HOLLYWOOD loves a movie full of dire predictions about the end of the Earth. Of course global warming has been all the rage with Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth winning an Oscar. Although I did prefer The Day After Tomorrow in which a climatologist, played by Dennis Quad, tried to save his son in New York from an ice age.
There is a new movie due for release on October 18, Not Evil Just Wrong, which explores society’s interest in Armageddon-type scenarios with a particular focus on the cost, and potential costs, of the policies following concerns about DDT and AGW [anthropogenic global warming].
I was lucky enough to be given a sneak preview of the feature length documentary by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney last week.
The movie is an exploration of the fears and aspirations of an ordinary small town American woman – Tiffany McElhany from Vevay – and her quest to get a message to Al Gore. Interwoven with this story are interviews with some of the most famous climate scientists of our time including James Hansen and Richard Lindzen.
Like McAleer and McElhinney’s earlier documentary, Mine Your Own Business, Not Evil Just Wrong is politically incorrect, compelling and spans several continents including Africa while exploring its subject matter with harshness and humour.
Those unfamiliar with the controversies behind the banning of DDT and push to phase out coal as a source of electricity, may find parts of the documentary unbelievable. Hopefully it will move them to follow up with more of their own research.
Sub thematically, the movie investigates our lives as part of a technological and rational society with ordinary people in Africa, Ireland and America wanting to do the right thing by their families, communities and the Earth.
Not surprisingly there have been barriers to the production and distribution of the movie from the mainstream film industry. I say not surprisingly, because the film unashamedly challenges the populist views on AGW, and no one seems to want to hear the debating points.
Undeterred McAleer and McElhinney are seeking your help in bypassing these obstacles and inviting you to be part of the premiere night through the hosting of a screening in your home, community centre or church.
“Be part of the cinematic tea party movement and tell Al Gore and the elites that you are fed up with taxes and restrictions that threaten jobs across the country,” says Ann McElhinney.
Perhaps this is your opportunity to come out – at work, on Facebook, over the dinner table – and tell your colleagues, friends and/or family you are not completely convinced by all the global warming hype. Tell them you are planning a film night on Sunday October 18, 2009 and that they are invited. Almost everything you need to make the evening a success comes with the party pack you can buy online. Clicking on the advertisement at the top right hand side of this blog page – basic packs with DVD and red carpet are US$30.
**************************************
Notes and Links
This blog site receives AU$5 for every party pack sold by linking from the above flashing badge.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Jennifer, i still remember your “defining the sceptic” series.
i wonder: how would a sceptic review a film?
wouldn t i at least expect some “sceptic” remarks?
for example stating the fact, that there is no real DDT controversy?
Sod,
You need to read more carefully, in the above note I write:
“with the controversies behind the banning of DDT”.
And I hope you are going to buy a DVD at least – click on the flashing badge. If you let me know where you live I might be able to hook you up with someone holding a film night?
Cheers,
“with the controversies behind the banning of DDT”.
I hearby predict that the ‘controversies’ will all be in agreement with their political view of the world.
I am really put off by the title of the film. The people who have killed tens of millions by banning DDT and are starving millions more with AGW through the biofuels programs are the very faces of evil. They live like the millionaire slave owners who stayed in Richmond, VA while exhorting the overseer back at the plantation to beat more work out of the slaves. They made sure they did not have to see the whippings and deaths from heat exhaustion. Al Gore with his profligate lifestyle lives the life of luxury while he preaches policies that leave a billion people without electricity and a short lifespan. Al Gore never has to face the people left in poverty. But its mostly little brown children in far away places who die, so who cares.
The title of the film should be, “Not Just Wrong, but Truly Evil.”
Although a sceptic about Co2 induced warming, I can smell alarmism coming from this film. The alarm cards of taxes, jobs, African poverty are obvious in the promotion. Yes, getting paranoid about AGW will hurt some people, but events like wars, natural disasters, and the GFC hurt far more and have nothing to do with Al Gore or even climate change.
I suppose this film is an emotional counter to what comes out from the planet savers, but the statement “They want us to change the way we live” is probably closer to the truth.
sod,
And you think the AGW promoters haven’t produced studies and shaped reports to their political agenda?
AGW is an apocalyptic cult.
Apocalyptic cults have a perfect track record of being wrong.
Ho ho ho – we’re not getting anywhere on a most serious issue are we?
It seems almost “alarmist”? Alarmist denialism? Meanwhile Iraq, Afghanistan, global meltdown – how could the alarmist denialists be so misguided about an issue not even yet implemented?
But hey it’s the good boys – they’re baaaccckkk http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mine_Your_Own_Business who want you to believe that bursting tailings dams full of cyanide are good for ya !. Ho ho ho ho ho !
“the banning of DDT”
When and where has DDT been banned, and by whom?
RW,
“In the 1970s and 1980s, agricultural use of DDT was banned in most developed countries. DDT was first banned in Hungary in 1968[26] then in Norway and Sweden in 1970 and the US in 1972, but was not banned in the United Kingdom until 1984. The use of DDT in vector control has not been banned, but it has been largely replaced by less persistent alternative insecticides.
The Stockholm Convention, which entered into force in 2004, outlawed several persistent organic pollutants, and restricted the use of DDT to vector control. The Convention has been ratified by more than 160 countries and is endorsed by most environmental groups. Recognizing that a total elimination of DDT use in many malaria-prone countries is currently unfeasible because there are few affordable or effective alternatives, the public health use of DDT was exempted from the ban until alternatives are developed. The Malaria Foundation International states that “The outcome of the treaty is arguably better than the status quo going into the negotiations…For the first time, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector control only, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes will be slower than before.”[27]”
Thanks Squidly. Tthe relevant phrases are The use of DDT in vector control has not been banned, and the public health use of DDT was exempted from the ban until alternatives are developed. A movie about the mythical ban cited by Gary P, and much publicised by the political right would certainly be interesting.
Note the MFI’s explicit endorsement of the ban on agricultural use as helping to preserve the efficacy of DDT in vector control.
John Quiggin: I live in the USA. Please tell me where I can buy legally some DDT at any price. Should be an easy task since it has not been banned.
John Quiggin: I live in Australia. Please tell me where I can buy legally some DDT at any price. Should be an easy task since it has not been banned.
So why do want DDT – to make the insect pests like Heliothis that you previously abused it on even more super-resistant?
I find $60 for a 2 x T-Shirts rather excessive.
what are you doing here John Quiggin? – you don’t debate deniers.
@janama, while I shouldn’t really be wasting time here, my rule about debating delusionists applies to amateur climate scientists who want me to debate scientific questions – I point them to the real scientists.
I’m happy to engage in debate about the non-existent ban on the use of DDT in vector control, the way rightwing propagandists ginned this up into an anti-environmentalist slander, and the stupidity of advocating agricultural use of DDT, something condemned by everyone concerned with malaria vector control, but particularly deplored by those who see a relatively large role for DDT. I’ll return Jen’s favor by posting a link here
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2008/05/rehabilitatingcarson/
Longer version here
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2008/05/13/in-praise-of-rachel-carson/
I think a better title would be, “These evil embeciles are wrong”. If this was a film about nutty ideas by nutty people, the msm would supply a venue for a world premier and promote it strongly, but of course the reverse is true.
Gore, hansen etc are evil and their stupid devotees on this blog are like all fanatical religious fundamentalists who unfortunately cannot think for themselves.
The true denialists are those who will not accept that the climate changes naturally and the natural recovery from the LIA easily accounts for the 0.7c rise in temp over the last 100+ years.
Stupid denialists who are led along by the snout by the likes of an evil, selfish swine like gore who uses energy like a true aristocrat and must have the carbon footprint of a yeti or bigfoot.
Although DDT wasn’t banned for vector control, the negative reaction of certain influential groups to DDT anywhere, anytime, prompted western manufacturers to stop making it entirely. Today, if you want DDT for vector control, you’re stuck with China, North Korea and India as suppliers. Is there any question that after the agricultural ban, use of DDT for vector control also dropped drastically and malaria deaths shot up?
Lou
Quiggin, Squidly, SJT, while we are about it, DDT is the only effective insectide for bedbugs. Hotels and hostels world wide would be like to know where to get it legally, so they can fumigate infected rooms. Those little sods are not funny.
(I once failed uni subjects because I could not sleep properly in my hostel room. I complained, but the management dismissed my complaints with “Australia has lots of biting insects”. It was only on returning from holidays and being bitten again savagely that I caught some of them, had them identified and rang the hostel, only to find on returning that my room had been fumigated and I could not get any of my gear for a week! Of course, it was too late by then to apply to sit supplementary exams.)
Jennifer, I will be travelling on Oct 20th, but I would like to know where, in Adelaide, a premier will be hosted.
so John, would you like to enlighten the audience as to when the the UN approved DDT for vector control?
Neville said I think a better title would be, “These evil embeciles are wrong”. If this was a film about nutty ideas by nutty people, the msm would supply a venue for a world premier and promote it strongly, but of course the reverse is true.
Gore, hansen etc are evil and their stupid devotees on this blog are like all fanatical religious fundamentalists who unfortunately cannot think for themselves.
The true denialists are those who will not accept that the climate changes naturally and the natural recovery from the LIA easily accounts for the 0.7c rise in temp over the last 100+ years.
Stupid denialists who are led along by the snout by the likes of an evil, selfish swine like gore who uses energy like a true aristocrat and must have the carbon footprint of a yeti or bigfoot
Congratulations Neville, you did everything except address the points raised.
Do they do stand up in the film? I think it’s the bravest form of comedy.
so John, would you like to enlighten the audience as to when the the UN approved DDT for vector control?
The UN hasn’t banned DDT. Individual countries do.
This is the latest report on DDT use issued by the UN. http://www.pops.int/documents/ddt/Global%20status%20of%20DDT%20SSC%2020Oct08.pdf
The bedbugs stuff is just another part of the myth. Bedbugs developed resistance to DDT long before the 1972 ban on agricultural use. See this article from 1959 for example, or check Pubmed for heaps more.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2537838
The movie should have been called “Evil AND wrong”.
The main reason people are prepared to put their scientific and economic ignorance on display and destroy human prosperity (via the green movement) is because they think it is morally good.
OT – the next sequestration solution?
http://www.mbdenergy.com/catalogue/c10
Something like algae seems the obvious route to sequestration of captured CO2, in the absence of any real progress on underground storage. Haven’t seen anything on the economics, though.
Quiggan must be here because no-one visits him to read his rants on his blog.
Hey John, all the religious zealots like Sod and Luke on this blog don’t appear to want to answer my questions on the “science’ of “global warming” / “climate change”. I have read the IPCC AR4 but cannot find anywhere that addresses them. Perhaps you could give me some specific answers.
1. Over the last 30 years, average global temperatures as measured by satellites (UAH) indicate a monthly temperature anomaly of zero degrees C in June 2009 and 0.4 degC in July 2009. Satellite temperatures of sea surface temperatures indicate an increase of 0.1degC over the same period. Both show considerable variation, almost a “random walk”. Argos measurements of ocean temperatures show cooling since 2003. Antarctica ice is at its maximum extent since satellite monitoring began, and the Arctic has lost as much as it has gained since 1950. What evidence is there that this is not just noise, or natural climate variation?
2. If the hysteria that average global (or ocean) temperatures are being driven ever upward by increasing anthropogenic emissions of CO2 is “science”, what falsifiability tests has this passed?
3. With atmospheric CO2 increasing, and average global and ocean temperatures static or falling, and there does not appear to be even a correlation much less a causation between them. What irrefutable scientific evidence exists that CO2 is a temperature forcer?
4. If the climate is changing because of anthropogenic emissions of CO2 over the last 100 years, which presumably is swamping any natural variation, then I assume that climate would look very different if these emissions were not in the atmosphere. What would the climate look like now, and how would I know?
5. If climate models predicting Armageddon as a result of anthropogenic emissions of “greenhouse gases” are relying on positive feedback mechanisms to make CO2 look like a significant climate forcer, what evidence is there that these positive feedback mechanisms actually exist?
6. What successful predictions have been made by climate models that would indicate their reliability?
7. During the Ordovician period, atmospheric CO2 levels were up to 11 times the current value, yet during this period the Earth was in an ice age. If CO2 is a significant and dominant forcer of temperatures, why?
7. During the Ordovician period, atmospheric CO2 levels were up to 11 times the current value, yet during this period the Earth was in an ice age. If CO2 is a significant and dominant forcer of temperatures, why?
You simply don’t understand the science, otherwise you wouldn’t be ‘asking’ questions like this. CO2 can be a climate driver, it is not always the most powerful driver, that can vary with the circumstances at that time. According to research, it is currently the most power driver of change, that will undoubtedly change at some time in the future.
I am not an expert on philosophy, but the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1832) are interesting. One of my nephews, more gifted than I, has written a biography of Karl Marx, in which he mentions the influence of Hegel over Marx’s thinking (Wheen 1999).
Whatever our view of Marxism, we have to admit that it has had a great influence, from the Russian revolution, through Chinese history, South America, and up to recent events in Africa, under Marxist Robert Mugabe. That influence has been, on balance, undeniably bad, involving wars, poverty, early deaths, and damage to the natural environment. I believe many animals in Zimbabwe’s National Parks have been shot for food.
Two Hegelian ideas strike me as important. One is that of dialectic, or creative debate. The other is the idea that there is often a gulf between what is, and what we think is, or ought to be. Models can be wide of the mark. Neither of these ideas is, of course, due to Hegel alone. The Chinese have long recognized polarity in their yin-yang idea, and Plato talked about shadows on the cave wall.
Oddly, history suggests that when Marxists get into power, they try to suppress dialectic, and try to impose a socio-economic model which does not relate well to reality. Hence the collapse of so many Marxist regimes, or a shift towards economic realism, as in China.
