. Naturally, Gore chuckled at such backwardness. But then the Nobel laureate went on to blame Katrina on man's energy sinfulness. It struck me that the two men were not so different. If only canoodling residents of the Big Easy had adhered to "The Greenpeace Guide to Environmentally Friendly Sex."
Environmentalists are keen to insist that their movement is a secular one. But using the word "secular" no more makes you secular than using the word "Christian" automatically means you behave like a Christian. Pioneering green lawyer Joseph Sax, for example, describes environmentalists as "secular prophets, preaching a message of secular salvation." Gore too has often been dubbed a "prophet." It's no surprise that a green-themed California hotel provides Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" right next to the Bible and a Buddhist tome.
Whether it's adopted the trappings of religion or not, my biggest beef with environmentalism is how comfortably irrational it is. It touts ritual over reality, symbolism over substance, while claiming to be so much more rational and scientific than those silly sky-God worshipers and deranged oil addicts.
It often seems that displaying faith in the green cause is more important than advancing the green cause. The U.S. government just put polar bears on the threatened species list because climate change is shrinking the Arctic ice where they live. Never mind that polar bears are in fact thriving -- their numbers have quadrupled in the last 50 years. Never mind that full implementation of the Kyoto protocols on greenhouse gases would save exactly one polar bear, according to Danish social scientist Bjorn Lomborg, author of the 2007 book "Cool It!"
Yet about 300 to 500 polar bears could be saved every year, starting right now, Lomborg says, if there were a ban on hunting them in Canada. What's cheaper, trillions to trim carbon emissions or paying off the Canadians to stop killing polar bears?
Plastic grocery bags are being banned all over the place, even though they require less energy to make or recycle than paper ones. The whole country is being forced to subscribe to a modern version of transubstantiation, whereby corn is miraculously transformed into sinless energy even as it does worse damage than oil.
Conservation, which shares roots and meaning with conservatism, stands athwart this mass hysteria. Yes, conservationism can have a religious element to it as well, but that element stems from the biblical injunction to be a good steward of the Earth, rather than a worshiper of it. But stewardship involves economics, not mysticism.
Economics is the study of choosing between competing goods. Environmentalists view economics as the enemy because cost-benefit analysis is thoroughly unromantic. Lomborg is a heretic because he treats natural-world challenges like economic ones, seeking to spend money where it will maximize good, not just good feelings among environmentalists.
Many self-described environmentalists are in fact conservationists. But the environmental movement wins battles by blurring this distinction, arguing that all lovers of nature must follow their lead. At the same time, many people open to conservationist arguments, like hunters, are turned off by even reasonable efforts because they do not want to give aid and comfort to "wackos."
In the broadest sense, the environmental movement has won. Americans are "green" in that they are willing to spend a lot to keep their country ecologically healthy, which it is. But now it's time to save the environment from the environmentalists.
......................................
We certainly need to save the world from the Watermelon politicos and thanks to Anarchist's input - that is going quite well! ;0)
606 I gave you plenty of evidence last August in that long inteminable thread, I haven't the time to trawl back through it all and spit it out again. It's just that right here and now there's another great big white cold fact visible out of my window as I type. I felt I should draw it to your attention, it's more convincing than statistics out of your real climate bible.
Joe thanks for your enlightening last post.
Its always good to understand how people with different views come to their conclusions about the world. In this case you have stated a belief that as its cold in the UK today then anthropogenic climate change cannot be happening. And the thousands of pages of carefully researched peer reviewed papers which detail the mechanisms for ACC and collect GLOBAL data (ie not just what is going on where you happen to be) directly over a period of over a century and use paeloclimactic records for 600,000 odd years can be summarily dismissed because you are cold today. That there are well tested physical mechanism which would explain the warming trend is not important. That other people around the globe are experiencing droughts and heatwaves is totally irrelevant, because you are cold, and global climate apparently is centred around you.
I couldn't make it up if I tried.
Whatever next?
You say:--
"Anyway how can you post an article by the DUP saying the warming is down to the sun and also post an article from Pravda saying we are going into an ice age? Huh? In one thread you have posted two contradictory positions. That my friend is denial."
