AT his popular New York Times blog, environmental journalist Andrew Revkin asks the question “Can a scientists be a Citizen, Too?” But what Mr Revkin is really asking is: should scientists become involved in advocacy?
Mr Revkin provides the case of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies Chief, James Hansen, as a specific example and suggests that because the issue of global warming has such “big consequences for society” Dr Hansen is almost obliged to become involved in politics.
I disagree.
In the following note, Mr Coleman goes on to explain that reporting on global warming at Mr Revkin’s newspaper, The New York Times, is unfortunately more advocacy than journalism.
“DID advocacy Journalism first get out of hand during the civil rights movement or the Vietnam war? It seems to me it began to sweep the newspapers and TV in the 1960’s and hasn’t been arrested since. I have little expectation that in the difficult times reform will take hold, but I will here and now hope for it.
There are two sides to everything. One of those sides is usually wrong, dead wrong. People who advocate the more unseemly or, to the Journalist, least supportable or correct position are often people the Journalist cannot stand or understand. But, to the solid Journalist, they must be covered and the coverage must be unbiased. That can be very hard, but it should be done.
That does not mean every single story must delve into both sides. The side that has taken some new action or released a new statement should dominate and may, in fact, be the only side covered in an article. But, over time, through a series of article, stories or reports a high degree of balance should be achieved.
In the case of the desegregation movement, the segregationists needed to be heard. They were wrong, in what we perceive to be only correct position. But, the Journalists needed to hear and report their statements and report their actions and positions without deriding them.
In the case of the Vietnam war, there were two sides of opinion, but it seems to me the media advocated the “end the war” side daily for several years and ignored or even derided the advocates fighting for victory. In the case of women’s rights, we all know there was only one side, so no balanced reporting was needed. (What’s this; a small joke creeping into this note?)
And, now the case of global warming; a current cause celeb: The news has flooded us with Al Gore’s pronouncements of climatic Armageddon and the constant barrage of supposed proof. From the dying Polar Bears (They were and are not dying), to the melting ice at the North Pole (The ice extent at the pole is now the same as it was when satellite surveillance began in 1979), the devastation of hurricane Katrina (A more or less average hurricane in a more or less average hurricane season, that created havoc in New Orleans because the levies were poor and the Mayor and Governor and well as federal officials did a poor job of evacuating the people and protecting property), all sorts of things including the die off of bees, shrinking coral reefs and a laundry list of other events have all been attributed by Journalists to global warming.
And, the connection between fossil fuel exhaust emissions of carbon dioxide has been presented over and over again as accepted science without the slightest bow to the growing throng of scientists protesting the entire silly foray of bad science and resulting public policy.
The meetings and publications of the UN IPCC have been reported like the final decisions of the high court.
If you search the files of New York Times articles about global warming, is there one single story that presents the skeptic’s side without demeaning them or their position? There is hardly such a story, much less a fair and balanced one.
In this day where everyone is in a position to be a publisher on the internet, advocacy is all around us. An individual’s website and blog and comments posted elsewhere are not meant to be Journalism.
But the writings and speech of a reporter for a paper or TV station or website should be expected to set advocacy aside.
This is fast and unedited since I must now quickly meet my 10 and 11 PM deadlines.
John Coleman
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner
*************************
John Coleman has been a TV weatherman since he was a freshman in college in 1953 and TV was brand new. He still loves predicting the weather and relating to the television viewers. He has been a TV weatherman in Champaign, Peoria and Chicago, Illinois; Omaha, Nebraska, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and New York City. For seven years he was the weatherman on “Good Morning, America” on the ABC Network. http://www.kusi.com/about/bios/weather/1838191.html
Louis Hissink says
In addition I suggest Bernard Goldberg’s two specific analyses on the practice of journalism in his books “Bias” and “Arrogance”.
John Coleman is much too kind.
Jeremy C says
“suggests that because the issue of global warming has such “big consequences for society” Dr Hansen is almost obliged to become involved in politics.
I disagree.”
Now Jennifer do you mean that James Hansen should not get involved in public debates because, A) he is a scientist or B) because of the position he holds and C) both. If A) then should you think of bowing out and not write your pieces for the Australian or are you just advocating denying freedom of expression to certain people you disagree with?
Now, in regard to the concept of balance wrt to the New York Times lets replace in the above, the words, ‘The New York Times’ with ‘The Australian’ or “The Daily Telegraph’ in the UK. Then so as to take the balance further we could send examples of advocacy from both newspapers to John Coleman to see how consistent he is in his viewpoint…… What do you think his reaction would be?
wes george says
That’s the problem with advocacy journalism. What the hacks end up advocating is their own quite predictable intellectual class bias.
John Updike died recently. Please read this statement of his on the tribulations this sensitive and thoughtful artist suffered during the Vietnam war at the hand of his own friends and peers. It makes clear how the overwhelming prejudice of the liberal intellectual classes can be almost as oppressive to a creative thinker as living in East Germany before the wall fell.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123317967229425945.html
Shame on Revkin. His ignorance and ahistorical perspective render him unfit as an apprentice for the Daily Whoop-whoop. But such is the decline and fall of the Old Gray Lady.
jennifer says
Jeremy C.
When I write for The Australian, it is as a columnist, and I write what are called “opinion pieces”.
As regards, advocacy and science, I again suggest you read Aynsley Kellow’s book ‘Science and Public Policy’ and in particular consider the issue of “noble cause corruption”.
spangled drongo says
This comes across as moderate, realistic, honest and probably, as Louis says, much too kind.
wes george says
Jeremy is a troll. He hangs out here to be the first to add a confusing voice of nonsensical obfuscation to whatever the topic is. Have a search back. He’s the self-appointed Stasi here, the thought police hanging out on the corner watching the blog 24/7, smoking fags and drinking stale coffee until the next topic comes up and then – bam! – comments something negative. Anything negative. Doesn’t have to make sense, stupid is good, just be fast, just be for the orthodoxy and against minority dissent. Just crush with a jackboot the creative thought struggling to break outside the box. Then he ditches the scene ’cause he bloody needs a nap, red-eyed, unshavened, face down on a dirty sheetless cot in a rented room surrounded by pizza boxes and scampering roaches. Nice work if you can get it, mate.
Luke says
Wes that was funny. You’ve been ripping into us very well of late. Well done.
SJT says
It’s like saying there’s no balance in the Evolution/Creationism debate.
CoRev says
Dr Hansen is a US Fed Govt employee who has signed certain contracts and annually signs certain conflict of interest and ethics agreements that he routinely ignores. Using his title and using “Official” Govt letterhead correspondence implies a legitimacy to his arguments, that are not supported by the then current administration. Otherwise his advocacy is perfectly normal for someone outside of the US Fed Govt.
Yes, he could have been admonished or removed for his actions.
hunter says
SJT,
No, the AGW community is more like when the Eugenicists high jacked certain aspects of Evolution science and asserted that their political goals were therefor based on sound science.
Eugenics, like AGW, was very popular in intellectual and government circles. Australia, the US, and other countries imposed various forms of it for many years.
sod says
Jennifer, the way in which you are mixing quotes and your opinion is pretty confusing. i am in no position to advice you, but given recent experience (your false claim that Jon Jenkins was dismissed from his job), i would have expected you to rethink your style.
if you don t, it will look as if the confusion is on purpose, to avoid responsibility.
on topic:
to the melting ice at the North Pole (The ice extent at the pole is now the same as it was when satellite surveillance began in 1979)
http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice.html
FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE.
J.Hansford. says
Well put Hunter….
SJT….. So you are a supporter of advocacy journalism?
Me, I prefer my Opinion writers to write opinions and advocate positions and my Journalists to simply report factual accounts….
sod says
SJT….. So you are a supporter of advocacy journalism?
reporters should just stick to the facts. facts only support one side of this story. fact.
Jennifer Marohasy says
Sod,
Just to clarify, off topic but nevertheless raised by you in this thread …
First fact, Jon Jenkins was informed he was nolonger an adjunct professor at Bond University immediately after he published a controversial opinion piece in the Australian newspaper. This was my claim and it has been confirmed by the university.
Second fact, the university claims that the opinion piece was not the reason for the dismissal.
Now on topic, and over to you ….
Which facts support AGW?
hunter says
sod,
I would point out that the recent flipflop by the AGW community regarding Antarctica reflects a certain flexibility with which AGW promoters have regarding facts.
The process is well described in discussions of ‘informational cascades’.
Informational cascades can be quite compelling and very destructive:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/10/informational-c.html
One characteristic of cascades is to confabulate marginal data and draw global conclusions from it.
Another would be that no matter the question, the answer is always explained by the object of the cascade.
Another would be the need to set aside normal checks and balances, and to treat any questioning of the object of the cascade, whether finance or AGW, as a sign of stupidity or bad faith.
hunter says
And to the AGW mantra that Arctic sea ice is significantly less today than in 1979:
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=01&fd=30&fy=1979&sm=01&sd=30&sy=2009
More interestingly to the AGW community I would pose this:
Since solar heating of the Arctic is very negligible this time of year, what is the net effect of open water in the Arctic ocean vs. ice covered?
Jeremy C says
Co Rev
“annually signs certain conflict of interest and ethics agreements that he routinely ignores. Using his title and using “Official” Govt letterhead correspondence implies a legitimacy to his arguments,”
Can you provide evidence of what Hansen has signed e.g. that he ignores such things, plus the rest of your claim? If so what was the context? Or is it just that you want to deny freedom of expression to someone you disagree and so to convince yourself that this is a noble cause you seek to blacken their name?
Jennifer.
WRT to Aynsley Kellow’s book, as I wrote recently on another post here, yes I would read it but as he dudded himself for me by using the same thinking he rails against, so you must excuse me if I won’t pay to read his book, but if someone would like to lend me a copy….
BTW, what did you think of my idea of swapping the OZ and The Telegraph with the NYT so as to ask Coleman’s opinion as to whether there is any difference in how they go about their advocacy of climate change compared with, supposedly, that of the NYT.
CoRev says
Yup! JC, Hansen signs a conflict of interest and a Ethics statement annually. In signing the Ethics statement he assures that he has read and understands the ethics law(s) and rules within his Agency. One constantly reinforced ethics issue is the abuse of his position by using “Official” Letterhead for personal usage (did that last year in writing letters to world leaders), and in speaking out upon policies not accepted nor supported by the then current administration. He is supposedley a scientist and not a policy wonk.
If he is paid for any outside activities derived from his ‘Official” status then it is supposed to be pre-approved. From prior comments from NASA Mgmt and from Theon’s implications, his outside activities were not officially approved. Moreover, acting as a CC advisor to Al Gore & John Kerry MAY break another law regarding politicking by Fed Employees.
Enough or do you want more? In a more normal/main stream Agency he would have been fired years ago. Having “High Cover” is nice.
Jeremy C says
CoRev,
Whats in the ethics statement?
“One constantly reinforced ethics issue is the abuse of his position by using “Official” Letterhead for personal usage (did that last year in writing letters to world leaders)”
Why was writing those letters, ‘personal usage’? But in answering please show evidence of NASA’s policies on such matters.
“and in speaking out upon policies not accepted nor supported by the then current administration.”
That doesn’t make sense. Whose/what policies. Another country’s? If they aren’t supported by an administration then they aren’t policies. It would make sense if you set out what Hansen said and what the administration disagreed with, and who actually disagreed with him from within the administration. Then the legitimate question would be why isn’t an individual not allowed to speak out on issues they believe bear down upon the security and future of their own country.
“He is supposedley a scientist and not a policy wonk.”
Well matey, he is a scientist and he is a scientist living in a free country and if it comes to climate change its better to have a scientist speaking out on it than a party policy wonk.
“If he is paid for any outside activities derived from his ‘Official” status then it is supposed to be pre-approved. From prior comments from NASA Mgmt and from Theon’s implications, his outside activities were not officially approved.”
You have added together payment and activities together in a contradictory way to suit your idea that he was doing something wrong. So how did NASA management discipline him and if they didn;’t don’t give me guff about them being cowed – since when were policy wonks and bureaucrats cowed by a scientist?
“Moreover, acting as a CC advisor to Al Gore & John Kerry MAY break another law regarding politicking by Fed Employees.”
Since when was being an adviser or providing advice to a former vice president and a sitting US senator breaking a law. Why is advising ‘politicing’? You want to stop them talking to each other? There are many times over the past 8 years when I advised the former administration. That, they didn’t heed me and millions of others doesn’t mean that I and millions of others were breaking the law.
You don’t like it so you declare it illegal. To persuade yourself its illegal you have to blacken Hansen’s name, all very convenient. But perhaps its a noble cause.
sod says
And to the AGW mantra that Arctic sea ice is significantly less today than in 1979:
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=01&fd=30&fy=1979&sm=01&sd=30&sy=2009
the difference of sea ice area is over 1 million square km.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea.ice.anomaly.timeseries.jpg
fact.
hunter says
sod,
According to nsidc:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
“Average Arctic sea ice extent for the month of December was 12.53 million square kilometers (4.84 million square miles). This was 140,000 square kilometers (54,000 square miles) greater than for December 2007 and 830,000 square kilometers (320,000 square miles) less than the 1979 to 2000 December average.
The math shows that the extent as of December, 2008 was ~6.6% below the 1979- 2000 average.
I will bet if the moved the average to the longer baseline of 1979 – 2007, the variance would be even smaller.
6.6% of an areas vast as the Arctic is not very much.
And the reason given by NSIDC is not about AGW:
“December’s week-long pause in expansion of the ice cover appears to have been caused, at least in part, by an anomalous atmospheric pressure pattern. High pressure over Alaska and the European Arctic, coupled with unusually low pressure east of Greenland and over eastern Siberia, brought warm southerly winds over much of the Arctic Ocean. The southerly winds helped keep the ice edge from expanding southward. In addition, warm sea surface temperatures, at least in the Barents Sea, inhibited ice formation.”
It is the AGW promotion industry that has hung its credibility on things that keep declining to cooperate.
Climate realists simply point them out.
sod says
look hunter, before you carry the goalpost any further, could we simply agree that this claim from the post above:
The ice extent at the pole is now the same as it was when satellite surveillance began in 1979
is FALSE?!?
ps: the difference between the 1979-2000 and the 1979-2008 average is tiny.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/200901_Figure5.png
Steve says
As a general comment about Journalists, I would like to say that my experience has shown them to have such myoptic standards, as to make most of their reporting useless.
It occurred to me some time ago that a Journalist has a degree in “Journalism”. Not science, business, medicine, engineering, economics, etc. He is no more qualified to write about these subjects than a child in grammer school. He is, however, qualified to grade English papers. Not much more.