On this blog, Jennifer tries to maintain constructive dialectic on environment and politics, but there are those who seem to want to close it down. The same people appear to subscribe to models of climate and bushfire which are well divorced from reality. Does Karl Marx’s error linger on in the ‘environmental movement’? I think Karl Marx meant well. He was not evil, but his model of the world was badly wrong. Ditto our political ‘environmentalists’? I hope this inspires some constructive dialectic, notwithstanding some lurking Eco-Bakunins. I look forward to seeing the film.
Ref:
Wheen, F. (1999) Karl Marx, Fourth Estate Ltd.
Other than addressing the question of the stupidity of sequestration, for which there is no valid reason, I cannot see how algae on that scale could be managed.
same with underground storage
It is all very well to discuss this stuff in theory, the engineering challenges are significant and will require significant R&D.
The economics makes no sense either. It is not a product or service that anyone demands, except via political fiat. Your taxes at work producing nothing.
The only question for historians will be when did climate alarmism pass from the plain wrong stage to the evil stage. Given that this film has been around for a while, perhaps we can excuse the generosity implied in the title.
The Y2K pile on is a case study in how something can mutate from a low order technical issue into some kind of pseudo-moral apocalyptic scam. Y2K was a real problem, (albeit quite a pedestrian one), but the hysteria and scare-mongering became outrageous.
The final feeding frenzy in 1998 and 1999 saw company directors and government managers effectively extorted by lawyers, insurance analysts, advertising execs, legislators, accountants, busy-boy regulators and management and IT consultants on pain of jail time (in some jurisdictions) if they failed to overreact.
Just ten years later we have people saying that mass hysteria, groupthink and gravy-training are the stuff of far-fetched conspiracy theories.
7. During the Ordovician period, atmospheric CO2 levels were up to 11 times the current value, yet during this period the Earth was in an ice age. If CO2 is a significant and dominant forcer of temperatures, why?
You simply don’t understand the science, otherwise you wouldn’t be ‘asking’ questions like this. CO2 can be a climate driver, it is not always the most powerful driver, that can vary with the circumstances at that time. According to research, it is currently the most power driver of change, that will undoubtedly change at some time in the future.
How can CO2 sometimes be the most powerful driver, and other times not? How does it change its properties?
What research show unequivocally that CO2 is a “powerful driver” of climate? Please advise, especially in relation to that there does not appear to be any correlation between increasing atmospheric CO2 and “average global” temperature trends.
Jen posted a link to discussion of the movie on my blog, so I’ll return the favour. My post on the movie: War on Rachel Carson enters 47th year.
The movie’s producers get so many basic things so very wrong that it seems that they do not know the difference between truth and falsehood or don’t care.
Sod – and why would it change some time in the future?
If orbital forcing can overwhelm atmospheric CO2, then CO2 is simply not a “powerful driver”.
Once you admit that CO2 is not a “powerful driver”, and that there are other much more significant climate forcers, like water vapour, like solar irradiance, like land use changes and UHI, you come to the reality that CO2 emissions, especially on the modest scale of the contribution from industrial society, are a non-problem.
There are other problems to solve, without a pointless tax on prosperity.
If you look at the carpetbagging, the pressure on governments to tax and transfer those taxes from households to carbon traders, inefficient and ineffective “renewable” energy producers, and non-productive carbon sinks..
If you look at how the science has been distorted to conform to political agendas and extract funding from governments
It is not just wrong, it is evil.
Ever willing to help John Quiggin, here are the answers he should give to Oil Shrill’s questions
Q1. Over the last 30 years, average global temperatures as measured by satellites (UAH) indicate a monthly temperature anomaly of zero degrees C in June 2009 and 0.4 degC in July 2009. Satellite temperatures of sea surface temperatures indicate an increase of 0.1degC over the same period. Both show considerable variation, almost a “random walk”. Argos measurements of ocean temperatures show cooling since 2003. Antarctica ice is at its maximum extent since satellite monitoring began, and the Arctic has lost as much as it has gained since 1950. What evidence is there that this is not just noise, or natural climate variation?
A1. None at all.
Q2. If the hysteria that average global (or ocean) temperatures are being driven ever upward by increasing anthropogenic emissions of CO2 is “science”, what falsifiability tests has this passed?
A2. The hypothesis of CO2-determined AGW fails the elementary test of checking temperature change at the SAME measuring stations that are used to generate our data on atmospheric CO2. For example, the R2 on annual changes in temperatures measured at Mauna Loa since 1958 against annual increases in [CO2] at Mauna Loa is close to zero, and the coefficient is equally minimal and absolutely statistically insignificant. The same is true of temperatures at Barrow (Alaska) and Cape Grim, the other main CO2 measuring stations. If a theory cannot be verified at the source of its core data, it is worthless. What is easily verified is that Airport-based Global Warming is determined by human economic activity, where flight movements are an excellent proxy (much better than tree rings) for all energy-based human activity there and elsewhere. [CO2] is a not a very good proxy for human energy usage at the places where that occurs, as the increase in CO2 only partly derives from the sources of most of that energy. Honolulu Airport is a case in point – temperatures there correlate better with aircraft movements and the associated economic activity in and around the airport than with [CO2]. Canberra Airport is another with a striking correlation between rising temperature there since 2000 and the massive expansion in adjacent buildings and carparks since 2000. In short, GW is a function of human economic activity, but not of [CO2]. The resulting inconvenient truth for Quiggin and fellow travellers Garnaut & co is that replacing fossil fuels with solar and wind energy etc will reduce growth of [CO2] but have no impact on GMT,as that is primarily determined by energy usage whatever the source of that energy. Even worse for Quiggin is that CCS will increase AGW, because of the enormous increases in energy output required to effect CCS, while the storage of CO2 will again have zero temperature effect.
Q3. With atmospheric CO2 increasing, and average global and ocean temperatures static or falling, and there does not appear to be even a correlation much less a causation between them. What irrefutable scientific evidence exists that CO2 is a temperature forcer?
A3. None at all, as in A2, because there is no evidence of warming trends at Mauna Loa etc. Those CO2 measuring stations are the black swans of AGW – each is pristine, chosen as they were for absence of local effects like so-called UHIs on both CO2 and temperature.
Q4. If the climate is changing because of anthropogenic emissions of CO2 over the last 100 years, which presumably is swamping any natural variation, then I assume that climate would look very different if these emissions were not in the atmosphere. What would the climate look like now, and how would I know?
A4. There is no evidence of any global temperature change since 1900, simply because in that year the instrumental records covered only 20% of the globe (see station maps of NOAA). This means that in the absence of records from virtually all Africa, most of Central Amercia, and much of SE Asia, all hot places, the “global” mean in 1900 is seriously understated – and that means the claimed increase (by GISS) in GMT of 0.7 oC between 1900 and 2000 is fictitious. Instrumental coverage only reached 80% around 1960 and has not improved since.
Q5. If climate models predicting Armageddon as a result of anthropogenic emissions of “greenhouse gases” are relying on positive feedback mechanisms to make CO2 look like a significant climate forcer, what evidence is there that these positive feedback mechanisms actually exist?
A5. None at all, they are all invented ex post, while there is growing data on negative feedbacks (from clouds and vegetation cover).
Q6. What successful predictions have been made by climate models that would indicate their reliability?
A6. None.
Q7. During the Ordovician period, atmospheric CO2 levels were up to 11 times the current value, yet during this period the Earth was in an ice age. If CO2 is a significant and dominant forcer of temperatures, why?
A7. As shown in A2, CO2 has had no forcing effect on temperature at Mauna Loa Barrow and Cape Grim. The main determinant of [CO2] since 1750 has been humans’ food production, which currently absorbs around 60% of annual fossil fuel emissions of CO2.
CO2 is a major forcer of temperature up to around 50ppm. After that , as it’s logarithmic, it tapers off as water vapour becomes the main driving force. That’s what Plimer meant when he suggested that water vapour drove the greenhouse effect by 98% but Monbiot was too stupid to understand.
Other than addressing the question of the stupidity of sequestration, for which there is no valid reason, I cannot see how algae on that scale could be managed.
I heard the managing director on radio this morning – he said they already had systems in place – They had successfully trialed the waste as cattle feed and the oil has been used as biodiesel. If they use a different algae they get different products, like plastics and Jet fuel.
He infered that the algae were housed in arms like a starfish and the CO2 piped in from the middle. The algae doubled in size in one day! – BTW – these are micro- algae
All y’all laying out your propaganda about how DDT wasn’t banned and the UN and WHO really aren’t bad guys and support its use please read this recent statement by the WHO:
http://www.mediaglobal.org/article/2009-06-06/no-change-in-who-position-on-ddt
Now, since their goal is STILL TO COMPLETELY BAN DDT BY 2020, y’all obviously have your heads where it would take my late daddies D8 Caterpillar to remove it!!!
Now if you really want to convince us of something, please list the areas and conditions under which the WHO and the UN have assisted in using DDT. In many of the areas where it is needed there are no local funds or resources for spraying. Unless external organisations provide resources, like the WHO or other organisation, THERE IS NO DDT USE!!!!!
SJT:
“7. During the Ordovician period, atmospheric CO2 levels were up to 11 times the current value, yet during this period the Earth was in an ice age. If CO2 is a significant and dominant forcer of temperatures, why?
You simply don’t understand the science, otherwise you wouldn’t be ‘asking’ questions like this. CO2 can be a climate driver, it is not always the most powerful driver, that can vary with the circumstances at that time. According to research, it is currently the most power driver of change, that will undoubtedly change at some time in the future.”
Ah, so CO2 is a driver for many seasons then, some times it does, sometimes it doesn’t, and it all depends on how you jiggle the parameters in the model.
Please join the Fabians posting here in their grand delusion.
Shill asks
How can CO2 sometimes be the most powerful driver, and other times not? How does it change its properties?
The Milankovich cycles or the solar output can be more powerful. But they aren’t doing much at all at present. CO2 is.
What research show unequivocally that CO2 is a “powerful driver” of climate? Please advise, especially in relation to that there does not appear to be any correlation between increasing atmospheric CO2 and “average global” temperature trends.
Have you read the IPCC report? “Understanding and attributing climate change”. That is the most comprehensive report available. “unequivocally”? You must not understand science at all. Nothing is “Unequivocal”.
I’m glad Tim Lambert and John Quiggan dropped by to discuss DDT because DDT is probably the most common subject of threads on both their blogs; perhaps the most informative source for info for DDT is the Junk Science site;
http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.html
Tim of course has a special thread[s] to rebut this site; but both Tim and John miss the crucial issue about the DDT controversy which is not whether it is effective or superseded but the reason why it was first raised by Carson and subsequently jumped on by various green advocacy groups. That reason is Carson didn’t like DDT because it simply disrupted pristine nature which should have priority over the interests of humanity. Of course this is not straightforward because obviously it is in the interests of humanity not to despoil the environment in such a way which affects humanity but this is a paradigm away from the current basis of green ideology and AGW which rejects any encroachment of pristine nature [PN] not because this may benefit humanity but because on principle PN should not be encroached or compromised even if such encroachment benefits humanity.
In a nutshell the DDT issue represents the fact that the interests of PN and humanity have diverged; on this level AGW is an attempt by those who think PN should dominate the interests of humanity to restrict humanity’s interests. So the question for Tim and John is, should DDT be banned because it is bad for humans or because it is bad for PN?
For those interested abc 4 corners tonight looks at the clean coal debate, I just hope it’s not the usual biased nonsense from silly old aunty.
Clean coal is a bad joke for 3 reasons; firstly it is technologically implausible;
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8408
Secondly, it would, even if possible, add considerably to power costs; and thirdly if there is no AGW why should the public suffer less and dearer power?
Neville, maybe you can do a report on the 4 Corners effort; I can’t watch our abc, period; blood pressure and too many smashed TVs.
In a nutshell the DDT issue represents the fact that the interests of PN and humanity have diverged; on this level AGW is an attempt by those who think PN should dominate the interests of humanity to restrict humanity’s interests. So the question for Tim and John is, should DDT be banned because it is bad for humans or because it is bad for PN?
Classic false dichotomy. Like all issues this is complex. What are the consequences for and against it’s use, and it’s not just a matter or PN. The WHO report illustrates a carefully considered approach to the matter.
Abstract
The global use of DDT for disease vector control is 4-5,000 tonnes of active ingredient per year. This substantial
amount may increase as a number of countries are in the process of reintroducing DDT for malaria control. Both the
costs and the effectiveness of DDT are dependent on local settings and merit careful consideration vis-à-vis alternative
products or methods. Legislation and capacity to enforce regulations and good use and management practice for DDT is
inadequate in many DDT-using countries. WHO recommends DDT only for indoor residual spraying, provided that
several conditions are met. Concerns about the use of DDT are fuelled by recent reports of high levels of human
exposure associated with indoor spraying amidst accumulating evidence on chronic health effects. There are signs that
resistance in malaria vectors to the toxic action of DDT is spreading, though not (or not only) as a result of indoor
spraying. The spectre of DDT illegally flowing into agricultural production systems raises broader environmental
worries as well as a threat to international trade in export crops. Research on the fate of DDT applied in indoor residual
spraying is still lacking. As immediate alternatives to DDT, effective chemical methods for vector control and
transmission reduction are available. However, the arsenal of insecticides is limited and in certain areas the
development of resistance is undermining the efficacy of insecticidal tools in malaria control while new insecticides are
not expected in the short term. To be prepared for disease emergencies in the future, the continued effectiveness of
insecticides needs to be safeguarded. A number of non-chemical methods have clearly contributed to successful malaria
control, but more work is needed to study their effectiveness as main or supplementary intervention at programme
level, tailored to local ecologies. In addition, a number of promising technologies are under development and need
further investment. Important barriers and gaps in the development and implementation of DDT alternatives are
discussed (some barriers also apply to use of DDT). A proposed solution is the support for long-term, integrated and
multi-partner strategies of vector control. Integrated Vector Management, defined as a rational decision-making process
for the optimal use of resources for vector control, provides a framework for developing and implementing effective
technologies and strategies as sustainable alternatives to DDT.