No Anarchist - what this is, is clear evidence of you not reading what is there.
If you read it again you will see that what I actually prefaced the piece that you got all unnecessary about with the following:-
" Because you guys are on one side of the sceptics and we have the like of the following on the other:-"
Ref - my post Tue Jan 27th 13:51
Now just to explain this as you clearly did not understand.
What I was actually laughing about was the fact that we sceptics are in the middle of two sets of alarmists - the "believers" of ACC=Catastrophe and the "believers" who think that an ice age is coming.
So of course I quote the both of you!!!!
Why shouldn’t I?
It just points out that the world is undecided and alternative views abound. It does not mean we sceptics support on or the other! - This is called having an "open mind" - it helps if you want the discover the truth rather than just accept another persons dogma.
Couple that with the total disdain true scientists that study how the sun and the earth interrelate over time show for the Climatologists with their unproven models and crystal ball premonitions and we sceptics feel very comfortable thank you.
But as I say - do keep the defensive prattle going - helps us a lot.
Ta
And they have been proved wrong time and time again.
That is why we sceptics are having such fun at the moment because in the past the "believers" - quoted the models and then cited floods, early spring, warm summers, Tornados etc etc as "proof" that the models were correct. It was OK for you to do it - so why not for us sceptics? Or do you really think that the rules do not apply to you because you have some sort of religious dispensation?
I can tell there is a distinct fear amongst the believers that the lack of warming since 1998 is more than just a tad inconvenient truth but a whopping great hole in the premise you have built a whole belief upon.
The latest cold snap is just a wonderful opportunity to apply the same "proof".
What is really funny "yawn" is how the believers now shift and squirm over to trying to make out that this cold snap was predicted and it is all part of Al Go(d)res great plan for us mortals and it is now all part of "Climate Destabilisation"
Come back Lowell Ponte - all is forgiven!! ;0)
Can someone tell me why the UK having snow is somehow evidence against climate change? Please refer to the record heatwave and drought currently affecting most of Australia in your answer.
If you refer to a globe you will see that Australia is in the Southern hemisphere and that we in the UK are in the Northern hemisphere. This means that there summer is in the months of October to March whereas ours (when we get one!) runs from July to September.
So when extreme weather hits as it does on a regular basis - if it hits now, in the northern hemisphere it tends to be cold extremes and because of the earth’s axis, in the southern hemisphere, it tends to be heatwave type recorded extremes. This is why we are having cold extremes here and Australia is having heat extremes. This is not the latest fad of "Climate destabilization - it is just reporters doing what they do best, hyping up a story to sell copy.
The fact that we have seasons at all indicates just what sort of effect the orbit, axis and distance from the sun can have on our climate. Add to that the variation in the "wobble" of the earth on its axis plus the 22 year cycle of output of the sun and you have a complex recipe for all sorts of climatic effects.
But, the congregation of the Church of Chicken Little will try to convince you otherwise. They will try to convince you that the sun is a constant never shifting or altering light in the sky.
This makes us that study such things laugh. In fact we wonder how they manage to keep a straight face when telling such a whopper.
Don't become a joke yourself. Read more and take on board more than a pseudo religious cults view of Climate Change.
Stand firm
Be sceptical
You know it makes sense!
I went to the very interesting talk last night in Bristol by Dr Michael Shermer on Why Darwinism Matters. Now the speaker is the Editor of Sceptic Magazine and has written a number of books and lectures all over the world on irrational beliefs and scepticism (amongst other topics).
During the Q&A I asked him about what I see as a connection in method and anti-science ideology between the global warming denialists (examples above) and creationists.
Guess what he said - yes. He joked to the hundreds in the audience that it is almost as if they went to the same school together to learn 'how to challenge science when you have none'. He said there were parallels in the way both operated and argued. Then he also said there were parallels in the way climate change denial and holocaust denial worked, "It's like David Irving says, show me the evidence, show me the order Hitler wrote, when it does not work like that, as if he is going to write 'I, A.Hilter do hereby...' the evidence comes from thousands of different places, like in global warming there is no single piece of evidence but thousands of lines of evidence, the biology of birds breeding patterns to satellite data."