When a journalist writes an article, he injects his biases based on his personal views of the world. If his Dad complained about the price of gas when he was growing up; he is biased against the oil companies. If his Marxist buddy complains about how Capitalism is ruining the country; he will have a bias against big business.
Let’s not give Journalists too much credit. They are just mouth pieces for their biases or the biases of their acquaintences.
These days our children are continually being exposed to the “green is good” propaganda. To the point where they cannot distinquish between good “green” and the “green” esposes by the Three Stooges who commonly appear on this blog.
When the day comes that the general public does not buy into “Catastrophic Global Warming”, the status of journalism will fall farther than it already has. Too bad too. When a true crisis does exist, who will we believe?
CoRev says
JC, I see you are in over your head re: US Fed Govt ethics and conflict of interest policies. This is neither the time nor place to educate a neophyte on their intricacies and bore the bejeebers out of the remaining readers. Do a little Googling and educate yoursel, and THEN, maybe, we could have a meaningful discussion, but until then all that will happen is an intricate dance around your unilluminated ignorance.
janama says
“The ice extent at the pole is now the same as it was when satellite surveillance began in 1979
is FALSE?!?”
agreed – but the difference is minimal, less than 10% – swiggly lines again – not something to be majorly concerned about – Al Gore only last week was telling the world that all the ice will be gone within 5 years. That would require a 20% per annum decline – ain’t going to happen!
wes george says
“If you search the files of New York Times articles about global warming, is there one single story that presents the skeptic’s side without demeaning them or their position? There is hardly such a story, much less a fair and balanced one.”
None of the supporters of the AGW hypothesis want to talk about this topic, do they?
And when they relent they dismiss the 99% bias of the media (in this example, the newspaper formerly known as the most influential in America) as healthy. Nothing to see here, move along…
Sod and Stj prefer another topic… Jeremaid C is writhing like a white ant in the sun, trying to confuse editorial content with straight news reporting. We’re talking straight news, dude, that’s the topic, not Hansen’s opinion or The Australian’s editorial position.
Regardless of one’s position in the AGW debate, the fact that other scientifically supported POVs aren’t getting a fair go in the straight new reporting should be a worry to us all.
NYT can take what ever editorial position they like. It’s a free country. But it’s a violation of the ethics of journalism and the public’s trust to skew the news reports to unfairly reflect the bias of your editors. That’s tabloid rubbish standards.
The NYT ain’t a supermarket shelf gossip sheet. The NYT once prided itself on its high ethical standards of journalistic objectivity. The Vietnam war ended that in the political sphere, now AGW has completed the decay into advocacy tabloid style by extending evangelism to even the science news. Sad, really, to watch a once proud cultural icon go senile, prostrate in its own poop.
But the real question is: WHY are the supporters of the AGW hypothesis so afraid of a transparent and fair exposition of both sides of the debate in the media?
Jimmock says
Jeremy: ‘Well matey, he [Hansen] is a scientist and he is a scientist living in a free country…’
Excuse me while I cough up a few lumps of irony. None of us would be living in any ‘free country’ if James ‘Jail the Deniers’ Hansen was in charge.
Jennifer Marohasy says
SOD, TO CONTINUE POSTING AT THIS BLOG YOU WILL NEED TO GET A CURRENT EMAIL ADDRESS. MY RECENT ATTEMPT AT DIRECT CORRESPONDENCE WITH YOU BOUNCED. JENNIFER
Malcolm Hill says
http://www.carsales.com.au/news/2009/cn-confidential-confidentially-this-ones-very-green-13197
The alarmists are so dopey they cant even support something that could be a real plus, no matter what the foibles and inadequacies of the so called AGW science.
Here is Toyota doing a trial of a hydrogen fueled car in Alaska. They had to take their own hydrogen with them because even the making of hydrogen in Alaska is illegal.
Mind you portable refueling at 700 mega pascals might be a problem as the article reveals.
FYI
Luke says
“WHY are the supporters of the AGW hypothesis so afraid of a transparent and fair exposition of both sides of the debate in the media?”
Well Wessy-woo – coz journalists don’t have to report bunk. The sheer idea that there are two sides to this debate and that the pseudo-sceptics actually deserve equal time for their nonsense is laughable.
hunter says
Luke,
Leave your anger and return from the dark side.
hunter says
SJT,
I never said it was unchanged. I said that the margin is small.
And since the AGW cult is satisfied with scientific certainty in the ~90% range, I would say that Arctic ice in ~95% range is just fine.
But look at you believers: you are no longer talking about big climate changes. From Hansen on, your leadership is betting on weather, torturing numbers to show even trivial bumps over decades, rewriting AGW predictions, and screeching louder and louder as less and less happens.
You have to keep pitching the apocalypse over to ‘tomorrow’, making it a pseudo science boogey man.
Every science makes big updates and corrections. Only AGW promoters reject any corrections at all. The non-falsifiable nature of AGW is plainer by the day. But true believers at every blog, like you, Luke and Sod do here, just hope if you keep fingers in ears and sing loud, all the pesky deniers will get rounded up and silenced.
And the climate simply refuses to cooperate.
How frustrating for you guys.
cohenite says
prosecutor sod’s cross-examination of Jennifer about the Jenkins issue and Arctic sea ice is both inquisitorial and disingenuous. Sea ice is measured in 2 ways; by extent and area; Cryosphere measures area which is the actual ice within a parameter; NSIDC measures extent which is the parameter; in reality both use thresholds to show the ice; Cryosphere uses 30% and NSIDC 15%; Cryosphere therefore, will show less ice than NSIDC; Cryosphere shows ice graphically and with images;
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=01&fd=30&fy=1979&sm=01&sd=30&sy=2009
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
The image shows that the current ice area exceeds the 1979 amount; a considerable proportion of the current ice is, however, new ice below the 30% threshold [white]; this is to be expected in a rebuilding phase after a declining period correlated with a +ve PDO from 1976-1998. The graph shows the current ice area below the 1979-2000 average. Again, this is not inconsistent with an assertion that the current ice is back to 1979 levels because even though the current rebuilding ice area may be less than the designated average it may still be greater than any one of the years in the designated average period. The real issue for prosecutor sod is to explain how the Arctic ice is rebuilding at all given the AGW assertions that it should be continually declining; after all 2008 was going to be the year that the summer ice disappeared all together. Case dismissed with costs against prosecutor sod.
Luke says
Cohers runs another spurious PDO ate my dog story. Give it away mate.
ANd what a desperate attempt to win the jury
“The real issue for prosecutor sod is to explain how the Arctic ice is rebuilding at all given the AGW assertions that it should be continually declining”
what a comedian – Cohenite who started out talking about being disingenuous on a NOW BANNED topic.
– But how disingenuous is this – where does AGW say there will a linear year after year record decline in ice.
Members of the jury – disregard those comments as utter bullshit.
Mr Cohenite – try that stunt again and we’ll hold you in contempt !
And what try-on doggy doo is this from hunter “you are no longer talking about big climate changes” – mate the IPCC 4AR is the latest formal assessment of the science – not what you reckon some bloke said on a blog. Do really believe your own rhetorical bullshit.
As for true believers – mate you are the typical sleazy denialist who loves to make stuff up.
Keep trying though – it’s great comedy.
wes george says
Wow, Luke. Your commitment to following the objective science where ever it may lead is stunning, so is your ravenous curiosity.
Jimmock point out the great cognitive dissonance of the AGW bullies…. Luke, et al, really are totally cool with the idea of crushing dissenting science and creating a culture dominated by a single orthodoxy to the exclusion of all scientific evolution.
Are they simply too intellectually shallow to grasp the full social implications of their brutish disregard for the cultural requirements for transparent and free rational inquiry?
I, for one, would never wish to suppress the voices of reasons that wish to defend the AGW hypothesis or any other rationally held scientific point of view. Aye, for that matter, I wouldn’t call for the suppression of the Eugenic, Creationist or Phrenological arguments either, bring it, baby. There is room in a healthy intellectual discourse for all voices.
In an open free marketplace of ideas nonsensical hypotheses are quickly sorted to the dustbin of science, while the strong memes will be naturally selected for and propagated, built upon and yield useful results. Hey, maybe that’s why we don’t hear much in reasonable debates anymore from the Phrenologists and the Eugenicists? No one had to censor them. They melted away in the warm light of rational and open free inquiry.
Luke, by saying that there is only one side to the debate–his– and the sceptics deserve to be oppressed, is admitting that the AGW hypothesis can not survive unprotected by censorship competing theories in a free intellectual climate.
He’s probably right.
C3H Editor says
In a previous comment on another posting, I mentioned how the U.S. mainstream media is in a business death spiral. The MSM in the U.S. chose a political agenda to reporting and it has hurt their business immensely, probably fatally. This includes the one-side reporting on global warming that the majority of U.S. citizens don’t support.
What if Andrew Rivkin, and other journalists, just ignored the global warming scientist-advocates and instead, focused on the actual climate data. If Andrew just looked at the data objectively, would he be a supporter of scientists who advocate? I don’t think so.
I guarantee Andrew has not seen any of the charts here: http://www.c3headlines.com/chartsimages.html , and if he took the time to look at them carefully on his own, he would seriously question if scientists should become advocates that he, and the rest of the media blindly embraces.
C3H Editor
cohenite says
D.A. luke; when they make a movie about this who shall play your part; Farrelly or Black?
“Where does AGW say there will [be] a linear year after year record decline in ice?”
First rule of legal practice luke, don’t ask a question unless you know the answer; and if the answer is one you don’t like, don’t ask the question;
http://www.damocles-eu.org/artman/uploads/2007-record-low_sea-ice-event.pdf
Luke says
Wes – don’t verbal me matey. How dare you talk about bullies given your behaviour. You’ve been posting long winded critiques of AGW posters for days with nary a science word from your fingers. Just like Willy wonker the great psychologist doing backups.
How dare you compare serious science with Eugenics – what a cad. But what do we expect from pseduo-sceptics propping up their denialist religion with nothing but long winded sermons as some pretence at a science debate.
If you’ve got some science – let’s hear it !
But really Wes – what a whinge – you’ve got literally 1000s of blogs and op ed pieces floating around out there. Columnists like Andrew Bolt, a partisan 60 Minutes, Michael Duffy, the denialist national newspaper running endless op eds – don’t say you’ve been suppressed – or I’ll have to laugh louder.
Luke says
Mr Cohenite – You’re again trying the judge’s patience – I’ll give you 2 minutes to show where this stunt is heading !
wes george says
Speaking of “serious science”
On Friday, Luke claimed that global climate is “stationary” at times and he labelled this nonsensical comportment of the Earth’s climate with the lovely oxymoron: “stationary climate.” Truly one of the most benighted propositions Luke has ever made in his 45,000 comments on this blog…way to shred your cred, dude.
Yet today he is out to top himself, declaring…. “The sheer idea that there are two sides to this debate…is laughable.”
I’m not sure what a “sheer idea” would be, perhaps an idea that has no relationship to the real world? Or maybe Luke meant a “diaphanous” idea, because he’s on pretty thin ice here.
Luke, if there aren’t two sides to the debate, then whom are you debating? LOL
Meanwhile…the concept of a debate with only one side is your second classic oxymoronic guffaw in less than 72 hours.
You’re on a roll, mate.
ROTFL
wes george says
“How dare you compare serious science with Eugenics – what a cad”
I didn’t. You did.
———————-
Luke January 30th, 2009 at 12:14 pm:
“Records can be broken any time in a “stationary climate”. However if there is an underlying trend towards warming or cooling (for whatever reason – natural or anthropogenic) one would expect…”
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/01/so-hot-in-southern-australia-and-in-1900/?cp=all#comment-82548
BHAH HA HA HA A AH HA.
Soooo funny it hurts! “One would expect…” to find one’s cred in shreds!!!!
ROTFL
Graeme Bird says
You may be on the wrong track here Jennifer. Its not that Hansen cannot be a citizen. Its that Hansen is not a scientist and refuses to attempt to become one. Its also not a question of balance. There can be no balance on this issue since the warmers are filthy liars. They don’t believe in evidence. They refuse to come up with evidence. They have no evidence. How can one be balanced in relation to this. We all have to come straight out with it and make sure that no-one can fool themselves that this is some sort of polite dispute over science. This is a case of incompetents and dirty filthy liars. This is new-communism.
Can you make the case for the other side? Can they make the case for themselves? The answer is no and no. And so this is science fraud. And science fraud is a sin and used to be considered a real crime.
Graeme Bird says
What are you talking about Wes? What are you talking about? You are a MORON Wes. Come on now! Make an accounting for yourself. Lets have that explanation you complete idiot. Its time to pull out the clue stick and start beating people like you and Robin Williams over the backside with it.
Graeme Bird says
Oh right. I see it now. You were hanging it on Luke!!! Sorry about that. Carry on. Good show Wes. Onward.
cohenite says
Very amusing.
hunter says
Actually, the comparison of what eugenics did to Evolution and what AGW is doing to climate science is spot on.
Eugenics was a dressed up pig of an idea, gladly embraced in many intellectual circles, enshrined into law in various countries, and in its final dark blooming, incredibly destructive.
The leader of Eugenics was a scientist of impeccable background- Darwin’s own cousin.
Australia, Switzerland, USA, Germany, and other nations all embraced eugenics to at least some extent.
AGW with its obsession on CO2, its confusion of models for data, its veneer of science that is actually an endless series of self-referential, self reviewed articles, and political ambition is not really very different.
Luke,
The delusion that you are somehow a litigator I guess fits in with the Hansen & pals view of putting those who disagree on trial- sort of like where eugenics finally took people as well.
Your embrace of the dark side is most disappointing, Luke.
SJT says
It is nothing like Eugenics, and Chricton was a fool for saying so. All he did was say “this is like that”, and it’s like it’s a gospel reading, it’s accepted fact.
AGW has been around for over 100 years, Eugenics was only around for about 20 years, and forgotten. AGW has a physical basis, Eugenics is a social and moral issue, it says nothing about genetics, but about dealing with genetics as a society. AGW has been consistent throughout, with a long history of discovery and refinement of the original properties of Greenhouse gases and their effect on climate.
Louis Hissink says
Hunter
The following PDF summarises when the global warming idea started – http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-23/pdf/50-55_723.pdf.
(I do not endorse the Larouche POV by the way but data is data and the eugenics connection via Margaret Mead is of interest).
““Global Warming” is, and always was, a policy for genocidal
reduction of the world’s population. The preposterous claim
that human-produced carbon dioxide will broil the Earth, melt
the ice caps, and destroy human life, came out of a 1975 conference
in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, organized
by the influential anthropologist Margaret Mead, president of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS), in 1974.