The recommendations are:
i. External financial support for long-term, integrated and multi-partner strategies of malaria vector control
is urgently needed;
ii. In the short term, immediate alternatives to DDT need to be accepted by donors and emphasized for
implementation;
iii. Promising innovative technologies, particularly those that do not rely on chemical insecticides, need more
emphasis in research and development;
iv. As the evidence base on some of the more serious and chronic health effects is mounting, the assessment
of health risks of DDT needs to be re-visited and a system for monitoring exposure from IRS established;
v. Criteria for implementation of IVM need to be further developed and consolidated;
Ah, so CO2 is a driver for many seasons then, some times it does, sometimes it doesn’t, and it all depends on how you jiggle the parameters in the model.
Louis, it’s not my fault if you are too stupid too understand that climate is a complex matter.
“Like all issues this is complex”; or as Gore says, “It’s complicated.” No, it’s not little will; AGW is real or its not; but let me make the issue even plainer: should PN be preserved for its own sake even if that preservation impacts detrimentally on humanity?
In 1955, the World Health Organization commenced a program to eradicate malaria worldwide, relying largely on DDT. The program was initially highly successful, eliminating the disease in “Taiwan, much of the Caribbean, the Balkans, parts of northern Africa, the northern region of Australia, and a large swath of the South Pacific”[17] and dramatically reducing mortality in Sri Lanka and India.[18] However resistance soon emerged in many insect populations as a consequence of widespread agricultural use of DDT. In many areas, early victories against malaria were partially or completely reversed, and in some cases rates of transmission even increased.[19] The program was successful in eliminating malaria only in areas with “high socio-economic status, well-organized healthcare systems, and relatively less intensive or seasonal malaria transmission”.[20]
DDT was less effective in tropical regions due to the continuous life cycle of mosquitoes and poor infrastructure. It was not pursued at all in sub-Saharan Africa due to these perceived difficulties, with the result that mortality rates in the area were never reduced to the same dramatic extent, and now constitute the bulk of malarial deaths worldwide, especially following the resurgence of the disease as a result of microbe resistance to drug treatments and the spread of the deadly malarial variant caused by Plasmodium falciparum. The goal of eradication was abandoned in 1969, and attention was focused on controlling and treating the disease. Spraying programs (especially using DDT) were curtailed due to concerns over safety and environmental effects, as well as problems in administrative, managerial and financial implementation, but mostly because mosquitoes were developing resistance to DDT.[19] Efforts were shifted from spraying to the use of bednets impregnated with insecticides and other interventions
So DDT is only effective when combined with effective backup measures. In places where it is just used blindly became futile, as insects became resistant. ‘junkscience’ acknowledges this fact, but then misinforms people by saying it is effective as a deterrent. In fact, it is still used to do this, but, as the WHO report says, long term health effects may even be caused to humans by just this use as well.
Thailand has largely eradicated malaria without the use of DDT since the 1994. Burma is a source of malaria, however, because it’s infrastructure is so poor in comparison. If it was not for Burma’s proximity to Thailand, malaria would probably be completely eradicated.
“Like all issues this is complex”; or as Gore says, “It’s complicated.” No, it’s not little will; AGW is real or its not;
It’s complicated. I’m sorry if that isn’t the answer you wanted to hear.
@kuhnkat, I’m aware that there are all sorts of “interesting” views on science, time and causality propounded here. Still, I would have thought a statement that “WHO would like to phase out DDT by 2020” is pretty strong evidence against the proposition “WHO has banned DDT”. But perhaps in the alternate universe you guys inhabit, time flows backwards.
SJT Sept 7 12.41 pm
“According to research it is currently the most power(ful) driver of change, that will undoubtably change at some in the future”
That’s right SJT…Change you can believe in. Ahahahahahaha.
Just the title of the film stands on its own as a wonderful piece of propaganda. The producers have been very clever.
John Quiggin said re DDT: “But perhaps in the alternate universe you guys inhabit, time flows backwards.” – Just as in his the absence of radiative forcing of temperatures at Mauna Loa by rising CO2 proves AGW?
John’s universe is not so much alternate as this;
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/ClassicBizarro.PNG
John Quiggin,
That you presume to comment about matters of Earth Science which climate falls into, tells me, at least, that the argument isn’t about science per se, but politics. Even Peter Jonson doesn’t wade too deeply into waters he suspects might hide unforseen traps.
Equally your use of perjoratives suchj as delusionalists or the little person’s (touch of the T.E Lawrence here) remark that we live in an alternate universe simply means you have lost the argument.
Winners don’t need to resort to pejoratives, but whingers do, so it seems.
But if you really want a debate, choose your opponents carefully, and make sure your homework is thorough. In terms of my debating ability may I suggest you ask Stewart Gillies of the Aus. I.M.M. about the uranium debate held in Sydney during 1975?
As far as DDT is concerned, there are other far more toxic chemicals which affect vegetation – and those are, sort of , available. I won’t say what they are, but by comparison DDT is a woosy chem.
Our pastoralist commentators here might know of what I speak, but will be mum on this.
SJT: “Louis, it’s not my fault if you are too stupid too understand that climate is a complex matter.”
No SJT, it is you who tries to simplify clilmate in terms of CO2 as a sole driving force who might be considered as intellectually challenged.
Quiggin,
And the obvious distraction by throwing DDT into the pot isn’t all that subtle.
Next thing we might read is that petroleum (Greek for rock oil) comes from angels.
Jeremy C
“Just the title of the film stands on its own as a wonderful piece of propaganda. The producers have been very clever.”
Yes, they have expertly played on the progressive belief that progressive are never wrong….
I just discovered that Louis has a blog. Who else has a blog they’ve been keeping a secret?
We all know Lambert does.
Show of hands from just the bloggers.
Ok that’s not gonna work.
How about all bloggers step over to the right of the room and non bloggers to the left.
Oh dear, that won’t work either.
Just as well. I have too many blogs to keep track of as it is.
Thirty bucks is a smoking deal for a skeptic movie. Been looking for just that sort of thing.
It doesn’t hurt for it to be in an Aussie accent. Americans are suckers for that sort of stuff.
For some reason my fellow Americans like being lectured by foreigners. Not me of course.
I can’t stand it, but most of the rest.
This could work out great. Maybe … if we could hook into a rich coal miner or some such people who are stuck on the tracks with the climate train barreling down on them…
Then there’s the small city utilities who are being pushed around by the big city interests.
Yes … This could turn into something.
No SJT, it is you who tries to simplify clilmate in terms of CO2 as a sole driving force who might be considered as intellectually challenged.
jesus h christ louis, i have never thought nor claimed that, neither have the ipcc. If you can prove otherwise I’ll give a million dollars.
SJT
I think I have.
Your ball.
AR4, executive summary page 132 declares that AGHGs are the driving force of AGW and that ACO2 is 2/3s of that.
QED
My last comment seems to have evaporated
– here is the gist of it.
When are Hansen Quiggin et al going to wake up to the fact that as much as 70% of gross emissions is taken up every year by the global biota? The EPA estimates human CO2 emissions at c 2 GtC p.a. growing at over 1% p.a., with livestock fish etc good for another 2 GtC growing at quite a bit more than 1% p.a. (FAO). With fossil fuel and LUC emissions of over 10 GtC in 2008, and with Mauna Loa recording only an extra 3.3-3.4 GtC since 2008, the biota is taking up perhaps as much as 7 GtC p.a., or 70% of gross incremental fossil fule and LUC emissions.
So as Hansen & Quiggin et al call for nil or even negative emissions what then will happen to the incremental biotic uptakes of of c.7 GtC when they fall to zero, with all that entails for world food production? Ah, I forgot, that will only affect the Wretched of the Earth, whoas non-whites deserve what we offer, unlike the Garnauts, Quiggins et al et al. with their comfortable lifestyles funded by us wretched taxpayers (eg Garnaut, Quiggin, Karoly et al have all received as much as A$2 million each for producing their unending drivel).
All of those named here refuses to admit that there is ZILCH correlation at Mauna Loa between CO2 as measured there and temperatures also AS MEASURED THERE (from 1958 to 2009).
Whatever happened to the IPCC’s radiative forcing at Mauna Loa?
Clearly, none of them could spot the difference between black and white swans.
AR4, executive summary page 132 declares that AGHGs are the driving force of AGW and that ACO2 is 2/3s of that.
being the most important driving force at this moment in time is completely different from being the “sole driving force”.
please learnm to read!
And I hope you are going to buy a DVD at least – click on the flashing badge. If you let me know where you live I might be able to hook you up with someone holding a film night?
Cheers,
i live in south Germany. i doubt that i ll buy the DVD, because i expect the film to be extremely bad. but if i change my decision, i promise to buy it via your link.
and i am sorry for making the point about DDT. it seriously derailed the discussion. i think that this topic is damaging the film, but even more this discussion.
so it would be best, if we focus the discussion on other aspects of the film.
SJT
I think I have.
Your ball.
You think you have. Sums you up perfectly.
Re Louis’s comments at 8-47 ept. 7.
This Agriculturalist agrees and supports you completely.
DDT was and still is one of the safest and most effective insecticides ever developed.
Many of the claims made here regarding resistance and effectiveness are simply false.
Following the banning of DDT in Australia, other much more toxic chemicals were rushed onto the market.
A number of farmers lost there life as a result.
My then (late 60s) recently married, 26 year old neighbour was one.
The unscientific scare campaign waged in the MSM following the release of “Silent Spring,”
and the rushed and ill-considered legislation which followed, is sadly being repeated in relation to AGW today.
Pikey.
I cannot comment on the upcoming film which I have not seen. But on the DDT-malaria story see Apoorva Mandavilli, DDT Returns, Nature Medicine July 27, 2006. According to Mandavilli, DDT use against malaria was not actually banned but it was subject to serious restrictions. The malaria control program was seriously harmed as a result.
“…DDT use against malaria was not actually banned but it was subject to serious restrictions. The malaria control program was seriously harmed as a result.”
Gold medal for understatement there. The malaria programme was derailed, not just seriously harmed, and St Rachel Carson of the green church and her gullible followers are largely responsible for the colossal needless loss of life.
“Whatever happened to the IPCC’s radiative forcing at Mauna Loa?” same as elsewhere – you’d have to a goober (oh that’s right it’s Timmy the data Diddler) to not work it out?
As for DDT – we can can blame western farmers for their disgraceful and immature misuse of pesticides resulting in a massive outbreak of global insect resistance and off-site contamination. It’s always the denialist filth ! Now trying to duck their past mistakes. What a disgraceful episode in agronomic mismanagement.
Luke,
As usual your bile gland gushes in direct proportion to dearth of fact in all matters agronomic.
On this topic you are an insult to reasoned debate.
Where exactly is this-“massive outbreak of global insect resistance?”
Pikey.
Luky: “It’s always the denialist filth ! Now trying to duck their past mistakes. ”
How amazing, denialists duck past their mistakes! Thats exactly what all the climate shonks do as well, how boringly predictable we humans are. Well Lukey, you have just proven Raupach et al to be brazen liars in a major newspaper article in order to sell their fraudulent product to the market. Are you going to duck past this as well? So far thats exactly what you have done.
For heavens sake Pikey – Google insecticide resistance.
173,000 hits in Google scholar. DDT resistance gene still prevalent in all major pests.
Virtually no pesticides being developed. So chemical harlots want to misuse what’s left. Pathetic.
In reply to Luke whose response to my question “Whatever happened to the IPCC’s radiative forcing at Mauna Loa?” is “same as elsewhere” – really? when there is no statistically significant rise in temperature vis a vis CO2 at Mauna Loa since 1958? The R2 is 0.078, the lowest I have ever found and that for a relationship with CO2 which according to the IPCC AR4 WG1 SPM is by far the strongest influence on temperature, the p is a pathetic 0.03 and F=4.8. If not at Mauna Loa why anywhere? The truth is that the radiative forcing concept is pure moonshine, I have never seen such abject nonsense as the IPCC’s definition and development of the concept, devoid as it is of any physical basis or statistical support whatsoever.
Sod, your devotion to the AR4’s WG1 ch.9 Understanding and Attributing Climate Change (Hegerl et al including the ineffable Myles Allen who thinks it’s gross emissions that determine climate (Nature 30 April 09) and other incompetents like Neville Nicholls and deceivers like Ammann and Santer) is very touching, but contrary to your claims it provides zero evaluation of the biases in the Gistemp record and no analysis at all of the relative contributions of CO2 and energy usage to temperature at ALL places where that is measured. The omissions in that chapter are enough to condemn all its authors and editors including none other David “CO2 caused the Victorian bushfires” Karoly. Their chief omission is absence of ANY mention of energy consumption which has had and is having far the largest anthropogenic impact on global warming as measured.
It really beggars belief that this Chapter’s authors actually believe that CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning have more warming potential than the energy of which they are a trivial by-product (7.84 GtC in 2006 against over a million TJ of Heat arising from the world’s power stations in that year).
Tim says It really beggars belief that this Chapter’s authors actually believe that CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning have more warming potential than the energy of which they are a trivial by-product (7.84 GtC in 2006 against over a million TJ of Heat arising from the world’s power stations in that year).
Appeal to emotion. You just haven’t done the calculations.
SJT – you say I have not done the calculations. Have you?
How about these:
My electricity supplier says I used 20274 KWh of electricity in 2006-07 (we don’t use gas).
ACTEW also says that generating my electricity produced 20.245 tonnes of CO2 or 5.5 tonnes of carbon, equal to
2.59837E-09
parts per million of CO2 at Mauna Loa.
Using the data in AR4 WG1 p.141, I find that accounts for Radiative Forcing (in watts per metre^2) of:
3.81708E-11
So for our house of 266 sq.metres, we have a total RF of
1.01534E-08
in watts per annum
Now SJT and IPCC would have us believe that our RF of 1.01534E-08 watts p.a. has a larger warming effect than our annual electricity usage of
20,274,000 Watt-hours
I freely admit there could be slips in the above back-of-the-envelope calculations, if so please enlighten me, but if I am right, you SJT and the IPCC believe pigs have wings if you really accept that atmospheric CO2 accounts for more warming than total global energy usage as claimed by IPCC’s Karoly and mates.