There you have it - the editor of Sceptic magazine does not think you are sceptics at all and does think you the same mind-set as creationism and holocaust denail.
Just reporting what was said...
Michael Shermer was a well known global warming skeptic until he publicly changed his position in the June 2006 issue of Scientific American. He says:
"Nevertheless, data trump politics, and a convergence of evidence from numerous sources has led me to make a cognitive switch on the subject of anthropogenic global warming. My attention was piqued on February 8 when 86 leading evangelical Christians--the last cohort I expected to get on the environmental bandwagon--issued the Evangelical Climate Initiative calling for 'national legislation requiring sufficient economy-wide reductions' in carbon emissions."
Then I attended the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Monterey, Calif., where former vice president Al Gore delivered the single finest summation of the evidence for global warming I have ever heard, based on the recent documentary film about his work in this area, An Inconvenient Truth. The striking before-and-after photographs showing the disappearance of glaciers around the world shocked me out of my doubting stance. [...]
Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism."
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
Michael Shermer goes whichever way the wind blows.
First he was influenced by 86 leading evangelical christians on climate change but presumably they do not also have a stated view on intelligent design.
Then (laugh!) he was influenced by dear Al Go(d)re who gave the
" single finest summation of the evidence for global warming I have ever heard, based on the recent documentary film about his work in this area, An Inconvenient Truth"
!!!!!!!!!! - you know! - the one with the 9 inconvenient lies as stated by a UK court and where Gore frightens people with talk of 20 ft walls of water and states as proof the Mann Hockey Stick that has even been quietly dropped by the IPCC as it has been shown to be produced by "managed" data - such an algorithm was used that whatever data you fed the model, you always get the hockey stick graph.
I would say Shermer is about as reliable as the TV Evangelists you see on US TV.
As for my position as a sceptic on ACC=Catastrophe - I am not even religious and certainly do not subscribe to the notion of Intelligent design.
Nor do I believe the earth is hollow and aliens live inside it.
All things that Anarchist tries in his desperation to smear us sceptics with. My! - he must be desperate!
Sammy Wilson - Environment Minister has got it right:-
"It seems that there is a branch of the environmental movement which almost rejoices in every environmental disaster be it local or international. The bigger the disaster the better because it helps reinforce their demands for more government regulation, restrictions on individual economic freedom and their anti-business agenda.
Their ire has been particularly directed at me because I refuse to blindly accept the new pseudo-religion that we must dramatically change our economy in order to stop climate change. The tactic used by the "green gang" is to label anyone who dares disagree with their view of climate change as some kind of nutcase who denies scientific fact."
So used am I know to Anarchists silly smear games that they just cause a chuckle.
The Church of Chickin Little is under threat - so I expect even more extreme utterings before long.
Funny, he talked about the Al Gore thing last night. He did a bit of a joke about the reaction of denialists to Al Gore (I did laugh) and he said that he'd had emails about it but replied to them, 'no it's not about the person, it's about the evidence'.
You are struggling to dismiss him I feel? The only come back you have is that he cited Gore and 'goes whichever way the wind blows.' Hmmm, not really much of a riposte? Still the Gore thing is a bit of a simplification of his journey, he writes;
Four books eventually brought me to the flipping point. Archaeologist Brian Fagan's The Long Summer (Basic, 2004) explicates how civilization is the gift of a temporary period of mild climate. Geographer Jared Diamond's Collapse (Penguin Group, 2005) demonstrates how natural and human-caused environmental catastrophes led to the collapse of civilizations. Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006) is a page-turning account of her journeys around the world with environmental scientists who are documenting species extinction and climate change unmistakably linked to human action. And biologist Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006) reveals how he went from being a skeptical environmentalist to a believing activist as incontrovertible data linking the increase of carbon dioxide to global warming accumulated in the past decade. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-flipping-point
He said he goes where the evidence is, as a true sceptic should. Once he was where you are now and then the evidence changed his mind. Like Frank Luntz did. And Exxon Mobil. Still you've got the guy from the DUP and the guy who cheered the Iraq war on to support your view...with friends like that....