Mead—whose 1928 book on the sex life of South Pacific
Islanders was later found to be a fraud—recruited like-minded
anti-population hoaxsters to the cause: Sow enough fear of
man-caused climate change to force global cutbacks in industrial
activity and halt Third World development. Mead’s leading
recruits at the 1975 conference were climate-scare artist
Stephen Schneider, population-freak biologist George Woodwell,
and the current AAAS president John Holdren—all
three of them disciples of malthusian fanatic Paul Ehrlich, author
of The Population Bomb. Guided by luminaries like
these, conference discussion focussed on the absurd choice of
either feeding people or “saving the environment.”
Mead began organizing for her conference, “The Atmosphere:
Endangered and Endangering,” shortly after she had
attended the United Nations Population Conference in Bucharest,
Romania, in August 1974. She had already bullied American
scientists with her malthusian view that people were imperiling
the environment. She wrote in a 1974 Science
magazine editorial that the Population Conference had settled
this question:
Holdren is Obama’s climate Guru by the way.
SJT says
“AGW with its obsession on CO2, its confusion of models for data, its veneer of science that is actually an endless series of self-referential, self reviewed articles, and political ambition is not really very different.”
It’s not an obsession, it’s an observation. If you observe that CO2 has certain properties and effects, then it does. If it has those properties yesterday, it will have them today, and it will have them tomorrow. That’s not the fault of science, that’s just how the world works.
wes george says
-“…you’ve got literally 1000s of blogs and op ed pieces floating around out there. Columnists like Andrew Bolt, a partisan 60 Minutes, Michael Duffy, the denialist national newspaper running endless op eds – don’t say you’ve been suppressed…”
Luke you don’t grasp the difference between an editorial opinion and the straight, objective and fair reporting of the news, do you?
Editorial opinion in the profession of journalism is something far removed from the new editor’s desk. Opinion is not news and the news shouldn’t be influenced by editorial opinion. That’s the topic of this thread: The news reporting process is deeply biased. Why is the question.
Blogs are not mass media news reports subject to codes of journalistic objectivity. The NYT calls itself “the paper of record.”
If the Internet and blogs didn’t exist then there would be NO public debate at all about AGW, because it is self-evident that it doesn’t exist on the telly or in print, outside of the few editorialists you just counted on one hand.
And even if op eds were what this thread was about they are running 50 to 1 pro-AGW apocalypse, mate. But that’s not the topic because everyone is free to have and express an opinion. Just not through the news desk of a national media outlet! Got it?
Yes, Luke, fair debate is broadly and deeply suppressed in the mass media. To deny such only proves you are wildly partisan.
Worse, your lack of concern with news bias (as long as it favours the dominant orthodoxy) reveals an unpleasant autocratic streak in your personality. Such absolutist intolerance of intellectual diversity is normally considered less than healthy in a democracy and truly stifling in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
But I’ll will give Luke’s POV a fair go:
Luke, list the names of all those dozens of broadcasts by our national taxpayer funded broadcaster (the ABC) which fairly documented the anti-AGW positions?
Louis Hissink says
SJT,
Slurring the dead now are we? You really are a ‘little person”, aren’t you. Your ignorance of eugenics is quite interesting – AGW was around for a 100 years? Got any documentary fact to support this or are we, yet again, to take it on your ‘little” authority.
Gordon Robertson says
cohenite….”The image shows that the current ice area exceeds the 1979 amount; a considerable proportion of the current ice is, however, new ice below the 30% threshold…”
The controversy about the measurement of sea ice is on-going. What most people seem to miss is that the Arctic ice is ‘pack ice’ and it piles up due to wind driven ocean currents. Measuring its thickness/extent is almost impossible for that reason. I have read proof of the effect of wind currents from the accounts of sailors sailing in the Arctic Ocean.
The first was from the captain of the Canadian RCMP boat, the St. Roch. It took the boat nearly two years to get through the Arctic from west to east starting in 1940 and only 88 days to return the 7700+ mile expedition from east to west (Halifax to Vancouver). When asked why it took so long on the way east, Henry Larsen, the skipper, said it was due to a pile up of sea ice along the northern coast of Canada. He said that was due to wind currents blowing the ice ashore.
The second account came from Shackleton in the Antarctic. His ship initially went aground in sea ice due to wind currents that hemmed his ship in, eventually crushing it. When they made their incredible journey across part of Antarctica on foot, leaving some of the crew behind, they had to go back to rescue them. They were required to make several attempts to sail into the bay where the sailors were stranded, due to wind currents piling up ice in their way.
Far too much is made of the ice extent in the Arctic and is yet another vehicle for the alarmists to peddle their fears. Christy tells anyone who will listen that the Arctic has warmed more than other regions of the planet. It hardly seems plausible, however, for a half degree C warming to account for that much ice loss, considering most of the warming occurs in the winter, at night. The explanation that the AMO is responsible, due to the transport of tropical warmth northward by wind and ocean currents, seems far more logical than a half degree C warming.
wes george says
Hunter observers:
“Eugenics was a dressed up pig of an idea, gladly embraced in many intellectual circles, enshrined into law in various countries, and in its final dark blooming, incredibly destructive. The leader of Eugenics was a scientist of impeccable background- Darwin’s own cousin.
Australia, Switzerland, USA, Germany, and other nations all embraced eugenics to at least some extent. AGW with its obsession on CO2, its confusion of models for data, its veneer of science that is actually an endless series of self-referential, self reviewed articles, and political ambition is not really very different.”
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doom to repeat it.
spangled drongo says
With environmental reporting, cold hard facts are very boring stuff for the MSM and likewise for the average punter.
Emotions, otoh, are their bread and butter [and jam].
As a f’rinstance, have a captain over at Doltoid where they are currently eviscerating Dr John Theon.
The science is deafening.
Gordon Robertson says
In my reply to cohenite, I used the quantity ‘half a degree warming’. I am basing that on the IPCC average of 0.6 C warming over a century. To show just how ludicrous that global average is, look at these global satellite temperature contours from UAH:
http://climate.uah.edu/
This is the global lower troposphere temperature data for Dec 2008. The blue contours seem to be areas of cooling, down to -3.5 C below average and the yellow/orange areas seem to be warming up to +4.5 C above average temperatures. Obviously, on this Mercator projection, the Arctic is exaggerated, but the first question coming to my mind is why the Arctic has such a variation in warming, yet immediately below that in North America and the northern Pacific, there is almost as much cooling.
It’s pretty obvious from the various temperature contours that temperatures are highly localized and that the concept of a +0.6 C average has no meaning, other than mathematically. At the top-left of the page, you can select different months in 2008. Select August, which is normally the hottest month in North America. Note that the Arctic ia actually cooler in the summer, with respect to the average, than it is in the winter.
Also, note the hot and cold spots that seem to form. They are quite localized. How could a rise in global CO2 density be responsible for such localization? If CO2 is causing a general temperature rise, something else is circulating the warming/cooling so that it concentrates in certain areas. From that, how can you tell what warming came from where?
Just asking, but not getting many answers.
Graeme Bird says
“It’s pretty obvious from the various temperature contours that temperatures are highly localized and that the concept of a +0.6 C average has no meaning, other than mathematically. At the top-left of the page, you can select different months in 2008.”
Right. But the problem goes further than that. I don’t think the air temperature is the right metric in the first place. Since no amount of joules in the air could be trapped there in such a way as to outlive two weak solar cycles. So the real metric is imbedded energy in the oceans. Perhaps sea level is a reasonable approximation of same. At leas in non-geological time.
The air temperature averages can apparently be affected by such foolish human factors as the fall of the Soviet Evil Empire. Since the Russians apparently discontinued measuring stations in Siberia due to the chaos. I don’t know the full extent of how true this story is. But one can see how you’d be suspect about many air temperature aggregations.
Personally I want to stick with sea level as my main metric. No-one can bullshit me about that. And its being as generous as I possibly can be to the other side who are liars, monstrous slave-philosophers, incompetents in logic, dwarves, retards, loony-tunes and horrid misfits.
Because its really sea level that is the last metric to come over to the dark side and flatten out.
Louis Hissink says
Gordon,
And you will not get many answers either – the whole AGW hypothesis was a political crock to start with – happens when something is proposed and then the troops are instructed to find, or manufacture, evidence to substantiate the proposal. Thatcher started it with the Hadley Centre to combat the coal miners union, and in a parallel development, the eugenicists devised the ploy of taxing air via CO2.
Graeme Bird says
“Also, note the hot and cold spots that seem to form. They are quite localized. How could a rise in global CO2 density be responsible for such localization? If CO2 is causing a general temperature rise, something else is circulating the warming/cooling so that it concentrates in certain areas. ”
Well I don’t think there is any reason to be cryptic about it is there Gordon? We are talking about the buildup of energy in the oceans, leading to greater water vapour being released and changes to ocean currents and wind patterns. The net effect is that temperature increases ought to correspond with extra water vapour conveying the increase in energy being released by the oceans. Those very regions that have experienced increased average temperature ought to be the self-same regions that now have a higher average concentration of water vapour in the air.
SJT says
“It’s pretty obvious from the various temperature contours that temperatures are highly localized and that the concept of a +0.6 C average has no meaning, other than mathematically. At the top-left of the page, you can select different months in 2008. Select August, which is normally the hottest month in North America. Note that the Arctic ia actually cooler in the summer, with respect to the average, than it is in the winter.”
It’s a simple summary. Obviously the story is far more complex than that, but the avarage anomoly is a useful indicator. The UAH with Christy and Spence have no problem putting out their version of the figure.
hunter says
SJT-
You say, “It’s a simple summary. Obviously the story is far more complex than that, but the avarage anomoly is a useful indicator. The UAH with Christy and Spence have no problem putting out their version of the figure.”
And they also have no problem putting it in perspective and realizing the data does not support Hansen & co’s call for an apocalypse.
hunter says
SJT-
I was actually unaware until you kindly pointed it out that Chrichton noticed the same similarity.
AGW- the idea that humans are creating a climate apocalypse by way of run away CO2 feedbacks is not 100 years old.
Your comment that confuses that theory with the simple observation that CO2 is a positive forcing is really the heart of the matter.
You AGW believers have been trained to believe, falsely, that AGW skeptics somehow do not ‘get it’ irt CO2. That is not the issue.
As with eugenicists confusing the science of Evolution with their idea about how it should be applied racially and socially, AGW promoters have sold a confusion of their idea about how CO2 works as a forcing in the atmosphere with the physics of CO2.
If you are going to go back to Svante Arrhenius to make the case for your apocalyptic cult, the connection with eugenics is only much stronger:
” He was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes would cause global warming. Arrhenius clearly believed that a warmer world would be a positive change. From that, the hot-house theory gained more attention. Nevertheless, until about 1960, most scientists dismissed the hot-house / greenhouse effect as implausible for the cause of ice ages as Milutin Milankovitch had presented a mechanism using orbital changes of the earth (Milankovitch cycles), which has proven to be a powerful predictor of most of the past climate changes for millions of years. Nowadays, the accepted explanation is that orbital forcing sets the timing for ice ages with CO2 acting as an essential amplifying feedback.
Arrhenius estimated that halving of CO2 would decrease temperatures by 4 – 5 °C (Celsius) and a doubling of CO2 would cause a temperature rise of 5 – 6 °C[3]. Recent (2007) estimates from IPCC say this value (the Climate sensitivity) is likely to be between 2 and 4.5 °C. It is remarkable that Arrhenius came so close to the most recent IPCC estimate. Arrhenius expected CO2 levels to rise at a rate given by emissions in his time. Since then, industrial carbon dioxide levels have risen at a much faster rate: Arrhenius expected CO2 doubling to take about 3000 years; it is now predicted to take about a century.
Svante Arrhenius was also actively engaged in the process leading to the creation in 1922 of The State Institute for Racial Biology in Uppsala, Sweden, which had originally been planned as a Nobel Institute. Arrhenius was a member of the institute’s board, as he had been in The Swedish Society for Racial Hygiene (Eugenics), founded in 1909. Swedish racial biology was world-leading at this time, and the results formed the scientific basis for the Compulsory sterilization program in Sweden, as well as inspiring the Nazi eugenics in Germany”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
It is more than a little disturbing that two movements so destructive mankind, eugenics and AGW, are based on such profound distortions of science connected to one person.
But hey, you true believers want it, you true believers get it.
wes george says
“You AGW believers have been trained to believe, falsely, that AGW skeptics somehow do not ‘get it’ irt CO2.”
Actually, Hunter, you clearly don’t get it. You should have said “CO2 pollution”. Off the the re-educational gulag for you, mate. I reckon your rehabilitation could take years.
Anthony Watt’s site has an interesting new discussion on CO2 abilities to drive the climate as derived from the data in the Volstok ice core series.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/#more-5392
But it’s just more bad news for the AGW hypothesis, so in order to keep the pristine ignoramus effect intact STJ should refrain from having a peek…
cohenite says
Gordon; you rise a lot of issues to do with the vacuum at the heart of AGW; the UAH map you link to graphically depicts this; the metric of the GMST or average temperature has always been problematic; even died in the wool AGW authors have noted this;
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/shindell_06/
Shindell’s piece seeks to isolate a response to a ^ in insolation and regionalism his paper describes is the bane of the GMST metric; why would anyone think that a response to solar variation should be regional but not a response to AGW [assuming there is a response]? We now have the benefit of the Essex, McKitrick and Andresen paper and the Pielke paper on Stefan-Boltzman based energy differentials which fatally undermine the Weartian concept of a CO2 trapping mechanism; this was devastatingly defended by lucia who demolished Eli’s attempt to rebut Pielke;
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/spatial-variations-in-gmst-eli-rabbett-vs-dr-pielke-sr/
A point about Birdie’s observations about the ocean; he is right about its crucial position in the grand scheme of things; but I don’t think there is an issue with the ocean sink providing the necessary stored energy for a delayed AGW effect; the Compo paper, Trenberth’s work on lags and White and Cayon’s paper, along with Tsonis’s effort on ocean/atmosphere coupling, all mitigate that ‘great white hope’ of AGW. With regionalism refuting the GMST and the immediacy of ocean/ atmosphere response there does not appear to be anywhere for AGW to turn.
Louis Hissink says
Cohenite,
“the immediacy of ocean/ atmosphere response there does not appear to be anywhere for AGW to turn.”
You severely underestimate them – they will, authoritatively, cook up a new ad hoc explanation to support their case.