“If not at Mauna Loa why anywhere?”
We’ll see how Timmy goes here. So why would it have to rise at Mauna Loa – apart from being the original baseline CO2 measuring site what’s so special about Mauna Loa?
Now Timmy – you wouldn’t be so thick as a data diddler to think that AGW should show a uniform global response to temperature do you? Tell me you’re not that silly Timmy?
But I think little Timmy might be.
Of course being denialista propagandista Timmy might be doing a bit of a try-on …
And I think we’ll compare Neville Nicholls lifetime of work against some codger like you any day matey boy. Timmy Tiddler – the data diddler.
Luke: you are a lot thicker than I dreamt possible when you say “So why would it [temperature] have to rise at Mauna Loa – apart from being the original baseline CO2 measuring site what’s so special about Mauna Loa?”
Well for your fellow thickets, as I doubt you can grasp what I am saying:
1. ML was chosen by Keeling for his CO2 measuruments as being pristine, ie free from local effects like power stations and airports. So ML is special for being pristine, geddit?
2. It follows a fortiori (too bad you were so poorly educated you don’t know what that means)
that if ML is good for measuring CO2, it must be just as good if not better for measuring temperature.
3. The temperature as measured there stubbornly refuses to budge despite the steadily rising CO2 as measured at ML. I am not alone in noticing this, try Google.
4. That may well be why the NOAA’s ML website does not post ML temp data after 2005.
5. End of hypothesis – again your lack of education means you have never heard of Popper’s black swan theorem.
Lukey: “If not at Mauna Loa why anywhere?”
We’ll see how Timmy goes here. So why would it have to rise at Mauna Loa – apart from being the original baseline CO2 measuring site what’s so special about Mauna Loa?”
I would have to agree with our favorite welded-on troll here. I cannot see what the temperature trend from the Mauna Loa Observatory, where the CO2 concentration is measured, has to do with the global average temperature. Persons who bang on about this appear be comparing apples with oranges.
The original issue raised about this particular temperature measurement site, as I recollect, was that it had been (supposedly inadvertently) left out of the relevant global average temperature indexing process, whereas the site at Honolulu Airport which showed an increasing trend was left in.
This issue, in my opinion, is more of an indicator that the global average temperature indexing process needs to be made more transparent, reliable and quality controlled than current practice in order to be taken more seriously as a scientific product by those who are not climate hysterics.
Dribble,
You mean that the CC mob cherry pick the data to support their argument?
Pikey
Thanks for the support – 🙂
The chemical I had in mind was one which, when applied to a leaf, would have killed the whole individual organism. My boss at the time, owner of the banana plantation in Kununurra that I worked for when the commodities market collapsed in 1989, thought about using it but decided against it on moral principles that Calvin Beisner would recognise, and understand.
We are actually dealing with people whose morals are secularised as issues of personal choice based on the belief that thought, an epiphenomenon of the human brain, is ultilmate reality.
Me? I am a sceptic.
Luke,
You are an agronomic fool and Google Junky beyond belief.
You initially blame: “western farmers disgraceful and immature misuse of pesticides,” for some self assumed problem.
Facts are, if you had or desired any understanding of agronomy, that farmers and chemical companies have always been in a competition with pests, weeds, parasites and fungi that is continuing to adapt to mans constantly improving methods of control.
There has been no failure as you claim.
If your Hanrahan like attitude of perpetual doom was correct the world would be starving by now.
It is not.
You might like to suggest to the readers of this blogg how it is that with all your dour presumptions of agriculture in Australia the following is fact (Aus B of Statistics)
1: From 1960 to 2000, the volume, yes volume, not value of agricultural production doubled.
2: Since 2000 and despite a continuing drought in southern Australia, agricultural production is still increasing at around 2% per year.
This is not what we would expect if your assumed claims had any merit.
Luke, having read most of your comments for over 18 months, I am at a loss to know in what field you have any experience or wisdom.
You seem to have boundless time to search the net for papers supporting your views, but always hide behind the mask of anonymity and never show any real practical knowledge on any subject.
I respectfully suggest it is time to stop being a Blogg Junky and do something for the betterment of mankind.
Pikey.
Luke:
“Whatever happened to the IPCC’s radiative forcing at Mauna Loa?” same as elsewhere – you’d have to a goober (oh that’s right it’s Timmy the data Diddler) to not work it out?”
Radiative forcing is a computer data processing term – it means that increasing the absolute quantum of a single component in a system will cause that system to change.
You confuse effects with causes.
“I cannot see what the temperature trend from the Mauna Loa Observatory, where the CO2 concentration is measured, has to do with the global average temperature.”
Probably nothing, but it would be logical to measure the temp. and variations in CO2 at the same time and place. I also cannot see why the same temperature change would be absent from ML site as claimed to be everywhere else?
What’s so special about that site?
Dribble: you disappoint me, when you say – “I cannot see what the temperature trend from the Mauna Loa Observatory, where the CO2 concentration is measured, has to do with the global average temperature.”
The physical science says that if the CO2 level above any given location rises then the temp. below THAT location also rises pro rata, ie in proportion to the increase in the radiative forcing resulting from the higher CO2 at THAT location, but it is not happening at Mauna Loa.
Luke’s silence (like SJT’s and sod’s) suggests his mighty intellect is still grappling with this concept.
Global average temperature is a meaningless construction – if I am trying to grow wheat in East Anglia or Victoria, I need to know the actual projected weather over the next few days in THOSE locations, NOT the global average over both NH and SH. Only jerks like Neville Nicholls & co could think that global average temperature has any meaning for any useful activity. But then Karoly Nicholls Garnaut Quiggin & co are totally opposed to all useful activity other than their own carousing from research grants paid from taxpayers’ money (including my $50,000 last year).
Well well Timmy the data diddler – the effects fiddler and his bunch of adoring clowns.
Tell you what matey – I hate being lied to by denialist filth and you’d have to be the greatest come in spinner drop kick of all time. This is the most appalling breach I’ve ever seen of sheer bullshittery. And you have the audacity to slime serious scientists. Who the hell to you think you are !
Get off the blog eh and go spread your rat dirt elsewhere.
Secular temperature changes in Hawai‘i 2008
Thomas W. Giambelluca,1 Henry F. Diaz,1,2 and Mark S. A. Luke1
Received 22 April 2008; accepted 7 May 2008; published 18 June 2008.
[1] While the upward trend in global mean temperature
has been intensively studied, some regional temperature
trends are less well known. We document secular
temperature changes in the Hawaiian Islands for the past
85 years based on an index of 21 stations. Results show
a relatively rapid rise in surface temperature in the last
30 years, with stronger warming at the higher elevations.
The bulk of the increase in mean temperature is related to a
much larger increase in minimum temperatures compared to
the maximum—a net warming about 3 times as large—
resulting in a reduction of the diurnal range. For much of
the period of record analyzed here, surface temperature in
Hawai‘i has varied coherently with changes in the Pacific
Decadal Oscillation (PDO). However, in recent decades, the
secular warming has begun to predominate, such that
despite the recent cooling associated with the PDO, surface
temperatures in Hawai‘i have remained elevated. The
greater warming trend at the higher elevations may have
significant ecological impacts.
Citation: Giambelluca, T. W.,
H. F. Diaz, and M. S. A. Luke (2008), Secular temperature
changes in Hawai‘i, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L12702, doi:10.1029/
2008GL034377.
The enhanced warming at high elevations in Hawai‘i
is consistent with changes found in other regions [Huber et
al., 2005]. Future temperature increases at high elevations
along the American Cordillera are likely to cause further
melting of alpine glaciers, with potentially severe hydrological
and ecological consequences [Bradley et al., 2004].
The alpine tundra climatic type decreased in coverage by
73% during the past 20 years in the mountains of the
western United States [Diaz and Eischeid, 2007]. In
Hawai‘i, where upper mountain slopes harbor most of the
remaining intact native ecosystems, rapid warming is likely
to have severe impacts. Endangered Hawaiian honeycreepers
(Drepanidae) currently find refuge in high-elevation
forests, where low temperatures limit disease-carrying
mosquitoes [Benning et al., 2002]. If rapid warming continues
at high elevations in Hawai‘i, it will likely hasten the
extinction of these birds.
You’re not gonna live this down Curtin.
I keep telling you Pikey that I’m pro-agriculture. Obviously agronomic and genetic improvement have lifted production. You don’t need to point out the obvious.
But don’t bing a catch-all stat like 2% in SA and expect to get us to swallow it. What’s the detail of the 2% – where and how.
Your generation has squandered a generation of pesticides – with substantial resistance, multiple resistance and cross-resistance in many granary and field crops. Animal pests etc. Cotton is only still going thanks to GM cotton (for now).
“You seem to have boundless time to search the net for papers supporting your views,” and you have endless time to wander around the countryside on your little outings – don’t verbal me mate.
I freely admit there could be slips in the above back-of-the-envelope calculations, if so please enlighten me, but if I am right, you SJT and the IPCC believe pigs have wings if you really accept that atmospheric CO2 accounts for more warming than total global energy usage as claimed by IPCC’s Karoly and mates.
I have seen the figures done before, and the energy usage of people is insignificant in the earth energy balance equation. What the sun puts out dwarfs the production caused by us, but greenhouse gases act on that massive output.
“Not Evil, Just Stupid” is a better name to describe where AGW is leading people:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/07/guardian-global-warming-to-trigger-earthquakes-tsunamis-avalanches-and-volcanic-eruptions/#comment-184470
so the Earth is going to spin off of its axis, and now volcanos, earth quakes and tsunamis are also caused by AGW.
The AGW promotion industry is in the squaeky voiced hysterical phase.
And what is driving them mad (albeit an increasingly short drive) is that the climate is simply refusing to cooperate.
Ice, up. Storms, down. Rainfall, normal. Temps, normal. AGW hysteria, approaching infinity.
Jeremy,
Not nearly as clever as “Inconvenient Truth”
Luke:
Wait and see!
Tim
Tim: “Global average temperature is a meaningless construction”
I am unable to agree. The global average temperature is a sort of quasi-physical measure or index. It is in effect an abstract number that does not have any necessary relationship to any specific site, but is an indicator of the general heat content of the global atmospheric system.
If the global average temperature in 2015 happened to be 10C higher than today, this would mean that the average temperature in Perth would be more or less 10C higher than it is now. It does not mean that the average temperature in Perth is going to be exactly 10C higher, but it means that sure as hell it is going to be a lot hotter in Perth on average in 2015 than it is now. The same for most other places. So there not a relationship in the sense that you will find a thermometer that will measure it directly, but as an average of thermometer measurements it definitely relates to physically relevant phenomena.
Take the example of a bar of steel heated at one end by a welding torch. One end can be glowing red hot, the other end may still be at room temperature. The average temperature of the bar may not mean much to say, a welder, in this case. However the total heat content of the bar, as determined by submerging the whole bar in a bucket of water, is still related to the number which represents the average temperature of the bar as a whole.
Concerning the temperature at Mauna Loa Observatory, the temperature trend there represents the trend at that specific site, which goes into the pile that makes up the global average temperature. The CO2 measurements that are taken there, along with measurements at other sites, supposedly represent an index or number for the ‘well-mixed global average CO2 concentration’. I don’t believe it is relevant in this case to compare the trend in temperature at a particular site which happens to be where the CO2 is measured with the number for global average CO2 concentration. Down the road from Mauna Loa Observatory there may be a site for example where there is a temperature trend but where there are no discernable urban heat island or other contaminating effects. Which site would you use?
None of the above is relevant of course as to whether or not the global average temperature indexes (or indeed the CO2 measurements) have not been doctored or incompetently produced. Just because Dr Jones of Hadcrud for example has produced a global temperature index does mean that any third party is required to trust it on his word. Whatever he may think about the issue is irrelevant. All data for these sorts of indexes should be publicly available for fact checking and analysis by third parties. Anything less is straightforward and obvious scientific corruption.
Lukey: “And you have the audacity to slime serious scientists. Who the hell to you think you are !”
I’m just a member of the public willing and happy to slime all supposedly serious scientists like Raupach and his corrupt co-authors any day of the week if they are going to abuse their positions of influence by lying to me and the rest of the public.
Why do you waste your time providing lists of papers and abstracts from climate scientists that nobody here is going to read? How are we able to determine whether or not they are full of subtle misrepresentations, data laundering and other forms of hidden technical manipulation? How are we supposed to trust these serious scientists who lie to us so easily because they can get away with it?
As far as Raupach is concerned I don’t care how great or important his papers are supposed to be. They all go into the shonk bin until proven otherwise. All climate scientists are tarred with same brush unless they speak up and put an end to the lies, hysteria and fraud.
Lukey: “Thomas W. Giambelluca,1 Henry F. Diaz,1,2 and Mark S. A. Luke1
Received 22 April 2008; accepted 7 May 2008; published 18 June 2008.
“Results show a relatively rapid rise in surface temperature in the last
30 years, with stronger warming at the higher elevations.”
How does this alleged trend at higher elevations relate to the supposedly no trend at Mauna Loa Observatory? Don’t ask me. Why don’t you get a copy from one of your composite alternative personalities and enlighten us? It should be a trivial matter for one so intelligent and dedicated to the cause as yourself.
You should watch yourself Dribble – you have now labelled Raupach and a range of well regarded public scientists as corrupt. This is quite different to abuse, or saying they’re stupid, misguided. Corruption is quite serious. They’re not engaged here in this rabble house. Steve McIntyre himself has warned against saying IPCC scientists are corrupt and does not tolerate it.
So put up your name and address if you are saying corrupt. LET’s GO ! Hope you’re prepared to back it up.
“Why do you waste your time providing lists of papers and abstracts from climate scientists that nobody here is going to read? ” if you read Jen’s guidelines – this is an evidence based blog – it’s not someone you can quote any old bogus opinion that you feel like. That’s bloody evil actually and simply spreading lies not any enlightenment. The fact that you can’t be bothered reading any of that material but want to discuss it puts you in a position of total hypocrisy – so I spit on your philosophical position.