...so I guess the simple answer to my question (so far) is no, the climate change sceptics cannot "tell me why the UK having snow is somehow evidence against climate change" given that Australia is at least an equally valid piece of counter evidence.
I'll try a different question -- are you not concerned that you are selecting the facts to fit your story?
There's a long history here of people cherry picking extreme weather events as proof of global warming. Unfortunately the recent extreme cold spell is in the same category, ie it suggests the opposite. So to be even handed no future weather event should be used as evidence of anything, unless of course your prepared to accept that this cold spell bucks the trend and suggests the modelling may not be accurate, in which case we may need some sort of points system as to who can produce the most weather as evidence of climate change.
There was a very long thread on the same topic last August, I just can't be bothered to drag it all out again but you can find it if your interested. There was a load of stuff about ocean temperatures, the aqua satellites, the Lindzen hypothesis, how the north west passage was navigable a hundred years ago . Artic ice records only go back to 1979, how Co2 lagged warming by 800 years in the last ice age etc etc. It got ignored because no one had any answers at which point I stopped taking this seriously.
Anarchist 606 has conveniently forgotten about it.
Actually, what's going on now is people like CHE and me are just having a bit of sport with you because of the snow and you haven't got a sense of humour ;-)
Thanks,
From now on I'll always try to remember that climate sceptics are merely having a bit of fun, and I'll try to lighten up more often. I am sorry I thought you really believed that stuff.
Trouble dealing?
The only trouble I have with your extraordinary and rather bizarre belief associations between aliens, creationism and what you label “denialism”, is the religious fervour apply that seems to require you to simply pile on more and more regardless of the relevance of what you through at us sceptics, whose only “sin” is to have an open mind.
This “sin” that you clearly cannot abide is better labelled as heresy against the Church of Chickin Little, for which you as a true believer, possibly see yourself as a White Knight, on a crusade against the heathen masses. You certainly come across as being on a crusade, lashing out with ever more strange links to belief ideals you somehow think are going to turn people against those of us that have only ever said “The debate is not over” and questioned the assumption that ACC=Catastrophe.
This latest one from you is a bit of a laugh, he no longer edits the magazine in seems but he did found it. A quick look would indicate that as I thought the main thrust of this guy is evolution over intelligent design. I have no problem with that as I am not religious, so how could I ? But here you are, bizarrely linking my scepticism about ACC=Catastrophe to those that believe in intelligent design? - You have to admit that your latest ploy is rather odd to say the least.
You seem to think I am having trouble dealing with the likes of an entertainer who uses TV evangelist type audience manipulation and whose main area of expertise is religion and pointing out that some people have bizarre beliefs! Well watch out Anarchist because when it comes to bizarre beliefs, the Church of Chickin Little is based upon the predictions of computer models not facts.
So who, in our debate, is the one who “believes” and who is the one who is simply saying “The debate on what to do is not over!”
I do not care what people believe in as their God, I only know that when it comes to Global Warming I believe that people like Lomborg and the current Environment Minister, Wilson have got it right and those in the Congregation of The Church of Chickin Little, have lost the plot.
So now you think I am having trouble dealing with someone who used to be a sceptic (not a “denialist” please note) but now as a true entertainer, has seen the light of millions of bright shiny dollars emanating from every orifice of the High Priest (of?) Gore and he thought “I’ll have some of that!” and so, seeing the momentum that Gore had back then, swapped from sceptic to “believer” and made more money from his shows and his books.
I wonder how he feels now with the tide turning?
And who from the entertainment world are you going to throw at us next I wonder?
Are you going to get Harry Hill to Burp at us?
Or maybe you could you get The Vicar of Dibley to “see the light”.
Either way, you are, anarchist – one of the more entertaining things to while away some time on a really cold snowy February evening.
“Sing them another song Donna!” as you get led away – exit stage left.
As for having fun "Confused" - well yes we are!
Because as has been pointed out time and time again - the believers used every weather event under the sun (get it!) to "prove" that Global warming was going to fry us all.
So as Joe says above - what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
You cannot dismiss this cold spell - because if you do, then every weather event will have to be dismissed.