In any case the global warming issue was actually caused by Velikovsky when he published Worlds in Collision in 1950. During the 70’s when in situ data showed Venus to be too hot for life, and thus verified Velikovsky’s deductions from historical data, Carl Sagan and the mainstream could not allow their standard model embarassed by an inconvenient fact, and hence invented a greenhouse effect to explain the Venusian temperature. When that was shown not to work, they then invented a runaway greenhouse effect which has never been proved, by the way.
So if the government scientists can come up with the crap idea of a runaway greenhouse effect and no one since has bothered to refute it, don’t assume that they can’t come up with some other crap idea to bolster AGW nonsense.
They have come this far, and they are not going to give up – their jobs and lifestyles are at stake.
spangled drongo says
Louis,
If nothing much happens climate-wise it could go on for decades but eventually the people and later the pollies will wake up and it could end up like Perestroika and Glasnost with James Hansen, like Gorby, getting the Nobel Prize in exchange for letting the sceptics adjust his GCMs with a big hammer, a la the Berlin Wall.
Jeremy C says
CoRev,
“JC, I see you are in over your head re: US Fed Govt ethics and conflict of interest policies. This is neither the time nor place to educate a neophyte on their intricacies and bore the bejeebers out of the remaining readers. Do a little Googling and educate yoursel, and THEN, maybe, we could have a meaningful discussion, but until then all that will happen is an intricate dance around your unilluminated ignorance.”
You’ve made the accusations. Its up to you to provide evidence that backs it up. Simple as that matey. I’m waiting.
Louis Hissink says
Spangles, the case of “benign neglect” 🙂
I suppose you are right – if you don’t think about something it cannot exist, so not thinking about it will ultimately end up in the scenario you describe.
I also noticed my recent posts have caused a serious verbal constipatory effect on some of the climate clowns here. Again, non reply to those suggests a belief that not thinking causes things to cease their existence.
Homlier comments come to mind but I won’t write them here as we do have standards. 🙂
But they are, wankers.
cohenite says
Wes; that is a thrilling exposition at Watts; the last refuge for this stinking ‘theory’ was the Enhanced Greenhouse whereby CO2 followed natural temp rises and then did its dirty work through H2O [which is ridiculous anyway]; that Watts piece just looks at this garbage from a different but logical perspective; simple and elegant.
Following on from my previous post about GMST; IMO it’s time Miskolczi got another look, especially with Philipona popping up regularly; Philipona, and Harries and AGW generally, states that LDR heats the surface; the Clausius contradiction apart, eqn no 4 from Miskolczi puts paid to this;
ED=SU [1-TA]
Where ED is the Philipona LDR, SU the surface upwelling and TA the Stefan-Boltzman derived temperature at the surface; Philipona’s experiments purport to establish a clear-sky LDR effect which can only be due to AGW; but, even if this is true, Miskolczi shows that a regional balance occurs with any increase in ED matched by SU at that location; regionalism leads to maintainence of TOA OLR equilibrium and, as miskolczi states;
“Planets following the radiation scheme of Eq [8] can not change their surface temperature without changing the surface pressure – total mass of the atmosphere – or the SW or thermal energy imput to the system.”
As Miskolczi shows, increase in CO2 do neither.
Luke says
Wes – you’re a frigging idiot – it was in quotes, with an accompanying RC article on records. I was simply saying that even without a directional forcing which is seldom theory would suggest occasional breaking of records is possible. I DID NOT say the current climate is stationary. Can I help it if you’re a pig ignorant moron? Whether records might be broken if such a thing as a stationary non-forced situation exists is an interesting statistical point. And stationarity on what scale. But climate is bounded – the tropics don’t suddenly become Antarctica do they? You really are totally stupid as well as verballing me. You’d have done well in the 1970s Qld police force fitting up suspects with fake evidence. Piss off !
Louis Hissink says
Cohenite: “this stinking ‘theory’ was the Enhanced Greenhouse ” and similar in logic to the runaway greenhouse on Venus.
Just realised the same pattern of thought behind both ideas.
Louis Hissink says
Luke: “But climate is bounded – the tropics don’t suddenly become Antarctica do they?”
Some seem to think this happened at the Pleistocene event.
Luke says
“Luke, list the names of all those dozens of broadcasts by our national taxpayer funded broadcaster (the ABC) which fairly documented the anti-AGW positions?”
Yes – get Michael Duffy’s broadcast list – surely you can look it up yourself …
Look up Deltoid’s score keeping on the national newspaper’s war on science
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/the_australians_war_on_science_32.php
Looks like we’re up to number 31.
Luke says
Louis – yes yes yes – Suddenly without a major driver ! Do try to keep up.
Luke says
What’s this “apocalyptic cult” dogshit? Tell me Hunter – do you really think that? Far out mate.
Louis Hissink says
Luke,
“Louis – yes yes yes – Suddenly without a major driver ! Do try to keep up.”
So, explain it please, because as I have pointed elsewhere here, the islands of Spitzbergen, located close to the Arctic, not that long ago hosted equatorial biota.
Given that plate tectonics cannot explain this, what other explanation could you offer?
Luke says
References pls Louis – what period of geological time.
Louis Hissink says
Luke: “References pls Louis – what period of geological time.”
Who mentioned geological time?
References? Why do I need references when as a scientist, (real in Will Nitschkes terms) I question you.
Answer the question Luke.
Jan Pompe says
Louis: “When that was shown not to work, they then invented a runaway greenhouse effect which has never been proved, by the way.”
You might find this interesting:
http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~weaver/Pubs/weaver_ramanathan95.pdf
About atmospheric IR windows (page 11,587):
“For the surface temperature to increase the size of the window must decrease. In other the words the modified SGM [Schwarzschild Grey Model modified to include a transparent window] predicts that a runaway greenhouse gas effect is not possible in an atmosphere with a spectral window, no matter how small that window is.”
See the paper for details. The Venus Express satellite looks at the surface of Venus through just such windows around 1 micron band.
“So if the government scientists can come up with the crap idea of a runaway greenhouse effect and no one since has bothered to refute it”
Ramanathan and Weaver 1995 refutes it Miskolczi 2007 reaches the same conclusion.
Peter Pond says
There has been so much hot air on this topic over the weekend – just look what you folk have done to the snow around the Arctic!
See http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=01&fd=31&fy=2009&sm=01&sd=30&sy=2009
Louis Hissink says
Jan,
thanks but will the usual suspects consider it?
Their silence “might” be an admission.
Jan Pompe says
Louis: “thanks but will the usual suspects consider it?”
i doubt it, Ramanathan and Weaver are pretty much part of the mainstream and published that in 1995 and still we hear some talk of tipping points 13 years later.
Louis Hissink says
Jan,
Tipping points? Presumably in the models but I wonder how mother nature is to be punished for inexpectations.
Graeme Bird says
“A point about Birdie’s observations about the ocean; he is right about its crucial position in the grand scheme of things; but I don’t think there is an issue with the ocean sink providing the necessary stored energy for a delayed AGW effect…..”
This is a very big problem cohenite. You see you try and get people to see things from the standpoint of the ocean. But they simply cannot seem to shift their vision of things. And suppose you say that they are not taking an ocean-centic view of the situation. Well they will believe they have already factored in the ocean. But what they’ve done instead is use the ocean as a fudge-factor.
Whenever people are talking about long delays between cause and effect its because they are looking at the wrong metric. So if Milton Friedman finds an 18 month to two year delay between monetary supply increases and the increase in consumer prices or nominal GDP then its time to check whether there are better metrics to use. Gross Domestic Revenue would be better. The extra money leads to extra spending right away. The mystery is where the spending will be. Same goes here. The increase in energy into the oceans is a yearly thing. And as a result of a Forbush event it ought to be an immediate reaction. All this talk about delayed reactions taking more than a few years is foolish. Its like saying the heat is hiding down the well with the 12th Imam of Shiite.
Luke says
Louis – So there’s no evidence for your tropical plants except your assurance. LOL – as I thought.
cohenite says
Jan; the Weaver paper states on the last page that;
“For example, with an increase in surface temperature, if the water vapor content increases, the width of the window decreases and leads to positive feedback.”
The Spencer and Braswell thesis negates this but it is the reason why Soden, Dessler and the whole AGW bandwagon want H2O/SH/RH to be increasing; the enhanced greenhouse depends on water and of course both RH and SH [except near the surface] are declining.
cohenite says
Yeah, good one Birdie; but the way things are going I reckon the heat is hiding with the 12th Imam.
Jan Pompe says
Louis: “Tipping points?”
Jimmy Hansen’s mantra.
“I wonder how mother nature is to be punished for inexpectations.”
I think she’ll just have to be spanked once Jimmy achieves his apotheosis.
Neil Crafter says
SJT
Surely you can’t be comparing the religious fervour of AGW to evolution? I think your side must wear the creationism team jumper by default.
SJT says
“AGW- the idea that humans are creating a climate apocalypse by way of run away CO2 feedbacks is not 100 years old.”
The IPCC is not predicting runaway global warming. There have been previous times when CO2 was much higher, and we did not get runaway then. We certainly had a much warmer and vastly different planet.
The issue is the relatively rapid time these changes will occur in. I am told our free market economy will save us. However, we are the only species that has a free market economy, how do all the rest cope?
SJT says
“Anthony Watt’s site has an interesting new discussion on CO2 abilities to drive the climate as derived from the data in the Volstok ice core series.”
What you have is an earnest amateur demonstrating his ignorance of the science.
CO2 is not the only driver of the climate. No one has ever claimed that. Analysis indicates that the other significant drivers are not behind the current change.
CO2 is not the most powerful driver of climate. No one has ever claimed that. In the absence of more powerful drivers at present, CO2 is it.
The issue is anthropogenic CO2. We haven’t been present during the previous major changes in climate, releasing vast quantities from storage underground into the atmosphere. So the ice cores are going to be little use in an analysis in that respect.
SJT says
“Surely you can’t be comparing the religious fervour of AGW to evolution? ”
The defence of science is always going to be full of fervour. In comparison to religion, however, science has the advantage of having evidence behind it, not faith.
Jan Pompe says
cohenite: ““For example, with an increase in surface temperature, if the water vapor content increases, the width of the window decreases and leads to positive feedback.”
Standard genuflection to global warming to ensure continued funding. They don’t go quite far enough in dealing with the fact the temperature discontinuity which is an artefact of a simplifying approximation that isn’t appropriate for an optically thin atmosphere. The important point of the paper is that in their opinion thermal runaway is not possible in an atmosphere with an IR window.
SJT says
“Standard genuflection to global warming to ensure continued funding.”
Climate would be studied with or without AGW. Scientists don’t study AGW to get rich. The claim is ridiculous.
Jan Pompe says
SJT “Scientists don’t study AGW to get rich.”
Who said they did?
CoRev says
SJT, you are putting up a spirited, although, mostly incoherent defense of your views. BTW, calling a writer at Watts an “…earnest amateur demonstrating his ignorance of the science.”, when in fact you are maybe more ignorant or at the very least less committed than he. Write an article with as much meat, and submit it to Jen. Let us have a go at it, and your earnest views.
Jeremy C says
CoRev,
Am awaiting your evidence on what you posted about Hansen. So far, everything you have so far written on your posts wrt to SJT’s post and my post questioning your accusations has been nothing more than bluster and weaving about. So give us some meat and drop the gristle.
CoRev says
JC, bluster and change the subject all you please, but until you educate yourself removing your obvious ignorance, it’s impossible to have a legitimate discussion. Why debate US Fed Govt ethics policies with someone with the knowledge of a five YO? It is a common trait of the immature mind to levy the responsibility to remove their ignorance on another, but all it shows is their intellectual laziness.
My apologies to the others visiting Jen’s house for responding to JC’s taunts and continuing this line of discussion. I will no longer. At least on this line of discussion.
hunter says
Why do you true believers have so little faith in your leaders?
Everyone of the major AGW leaders believes we are facing an imminent apocalypse.
But you know that. You bleat on about it here, until someone happens to point out you are bleating on about it.
The leaders of the AGW movement, Lovelock, Hansen and Gore, clearly see an apocalypse at hand:
Lovelock: http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1416/print
Hansen: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2007/2007-06-01-01.asp
Gore:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16074591/
And since the first strategy of AGW true believers is to pretend that the apocalyptic hucksters are not officially speaking, here is the IPCC:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming-say-scientists-402800.html
SJT,
Anthony Watts, from his showing how GISS was peddling faulty data, to his demonstrating that the ground temp collection system is producing garbage, is doing what AGW promoters decline to do: honest and real science.
Just like when a eugenicist was confronted with the logical extension of their garbage ideas about evolution, you AGW true believers hide when confronted with the facts of what your leaders say.
Keep peddling marginal, corrupt and self-reviewed pap posing as science.
Keep rewriting the failed predictions of AGW to make it even more non-falsifiable.
People are seeing through the bs, and as usual, way ahead of the blithering classes.
And if CO2 is not the main driver, why is it the main thing the IPCC talks about?
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20071911-16606-2.html
You are being circular, SJT, when you try and dodge the CO2 issue.
Water vapor is, has been and always will be, the primary GHG.
Luke, your side being an apocalyptic cult is not ‘far out’. It is actually rather sad.
sod says
SOD, TO CONTINUE POSTING AT THIS BLOG YOU WILL NEED TO GET A CURRENT EMAIL ADDRESS. MY RECENT ATTEMPT AT DIRECT CORRESPONDENCE WITH YOU BOUNCED. JENNIFER
the e-mail i use is mine. yahoo had closed it, because i didn t check for 4 months, but it is the one i use on the net. it should be working again, or you use the one i gave with this post.
thanks for personal conversation attempt!
Graeme Bird says
““Standard genuflection to global warming to ensure continued funding.”
Climate would be studied with or without AGW. Scientists don’t study AGW to get rich. The claim is ridiculous.”
SJT you are a complete idiot. The logic of this is so idiotic. Now knowing that, do you see how incompetent you are to judge this matter and why you are too dim to see that it is a clear science fraud? Well you should do. But that would require logic.
Has anyone ever claimed that the research grant whores are allowing themselves to be manipulated in order to become multimillionaires. Is this the sort of argument you are trying to counter you dirty little pig SJT?
Come up with some evidence you dishonest jerk. Stop the filibuster. Lets have some evidence.
Gordon Robertson says
SJT “CO2 is not the most powerful driver of climate. No one has ever claimed that. In the absence of more powerful drivers at present, CO2 is it”.
You are using the same argument as the HIV/AIDS advocates. Luc Montagnier, the first scientist credited with isolating HIV, which he later denied isolating, has since claimed that HIV cannot cause AIDS acting alone. He theorized a co-factor was involved but no one knows what it is. His ideas were adopted by many in the movement and they are proceeding along the same lines as you have suggested: until the co-factor is found, HIV is the lone cause.