“They all go into the shonk bin until proven otherwise” – well that’s logical isn’t it. You don’t want to read them but you want to disparage their content. So you would like the readership here to believe that there is systematic corruption in one science discipline with 1000s of papers a year in dozens of journals. Might one raise an eyebrow in incredulity?
“I’m just a member of the public willing and happy to slime all supposedly serious scientists like Raupach and his corrupt co-authors any day of the week if they are going to abuse their positions of influence by lying to me and the rest of the public.” well how do you know they’re LYING – you don’t read anything.
The only reason that you don’t like seeing papers is (a) it confronts you with science reality and (b) makes you realise that you’re too dumb to read them. i.e. you’re a stupid fuckwit. Well a serious debater here like Cohenite has no problem. He thrives on it. And you only have to give him and abstract and he has the gist of what you are saying. He also knows it is not my pure opinion and has had some peer comment. And he’s discerning enough to form hsi own opinion. (I love you Cohers – I want to have your baby).
Yes I have my own copy thank you. “How does this alleged trend at higher elevations relate to the supposedly no trend at Mauna Loa Observatory?” Well what do you reckon ? (a) similar (b) different (c) is my arse on fire – read the abstract fool.
“Hawai‘i appears to have been tightly coupled to the PDO,
perhaps through regional SST variation. However, in recent
decades Hawai‘i’s air temperature trend has diverged from
PDO and local SST trends, perhaps signaling increasing
influence of global warming.”
Now the Luke is pitching legal advice….or is it comedy?
The two seem to converge whenever the Luke is involved.
Dribble wrote:
Some points:
* temperature and heat are two very different things
* GMST is near surface, not throughout the entire volume, and is very sparsely sampled
* surface boundary layer effects, which are more pronounced in towns and cities, bias any increase upwards (see Pielke et al)
* despite the claims of IPCC (ref Jones et al) that UHI is less than 0.1C/decade in the global average, meta data indicate that we are seeing less rural stations (with low UHI) and more urban and/or airport stations (with much higher UHI), which would seem to indicate the possibility of an upward bias (as yet unquantified)
* site microclimate effects, which are known to be significant, have been documented (eg surfacestations.org) to be outside WMO specs in a significant fraction of the stations examined. These effects almost always introduce an upward bias.
* As documented by EM Smith, stations with a long and stable history show the least warming
* most stations were constructed to inform local residents of local weather – as such, they have resolution of 1C (in some cases – mostly in USA – 1F)
* the trend extracted over a century is less than 1C (0.8C IIRC)
* LULC changes produce significant local changes in microclimate (ref Pielke et al) (other than UHI – eg, irrigation) and due to the scale of human intervention in these matters, likely a regional effect and probably a global effect as well.
* in most cases, average temps have gone up not because the highs increased, but because the lows did.
So we have a number of significant effects – some that really do affect air temperature (UHI, LULC) and some which affect our measurement of same (boundary layer, microsite, site location changes). Most bias our estimate of the surface temperature upwards. Yet despite that, what we have is still less than the resolution of the original measurements. Neither can any statistical methods help us here – many would claim that the law of large numbers can help us here, but it cannot because we are not making many measurements of the same thing, we are making many measurements of many things. That is, we are not measuring GMST at each location, we are measuring local temperature and creating the average from those measurements.
Questions:
1) are we properly accounting for the loss in degrees of freedom in the data by the large number of spacial averaging steps we are doing?
2) are we properly accounting for the autocorrelation in the data, again especially given the additional autocorrelation introduced by several temporal averaging steps?
3) does (min+max)/2 inside the surface boundary layer provide us with useful information on atmospheric heat content?
4) if we are “inside the noise” (ie, below our instrument resolution), can we make any meaningful conclusions anyway?
I don’t know the answers to 1 & 2, but the answer to 3 is most definately “No” and the answer to 4 is “probably not”.
We have much to learn about climate and weather, so I am hesitant to suggest we should be doing anything at the moment, given the uncertainties.
Hunter said.
so the Earth is going to spin off of its axis,
That is a lie.
It is typical of the lying that has to be done to keep up the anti-AGW hysteria. The article explicity said what the change would be, it did not say the Earth would ‘spin off it’s axis’, there was no ‘hysteria’. Amazing that just such a simple story can be so twisted and turned by deniers.
The concept of a average global temperature has been central to AGW; it is a worthless concept and the Essex, McKitrick and Andresen paper is definitive on this;
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/globaltemp/GlobTemp.JNET.pdf
Another deficiency of the GMST was dealt with the Pielke paper;
http://ww.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-321.pdf
Simply put according to Steffan Boltzman temperature fluctuations in colder areas have less radiative effect than fluctuations in warmer areas; the GMST may be increasing if colder areas are warming and the warmer areas are not or even cooling but this will not mean that there is greater trapping of radiation and therefore heating of the Earth.
Turning to luke’s Hawaii papers allegedly showing increasing temperature, mainly at altitude and mainly as a response to a decrease in DTR; DTR decrease is no assistance to AGW;
http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/dtr.htm
http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/
In addition alleged increases in temperature at altitude in the tropics and near tropics must be treated with suspicion because there is simply no THS; it would be odd therefore that temperatures are increasing at a slightly lower altitude when they are not increasing at a slightly higher altitude.
Neil Fisher – terrific post, well done. I suggest the answers to your first two questions are resounding Noes:
1) The IPCC ‘s authors (2007) then and since ALL fail properly to account for the loss in degrees of freedom in the data by the large number of spatial averaging steps undertaken by Gistemp and HadleyCRUT; and
2) They ALL also fail properly to account for the autocorrelation in the data, especially given the additional autocorrelation introduced by the many temporal and spatial averaging steps of Gistemp and HadleyCRUT.
Dribble said: “Down the road from Mauna Loa Observatory there may be a site for example where there is a temperature trend but where there are no discernable urban heat island or other contaminating effects”. If so name it. Hilo is down the road from the ML station, but is a rapidly growing quite large town (45000) and does provide the sort of warming trend that so gladdens the hearts of Luke and his unreliable authors. Their paper is worthless because of the refutation by the ML data that you rightly note.
Tim Curtain wrote:
Tim, the reason I am unsure re the stats is that the HADCRU global averages are not open source – we cannot check to see what they do, so we cannot know. GISS is better (only after some pressure was applied, I note), but as far as I am aware, only EM Smith has managed to actually get their code to run without a significant re-write, and his analysis continues – perhaps he can clarify for us at some point. Certainly, in many cases there is doubt about whether these adjustments have been made, and if so, was it done correctly – Steve McIntyre, Hu McCulloch, Ryan O, Roman M and Jeff Id would have a much better idea, and to be blunt with you, a much better understanding of the stats than this ignorant peasant (that’d be me, BTW. Alas for me, my understanding of stats is somewhat limited, but I get by you might say). Given the reaction to several stats based papers by these folk, it would not surprise me to know it’s not been done, or has done incorrectly – as I’ve noted before, it is not these errors as such that bother me. Rather, it is the reluctance of The Team to take on board valid criticisms and use the information thus gained to improve subsequent papers and therefore science and our understanding of climate. Alas, they seem to continue with their too low confidence intervals and suggest significance where there is none – seemingly content that the “results don’t change”. Which, ironically, is true – but the significance, which they rarely dwell on, does change and that change in significance alters the conclusions one draws from the papers. After all, 20 +- 10 is, err, significantly different from 20+-25 – and we must also remember, as Lucia points out, that we should expect something that only happens 5% of the time to actually happen 5% of the time (that is, the odds of winning lotto are pretty small, but many people have still won it just the same)
Oops! Sorry Tim Curtin for spelling your name wrong – with my name, you’d think I’d know better (a lot of people write “Niel” – a just laugh and say “what is the rule? I before E except after C, but you must remember the exceptions, and I am exceptional!)
SJT:
A tipsy topsy earth is quite on the cards if the Lunatic prophesies are true,
“Climate change: melting ice will trigger wave of natural disasters
Scientists at a London conference next week will warn of earthquakes, avalanches and volcanic eruptions as the atmosphere heats up and geology is altered. Even Britain could face being struck by tsunamis
Robin McKie The Observer, Sunday 6 September 2009
Scientists are to outline dramatic evidence that global warming threatens the planet in a new and unexpected way – by triggering earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches and volcanic eruptions.
Reports by international groups of researchers – to be presented at a London conference next week – will show that climate change, caused by rising outputs of carbon dioxide from vehicles, factories and power stations, will not only affect the atmosphere and the sea but will alter the geology of the Earth.
Melting glaciers will set off avalanches, floods and mud flows in the Alps and other mountain ranges; torrential rainfall in the UK is likely to cause widespread erosion; while disappearing Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets threaten to let loose underwater landslides, triggering tsunamis that could even strike the seas around Britain.
At the same time the disappearance of ice caps will change the pressures acting on the Earth’s crust and set off volcanic eruptions across the globe. Life on Earth faces a warm future – and a fiery one.
“Not only are the oceans and atmosphere conspiring against us, bringing baking temperatures, more powerful storms and floods, but the crust beneath our feet seems likely to join in too,” said Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre, at University College London (UCL).
“Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something,” added McGuire, who is one of the organisers of UCL’s Climate Forcing of Geological Hazards conference, which will open on 15 September. Some of the key evidence to be presented at the conference will come from studies of past volcanic activity. These indicate that when ice sheets disappear the number of eruptions increases, said Professor David Pyle, of Oxford University’s earth sciences department.”
Baking temperatures?
We really are turning the hysteria knob up, are we not?
The concept of a average global temperature has been central to AGW;
Your ignorance is showing again. Read the IPCC report. They refer to a lot more than just AGT.
Luke,
Not verbaling you mate, just pointing out the obvious.
For the record, which I believe I have posted here previously.
I am a retired irrigation farmer and developer form the Riverina, now 73.
Although still doing some work and paying taxes, yes I do have time to travel and see thing as they really are.
Far preferable to doing a Google.
One of the truths I have learnt from life is that no matter how bright the interlect and thorough the education, it does not protect us from showing extreme ignorance if we choose to comment and make decissions in areas where we have little or no practical experience.
I now spend much of my spare time trying to correct some of the false and sensationalist claims that have become a daily occurance in our MSM always emernating from radical environmentalists.
I con fine my remarks to water and the Australian environment.
I fervently believe that the nonsense bein peddled by political Greens is resulting in legislation that is not in the best interests of Australia.
e.g. Renewable energy, the CPRS, so called water buy-back and the banning of DDT.
So Luke where do you fit in all of this?
It has occured to me that you could be on this blogg at the request of Jennifer.
It would be quite dull if we didn’t have someone to take issue with reasoned argument.
I would prefer to think you are part of Jennifer’s team, or even best mate.
Because if you really believe all the tripe you write then in the spirit of Banjo.
For that would end it, Mr. Luke, and it’s time to say good-bye,
And we’ll just agree to differ in all friendship, you and I.
We’ll seek out truth through reason, with all energy that we may,
And if fortune only favours, we will meet one sunny day,
Adjurn to an outback Pub and share some thoughts on life,
Of mans wonderous achievements and that little bit of strife.
Pikey.
Lukey: “You should watch yourself Dribble – you have now labelled Raupach and a range of well regarded public scientists as corrupt. This is quite different to abuse, or saying they’re stupid, misguided. Corruption is quite serious. They’re not engaged here in this rabble house. Steve McIntyre himself has warned against saying IPCC scientists are corrupt and does not tolerate it.
So put up your name and address if you are saying corrupt. LET’s GO ! Hope you’re prepared to back it up.”
Steve McIntyre runs a respectable blog intended to cultivate respectable scientific interest. Jennifer runs a more politically oriented blog in which accusations of fraud and corruption are less of a concern. At least she has not complained about it so far. My accusations against Raupach relate to a quite specific statement made by him in a newspaper. I have described this issue twice already and requested a rebuttal but have received no answer. There are 15 authors listed as signatories, thus the chances of it being a stupid error are, in my opinion, non-existent. I have therefore stated that this statement is a lie, and that therefore Raupach and the other signatories are corrupt. The statement, for the third and last time is as follows:
” The global average temperature has increased by about 0.8 degrees since 1850, with most of the increase occurring since 1950.”
I once again ask (for the third time) to explain to me why this statement is not a lie. I consider any scientist who lies for any reason about his public scientific work to be inherently corrupt. If you are able to reasonably demonstrate that the statement is not a lie, I am happy to apologize and withdraw my complaints about corruption for this particular instance.
“So put up your name and address if you are saying corrupt. LET’s GO ! Hope you’re prepared to back it up”
Sorry but I have the interests of the members of my private UFO cult to protect. If Raupach et al wish to initiate legal proceedings for slander etc, they should state so on this blog and I will consider my legal options. I would warn them that I would bankrupt easily and they would not get much money out of it. They would of course be aware that that a libel suit would bring possible unwelcome publicity concerning the matter. I think the best way to resolve the problem (if you are not able to demonstrate that the above statement is a lie as requested) would be to appeal to her for a ruling on the matter. I am happy to abide by whatever her decision might be.
The rest of your comments re the temperature paper you have quoted are a waste of time as far as I am concerned, they are better directed at Tim. I was merely in the process of attempting to provide Tim with my opinion about specific site vs global temperature interpretations. I am not precisely sure what the issue with the Mauna Loa Observatory is all about exactly. I was under the vague impression that the site exhibited a low trend, as compared with the site at Honolulu Airport which allegedly shows a higher trend.
However after looking up the GISS record for the Mauna Loa Observatory (Honolulu Obs Oahu) you will find that the reporting stops at 1980. This gives the impression that there is not much of a trend. I would expect that if you added in the missing data to bring it up to the present, it would probably show a similar trend to the Airport site.