Because when it comes to denial - i wonder if it has ever occurred to you believers that it is you guys that are in denial because yo flatly refuse to consider that ACC might not equal Catastrophe.
I'm going back to assuming that you chaps aren't saying "ACC" doesn't exist simply for a good old chuckle -- and that you actually do believe what you're writing.
So -- when are you going to answer my question? In case you've forgotten...I'll write it out again, simply, in capital letters.
EXACTLY HOW DOES THE UK HAVING A FEW WEEKS OF COLD WEATHER PROVE THAT MAN MADE CLIMATE CHANGE IS A MYTH, GIVEN THAT AUSTRALIA IS HAVING ITS MOST PROLONGED AND SEVERE DROUGHT IN RECENT HISTORY?
You can either:
a - ignore the question because you have no answer;
b - answer a different question, and so ignore the one above;
c - or tell us to chill out as "it's all just a it of fun really".
Which is it?
I agree with Confused. I know I am...
I do not care what people believe in as their God, I only know that when it comes to Global Warming I believe that people like Lomborg and the current Environment Minister, Wilson have got it right and those in the Congregation of The Church of Chickin Little, have lost the plot.
Err, Clive/Che -
Lomborg thinks global warming is happening due to humans and accepts the IPCC report. He debates our response to it.
Sammy does not accept the IPCC, thinks it might not be happening, there is no consensus and the sun might be causing it.
Who's got it right? They are contradictory positions.
To sum up, if you don't like Denialism how about: It's-not-happening-but-it-is-sort-of-happening-but-even-if-it-is-happening-the-sun-is-causing-it-and-even-if-the-climate-is-changing-then-its-might-be-an-ice-age-though-it-might-be-warming-a-bit-though-it-is-a-conspiracy-of-scientists-and-communists-and-tree-huggers-but-whatever-as-we-don't-need-to-prove-anything-and-we-really-hate-al-gore-ism.
Got it. Clear as mud.
PS. Hi Joe, I remember the debate well, http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/article/689345 - same sort of fun as this debate really!
Confused - I really think you are dear boy! You ask:-
"EXACTLY HOW DOES THE UK HAVING A FEW WEEKS OF COLD WEATHER PROVE THAT MAN MADE CLIMATE CHANGE IS A MYTH, GIVEN THAT AUSTRALIA IS HAVING ITS MOST PROLONGED AND SEVERE DROUGHT IN RECENT HISTORY?"
(careful using upper case - you will upset Emma!) We sceptics never said it was a myth now did we?
What we said was that in the past the Church of Chickin Little believers used every single extreme weather event to "prove" that Global Warming was a fact. What we say now is that the latest bought of cool and damn cold weather can also be used by us sceptics to question the extreme alarmism of the Chickin Little types.
because I will say it again - please pay attention - Climate Change has always happened - I for one (I cannot speak for anyone else) feel that the models spin up and hype the ACC=Catastrophe scenario. We had the so called "proof" of floods, early springs warm summers cited as reasons for the debate being over.
This cool period in the N Hemisphere has meant that the world is questioning the alarmists assumptions. You just need to catch up.
Anarchist - as for Lomborg and Wilson having differing views - that is fine by me - I can deal with more than one concept at a time. Shame you can only deal with life on a one size fits all basis.
Because sadly you Chickin Little types seem only able to focus on just the one scenario and get quite upset when this is challenged.
Wilson simply hi-lights the alarmist agenda and how silly it is to blindly follow that alone and I agree with him on that 100%. But he does pick up on Lomborgs concept of what the appalling opportunity cost of focusing on only what the alarmists would have us focus on and how that would have a very negative effect on the developing nations. If you bother to read what he actually says it is line with Lomborgs opinion
“Spending billions on trying to reduce carbon emissions is one giant con that is depriving third world countries of vital funds to tackle famine, HIV and other diseases, Sammy Wilson said.”