How can you use such a lame argument? We know that water vapour is 97% responsible for the warming, depending on who you read. realclimate offers up a range from 10% to 25% but they don’t explain the 10% value and the 25% value is based on altitude and humidity. They theorize that CO2 is more abundant than water vapour at altitude, and presumably in low humidity climates, therefore it ‘must’ have a higher effect.
As G&T point out, that is pure theory. No studies have been done anywhere to suggest that a gas as rare as CO2 can affect warming to the extent of 10%. That number was picked out of a hat. Lindzen, who knows more about the atmosphere than all of the contributors at RC combined, claims ALL GHG’s except water vapour contribute no more than 3% to ALL warming. That includes the highly theoretical warming attributed to the Earth with an atmosphere as opposed to the Earth without an atmosphere. Birdie will be interested to hear they did not include the ocean in those calculations.
No matter how you look at it, water vapour is the vehicle of warming and most of that is sourced by the ocean. Since the mean temperatures of the world’s oceans are something like 40 F, you have an automatic source of warm vapour. You don’t need to theorize about a mysterious more powerful driver, you already have it, and it’s not CO2, which is a lightweight passenger.
Gordon Robertson says
cohenite…with regard to your link to Shindell, I found it interesting that he cited ‘only’ the following:
“Shindell, D.T., G.A. Schmidt, M.E. Mann, D. Rind, and A. Waple 2001”
Isn’t M.E. Mann the same M. E. Mann who tried to do away with the Little Ice Age? And how about G.A. Schmidt? Isn’t he a mathematician? It seems typical that Shindell would quote himself. That’s exactly what Wegman complained about when he asessed the work of Mann on the hockey stick. He claimed that Mann’s work was reliant on a close-knit group of researchers who tended to quote each others’ work.
I have been concerned for a while now about people publishing papers when they have little or no background in the field they are discussing. People could argue the same thing about G&T putting out a paper critiquing climate science but they are careful to restrict their arguments to the underlying physics, in which they have expertise. Shindell et al are getting into the modeling of climate systems and discussing weather/climate patterns as if they understand the underlying science. Worse still, this kind of pseudo-science is being accepted as legitimate.
Take a look at the NASA home page for Drew Shindell:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/dshindell.html
Education:
B.A., 1988, University of California Berkeley
Ph.D., 1995, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Why does it not say in which discipline his B.A. and Ph.D are earned? If you look at Gavin Schmidt’s home page, you get the same thing. What are they hiding? They are presenting themselves as experts in atmospheric physics yet none of them are trained in that field. They seem to think that programming a computer with their vision of reality is enough.
In my search for Shindell’s background, and why do I have to search that hard, he is refered to as an atmospheric physicist, an atmospheric chemist, an ozone specialist, a lecturer in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, a climate scientist and a climatologist. So, this guy has a degree in physics, chemistry, environmental sciences, and climate science but he can’t indicate that on his resume? Maybe he can’t because he is none of the above.
I finally tracked down a reference to Shindell having a Ph.D in physics from State University in New York. However, he has been working for NASA as a computer modeler and his expertise is in understanding historical- and paleo-climates as well as natural modes of climate variability. He is not trained as a climate scientist or atmospheric physicist formally.
Why do people like that get headlines when they print garbage about Antarctic warming? Why are they writing papers on atmospheric physics when they have no expertise in that field? How does Michael Mann, a geologist, get off co-writing an article on the Maunder Minimum when his initial work on the hockey stick either refutes or ignores that science? And why are they collectively now acknowledging the role of the Sun when that suggestion would have had them rolling on the ground with laughter?
cohenite says
Good, salient questions Gordon; and may I suggest you would need a PhD in psychiatry specialising in abberant neuroticism and advanced narcissism to provide an answer.
Luke says
Moronic dribble by a bunch of unpublished goons. Does Morano write your scripts. Don’t you get sick of ranting on the same materail ?
If you’re any good Gordon write the rebuttal of the Antarctica paper analysis to Nature. But that’s right – you haven’t even read it have you?
And as we all know kiddies FAUX SCEPTICS DON’T PUBLISH – coz essentially they’re flakes. (unless of course it’s … wait for it … E&E …. LOLZ).
cohenite says
Thanks for that luke; and ta for the latest Philipona; this time his data sample goes back to 1981; an initial problem is he doesn’t specify the height of the increase in SH [absolute humidity]; his Fig 2 is a direct shot across the bow of Miskolczi in that he shows a net increase in total absorbed radiation at the surface with longwave upward radiation declining relative to longwave downward radiation. I’ll get back to you.
SJT says
“We know that water vapour is 97% responsible for the warming, depending on who you read.”
Gordon, try to get an understanding of what is responsible for the current warmth, and what is responsible for the increased warmth. Water vapour is not going to increase warmth, that is, warming.
“You are using the same argument as the HIV/AIDS advocates. Luc Montagnier, the first scientist credited with isolating HIV, which he later denied isolating, has since claimed that HIV cannot cause AIDS acting alone. He theorized a co-factor was involved but no one knows what it is. His ideas were adopted by many in the movement and they are proceeding along the same lines as you have suggested: until the co-factor is found, HIV is the lone cause.”
There is a physical basis for the claim, not a “we can’t see anything else there for it must be this” claim. We know CO2 is GHG, we know it’s concentration is increasing. That’s a lot different to the strawman argument you are creating.
I also think you are seriously behind the times on the current state of HIV/AIDS research. The initial, tenuous claims have been validated and refined many times. We know that AIDS, the breakdown of the body due to HIV, is the result of the destruction of the immune system. Once HIV has done it’s job, a simple common cold is enough to kill an infected person.
SJT says
“Good, salient questions Gordon; and may I suggest you would need a PhD in psychiatry specialising in abberant neuroticism and advanced narcissism to provide an answer.”
Do you really want to be agreeing with an HIV/AIDS denier?
Jan Pompe says
cohenite: “his Fig 2 is a direct shot across the bow of Miskolczi in that he shows a net increase in total absorbed radiation at the surface with longwave upward radiation declining relative to longwave downward radiation. I’ll get back to you.”
Regionally we can expect that increasing downward LDR (Ed) with decreases in SDR and consequent declining upward radiation with increasing cloud in the region. Warm moist air coming into the region will also increase downward radiation as the latent heat is released due to condensation during cloud formation. Just where/when was this study done?
cohenite says
Jan; here is the abstract;
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008GL036350.shtml
luke has been kind enough to send me the Letter in full; it is similar to their 2005 paper, and indeed all prior papers, with the exception this time that their data sample is from 1981 – 2005
Jimmock says
SJT “Scientists don’t study AGW to get rich.”
Exactly. The money is a secondary consideration. The main thing is to be adored by teenage groupies.
hunter says
SJT,
Please let these groups know that water vapor is not going to act as a positive forcing.
They are betting on it being a net huge positive:
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/samson/feedback_mechanisms/index.html
And of course the keepers of AGW orthodoxy:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142
Until you get your thinking straight, you might be considered a denialist, by Hansen, and you know what he and others in the AGW leadership have in store for pseudo deniers.
hunter says
SJT,
No one disbelieves that CO2 is a positive forcing, by the way.
Reasonable people are skeptical of the AGW theory that it is somehow a major driver, or that it could trigger an apocalypse.
Many skeptics believe the facts show that positive and negative feedbacks increase in CO2 increased atmosphere.
Certainly the lack of predicitive ability of the AGW promoters would make a reasonable observer wonder, to say the least.
Graeme Bird says
“No one disbelieves that CO2 is a positive forcing, by the way…..”
Thats not necessarily the case at all. People have demonstrated a quite a convincing mechanism for CO2-cooling to do with its effect on vertical weather patterns. I’d have to review it all to give you a good explanation. Cohenite could likely be leaned on for a good explanation on the spot.
And if you look at the history of temperature versus alleged CO2 levels and pretend you are looking at two different mechanisms (except for the knowledge of the way the ocean gives off CO2) then it is easy to imagine a negative feedback mechanism as being the better explanation for the way things work.
Of course there may be more than one transmission. Extra back-radiation may be important in some areas and altitudes and not important in others and there may be some effect on air pressure. I myself don’t have a belief except to say that the effect is either tiny positive or tiny negative. Of that I’m furiously sure. We can be uncertain about it being positive or negative but there is no real cause to be uncertain about it being a tiny effect.
Graeme Bird says
“Please let these groups know that water vapor is not going to act as a positive forcing.
They are betting on it being a net huge positive….”
Its only the focus on WATTS-per-square metre that could have lead people to being so blinkered as to see this water vapour as a positive feedback. Its a positive feedback if your time horizon is one second as in one joule per second. But water vapour is the oceans cooling themselves. Its a refrigeration process. Refrigerating the water. Hence taking an ocean-centric approach water vapour is always a negative feedback to the imbedded energy in the water.
So this water feedback runaway deal is really pretty foolish. Land lubber talk. The temperature of the air is a CONSEQUENCE of what the sun is doing now and the imbedded joules in the ocean…. which depends on the history of things. But always and everywhere when the water vapour is forming it is cooling the water. And since the water is the important thing for more then temporary warming, that means that water vapour is always a negative feedback.
The time period to determine what constitutes a negative or positive feedback has to be considered in view of the fact that any warming to be cumulative has to outlive a weak solar cycle. And ought to be able to outlive two.
The alarmists and even the climate skeptics have a whole set of institutional blinkers that stop them from seeing these matters clearly.
SJT says
“SJT,
Please let these groups know that water vapor is not going to act as a positive forcing.
They are betting on it being a net huge positive:
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/samson/feedback_mechanisms/index.html
And of course the keepers of AGW orthodoxy:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142
Until you get your thinking straight, you might be considered a denialist, by Hansen, and you know what he and others in the AGW leadership have in store for pseudo deniers.”
I think you need to learn the difference between a forcing and a feedback. CO2 can be either, depending on the circumstances, water vapour is pretty well always a feedback.
Louis Hissink says
SJT: “CO2 can be either, depending on the circumstances, water vapour is pretty well always a feedback”.
A gas for all seasons!
SJT says
“A gas for all seasons!”
If you can’t understand it, Louis, that’s your problem.
cohenite says
Will; I’m feeling masochistic; enlighten me; AGW theory predicts stratospheric cooling due to a rise in the photosphere and the OLR emission by CO2 at the higher level; so CO2 emission is a cooling mechanism at that level; at the surface and the various levels below the elevated photosphere CO2 emissions are a warming factor, hence the prediction of the THS; how can CO2 be both a warmer and a cooler? And why isn’t this dualism happening?
Louis Hissink says
SJT: “If you can’t understand it, Louis, that’s your problem.”
Understand what? CO2’s split personality?Maybe I do but maybe you can’t understand my sarcastic satire, hence showing us once again that you have well developed ailment of foot in mouth syndrome.
Louis Hissink says
Cohenite,
You must not ask SJT for answers above his official pay grade level.
cohenite says
Hi Louis; I’m just seeing if I can a direct answer out of our Will; it never occurred to me that people paid him 🙂
Tim Curtin says
Another example of the bias of the NYT, acting as ever as the mouthpiece of James Hansen is that its hacks never ask what becomes of the [CO2] taken up by the oceans and biosphere. The increase in terrestrial absorption of [CO2] from 0.5 GtC in 1958 to over 3 GtC is amazing, reflecting as it does equally amazing increases in world food producion. Do NYT in supporting Hansen truly believe that reducing [CO2] to 350 ppm or less would have no impact on the productivity of the biosphere? Sadly yes, the NYT shares Hansen’s apocalyptic vision based as it is on wilful suppression of the truth about the benefits bestowed on humanity by increasing [CO2]. Yes indeed, the NYT’s reporting is advocacy, but based on suppressio veri, like Hansen’s letters to Kevin Rudd and the Obamas that make no mention of the benefits of rising atmospheric CO2 (aka [CO2]) or of the costs in the form of reduced food output that will flow from reducing [CO2] to pre-industrial levels as in Hansen’s ultimate goal.
Luke says
Timmy could work in an old butcher’s shop. Put your finger on the scales while weighing the snags mate. You haven’t factored in the stuffed Walker circulation, ongoing Los Ninos, increased frost sensitivity into your plant physiology 101 fragment.
Maaaaatttteeee – come on …
And how about this Argentine drought crisis – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7852886.stm – CO2 works well eh? LOLZ !!
SJT says
“Understand what? CO2’s split personality?Maybe I do but maybe you can’t understand my sarcastic satire, hence showing us once again that you have well developed ailment of foot in mouth syndrome.”
If you ever decide to make a sarcastic comment, let me know and I’ll check it out.
SJT says
“Will; I’m feeling masochistic; enlighten me; AGW theory predicts stratospheric cooling due to a rise in the photosphere and the OLR emission by CO2 at the higher level; so CO2 emission is a cooling mechanism at that level; at the surface and the various levels below the elevated photosphere CO2 emissions are a warming factor, hence the prediction of the THS; how can CO2 be both a warmer and a cooler? And why isn’t this dualism happening?”
I would suggest you look it up yourself. At my current understanding of the science, my answer would not be one I would be happy with. I would point out a cooling troposphere was predicted by the models.
Tim Curtin says
Luke: your erudition never ceases to amaze me. Droughts happen, but never worldwide simultaneously as claimed by the IPCC, which has also never grasped that if it is right about rising global temps, they must produce more evaporation from the global surface, leading within 10 days to more precipitation if not in Argentina or SE Australia, then as now in NE Australia. World wide, it is a zero sum game, a concept unknown to all 2,500 IPCC “scientists”.
Luke says
No it’s not a zero sum game – 800,000 animals gone in Argentina mate. You have nothing on frost sensitivity in plants, nothing on woody weeds overtaking grazing lands. Nothing on real world effects measured in FACE.
I spit on your amateurish denialist undergraduate analysis.
Luke says
And droughts do happen simultaneously – it’s called ENSO and anti-ENSO mate….
Ra says
Actually i have no issue with the NYTimes and in the way they sell their papers. They are a private organization and as such deserve and havea right to say, advocate or “opinionate” in what ever way they want.
Similarly readers are free to to buy their publication which looks like they increasingly are not doing as NYTimes is basically broke and will run out of money by mid 2010 if they are unable to increase advertising and circulation which is head down in a big way. Some of that is being caused by the recession but the other reason is that it has become more or less unreadable like the Fairfax publications. On the other hand the Walls street journal was one paper that actually saw its circulation rise last year.
Here’s for the NYtimes bankruptcy coming soon. Can’t wait.
hunter says
SJT,
All GHG’s can act as feedback or forcing.
The heart of AGW hype is that CO2 triggers a run away of positive feedbacks and forcings.