I would like to express my thanks for providing us with a copy of the paper. I was initially under the impression during one particular rant that I was expected to perform an in depth statistical analysis of it before coming to any conclusion. However upon further examination of the abstract I realized that the entire paper probably does not actually state much more than “we have surveyed the temperature data for Hawaii and found that the temperature has gone up”
I then realized that you were referring to Tim’s discussion of site vs. average interpretations and were providing him with information that other sites in the same area, and thus with the same CO2 concentrations, had a similar trend, which would tend to invalidate his opinion. This is in line with what I had already told him.
To alleviate this sort of problem in the future, it would be preferable if your supplementary comments are less truncated, abusive and ADD-afflicted than at present. That way I and others who are not quite following the particular issue involved can at least can get some idea of what your point is in relation to the reference and abstract that you are providing.
While we are on the subject of Mauna Loa, I thought this might be of interest to Louis, a geologist with an interest in non-establishment paradigms. The Mauna Loa volcano, the largest in the world, is situated on the Hawaii hot spot. This is a plume rising from the mantle which does not move in relation to the earth. The continental plate drifts across the spot resulting in the gradual creation of a chain of submerged islands. There is an excellent article in Wikipedia on the subject: ‘Hawaii Hot Spot’.
I mainly refer to it, not in relation to temperature, but to a theory put forward by Richard Hoagland. As a result of his numerological speculations with regard to the alleged Face on Mars, Hoagland noted that most planets in the solar system have a prominent geological feature at 19.5 degrees latitude. This is the latitude of the corner of an inscribed tetrahedron inside a sphere. He dug up some sort of hyper-dimensional mathematical treatment in which, it said, 3-dimensional energy exits from the corner at the surface of a rotating sphere.
Whether or not the theory is crackpot or otherwise I do not know, although I have not heard of it debunked anywhere. I am mainly interested in what can be checked about it from the empirical point of view. For example, Mars has Mons Olympus, a gigantic extinct volcano at 19.5 degrees latitude. Jupiter has the famous Great Red Spot feature at this latitude. Saturn has gas ring features at this latitude, similarly with Neptune and Uranus. Apparently Venus and Mercury do not have any feature that is readily discernable. There is a photo of what appears to be hexagonal gas flow at one of the poles of Saturn as taken by one of the Voyager missions. There is also said to be something or other about sun spots favoring this particular latitude.
Earth’s equivalent feature is the Hawaii Hot Spot, which basically straddles or is very close to the 19.5 degree latitude. The volcanic plume comes directly from the mantle and does not move in relation to the earth as a whole. This feature of the Hawaiian volcanoes therefore appears to be directly confirmatory towards Hoagland’s theory.
Hoagland’s stuff is found on his website www. enterprisemission.com. Be warned it is a swamp of very weird stuff although there may be gems to be found amongst the dross. I am not sure whether or not Hoagland is totally sane. A picture of the hexagonal gas flow is available by searching for ‘hyperdimensional hexagon’ in google.
If I may ask, do you have any opinion of the hot spot in relation to theories of continental drift?
Dribble,
Oooohh you are asking loaded question 🙂 The hotspot is physically there but it has nothing to do with continental drift as that theory is flawed.
What I do suspect both Mauna Loa and Olympus Mons to be are enormous planetary scaled electric discharge sites.
I also think that the oceanic areas might have been electrically machined out by enormous Birkeland currents.
If you look carefully at all the drainage systems on Earth and then compare those with Lichtenberg figures (good ones are the patterns made by lightning on golf course greens) you will see an eerie similarity.
Nowaways water flows down these channels and hence the belief hydraulic erosion formed them. My field experience tells me otherwise – since my geological specialisation is diamond geology, I am familiar with sediments and upper mantle rocks.
Hot spots in general seem to be thermal impact sites of previous electrical discharges between the Earth and whatever it was interacting with in space during the past.
Mantle plumes are one of the impossible ideas you need to think of before breakfast – the impossibility comes from the lack of a viable mechanism to produce the thermal energy.
Oh and kimberlite pipes are actually diatremes formed by some sort of electric discharge which rotationally machined downwards into the earth’s surface, sort of a short circuit in an earth which is best described as a leaky capacitor. The Russians have previously published on this topic but in a more general way.
As for Hoaglands theory – I’ve heard about but don’t really know much of it but given the possibility that Earth and Mars might have been closer together in the past, both Mauna Loa and Olympus Mons could be the sites of a large electrical discharge between the Earth and Mars. The Greeks and Romans etc were pretty convinced about the danger Mars posed to humanity and I don’t think either civilisation was barking mad either (that role is played by the global warmers here), so I suspect this might be the most plausible explanation for Hoagland’s observation.
Of course posting this comment up will cause some here to go into apoplexy. Watch out for SJT’s standard ad hominem.
Errata: When I remarked ‘This feature of the Hawaiian volcanoes therefore appears to be directly confirmatory towards Hoagland’s theory’, this is obviously a bit strong. Rather I would say that this feature is evidence towards Hoagland’s theory. I would note that there are other hotspots in the Pacific area so there would have to be different explanations for these in order for the theory to be viable I assume.
I only brought the matter up since we were on the subject of Mauna Loa so I thought I would throw it in for thrills. Thanks for your observations. I confess to being fairly amazed at the extent of your departure from the path of orthodoxy. You have wandered much further on the path of weirdness than I am able to go as yet.
As for the trolls such as SJT, who cares what they think? They are just trolls who should go somewhere else to spend their dreary lives.
Dribble,
Wierdness? 🙂 Well, it comes from spending many years in the field looking at rocks of all types – I am a bit luckier than most geologists in that I never specialised in either hard or soft rocks (igneous vs sedimentary areas) and as a diamond geologist have to look for kimberlites in all sorts of geological terrains – whether sedimentary basins or the crystalline shield areas.
Professor Cliff Ollier (U of WA) alerted me to the perplexing problem of the lack of sediment accumulation at the enges of the earth’s continents.
Take Australia for example – if you look at the existing drainage systems and compute how much has been removed by erosion, then that material MUST be downstream as sediment deposits. The problem is that when you look at the mouths of the rivers at the edge of the continents, one finds a signficicant shortage of eroded sediment. There are small deltas representing some erosion, but these deltaic deposits are not large enough to explain what has been recently eroded – recent being geologically.
So where are the sediments?
The US Grand Canyon is another example of missing material excavated by the Colorado River – apart from some surficial deposits in the river channel, there is no evidence of any accumulation of sediment equivalent to the eroded rock.
So where is it?
So it’s one thing proposing that rivers eroded the continent and another thing not being able to produce the physical evidence for the deposition of that material.
My explanation is wierd but I am only using the existing physical forces available to me in terms of the Plasma Model. The real weirdness lies in proposing that river erosion sculpted the lands surface and then explaining where it all went because it surely isn’t on the continental shelf.
But my ideas are not so weird – it’s just that I take Greek and Roman accounts, as well as Aboriginal, as face value.
Our world view is an Anglo Saxon one developed from Charles Lyell’s hijacking of the nascent science of geology two centuries ago. The AGW mob, his successors, are the present problem.
While I do support Creationism per se, (there is a world of difference in meaning when we say a world was created as opposed to the earth was created), the scientifically valid work by Gentry, Melvin Cook and others of that group cannot be ignored.
The AGW argument is really nothing more than a modern variant of Lyell’s method of using artful persuasion to win converts, except today the argument is couched in scientific terms and computer modelling. Then as now they are trying to force abstracts models of what they think the earth system is down our throats by resort to authority and specious science. Lyell’s theories were not based on geological fact, but Lyell’s impressions of what he thought might have happened.
AGW theory starts with the initial premise of Arrhenius – increasing atmospheric CO2 causes the atmosphere’s temperature to rise, decreasing it causes it to descend, causing, according to him, ice ages. This hypothesis has not been verified experimentally, but is assumed by common agreement to be correct. The rest of thje AGW theory is competently, or not so competently, cantilvered on this initial assumption. The problem is then of whether that original assumption is actually true. If not the AGW edifice has to collapse. Because this method of science, what I disparagingly call Lyellian Lyricisms, is not founded on an empirically verified starting point, it is therefore pseudoscience. This type of science is extremely difficult to change because it is first and foremost a belief system.
And while it is on my mind – no I do not accept the idea that the Earth is of a recent creation – we actually do not know because apart from not being there when it might have formed, science is also restricted to DATA, and if we have not data, we have no science. That is the Pope’s area, mine is science.
But when your science is based on the Lyellian model, determination of scientific truth by reasonable argument, and therefore a belief system, then it is all too easy for one belief system to merge with another one like religion. Both are founded on the same assumptions.
Weird? Today yes, tomorrow ? Don’t bet on it.
Whoops – typo – I do NOT support creationism per se, and that becomes clear when that phrase is taken in context with what follows it.
Pikey
“e.g. Renewable energy, the CPRS, so called water buy-back and the banning of DDT.
So Luke where do you fit in all of this?” – no more than any other citizen – no formal responsibilities.
But what is this Pikey – you’re off – just when we’re getting to know each other. I was close to taking you up on a roadtrip. Anyway – hope you didn’t mistake my passion for dialectic as personal aggression. Go in peace.
Louis – on the now closed thread you asked:
“Part of the QLD guvmint policy to solve the health crisis in yiour health system, free as I understand it to be, is to expect doctors to drink at least 6 cups of coffee per day.”
Yes what a horrid nouveau labor administration – don’t blame me – I voted against them last time – and of course all is now being revealed. Of course treachery against the “light on the hill” will be forthcoming.
Problem is that LNP need to be purged and replaced with a whole new generation with better ideas and less hayseeds to appeal to an increasing urban electorate. Or they’ll be continually outsmarted by Labor suits and thin black ties forever.
Louis: “So it’s one thing proposing that rivers eroded the continent and another thing not being able to produce the physical evidence for the deposition of that material.”
Youv’e got me on that one. You would normally have to assume the missing material is somewhere, although where may not be immediately obvious. I could not offer any suggestions except perhaps loose sediments are maybe raised up by rising land movements and then blown away by the wind etc. However there are rivers such as the Nile which have a substantial delta and an ever larger submerged abyssal plain. I was surprised to discover for example that the Nile canyon is about 9km deep in places and that the Mediterranean has apparently dried out several times in the past 50 million years or so due to the land rising at the straits of Gibraltar and blocking off the inlet of water.
The idea that rivers were created by electrical discharges and so forth, whew thats a hard one to get my head around. I can buy your idea however of the Lichtenberg figures to which drainage patterns bear a resemblance. The next time I get on the bong juice I will give this idea a run and see if anything coherent comes out. I would definitely have to be in an altered state to contemplate such a radical restructuring of my generally normative views of geology.
I have read up on Hutton a bit but not much on Lyell. I don’t think that people such as Lyell can be blamed all that much for being naughty. This was a very early time when the Vulcanist Huttonian theory of geology was only just becoming accepted over Wernerian Neptunism. This universal primordial ocean theory was itself really only a sort of enhanced version of the biblical deluge. I would find it difficult to expect therefore anybody at the time to branch out into anything else, although I am ignorant of the alternatives. I am always amazed at how short a period it has been since 1800, when the biblical story of creation was still widely regarded as correct even amongst much of the intellectual classes. The human race advances one step at a time and must perforce drag its baggage of old and obsolete beliefs along for the ride as well.
I also became a creationist of sorts when someone once pointed out to me the strange coincidence of the solar eclipse. The moon is exactly the correct distance away from the earth as is required to exactly cover the disk of the sun during a total eclipse. Given that the moon is slowly moving away from the earth, it is also true that the current period is the only time in geological history in which an intelligent race has evolved that is capable of observing it. I find this to be a very deep coincidence which, if it were any other situation, would not normally be considered due to chance. What it means don’t ask me, nor is it proof of anything, but I find it quite remarkable nonetheless.
The AGW business is a mess which demonstrates the unique stupidity of the human race in general. What will come out of it God knows. The difficulty for the believers is that there is no easy straightforward proof. Its proponents are mediocrities who cover for this weakness with political expediency and pretend they are doing science. The difficulty for the skeptic side is that there is no straightforward replacement for the greenhouse gas theory. So both sides have their weaknesses, which is why I am happy to wait for the temperature to do its thing.
Given the political realities the only thing that will kill AGW outright is for the temperature to gradually sink back to early 20th century levels over the 21st century. I personally don’t think this will happen but who knows. However the longer the current temperature plateau lasts, the tougher it will be for the climate shonks to maintain the hysteria. You can expect the hysteria to get worse before it gets better. Of course if the temperature starts rising again tomorrow, all hell will break loose.
SJT,
The AGW industry is the one that printed the story that global warming is going to change the Earth’s axis of rotation, not me.
Their paper is the AGW version of arguing how many angels dance on the heads of pins.
Just like nearly everything AGW is based on, it extrapolates huge conclusions from data at the very edge of measurability, and processes it through models cleverly designed to give results already selected.
I am free to ridicule it for the ridiculous claim it is, and just because you don’t like it, that does not make me a liar.
I am simply pointing out that AGW true believers are not evil, just stupid. And here you are confirming the point quite nicely.
And penalty points for you, for persisting in trying to pretend that skeptics are the ones churning up hysteria. That is unoriginal and lazy copy-catting on your part. You can do better, I know it.
Hunter said.
SJT,
The AGW industry is the one that printed the story that global warming is going to change the Earth’s axis of rotation, not me.
You created the lie about ‘hysteria’. The affect is going to have no more interest than to those who study such things.
Steve McIntyre runs a respectable blog intended to cultivate respectable scientific interest.
Yet it generates none. Funny about that.
Dribble: you are right about Raupach, and your specific accusation is absolutely valid
“I once again asked [him] (for the third time) to explain to me why this statement “The global average temperature has increased by about 0.8 degrees since 1850, with most of the increase occurring since 1950” is not a lie. I consider any scientist who lies for any reason about his public scientific work to be inherently corrupt. If you are able to reasonably demonstrate that the statement is not a lie, I am happy to apologize and withdraw my complaints about corruption for this particular instance.”
and is far from being the only one to be brought out in court if need arises. I shall be delighted to be called as a witness in your defence!