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/environment/envi....html
As for my opinion? – I do not think man made climate change is a con – because it seems clear to me that as soon as we developed agriculture, used fire, felled forests etc. we had an effect on our climate. What I think is a con is the alarmist nonsense that ACC=Catastrophe. You only have models that predict that – that is why we label you guys as “believers” – you really believe with a religious passion that these models are right. As such it is the believers that deny – they deny the fact that rather than follow the now known to be flawed models, the Climate has done things very differently.
So much so that rather than your able to point to the heavens (well the weather doing whatever it does) and proclaim “Hark! – we have Global warming (bugger it’s not warming!) – we have Climate Change (bugger bugger! – it’s not changing!) – we have Climate destabilisation! (third time lucky eh!!) – you have to take into account that we have had a cold spell.
Oh you can bleat on about this being weather not climate and that one swallow does not make a summer and all the other of truisms.
But if you do, then that means that we can call into question all the so called “proof” you cited to back up the flawed models that so desperately needed such “proof” to give your alarmist ideas credibility.
And haven’t we sceptics been saying for some time that all we had to do was wait?
And the same will be true of yourselves – we will have a hot summer again, and we will have bad winters again. What we won’t have in the Church of Chickin Little strutting about claiming that floods, and a hot summer are GW/CC/CD and that “we are all gonna die!”
Your getting too desperate now Anarchist – trying to argue that the sceptics view is flawed because I quote both Wilson and Lomborg and your trying to make out that they hold contradictory views is sheer desperation.
I am sure they would have differences – I would be surprised if they didn’t! - but the issue is that both of them have written that the Alarmists will cost the developing world dear if the succeed in getting us to go down the very expensive wrong road.
Like I say – we sceptics value opinion – the Church of Chickin little preaches dogma.
Good reply Che.
Interesting read =
Man-Made Global Warming: Unravelling a Dogma
by Hans Labohm, Simon Rozendaal & Dick Thoenes
Three Dutchmen - respectively an international relations expert, a scientific journalist, and a chemical engineer (past chairman of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society) - form part of that growing body of reasonable and qualified people who feel unease at the claims of 'scientific consensus' on climate change, and wonder at the policies flowing from those claims. If the science is flawed, plainly the policies are too. Worldwide, billions of public money will be mis-spent, unnecessary costs placed on existing industry, new industrial development hampered. Together, these three authors are well-placed to point up the weaknesses in the scientific argument that global warming is a man-made phenomenon, and are able to analyse that murky place where the needs for recognition, research grants and votes all come together. Could it really be the case that the 'global warming crisis' is really as much about careers and power as anything else?
Published in 2004 – this book is still very relevant today and should be required reading for all those who profess to know all the answers.
I do read what you write. I that is why I am so confused. I mean come on...
I for one (I cannot speak for anyone else) feel that the models spin up
Feel? Are we talking science or a therapy session? I could feel Newton's Laws of Motion are a bit harsh. Without evidence, it is just opinion. Still I suppose you are at least using vague words like 'feel', which exemplify the lack of facts.
Anarchist - as for Lomborg and Wilson having differing views - that is fine by me - I can deal with more than one concept at a time.
Concepts? Views? This is science not an arts festival. I m sorry to say you are not 'dealling' with them - you said they were both right and that makes no sense. It is like saying Richard Dawkins and George Bush are both right on religion. Come on...
Like I say – we sceptics value opinion – the Church of Chickin little preaches dogma.
I finally understand the denialist view; taking the views and feelings on the complexities of the climate from a politician and an economist rather than the collected research from thousands of earth scientists, biologists, ecologists and all of the major scientific institutions on the planet.
Imagine this in another cotntext; you've got a lump growing in your stomach. Who do you listen to; a guy from the DUP who knows nothing about medicine and an economist or a team of experienced and trained doctors? If trusting the doctors is dogmatic, I'm with the dogmatix crew!
PS..
Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) has released their lower tropospheric temperature anomaly data (based on microwave sounding dat a on board satellites) for the month of January. I think many of you who live in eastern North America or western Europe will be very surprised to hear that the month of January as a whole was clearly warmer-than-normal when you take most of the globe into account. http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2009/02/january_was_actually_warmer_th_1.html Ooops.
Just checked out your link
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2009/02/january_was_actually_warmer_th_1.html
Oooooooops indeed!