You seem to deny this.
Be careful. They are watching.
Or maybe you just sort of toss stuff out and hope it sticks?
hunter says
I just noticed- the true believers are down to chasing weather to bolster their faith and keep up the drum beat of AGW hype.
Now it is down to a heat wave here, a drought there, Hansen betting on warmer weather in the future- coinciding with a future El Nino, a bet that ice pack cycles will remain scary enough, fabricating temp numbers about regions, etc.
And then denying the heart of the AGW dogma- that a tipping point is near.
The snark level is higher than ever of course, but peel it back and really- nothing is there but a whiny grasp for power based on fear mongering.
Interesting.
Luke says
Yea mate – just a worst on record drought here. A heat wave there – worst on record even. A 100 year drought in the Argentine. Denialist scum.
CoRev says
C’mon Luke. You have done better than just repeating your scary weather analogies. Through these eyes, Hunter’s just about got it pegged. Way fewer real climate science articles on the believer side. The few there quickly get torn apart for shonkiness, while Tim, Tamino, and Grist are busy inventing the next crisis. BTW, did anyone notice Gore’s emphasis on the latest term, “climate crisis”, when he last testified?
Luke says
Are you actually crazy CoRev – when confronted with a changing climate, and ongoing breaking record trends, the denialist scum just try to squirm out of it. So dishonest, so morally bankrupt is your philosophical position that you’re actually saying nothing short of a global apocalypse is now evidence. You guys really are crap. All your tawdry little position has is beating up on Hansen and Gore – who are mere bitplayers in the AGW main game. Do you really think your pathetic attempts to contain this now massive science program on a few personalities is working. Every day the literature just rolls over the top of you.
Hunter’s bleatings are just that of some little whinger on the internet whining against a juggernaut that can’t even hear him.
A 1 in 100 year drought is a “weather” “event.” Weather 1-7 days !
Trends that extend over decades are NOT weather.
As our national Bureau of Meteorology said today
“But we do expect, with an increase in average temperatures, that the risk of high extremes will increase, and the risk of low extremes will decrease.
“We are seeing high temperature records being broken more frequently than low temperature records by a ratio of about two or three to one.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25000195-11949,00.html
hunter says
Luke,
“Denialist scum”?
The dark side will eventually eat you alive, Luke.
The fallacy of pretending that normal weather is somehow indicative of apocalyptic climate change just doesn’t ring out like it used to.
And bleating about 1-in-100 year events being proof of some sort of change only shows you don’t ‘get’ weather at all. But yo uhave bought into the great AGW apocalypse meme rather well, and of course, wordily.
When Australia had record cool weather patterns jsut a year ago, was that AGW as well?
When the Argies had record cold summers and winters, was that AGw as well?
The great thing about dealing with true believers like you is how fast you reduce to argument from authority and simple personal attacks.
Just like Hansen.
I am sure you are too clever to have ever bought into religion, but frankly your behavior is simply that of any other fundie; you just don’t have the experience to recognize the behavior in yourself, much less the AGW leadership.
As to no one listening to me, perhaps that is the case. But it is rather odd that fewer and fewer people are, according to all polls, beleiving the AGW hype.
However, it can certainly be said that no person with critical thinking skills would listen to you and conclude anything other than you are a shallow, derivative parrot on the issue of climate.
Luke says
Listen up and clear your ears denier
“We are seeing high temperature records being broken more frequently than low temperature records by a ratio of about two or three to one.”
Stupid denialist scum.
Luke says
Your disgraceful attempt to try to pigeonhole Hansen and Gore as “AGW leadership” also needs to be smacked down for a lie that it is – every time it gets brought up. We’re used to your Nazi wedge tactics mate. That’s why you will be met at every turn. Propagandistas !
hunter says
And Luke,
The 800,000 dead animal stat you are tossing about- were they all pretty animals with big doe eyes, like Gore’s drowning polar bears?
I wonder how you, always telling everyone in the room how smart you are, can talk about droughts so much from so much ignorance about historic drought events?
http://ccc.atmos.colostate.edu/pdfs/ahistoryofdrought.pdf – a little north of lovely Argentina, but don’t cry too much.
This one may upset you, but when AGW hype and fear is set aside, good science climate can still be done:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060529082300.htm
Fear leads to anger, and anger leads to darkside, Luke.
hunter says
Luke,
Some of your spittle is sticking to your face. I offer you a virtual hankie, if it will help.
I am disappointed in your lack of loyalty to the AGW leadership.
You would be spluttering away about totally different contrived crisis, if not for the hard, profitable efforts of Gore, Hansen, Lovelock and pals.
To deny that AGW is led by Hansen, Gore and co. is to deny reality. Pigeonhole? Their egoes will not fit in an average house. Please let them strut around longer. The lesson of what they are teaching- only trust proven prophets that are not also trying to take your money- needs to be well taughtin this high tech age of poor critical thinking. Otherwise even more people would turn out as gullible as you.
And in normal internet discussions, the loser is always known by the loser’s being the first to call the other a Nazi. I am sure next you will be calling for my prosecution as a true denialist scum who is obviously on the payroll of a VRWC to kill the planet.
You are so pathetic, Luke.
The pitiful amount of climate change is only matched by the pitiful lack of critical thinking from those being hoodwinked by AGW promoters.
Louis Hissink says
SJT: “If you ever decide to make a sarcastic comment, let me know and I’ll check it out.”
Cohenite, your original assessment of our Wil was right, and sort of balances Luke – a balanced sort of dumbness.
Graeme Bird says
Louis. I’ve decided you are entirely right about this plasma business and have ordered this book off the ebay:
http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521528009
I’m going to keep reading it and do almost nothing else till I’ve read every section seven times.
I’ve come to the conclusion that this subject is a sort of missing block in everyones general science education.
Have you seen this google tech talk video? Actually I won’t link it here because that will be two links and Dr Marohasy’s spam filter will likely eat my post.
I just always thought of fusion as a pipe-dream, although this is kind of fusion-fission. But I never took it seriously until is saw this fellows astonishing presentation. And now two things baffle me:
1. How could it be that this John Galt-like character could be scrounging for a measly 2 million in 2006. I think I know the answer. The perversion that stolen-money-finance spreads to the rest of society would be a summary.
2. Why people cannot see that this approach to “fusion” is superior on all grounds…….. since its the only one that completely trounces my reasons for being skeptical. Anyway I’ll post the link in another post.
hunter says
Graeme Bird,
I am very interested in, but dubious of, fusion power.
There have been so many amazing presentations, since the 1950’s or even earlier.
Fusion has always been getting ready to happen in ten years for about 50 years now.
I think I found the tech talk one you are talking about,a nd I am always suspicious when a guy just needs a few more bucks to get his revolution off the ground.
But I would love to proven wrong.
Practical, safe fusion would be completely revolutionary.
But be careful of what you wish for- getting ‘God’s own power’ has all sorts of Promethian and Pandoran implications.
Luke says
Hunter drones on …. zzzz …. conspiracy Hansen – kill planet – blah blah blah
no mate the 800,000 were from their beef herd – big dollar units of wealth !
Interesting how when the Earth seems to warm these drought anomalies pop up. Sort of like in the MWP actually which you guys love.
Graeme Bird says
But thats my whole point hunter. They were all crap. Totally useless. Money pits. Until this presentation right here. And at the time of it he was just looking for 2 million from the private sector for the next three years:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-1518007279479871760&ei=U8KDSZnjJKqyqAPixuzoCg&q=Eric+J+Lerner&hl=en
“There have been so many amazing presentations, since the 1950’s or even earlier….”
I dispute that utterly. They have all been crap. Total pie in the sky. None of them even a little while. Until the presentation linked above.
Graeme Bird says
I maintain that these lefties wanted us to sink all our hard-earned money into these endless holes until the end of time. And now that I show them one that is actually on the level they will just exhibit a great big yawn.
The left are only interested in energy sources that they can ration and that will cost us. If the energy source actually works they don’t like it.
SJT says
“The heart of AGW hype is that CO2 triggers a run away of positive feedbacks and forcings.
You seem to deny this.”
You must be reading something different to me. The notion that there could be a runaway is considered extremely unlikely, and is the accepted sciencific consensus at present. Runaway is not the seem as enhanced greenhouse effect with feedbacks.
Graeme Bird says
“The notion that there could be a runaway is considered extremely unlikely, and is the accepted sciencific consensus at present.”
You cannot prove a scientific consensus you FILTHY LYING DOG. You don’t have a scientific consensus you filth!!!!!!!!!!
Retract that lie NOW!!!
You are just a liar mate. You don’t have a scientific consensus. You are filth mate.
Take it back.
Graeme Bird says
Lets look at this again:
““The notion that there could be a runaway is considered extremely unlikely..”
UNLIKELY???
If you HAD a clue about the subject, you would be able to rule it IN or OUT on the basis of evidence.
Stop you lying you filthy pig.
Take you lying rubbish about a consensus back. Take it back. Take it back now you bastard.
Graeme Bird says
So this is what you get. Monstrous filthy leftist liars. Lying all the time. Never taking a holiday from these hateful lies.
Louis Hissink says
Graeme,
Enjoy your reading – I’m not up to speed on the fusion area but I’ll look at the presentation you linked.
Most of the books or E Books from Mikarmar publishing would be a useful adjunct to your purchase – but Anthony Peratt’s site is the only official plasma universe site – many are bogus or maintain the fiction of magnetohydrodynamics, based on the wrong assumption that plasma is a perfect conductor – it isn’t.
Incidentally if there is a runaway greenhouse effect on Venus then it’s temperature should be increasing, shouldn’t it. What if the Venusian temperature is shown to be decreasing over time.
Current distraction is nano or microdiamond distribution on the earth.
I wouldn’t be too harsh on SJT, every village has one.
Graeme Bird says
“Most of the books or E Books from Mikarmar publishing would be a useful adjunct to your purchase – but Anthony Peratt’s site is the only official plasma universe site – ”
1. Mikarmar publishing
2. Anthony Peratt.
Got that everyone. Right. Yeah I read your history of this racket. And how you are saying that it really boils down to Venus and Carl Sagan. Always Venus has haunted this discussion. Turned grown men into guilty doubting CO2-bedwetters. If you scratch the surface enough it comes back down to Venus in the end. When we are talking about how ludicrously fearful these CO2-Bedwetters appear to be. So it is important to get the history right.
Carl Sagan’s jive about extraordinary claims needing extraordinary evidence really seems to have gotten traction with the stupid side of town. Sorry Carl. They need a handicap but I’m not prepared to give them one.
Louis Hissink says
Graeme–
Fusion presentation – Eric Lerner, ok you are on the right track – see if you can his 1992 book “The Big Bang Never Happened”, – he is associated with Peratt and the late Hannes Alfven.
Gordon Robertson says
Luke…”If you’re any good Gordon write the rebuttal of the Antarctica paper analysis to Nature. But that’s right – you haven’t even read it have you”?
I already did, if you read my earlier posts. I revealed my opnion that the authors are unqualified to assess the situation. As far as reading it, I have no interest in anything Michael Mann has to say. The fact that Nature published him shows me it has roughly the same level of seriousness about science as the National Enquirer, a US tabloid that publishes innuendo, has toward journalism.
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/
Happy reading. When Nature passes over legitimate climate scientists (i.e. with degrees in that field) like Roy Spencer, and publishes geologists like Mann, who has already made a fool of himself with the hockey stick, I have no interest in it’s opinions.
Louis Hissink says
Gordon
“and publishes geologists like Mann” – he isn’t a geologist but a physicist.
Gordon Robertson says
SJT “Gordon, try to get an understanding of what is responsible for the current warmth, and what is responsible for the increased warmth. Water vapour is not going to increase warmth, that is, warming”.
Go argue that with Lindzen and Spencer. How else do you think energy, in the form of heat, is moved around in the atmosphere? You’re problem is that you’re so caught up in the model concept, that is nothing more than a mathematical equation, that you have lost touch with the real world. You think in terms of forcings and feedbacks, which are nothing more than means of manipulating an equation in a computer. Why don’t you look at the reality to see what actually makes heat transport work? You’re not going to learn that from the motley crew at realclimate. I could understand it better if you referenced Trenberth, a real climate scientist.
Why do you have an issue with someone like Lindzen, who teaches this theory at the most prestigious engineering school in the world, and who has over 40 years experience in the field, and not have issues with Gavin Schmidt, who is a mathematician working for an astronomer? When Lindzen claims that removing all GHG’s from the atmosphere, except water vapour, would keep the warming in the atmosphere 97% intact, why does that bother you? Why do you align yourself with a mathematician who points to one remote study that backs his claim that CO2 is responsible for 10% to 25% of warming?
It is a theory that CO2 is responsible for the current warming and there is no proof to back it. It is an even wilder theory that CO2 is warming the water on the surface and causing it to increase in the atmosphere, further warming it. There’s an even wilder theory that CO2 is forming a blanket around the Earth that slows the escape of heat from the surface. They had their chance. They programmed their computers, which returned graphs of ever-increasing warming with ever-increasing CO2 levels, and they were wrong. The global mean is moving in the wrong direction and has done so the past 10 years.
I posted the UAH contour map showing the December 2008 distribution of lower tropospheric temperatures. How do you explain the localization of warming and the large areas of cooling? How does the CO2 theory explain that?
Luke says
If Spencer was serious he could reveal the reasons his publication was rejected by reviewers. Failure to do so is just a whinge and a cover up which denialists are good at.
Your attack on Nature is hollow mate…. if you were fair dinkum you would write your rebuttal to Nature itself not just a lazy whine on a backwater blog where your claims will be untested. Submit your rebuttal and report back. We’ll wait. 🙂
Somehow I suspect that won’t happen. Call me intuitive.
Luke says
Moving in the wrong direction! Oh do wank on.
Pity Lindzen’s big ideas never worked out.
Luke says
As for water vapour feedback measured and modelled. CO2 flux measured and modelled.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008GL036350.shtml
Grow up Gordon.
Gordon Robertson says
SJT “Do you really want to be agreeing with an HIV/AIDS denier”?
You don’t even read anything I say, or anyone else for that matter. Nowhere have I denied that AIDS exists. It’s a very serious syndrome of opportunistic infections that eventually kills the victim. There’s no doubt in my mind that it exists and that it is serious. I have not even denied that HIV exists. I am caught between the arguments of Duesberg, Lanka and Eleni Papadopulos, the former claiming it exists but that it can’t cause AIDS, Lanka claiming HIV and many other viruses have never been isolated, and Papadopulos who claims it was never properly isolated or demonstrated to be replicable.