Tim: “and is far from being the only one to be brought out in court if need arises. I shall be delighted to be called as a witness in your defence!”
Thanks Tim I would be glad of your assistance if the need arises. I hope it does not come to that. I shall lay off for a while except when Lukey complains about denialist scum verballing ‘honest’ climate scientists. Instead of calling Raupach a fraud all the time I will refer to him using terms such as ‘hysteric in need of psychological counselling’, ‘hopelessly incompetent idiot’, etc etc.
Update to hyperdimensional hexagon above:
I have not looked the hexagon issue for a number of years which is why I stated that it had been photographed by Voyager. Since looking at the video I now realize that the existence of the hexagon was confirmed by the Cassini mission in 2006 and photographed in detail.
Why is this not on the front page? Welcome to the wonderful world of conspiracy theory. Proceed with caution and at your own pace. Many issues are paradigm related, some are not.
Dribble,
Google Earth is a neat way of observing these structures – and Lyell’s background is published on the web – George Grinnell presented a paper outlining this – Lyells Principles of Geology was a essentially a political document to counter Biblical authority. The Clerical geologists of the time were hamstrung by their insistence on the Biblical record of only 1 deluge, when Cuvier pointed out many catastrophes, so Lyell allowed them to have their cake and to also eat it. Lyell was a devout Methodist as well, and this link posts Grinnel’s paper. http://www.sedin.org/propeng/grinneng.htm – quite interesting learning about all the political shenanigans of the time.
Louis I have had an idea re the hotspots concerning your plasma stuff.
Firstly, I checked the latitude of the Mauna Loa volcano which is 19.28’46” N which pretty much right on 19.30’00” or 19.5, or about as close as you can get. Given that the heat for the hotspot is catered for the hyperdimensional theory (it comes out of hyperspace) and the confirmed existence of the hexagon on Saturn, I go for the hyperdimensional theory on this one. Its too exact not to.
I can see what you mean when you say that the conventional theories for the hotspot are bunk. One of them for example says that heat rises from a bump on the planetary core through the mantle, then creates a hot spot on the crust. I would have thought that a bump on the planetary core would be nonsense in the first place given the pressure. Also I would have thought that the heat from the bump would just dissipate into the mantle rather than travel directly to the surface and create a pinpoint hotspot.
I was initially worried about the existence of the other non-Hawaiian hot-spots (there seem to be over 40 of them world-wide) but have come up with what might be a reasonably plausible solution.
There are in fact two spheres in the Earth that would have hot spots on a tetrahedral corner. One sphere is contained by the outer crust, the other sphere is the planetary core made of iron. Perhaps there is some sort of superimposition of hyperdimensional effects since one sphere is inside the other. The planetary core being made of iron generates the earth’s magnetic field. Perhaps this magnetic field, being more concentrated in the iron core, affects the core’s hyperdimensional energy outlet. The hyperdimensional ‘hole’ might thereby be stretched out in the form of a number of tendrils on the pattern of a spark discharge. (a sort of hyperdimensional electro-plasma). These might originate from a number of different positions due to superimposition effects. The tendrils terminate at the outer sphere, which is the earth’s crust, forming small hyperdimensional holes at the crust. The heat is therefore released at the surface, not at the core/mantle boundary.
From Wikipedia about the New England hotspot:
“200 million years ago, just as the Atlantic Ocean was starting to form, the area northwest of Hudson Bay was over the New England hotspot. About 50 million years later, as the Atlantic Ocean opened slightly, the plume was under present-day Ontario, creating numerous kimberlite fields.”
The kimberlite tubes are left behind by the hyperdimensional plasma tendrils.
Just like nearly everything AGW is based on, it extrapolates huge conclusions from data at the very edge of measurability, and processes it through models cleverly designed to give results already selected.
I am free to ridicule it for the ridiculous claim it is, and just because you don’t like it, that does not make me a liar.
The lies just keep coming. The models are not ‘cleverly designed to give the results already selected’.
You have made a claim with no evidence at all. You are a liar.
Luke you are so right when you say
“Problem is that LNP need to be purged and replaced with a whole new generation with better ideas and less hayseeds to appeal to an increasing urban electorate. ”
Its very sad , how pathetic they are isnt , a weak opposition gives labour a license to do whatever they want….and they are!
Louis,
In response to your question regarding sediment deposits from millions of years of erosion.
I can only speak with any knowledge of the rivers of the Murray Darling Basin.
All of these rivers have deposited the sediments on the flood plain where the velocity slows and flood waters spred across the plain for many miles.
These flood plains on the Macquarie, Lachlan, Murrumbidgee and Murray river, vary in depth of silt clays between 50 and 200 feet. (still think imperial).
Underneath this clay strata we normally find differing depths of sands and lower again water washed gravel.
It is in these sediments that the vast underground water reserves are located.
If we use the Murrumbidgee as an example, once the river leaves the hills at Narrandera, the flood flow spreads across the Riverine plain all the way to the Murray and westward for 170 miles.
In flood the river can be 80 miles wide.
The same applies to the Lachlan.
However by the time these rivers enter the Murray and this river enters S.A., even in flood the water is mostly within the banks.
These old rivers lacked the gradient and water volume to transfer vast quantities of material to estuaries and deltas.
Similar, but not as extensive, flood plains can be found on the other rivers in the MDB. This is particularly so of the black soil plains of N.W. NSW, which deposits mainly came from southern Qld.
The vast majority of the flood generated sediments in the Darling are deposited well before this river reaches the Murray.
In relation to the Colorado and the Grand Canyon, I have often marvelled as to where this vast amount of sediment was deposited.
Some certainly found it’s way onto the Imperial Valley.
As for the balance I have no idea, but this is a much younger and dynamic system than the MDB.
Pikey.
Baking temperatures?
We really are turning the hysteria knob up, are we not?
47 felt like it, I can assure you.
Is there a problem you have with their logic? You have dismissed it as hysteria, but no addressed the reasons for making their claims. This is just an initial report, maybe they are right, maybe someone else will point out that they are wrong, but their reasoning seems to be logical.
Pikey
The problem is a little more interesting – if you look at the old land surface, the duricrust as it’s called, see the extent of that and then see how much has been eroded away over the years, then it has to be somewhere downstream. The problem which Ollier pointed to was that there isn’t enough sediment observed to account for all the measured erosion in the drainage catchments. The most conspicuous example is the Grand Canyon – go downstream and there is no accumulation of sediment representing what has been eroded.
So where has it gone?
And this is the point – if water did the eroding then there has to be an equivalent sediment accumulation down stream. If that accumulation is missing, then the idea that water was the erosional force would need to be reviewed.
I know from local Aboriginal stories associated with Wolfe Creek crater near Halls Creek, that the sky serpent travelled underground forming Sturt Creek before leaving the ground at the crater itself. This is one of those “huh” situations – and I know of other anecdotes that suggest Aboriginals, or their ancestors, since its an oral tradition, were familiar with geological events 1100 million years ago. Amerian Indians also have similar, hard to believe, stories of a geological nature that contradicts the mainstream geological paradigm.
Given the shenanigans Lyell and the Whigs were up to 2 centuries ago, it seems that the empirical scientists lost the argument then as we are close to losing now with AGW theory. It’s the same group running the AGW scam that ran the uniformist theory during Victorian England, and science has suffered for it.
Louis, with all due respect the aborigines have only been here for somewhere between 40,000 and maybe 100,000 years…how could they possibly know what happened 1,100 million years ago?!
http://www.drivewa.com/poi/961/wolfe-creek-crater-national-park.html suggests an age of 2 miilion years and comments on dreamtime superstitions…..but im more sceptical of dreamtime stories than i am of AGW!
This link http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~psanday/Aboriginal/crater.html suggests an age of 300,000 years , neither estimations are within the time of aborigines in Australia..are they?
Toby
That is the problem – and what makes you think our chronology is accurate? (They can’t date the craters incidentally).
I recall a colleague mentioning that some wood found in a small kimberlite pipe of 800 million year “age” in the Kimberley region was sent for ID. It came back with a Cretaceous age which caused a few raised eyebrows, and when this was related to the lab, they then changed the date to 800 million, and that causes a new problem because trees did not exist then.
Given what Lyell did I strongly suspect the geological timescale is seriously in error – given the anecdotes previously mentioned above. Richard Milton caused a big stir some years back when he raised all sorts of questions.
And we now know that radioactive decay isn’t invariant either – it’s affected by the ambient electric field that the nuclei are embedded in.
The NASA webpage announcing the hexagon is at:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20070327.html
SJT,
You keep making conclusions with no evidence, which is not unusual, but recently you seem to be fixated on calling people who disagree with you ‘liars’. Can’t you find a less self-revelatory way to communicate?
As to hysteria, no one who is the least bit fair minded or informed will ever believe that AGW promoters have not relied on pushing hysterical scenarios and claims throughout the long tedious, expensive existence of the AGW cult.
As to your silly assertion claiming models are not being tailored to give pre-designated results, the Manniac school of data abuse should give anyone with a conscience enough shame to never again try and defend the integrity of climate models.
But back to the theme of ‘Not Evil, Just Stupid”
AGW true beleivers pretending that AGW promotion is not all about apocalyptic fear mongering, please take a look at the Guardian’s report on how global warming is not only going to bake us, drown us, drought us, and make the Earth wobble, AGW is also going to make the volcanos erupt and tsunamis sweep us away:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/06/global-warming-natural-disasters-conference
And I did double check- this is not from the ‘Daily Onion’.
SJT, call me all the names you want. As Galileo said to a different set of denialists, ‘They still move.’
And AGW is still apocalyptic clap trap pretending to be science.
SJT, call me all the names you want. As Galileo said to a different set of denialists, ‘They still move.’
Galileo. LOL.
You are a liar. The earth is not going to spin off it’s axis. No one has claimed that. If massive ice sheets melt, is that enough movement of weight to destabilise parts of the earths crust? Your appeal to ridicule does not answer that question. Maybe it’s true maybe it’s not, but you cannot just ridicule the idea.
And Hunter – maybe not a stupid as you have portrayed…
http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/1477
http://izzat-sajdi.blogspot.com/2008/05/earthquake-risk-from-dams.html
Luke &co,
What is it with you AGW true believers that you cannot admit what it is your promoters so obviously do?
So is your position now that the Nobel prize winning Gore/IPCC team has not been pushing dire *changes* in Earth, like flooding of major coastal areas, grave tipping points of no return, etc.?
Or do you possibly not understand that climate is experienced as weather?
Perhaps you think there is a new, evil magic called ‘AGW’ that will supersede weather?
Or perhaps you all are just a one trick moron, and when you run (very very quickly) out of posing as intelligent, you just blither out utter offal?
Your link sounds like another good reason to not keep relying on hydro.
No easy solutions, heh?
But now you are going to compare shallow earthquakes to volcanos, etc.?
Louis,
Your talk about solar currents seems to be growing a lot of support from some well qualified people:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/10/solar-wind-suprise-this-discovery-is-like-finding-it-got-hotter-when-the-sun-went-down/#comments
SJT,
So now you think the ice sheets are going to melt and the crust is going to become unstable, but I am a liar for stating that AGW believers think an apocalypse is on its way?
Make up your mind, big guy.
Please do show any evidence at all that the great ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland are due to melt away due to CO2, by the way.
I think from your actions that I am not the one challenged to tell the truth.
SJT,
So now you think the ice sheets are going to melt and the crust is going to become unstable, but I am a liar for stating that AGW believers think an apocalypse is on its way?
You are a liar for misrepresenting what was said about the possibility for small changes in the axis. Glaciers are melting, the vast majority of them. The water has a considerable weight. Is that enough to cause changes in the earth’s crust? You have only used ridicule as a response, not any logic at all.
Hunter says “And AGW is still apocalyptic clap trap pretending to be science.” as his link so clearly shows.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/06/global-warming-natural-disasters-conference
Anything can and is being blamed on climate change…and these people expect us to take them seriously. If it wasnt so worrying to our freedom of choice I would have to say the AGW movement is getting more hysterical and funnier by the day.
Seriously, what a croc, how will science ever recover from all this bullshit.
Let me remind you what you said.
so the Earth is going to spin off of its axis,
No one ever said that.
That is a lie.
Anything can and is being blamed on climate change…and these people expect us to take them seriously. If it wasnt so worrying to our freedom of choice I would have to say the AGW movement is getting more hysterical and funnier by the day.
Seriously, what a croc, how will science ever recover from all this bullshit.
Just like Hunter, you can only use scorn and ridicule as an argument. In other words, you have nothing to use to reject their argument.
I don’t think people understand the scope of Global Climate Change.
It encompasses the whole globe. Ridiculing changes that are observed around the globe is just ignorance. We are talking about change that affects every place on the planet.
It is to do with changing climate. The climate is a vital part of the life of just about most life on the globe, not just humans life. It can even have effects on the geographical features. Just look at the landslides that occur with flooding. Water flows are already changing in areas that depend on steady flows from glaciers. AGW predicts more weather events such as flooding.
Once again, appealing to ridicule is not a logical response. AGW affects the whole globe.
SJT had you bothered to follow hunters link you could only reach one conclusion….”Anything can and is being blamed on climate change…and these people expect us to take them seriously.” And you have the hide to try and defend them and state that I and Hunter “can only use scorn and ridicule as an argument”. Mate you don t honestly believe volcanoes and tsunamis are going to destroy the planet as a result of co2 do you? do you!!!!!!!?
The scientists being quoted in this article deserve scorn, as do you for trying to defend them.
If as I suspect you just didnt read the link and are commenting from a position of ideology, you should take off the blinkers and read before opening your mouth. If you did read the link, then you deserve scorn and ridicule. I respect people with a different paradigm and ideas to my own. But this hysteria from the guardian is just pure bullshit, which if you can t see says a lot.