Hardly a non biased site this is it!
The link to :-
"The Global Warming Center,
Where you will find links to the latest research, commentary by experts with various points of view on all aspects of climate change, and a forum to share your own thoughts and ask questions."
Hardly makes it an unbiased source of info!
http://www.accuweather.com/global-warming/index.asp - That is a laugh! - do you really think we sceptics are that gullible?
The desperation is getting the better of you.
By my count hammond had more than enough posts hidden in the last month to be banned - again!
Forecasters are warning of freezing temperatures tonight as the Big Freeze shows no sign of loosening its grip.
Big Freeze Just Goes On - And On
Temperatures as low as -10C have turned the country's widespread snow patches into sheets of deadly ice.
Forecasters say the temperature is some rural parts of the country may plunge to a bone chilling -12C on Saturday and Sunday night. The Met Office has issued a severe weather alert, warning of widespread icy roads tonight, with another alert issued for Monday warning of the possibility of heavy snow in the south, including London.
Sky weather presenter Isobel Lang says the icy conditions are here to stay.
"Today, there will be snow showers for north east England and Scotland but in the South East it will be sunny and freezing," she said.
"Tonight we're expecting half-frost, so there is an ice threat again.
"An Atlantic weather system loaded with moisture will arrive tomorrow with early snow for Ireland, but that will likely turn to rain later in the day.
"Britain will be threatened with snow - mostly across the Midlands, Wales, northern England and Scotland."
The second Severn bridge has reopened after both crossings were closed by falling ice on Friday. There are delays at airports and on some train services, while many roads are still closed as the UK's worst week of travel disruption for more than 18 years persists. Thousands of Welsh rugby fans hoping to travel to Scotland for Sunday's Six Nations clash have seen their plans thrown into disarray after heavy snow grounded flights at Bristol airport.
The AA estimated by the start of the weekend it would have attended a total of more than 70,000 breakdowns since Monday. More than 6,100 call-outs were received by 12.30pm yesterday, and the workload throughout the day was double the norm for a Friday in February.
The severe weather conditions left 21,000 homes across the West Country without power. Councils are running low on road salt and Gloucestershire County Council has said it will resort to using table salt to treat roads.
The Highways Agency say its vehicles are making deliveries of salt to hard-pressed local authorities.
Do try to think bigger hammond.
Focusing on the UK over a period of a couple weeks is hardly scientific is it.
Whats the long-term weather report for Bangladesh?
Or Antarctica?
As billions of gallons of melting ice water pour down from the melting north pole, the gulf stream will most likely increasingly weaken, leading to colder winters in the northern hemisphere.
But I don't expect certain individuals to be able to comprehend such a state of affairs, that global warming of the planet in general will lead to more frequent cold winters here in the U.K.
The only thing which currently prevents us have siberian winters every year, is the gulf stream.
Al Gore has really stepped in it this time. He could have spent the rest of his global warming career collecting money by spreading fear over events that were a century or at least half century in the future. Oh, but that wasn’t good enough for Big Al. He’s now told the biggest global warming whopper of his alarmist career:
AL GORE HAS GUARANTEED THAT THE NORTHERN POLAR ICE CAP WILL BE COMPLETELY GONE IN FIVE YEARS!!!
When I heard this I assumed it was a rumor started by skeptics to make Gore look bad. It wasn’t until I viewed the video that I realized what Gore had done. Gore has started a five year credibility countdown timer ticking. He could well be held accountable and proven to be a fraud when his dire prediction aimed at drumming up support doesn’t come close to coming true.
The mainstream media isn’t going to let this video see the light of day because they, unlike Al Go(d)re, understand the precarious position in which he has placed himself.
It is therefore down to the internet to spread the word about Big Al’s prediction. Will he be exposed for the fear mongering opportunist that he has become? - Wow - another reason for us sceptics to be sitting back and watching with interest!
To view the video, please visit the following site and click on the picture of Big Al holding up five fingers.
http://www.hootervillegazette.com
While visiting this site, you might want to watch a preview of the film “Not Evil, Just wrong”
Waiting has never been so interesting.