I have stated several times that I don’t know what to think. I am leaning toward the explanation given by Papadopulos that HIV has never been properly isolated or identified. That explanation is gaining credence in my mind with the passing years. It has been 25 years since the theory was presented, completely without peer review, and I would like some answers as to why they are having so much trouble presenting proof of how this virus operates. I am concerned about the number of people still dying of AIDS and I think it’s time science looked in a different direction for the answer.
I take the same approach to the global warming debate. I’m looking for proof, not consensus. You seem to be happy with the pseudo-science of computer modeling. Fair enough, but that’s no reason to come after people who demand real proof. In 1988, Gore and Hansen declared war on global warming. Hansen presented his proof and he was wrong. He admitted it. Here we are 20 years later, and the thermometers are going down, not up. I have been harping that global warming is an idea, not a reality, and no one is countering me other than with ad homs.
Maybe you should take a clue from my position on HIV/AIDS and start asking some hard questions. Considering your naivete with global warming issues, however, I wont hold my breath.
hunter says
Luke,
You are not much of a Nazi hunter if you simply doze off while one of those wraskly wrabbitz is running loose.
It is your team leaders, Lovelock, Hansen and Gore accusing us skeptics of destroying the planet.
Wake up, Luke, your father is calling.
I don’t think we can destroy it, even if the self-declared best and brightest work really hard at it.
Remember: I am the fella who says we will muddle through.
You weenies are the ones Pavlov has trained to bark at the idea of AGW.
Geoff Sherrington says
Just pop over to Climate Audit to see the latest scandal about “The Antarctic is warming after all”. Paper by Steig, Mann et al, some in Hansen’s department is found defective because among other things they plotted a critical weather station in the wrong place and then they assigned it data from another weather station. And that’s just the start of the problems.
cohenite says
luke; you have relinked to Philipona’s latest paper; you will simply have to do a post on this because it is totally contradictory; P states that the increases in temp and humidity are due to forcing from increased SDR [shortwave] and LDR [longwave]; the increased SDR is apparently due to reduced aerosol caused insolation increase and the LDR increase due extra SH; the contradictions are these;
1 It is not clear whether the increased SDR is due to decreased cloudiness or aerosol decline
2 SH is stated to have increased and is regarded as a +ve feedback; however the height of this alleged increase in SH is not specified, which is crucial since NOAA records show that at all levels of SH, except the immediate surface are flat or declining. The +ve feedback allocated to SH is also contrary to Spencer and Braswell’s paper and work where they have distinguished the forcing signal from the feedback signal for clouds so that an increase in temperature will cause an increase in clouds via increased SH at low levels which will mitigate temperature thorugh latent heat transfer, increased albedo and precipitation; P has found the opposite!
3 The paper attributes the increase in LDR to the increase in SH [I still can’t see any connection with CO2] but, as noted, there is a decline in cloud cover so once again we have the unique phenomenon of increasing surface temperature caused by increases in SDR and LDR increasing SH but not producing clouds, or rather, according to Table 1, producing a neutral cloud situation with the decrease in SNR causing a decrease in clouds equal to the increase in clouds caused by the LDR; a tad convenient.
4 Even though the data record is longer than the 1995-2002 period in the previous paper the temperature trends are still the opposite of all other metrics [except GISS]
cohenite says
And it gets better Geoff; Mann and his cohorts have replied to M’s critique justifying their ‘statistics’ by referencing Mann’s previous papers!!??
Louis Hissink says
Cohenite,
That’s interesting, tells me they actually believe all this to be 100% science. Truly science if off the rails when the, and it has to be said, Whigs take conrol of it. But there is a glimmer over the horizon – “So-called “global warming” has accomplished the impossible: It has united liberals and conservatives in laughter.’”
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/397959_murdockonline30.html
Eli Rabett says
Coleman is an idiot suffering from long term memory loss. Believe me, having lived through it, the segregationist side was heard loud and clear, the media advocated loud and strong for the Vietnam war until at the earliest 1968 (remember the US got in in the late 50s) and in many cases up to the end, and yes Virginia, there will be serious problems in the coming years because humans have significantly increased greenhouse gas concentrations. Coleman is essentially saying that one media organization got it right three times although late in all three. The world is NOT flat.
On the Vietnam war you could read this
hunter says
Eli,
You apparently missed Coleman’s point entirely.
But that is normal behavior in AGW believers.
Eli Rabett says
Really Hunts? His whole argument started with the fiction that journalism was biased and he invented two fictions as evidence thereof. BTW, there are several clues about Coleman’s political associations in the letter. They are not “seemly”
hunter says
Eli,
If you claim you cannot perceive the bias present in media, you are out of step with reality.
There is nothing in Coleman’s essay that indicates any sort of political associations.
By contrast Coleman is not, like Hansen, calling for criminalization of dissent from AGW.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/are-big-oil-and-big-coal-climate-criminals/
Nor is Coleman defending criminals, unlike Hansen:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7596934.stm
I will take someone’s writing over someone’s actions any day.
And as for your opinion that media is not biased, you are certainly not supported in academic circles on that one:
http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/MediaBias.doc
http://www.mediaresearch.org/biasbasics/biasbasics3.asp
etc.
And it is ‘hunter’, by the way.
Luke says
Trying to fit out more public individuals like Hansen and advocates like Gore and Lovelock is really just part of pseudo-sceptic campaign of total dishonesty. It’s a deliberate attempt to pigeon hole and marginalise the debate to a few more controversial individuals. The assertion that they are “the leader of AGW” is just disgraceful.
Leadership is shown by many scientists from diverse institutions on a daily basis. They are never mentioned on here.
It is the pseudo-sceptics that continue to use language of an “apocalypse”. Or absence of a mega-apocalypse means AGW is incorrect.
In doing so you trash the entire process of science.
You really are philosophically bankrupt. Just reycled shonky rhetorical arguments made by inactivists.
If Spencer was any good he would detail the reviewers reasons that are preventing his publication instead of hiding behind the bullshit of a conspiracy. Why is he scared to tell us the feedback?
Luke says
Cohenite – it is you that owe us a guest post on your many interesting theories on radiation physics (seriously).
The right thing for you do with Philipona et al is communicate with Rolf personally about your many inevitable nitpicks. Instead of making infantile comments like previously.
hunter says
Luke,
Everytime I read your latest dodge, I laugh out loud and think of Dafy duck in the old Warner Bros. cartoons,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck!_Rabbit!_Duck!
But I think Gore, in his latest performance, speaks for all of you AGW true beleivers rather well:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/28/AR2009012803318.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Notice how many times your guy uses ‘catastrophe’.
And Luke, I realize that being stuck in an alien mask like you are diminishes blood flow to the head, but it is Hansen, Gore, Lovelock, and the IPCC who have been asserting a great catastrophe is at hand. I posted the links to their own words up thread a few days ago. So if you have problems with my pointing out that AGW is an apocalyptic cult led by con-artists posing as scientists and stateman, talk to your guys.
Now if you want to parse that a ‘global catastrophe’ is not an ‘apocalypse’, I invite you to do so. It will provide even more entertainment than you have lately- you have to admit you are stuck in rut, you know.
The best way to expose an extremist is to simply quote him or her accurately.
Gore, Hansen, Lovelock, the IPCC, Mann, & etc., are very rich targets for accurate quotes.
I will continue to do so.
AGW is to Climate Science what Eugenics was to Evolutionary Science: A nasty social movement hiding behind a thin veneer os scientific talk.
SJT says
“Now if you want to parse that a ‘global catastrophe’ is not an ‘apocalypse’, I invite you to do so. It will provide even more entertainment than you have lately- you have to admit you are stuck in rut, you know.”
If your doctor says if you don’t stop drinking you will die, do you think he should say something not so alarming?
Global Warming is dangerous because.
* It’s global. This isn’t something that just affects a few people, it affects the whole globe.
* All life depends on the climate. The climate over the whole globe is getting warmer. Keep that in mind. All life will be affected. (excepting a few exotic bacteria that live in environments like on volcano vents).
* It’s a copout to say we will cope with free enterprise and freedom. 99.9999999% of species on the planet don’t run an economy, we are the only one.
The remedy will be difficult, that’s not the fault of the scientists, all you are doing is shooting the messenger. You are behaving like a child who doesn’t want to eat his greens.
Jan Pompe says
SJT: “If your doctor says if you don’t stop drinking you will die,”
When are you going to learn that there is a huge difference between a doctor how adheres to evidence based practice and spin doctors who do not.
Louis Hissink says
SJT: “Global Warming is dangerous because.”
So it’s global warming now and not climate change – talk about tipsy topsy changing mindsets.
Louis Hissink says
Hunter:
“Eli,
If you claim you cannot perceive the bias present in media, you are out of step with reality.”
As I said in the first post here Bernard Goldberg proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the US media is biased and arrogant. And Goldberg is a liberal.
http://www.bernardgoldberg.com/oldsite/index.php
Louis Hissink says
SJT: “. The climate over the whole globe is getting warmer.”
So now climate, an abstraction, has been reified into a physical object which can get cold or hot by manipulating a minor constituent in the earth’s atmosphere? The peoples of the northern hemisphere might take issue with the notion that things are getting warmer as some of them freeze to death.
Graeme Bird says
“The remedy will be difficult, that’s not the fault of the scientists, all you are doing is shooting the messenger. You are behaving like a child who doesn’t want to eat his greens.”
Well I wish I could shoot the messenger. Because the messenger is a traitor and a liar. You too SJT. Take time out from lying for one moment and make good with the evidence or admit you are wrong and have been dishonest the entire time that you have been coming here anonymously like some hardcore traitor-pervert.
hunter says
SJT,
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you are full of it.
You and Luke whine that I am dessshhhpicable for saying that AGW is all about apocalyptic futures on Earth, you ignore that I quote the AGW leadership correctly, and then you come up with some lame-o red herring about drinking one’s self to death.
There is no evidence at all the whole Earth has gotten significantly warmer in the last 100 years in any way that is threatening to anything anymore than typical climate fluctuations.
The fact that we may be driving the climate some with CO2 does not mean we are driving it any sort of fantasy tipping point of doom. The Earth, and its biome, have survived much worse climates than anything we are going to see in the next 1000 years just fine.
Earth does not have a fever, Hansen is not going to ‘save the planet’, and Gaia is not going to kill us all. And Mann’s bogus numbers, fit only for Soviet style Pravda propaganda, are still crap.
The fact is AGW leadership, from Lovelock to Hansen to Gore to Mann keep getting caught using crap numbers, false claims, dubious techniques, obvious fear mongering, and all at huge personal profit.
I am not shooting the messengers. As I have repeatedly pointed out, it is the AGW leadership calling for criminalization of dissent. Let the scammers scam on. Just don’t ever let those fools have the keys to the family car.
SJT says
Where did I make any comment on you as a person?
SJT says
Gordon Robertson says
Louis Hissink….I am reading a book on the aurora, by Akasofu. I did not connect his name to global warming till I Googled him. He’s the guy who Trenberth admires but who wrote an article critical of the AGW theory thus disappointing Trenberth. Here’s his article:
http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/highlights/2007/akasofu_3_07/Why_has_global_warming.pdf
The reason I thought you might be interested is that Akasofu is an expert on the interaction of solar plasma with the Earth’s magnetosphere. He carried on the work of Chapman, who developed the theory of that interaction, and did his graduate work under Chapman at the U. of Alaska (what better place to study the aurora?).
I have only read a couple of chapters, but I am impressed with the electrical interaction between the solar wind and the Earth’s atmosphere. Akasofu mentioned Fred Singer, who was active in the late 50’s with parts of that problem. This is the same Fred Singer (as well as Lindzen) who William Connolley (a computer programmer) of realclimate likes to deride on Wikipedia. Do they (RC) have any idea who they are putting down? Singer has a degree in electrical engineering and he’s an expert in atmospheric physics. He’s also one of the leading critics of the CO2/warming paradigm.
Hmmm…an expert in atmospheric physics, and now another one (Akasofu), don’t think CO2 has much, if any, effect on global warming. But…computer modelers, like Schmidt and Connolley, a mathematician and a computer programmer respectively, at realclimate, do think CO2 is an issue. Akasofu studies the interaction of solar energy with the Earth’s atmosphere…he’s an expert on it. He claims the conversion of kinetic energy in the solar wind to electromagnetic energy, when the solar wind collides with the magnetosphere, ‘heats up’ the ionosphere. Is that heat in the AGW heat budget? What other heat is being introduced by the Sun besides its direct radiation?
I think the IPCC and AGWers have been too quick to dismiss the Sun’s involvement in global warming. Those studying the Sun don’t seem to know the direct mechanism between the solar wind and sunspots yet, but the fact that the Little Ice Age happened at a sunspot minimum should alert us to the minimum in sunspots we are seeing right now. It was once thought that space was a vacuum. It is now known to be full of plasma, blown off the Sun.
Those electrical currents you are on about could be influencing things we know nothing about. In his article, Akasofu mentioned the multidecadal ocean variations. I’ll bet you he knows something he’s not willing to talk about. I wonder how much the electrical currents running through the oceans and the earth have to do with those oceanic oscillations? I wonder what effect the electrical currents running around our atmosphere are having on the weather, and it’s long term manifestation, the climate?
SJT was on me about denying HIV/AIDS. This is sure to drive him to distraction.
John says
I did not have time to read all the comments. Forgive me if this is redundant. The Arctic ice extent is the same as in 1979 when satellite survielance began. Check out
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh
The data a links listed by comments previously cut off when the ice was at its low point in the fall of 2007. The polar ice comes and goes and has melted to a greater extent at least five times previously, we are told by Paleoclimatologists. Remember, the Norsemen famed Greenland for 100 years at one point.
Remember, this is an interglacial period which is nature’s global warming; It is that wonderful time between life ending ice ages when the Earth warms, the ice melts and life thrives. It has been going on for 10,000 years and according to experts, the next ice age is due soon.
But, try as they have the alarmists have totally failed to prove a link between mankinds use of fossil fuels with their CO2 exhaust and any significant global warming.
John [Coleman]
Gordon Robertson says
Louis…another article by Akasofu…from Sept 2008:
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/pdf/recovery_little_ice_age.pdf
He claims there is a natural warming of 0.5 C that should be subtracted from the 0.6 C derived by the IPCC. He laso talks about the multidecadal oscillations.
Now we’re getting to the bottom of this issue.
Louis Hissink says
Gordon:
“The reason I thought you might be interested is that Akasofu is an expert on the interaction of solar plasma with the Earth’s magnetosphere. He carried on the work of Chapman, who developed the theory of that interaction, and did his graduate work under Chapman at the U. of Alaska (what better place to study the aurora?).”
Sydney Chapman?