SJT had you bothered to follow hunters link you could only reach one conclusion….”Anything can and is being blamed on climate change…and these people expect us to take them seriously.” And you have the hide to try and defend them and state that I and Hunter “can only use scorn and ridicule as an argument”. Mate you don t honestly believe volcanoes and tsunamis are going to destroy the planet as a result of co2 do you? do you!!!!!!!?
The scientists being quoted in this article deserve scorn, as do you for trying to defend them.
I’m not defending them. I’m saying you have not addressed what they said. It could well be that the massive weight of ice sheets that are melting will cause changes in the earths crust, according to them, it has happened before. You don’t address that at all. The question seems to be to me, is the wieght that is being removed significant enough to cause change, or not. The argument seems to be logical, the figures need to be shown. Hunter has completely misrepresented the changes to the earths orbit. No claims of disaster were made at all, they merely pointed out that as the weight distribution is moved around the earth as ice melts, the earths axis will change slightly. That was all they said, that was all they claimed. No predictions of disaster made for that event.
“It could well be that the massive weight of ice sheets that are melting will cause changes in the earths crust,”
What “massive” like the ice sheets that covered most of the planet in the recent past? These really were so massive that sedimentary rocks in much of the world are still rising because of the weight that has been removed since the end of the last ice age?….where are these modern day massive ice sheets that are in imminent danger of melting? ( greenland …no, antarctica …no) or do you think greenland is in imminent danger of melting?
Hysteria and what if scenarios based on highly unlikely events = chicken little…..mate most things are possible, just not probable.
Look at how much of the world was covered by ice http://uk.encarta.msn.com/media_461527006/ice_extent_during_the_last_ice_age.html
and how thick it was ( debatable judging by this link but probably 500m to 1200m thick on average.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/fit/chapter9.asp
still dont think its hysteria?
And watch it continue heading into the copenhagen meeting……
What “massive” like the ice sheets that covered most of the planet in the recent past? These really were so massive that sedimentary rocks in much of the world are still rising because of the weight that has been removed since the end of the last ice age?….where are these modern day massive ice sheets that are in imminent danger of melting? ( greenland …no, antarctica …no) or do you think greenland is in imminent danger of melting?
Hysteria and what if scenarios based on highly unlikely events = chicken little…..mate most things are possible, just not probable.
You would have to look at what their actual claims are. Obviously the size of the ice sheets is much smaller now. Press relseases often get things wrong, and are themselves the source of hysteria, that’s what sells papers. But they seem to think there is still a bit of give there.
Sounds like a coven of mad english scientists to me.
Nobody except the Guardian and it’s readers pays any attention to the apocalyptic tripe espoused at their little meetings anyway.
They haven’t realised that intensity of bullshit is inversely proportional to degree of credibility.
SJT,
Define ‘spin off its axis’.
I define it as ‘moving from its present orientation’.
According to the paper I linked to, that is exactly what they said.
Your pitiful attempt at a defense of AGW, of fixating on one thing that a person says, redefining it so that you can disagree with it, and then claiming that disagreement means the other person is a liar, is predictable, tedious, wrong and boring.
But hey, if I was trying to defend my faith by pretending it is scientific, I would have to use the same techniques.
And everyone paying attention knows you do this, along with never actually addressing the points raised. At least Luke does his trollishness with style. You just plod along, repeating ‘liar’, and dismissing what is said, as if your act of dismissal is a refutation.
And your line about ‘people don’t know the scope of climate change’ as an excuse for the pap being passed off as ‘climate science’ is odd, because you are defending the apocalyptic stuff you claim I am lying about by highlighting.
It is almost as if in SJT’s theology, only the true believer in AGW is worthy to comment on AGW.
AGW is apocalyptic clap trap, and its true believers, as you demonstrate so aptly, are fools.
Get a life, troll.
Mack,
It is almost as if the AGW hype machine is dopplering into a tinny, tiny speed up screech of doom and gloom and hype.
Sort of like this:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/717889/invader_zim_the_doom_song/
SJT,
Define ’spin off its axis’.
I define it as ‘moving from its present orientation’.
All of a sudden your accusation has moved from an alarmist one to a reasonable one. You are no longer lying.
Hunter,
The solar currents discovery – well, remember it’s not my theory to start with, and all of the scientific literature on it is via the IEEE Plasma Universe section. My peers reckon I am bit ahead of my time, which is probably correct – but knowing the politics behind science and the Lyellian legacy geology is saddled with, it will take a few more years for the paradigm to start shifting, providing the AGW mob haven’t destroyed our economies as they intend to.
SJT’s volte face is amusing – a rotating troll no less.
Moving from it’s present orientation? That is constantly happening, at a slow rate. “Spin off it’s axis” is the alarmist hyperbole that implies it is going to start spinning like a top that is out of control. Which is a lie.
SJT,
““Spin off it’s axis” is the alarmist hyperbole that implies it is going to start spinning like a top that is out of control. Which is a lie.”
Given that alarmists are basically AGW supporters, does this mean you admit to telling untruths finally? Or have you started to distance yourself from the AGW alarmists given existing realities.
SJT,
The only thing that changed is your choosing to stop calling me a liar.
But does this mean that you are going to start policing the vast amount of hyperbole the AGW communit relies for each and everyone of its claims?
SJT,
The only thing that changed is your choosing to stop calling me a liar.
But does this mean that you are going to start policing the vast amount of hyperbole the AGW communit relies for each and everyone of its claims?
As far as I can tell, the hyperbole is generated by the deniers. You just gave a good example. There was no claim of a disaster due to the earth spinning off it’s axis, the change would only be of some academic interest.
SJT,
The only way to claim that AGW promoters are not using hyperbole and over the top hype to sell their theory is to either be a congenital idiot or a deliberate liar.
Clarify yourself, please.
Oh, I missed most of the fun.
Someone said: “Although DDT wasn’t banned for vector control, the negative reaction of certain influential groups to DDT anywhere, anytime, prompted western manufacturers to stop making it entirely. Today, if you want DDT for vector control, you’re stuck with China, North Korea and India as suppliers. Is there any question that after the agricultural ban, use of DDT for vector control also dropped drastically and malaria deaths shot up?”
Actually, the ban on DDT in the U.S. didn’t stop U.S. manufacturers at all. Under U.S. law the companies could continue to manufacture the stuff for export, and they did with abandon right up until 1984, when the the laws required them to do the manufacturing safely, and clean up spills. Abruptly, most on the day before the law began to bite, declared bankruptcy. The U.S. now has a number of Superfund cleanup sites as a result.
It’s true that DDT today is manufactured in India and China, chiefly. It’s also true that in most nations, DDT is not a preferred insecticide for anything, not even fighting malaria. Recent massive tests in several African nations show that bednets are much more effective than DDT (some nets have DDT impregnated, but this isn’t spraying), and nets are much less expensive than DDT.
Check the statistics. I don’t think it’s fair to say that malaria rose dramatically with the end of DDT broadcast spraying, anywhere.
The world will fry tomorrow. The sky is falling. The ice is melting. Sea levels are rising. You wanna know more? Gimme the money…Al Gore
Someone put a large pile of paper from Leon Ashby, a climate sceptic, into my mailbox.. I glanced through it and chuckled at the inadequacy of his thinking, He is obsessed with the inadequacies one can find in the ETS, but failed to see any motes in his own eye.
I don’t care a damn whether the “human responsible global warming model” is right or wrong. I’m not a climate expert and thus have always been open about the whole story.
BUT I am enthusiastically in favour of any plans to stop the production of co2 by the use of fossil fuels. Yes, it is right to say that a change to renewable energy will lower our standard of living for a while. They pay lip service to our need to change but ignore the thousand reasons why it is necessary – they are obsessional about the ETS.
We have enough oil to last perhaps a hundred years and coal perhaps could last for about 400 years. Then there will be nothing cheap left to burn easily and we will be forced to adopt a sustainable lifestyle. Then there will then be no option.
The present movement towards living with sustainable energy resulting from the experts belief in “Human caused global warming” means that we can soon wean ourselves off burning oil and coal. They are chemical treasure-houses and should never be wasted by burning them. Perhaps our generation could leave some of these treasures for future generations.
I think we are just thoughtless – we couldn’t care a damn about our descendants. Oil and coal are valuable. We waste most of their properties by burning them. Our descendants would love to have a share but we are so greedy that we want to take them all and waste them for making energy – which we can have endlessly from the sun, tides, wind and geothermally. Stupid and selfish.
We believe that oil and coal are cheap. They both took millions of years to create – how much should we be valuing a resource if it takes millions of years to produce and can never be replaced? We naively think that the cost of digging them out of the earth is a real cost. Do you believe the costs we pay for coal and oil are realistic? Of course this is nonsense. That trivial cost is what we pretend is their value. This pretending lets us waste them. It also lets us pretend that their use is cheaper than renewable sources of energy. Any child could work out that their use is really a thousand times dearer than renewable energy. You know it is a pretend game and that to conserve these resources is the only sensible course. But we are greedy and of recent years, we learned that greed is good!
I like to think that our species will last for thousands or millions of years. They will need everything we are ripping out of the earth, every mineral, every chemical. But we want them all and we want them now. We have no plans to ensure that we recapture everything we use once – for every chemical and mineral will last for millions of years and all need conserving and recycling. We are just beginning to think of recycling – a moment’s thought makes it obvious that everything must be conserved, regardless of cost. But our greed allows us to argue that it is mostly too expensive because it is often cheaper to dig more from the earth. Yet every gram will be required over and over again by our descendants.
We are not sensible livers – we are plunderers. Our economic system has only money as a value measure. It ignores the intrinsic value of these permanent minerals and chemicals. Our only interest is immediate plunder – how much can we rip up, waste and disperse as quickly as we can with as much immediate profit as possible.
The Club of Rome in the 70’s wrote about “Limits to Growth”. It tried to look ahead, something we should have learned from them – their logic was inescapable. We should have embraced it and made it a central activity for humankind long into the future. They attempted to show how long resources of the earth would last. Technology improved and quickly made their estimates incorrect. The plunderers then made sure that their imaginative attempt at logical thinking and planning ahead was trivialised, denounced and eliminated so completely that one never hears their name today. Yet these were real and imaginative people who tried to look logically at our failure to look ahead and predict sensible consequences. Bright people today could do much better – and those in fifty years hence will be able to do the same job even better still.
Logic suggests to me that we should be grateful for those finding a reason to stop burning and wasting real resources. It suggests to me that the “climate sceptics” are appealing only to our greed and selfishness rather than thinking about the future of our grandchildren. Sadly logic will never overwhelm greed. So please bless the global warmers and the co2 worriers. They have just a chance of moving us to a sustainable lifestyle a hundred years before we would inevitably be forced to. They could make us pay our own way realistically sooner rather than leaving it to our grandhcildren to pay for our greedy profligate living style. Ask again and again, what is the real value of a tonne of coal or oil? Do you really think it is cheaper than renewable energy?
You are right about costs. Changing from coal and oil wasting will be expensive. It will mean thousands of people forced to change jobs. It will take enormous resources to invest in these other forms of energy. Only a fool believes that it won’t be necessary – the only question is when. This moment is history offers us a chance to decide to do it soon. We know it will hurt. We do it now or leave it to our grandchildren. The selfish and greedy ones will leave it to our grandchildren. The proud and independent ones will delight in the challenge.
I suggest that climate sceptics start some real thinking – this time outside the box in which they are locked. Humankind has a real challenge before it and the time is right NOW.
Please feel free to pass this on – it may help others think beyond next the decade.
Cheerily
Glen McBride
Mr. McBride, you say you don’t care about the truth (if global warming is wrong or not), but I do. I want to know if I have been lied to, especially by politicians who use scare tactics on my family and I. I want to be sure that as a mother I have been responsible and that I have not perpetuated a lie on my children. What kind of mother would I be if after I have taken extreme measures, some that I could barely afford, to what I thought was protecting the planet it would end up being an innecessary lie? YOU even mention that (to quote you) “Yes, it is right to say that a change to renewable energy will lower our standard of living for a while ” when sincerely at the moment I can not lower anymore my standard of living unless it is by not eating and losing my home. Maybe someone like you can not understand that many people right now at this moment are in survival mode. We don’t have any savings. We lost our jobs. We barely can feed our children. Yet maybe you feel that it would be okay if we lost our homes or even died of starvation as long as we used other sources of energy we can not afford in favor of “descendants…” What descendants, sir? Yours? God knows I have to protect the descendants that I have NOW!!!
Globally, DDT availability started to decline in the early 1970s. World Health Assembly documents reveal increasing difficulties for developing countries to obtain DDT as a consequence of environmental activism against DDT. Simultaneously, purchase price of DDT spiraled upward. Whether manufacturers in the U.S. could or could not still produce and export DDT is irrelevant. Globally, production and availability of DDT for public health use declined. At the same time, availability of international funds for sustaining the public health programs declined. In response to those trends and to global activism against DDT, national malaria control programs began decrementing use of DDT in house spray programs and numbers of malaria cases began to increase.
Ed Darrell states “I don’t think it’s fair to say that malaria rose dramatically with the end of DDT broadcast spraying, anywhere.” Actually, its not a question of fair or not fair, its a question of whether the relationships are true or not true. Where conditions of poverty existed when DDT use began and still existed when DDT use was stopped, malaria increased. If the condition of poverty went away during years of DDT use, then malaria probably did not increase when DDT use was stopped. This is illustrated by what happened in the United States and Taiwan. However, in the Amazon Basin of Brazil and many other regions of the world, poverty was still prevalent when governments stopped or reduced their use of DDT and numbers of malaria cases increased (see: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol3no3/roberts.htm).
As a last comment, the observation is not true that use of insecticide treated nets is a more effective method of malaria control than spraying DDT on house walls. There is no example of nets producing the extraordinary levels of control, and in some cases total elimination, that were achieved, and fully documented, through the use of DDT on house walls. There is, however, a great deal of hype about nets that might lead one to think that nets are the best approach to control. Again, the fundamental question is, are the claims true? They are not!