Louis Hissink says
Gordon,
Basically we have the solar system dynamics (Newtonian) wrong, but you would not read about it in Nature or the other mainstream science journals. Once you realise its an electromagnetic system that is easily explained by the equations of Maxwell and Lorentz, CO2 obsession, bascially a Newtonian POV, (Newton knew nothing about electricity) becomes an anachronism.
I am aware of Akasofu and his work and his position as a sceptic – but your research suggests you know more about him than I, and I, right now, haven’t the resources or time to chase all these loose ends; right now Numero Uno asked me about a map of microdiamond distribution over the earth which, together with the daily disasters involved with being trailer park trash, leaves little time for genuflection.
But Akasofu knows his science but is too self effacing to make a hit on the climate barbarians; subtley is lost on them, especially from an Oriental perspective.
What does concern me is the continued use, purely from habit, of the term fossil fuel. The oils we extract from beneath us are not derived from previously buried biomass; however that is off thread here but the blog “oilismastery” does a good coverage of it.
Suffice it to say that petroleum is a mantle product that occasionally seeps, erupts to the earth’s surface.
Other than that gripe, looks like you and Graeme Bird are enjoying yourselves studying real science.
Louis Hissink says
Gordon
“Those electrical currents you are on about could be influencing things we know nothing about. In his article, Akasofu mentioned the multidecadal ocean variations. I’ll bet you he knows something he’s not willing to talk about. I wonder how much the electrical currents running through the oceans and the earth have to do with those oceanic oscillations? I wonder what effect the electrical currents running around our atmosphere are having on the weather, and it’s long term manifestation, the climate?”
I have an article on this in E&E due out shortly but scouring the IEEE publications might give you a wealth of published data.
If you regard the oceans as a thin liquid film covering a solid sphere of magnitudes greater mass, and thus specific heat, then any thermal variations observed in the oceans would have to be subordinated to therma behaviour of the mass they coat.
Or we have the basic physical structure of the earth-atmosphere-space system wrong.
As Thoreau once said, Simplify simply.
Luke says
Well Hunter – basically you’re a fabricator. Simple enough !
They’re not the “AGW leadership”. You’re full of shit.
But hey – lying manipulating denialists are just par for the course.
Fancy Spencer not even game to share why his paper was rejected. What’s he hiding?
Eli Rabett says
Such a target rich environment:
If you want a bit more about the alarmist Coleman, you could start here.
Louis should read this series and this one for starters before talking about media bias.
Finally, whoever posted the link to cryosphere today Doesn’t know how to read a map. In 1979-80 there was a lot more ice along the Siberian coast and the coast of Greenland, in the Baltic and north of Norway. You can see this is the ice extent chart at the same site. At the peak in 1979-80 there was 15 million sq km of ice. This year it looks like the peak will be below 13.
hunter says
Luke,
Let us see:
You invoke Nazi plots, you deny AGW leaders are AGW leaders, and you show your inability to conduct civil conversation by demonstrating your lack of vocabulary choices.
If Gore, Hansen and Lovelock (well, Lovelock is wacked out they kind of ignore him lately) were not leaders of AGW thought and opinion, they would not be the go-to guys for AGW orthodoxy.
Why do you seem so furiously fearful of admitting that they are huge opinion leaders, and set the tone for media and public square discussion of AGW? Does it touch a nerve? Are you jealous you are not up there with them on the world stage, acknowledged as great prophets of doom?
But hey, a simple mind needs a simple explanation, so I am sure you are satisfied that I am just a Nazi denier scum fabricator.
What is it about you true believers that leaves you painted into such silly corners?
Your side cannot have made any sort of error? The planet is facing fer sure catastrophe no matter what, but we had best increase carbon costs dramatically and sit in the cold/heat and wait for our doom?….But of course keep feeding the AGW promoters really well.
I would suggest that manipulation is better exemplified by Gore, Hansen, Lovelock, the Heinz Foundation, and other AGW promoters continuously repeating the story that we are going to die in a climate catastrophe and apocalypse and that cute animals will drown or die of thirst.
It sure seems to have worked for you.
hunter says
SJT,
When it comes to AGW, the believers are full of it. Nothing personal at you at all.
You have no idea what warming is coming, and no one else does either.
There are cheesy models and hack salesman pitching fear.
We live in an age like nearly every other, where popular ideas can get fixed in the minds of many, be held in high esteem and be the clear consensus, and be completely wrong.
Often the popular manias are simply silly. All too often, they are not just wrong but dangerous.
I think the lack of actual evidence AGW promoters provide, the dark demands of their leaders for social controls far beyond their areas of expertise, and the cynical behavior of many of the leaders, means AGW could be an extraordinarily dangerous popular mania.
As to your red herring- I think the better comparison is this:
Some guys who have never practiced medicine show up and claim to have discovered a new and deadly disease. When asked to provide any evidence, they show models of what the disease could do in the future. And when asked to provide evidence of where it came from or when it happened, they shout down the questions with claims the questioners are part of a conspiracy to kill us all. The guys then show some data, that is actually well within the margin of error, and shout louder. They accuse anyone not willing to give over their money and do as they say of wanting to have a health catastrophe hit humanity. When asked for examples of their new disease, they start writing stories about things that have been happening for many years, and then claiming that when those things happen today, they are *proof* of their new disease.
And besides, even if there is no real evidence, the fact that their models show such terrible outcomes if their diagnosis is correct, it is only good common sense and caution to give them all the money they say is needed to fight the disease their models claim is at hand.
I think that is far better than using a lame example of how doing something that is known to be bad for your health, and for which the data is well beyond the MOE, is similar ot what the AGW community is promoting.
hunter says
Eli,
The technique of AGW believers to try and co-opt the terms of the debate is old and boring.
AGW is the alarmist side of the debate.
And arguing that there is no media bias, without addressing the peer reviewed papers documenting it, only implies you are not really trying. You are jsut sitting on your self-perceived mound of authority and pretending to be above it all.
Coleman is not the issue. Lazy biased journalists buying into phony stories is the issue for Coleman.
That he is getting deconstructed for speaking out is just another example of how AGW cannot withstand any sort of critique.
hunter says
Here is another nice example of AGW apocalyptic hype from a new leader of the AGW movement:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-warming4-2009feb04,0,7454963.story
California will starve if we do not give over all of our money to the AGW prophets.
And, even worse, we will starve with out any nice California wine!
Luke says
Here’s some leadership research from the real AGW leadership – BUT where’s Gore? Hansen …????
The current Indian Ocean warming pattern is unprecedented and probably related to climate change, researchers say.
The report found that a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean dipole plays a dominant role in determining temperature and rainfall in south-east Australia.
It examined data on changes in the distribution of warm and cool water and found a direct correlation between dipole events and the current drought, as well as the devastating centenary drought between 1895 and 1902 and the so-called World War II drought of 1937-45.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/indian-ocean-is-drought-culprit/2009/02/04/1233423310800.html
During a “negative” Indian Ocean dipole, cooler winds carry moisture in south-eastern Australia. During a “positive” dipole, warmer, dryer winds limit rainfall and contribute to high temperatures. In the past three years there have been successive positive cycles.
“This is something new. This has never, in the historical record, happened before,” Dr Ummenhofer said. “So there are some indications that positive Indian Ocean dipole events are becoming more frequent and negative events are becoming less frequent.”
So while sophists like Hunter marginalise the debate – the serious research on serious issues continues.
Louis Hissink says
Eli
You refer to Tim Lambert?
Get serious – what you liberals can’t seem to muster is any refutation of Bernard Goldberg’s accusations. As for editorial bias in The Australian, give me a break – they tend to run nore alarmist articles than sceptical, while the US MSM doesn’t.
As J.F. Beck writes “Computer scientist Tim Lambert reads a study which finds 97% of climate scientists “think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures” and comes up with “97% of active climatologists agree that human activity is causing global warming”. The guy is not to be trusted, ever.”
Louis Hissink says
““This is something new. This has never, in the historical record, happened before,” Dr Ummenhofer said. “So there are some indications that positive Indian Ocean dipole events are becoming more frequent and negative events are becoming less frequent.”
And so how long is the historical record? Can’t be that long and think, none of this was included in the current GCM’s.
How on earth one can model something one doesn’t really understand…… GIGO!
Must be full moon………
Eli Rabett says
How about google bucky. Same result for the Australian, and of course previous Eli provided a google search for the Telegraph.
As for this thread Coleman IS the issue and, as has been shown he is a conspiracy theory guy and an alarmist
” Frances Debevec, Chicago: Regarding your column on the alarmist forecasts of WMAQ-Channel 5 weatherman John Coleman, I agree that he frightens people because it’s never as cold as he reports it. That’s why I no longer watch him. I don’t see other weathermen acting as he does.
Mrs. R. Murphy: John Coleman delights in predicting the next “doomsday” forecast. I’m glad to know his competitors are questioning his tactics. How can he “try to be accurate” and almost always be so wrong? “
Louis Hissink says
Eli,
cut the crap – refering to your own posts, shucks who is going to be lead for the BS award – you or Tim Lambert?
hunter says
Luke,
“Leadership” does not mean “writes every alarmist paper”.
As to the Indian Ocean Alarmist paper you refer to, I will point out that this, like the rapidly-falling-apart recent Antarctic paper, it actually does not help AGW:
http://climatesci.org/2008/05/20/multi-decadal-global-model-predicted-and-observed-indian-ocean-warming-are-they-in-agreement/
And yes, Hansen, Gore, Lovelock and pals are leaders of AGW alarmist hype.
And you appear to be a happy consumer of same.
Eli,
I have never looked to Coleman for skeptical evidence. I like what he factually points out about the media.
The viewer complaints you have about his weather forecasts fit what Gore, Hansen &etc. say about the climate to a ‘T’.
You can try and point out that yet another person pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes is unworthy to point this out, but the Emperor nevertheless still has no clothes.
Luke says
No Hunter – you’re the alarmist denialist, the destroyer of all science, the debate marginaliser, the pigeon holer.
You are trashing the entire science process in a pig ignorant mindless assault on everything you can can get your disingenuous hands on.
And it fascinating that typical of faux sceptic scum that you would obsessively bring Hansen, Gore, and Lovelock up ad nauseum – you’re the one banging on about catastrophism. All just a pathetic attempt to get some leverage and divert from the real issue at hand.
As for the weeny dick attacks on the Antarctica paper – it’s been answered in a short sharp rebuttal. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/antarctic-warming-is-robust/
In fact – a major philosophical slap down of the juvenile behaviour of our resident non-scientists.
hunter says
Luke,
So, I am scum for accurately quoting the people who have driven the AGW debate in the public square?
So, I am an alarmist for pointing out that the world’s most well known AGW opinion leaders are apocalyptic wack jobs?
So, I am ‘pseudo sceptic scum’, for accurately pointing out that the IPCC is claiming a huge disaster is at hand if their policy suggestions are not enacted immediately?
So, I am powerful enough to be ‘the destroyer of all science’ for merely pointing out that AGW leadership claims are full of holes?
I am ‘trashing the entier science process’ for pointing out that AGW promoters regularly use self-referential, marginal and dubious numbers and facts to support their assertions?
And the rebuttal you link to is a perfect example of how you AGW belilevers will eat any poop dropped on the table by AGW leaders and call it caviar- it is simply a lame response that says since other work done by is equally lame, so this report is just as good. Gavin has been caught obfuscating about this, by the way. But I suppose for you, since accurately quoting AGW opinion leaders is the wrong thing to do, misleading by AGW opinion leaders is the right thing to do.
After all: you clowns think you are saving the planet.
By the way, I am sure I am not the only one that when confronted with facts and links, your response is that of of the typical fundie when caught without a convenient verse of scripture to quote.
Immature, ignorant anger. It seems you have that reposnse odwn to a gavanic level.
And for the latest garbage study AGW leaders are using to pretend the world is coming to an end, here is a quick review:
http://climatesci.org/2009/01/21/follow-up-on-todays-ap-article-by-seth-bornenstein-entitled-study-antarctica-joins-rest-of-globe-in-warming/
Gavin, since he is helping his pal Hansen save the planet is, like Hansen, unbounded by ethics, integrity or facts.
But if the AGW movement odes not have leaders, just who and what are Lovelock, Hansen, Gore & gang doing in this?
Raking in huge profits? Acting out deep psychological disturbances? Trying to be for AGW what Darwin’s cousin was for eugenics?
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/07/22/darwins-cousin/
I mean, since pointing out that your guys are your guys is so desshhpicable, just what are they?
Luke says
So while you’re attempting to divert from real issues at hand there’s some pretty interesting developments occurring out there which may be somewhat related La Nina translocations but also perhaps multi-year manifestations of greater changes.
And these impacts are potentially affecting millions of human beings and natural systems.
A quick global roundup:
Ongoing low inflows in the Murray RIver System – despite the La Nina, the hydrological drought is not broken, Situation ongoing since 2001. Sequence is worst on record.
http://www.mdbc.gov.au/rmw/drought_updates
Argentina – worst drought in 100 years – 800,000 cattle lost, 90% wheat crop gone, corn producers 80% loss
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7852886.stm
http://www.globalissues.org/news/2009/01/21/377
China’s worst drought in 50 years
3.7 million people and 1.9 million head of livestock are short of water, 43 percent of the country’s winter wheat supplies, are also affected,
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25012398-11949,00.html
California faces worst drought in living history
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/drought/2009-01-30-california-drought_N.htm
Major drought in Texas and cattle losses
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2009/01/16/2318583-texas-drought-worsens-cattle-dying
Drought and crop failures in Kenya – 10 million affected
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L9425320.htm
So whether we’re seeing climate variability from La Nina, combinations of other periodic behaviour, anthropogenic climate change, or mixtures of all these things – the multi-seasonal and multi-year nature of these droughts are a major concern.
I’d be wanting to know what the science is saying.
We’ve had yesterday’s paper on the Indian Ocean Dipole affecting SE Australia – http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/technology/indian-ocean-is-drought-culprit/2009/02/04/1233423350324.html
Much less reported but putting the emphasis on the Southern Annular Mode instead – http://www.springerlink.com/content/q72520r149221353/?p=f41d7f59fa7f40339f86f52be74574a3&pi=0
Both papers in press.
uascentral.uas.alaska.edu/onlinelib/Fall-2008/GEOL310-J01/ChineseCave_Monssonrecord2008.pdf Major changes in the Asian Monsoon after 1800 years
And a growing understanding of the consequences the last time the world warmed in the MWP. Worldwide megadroughts.
http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-1/February-2009-Geology-and-GSA-Today-media-highlights-6937-10/
So climate alarmism?? – humanity is still ill-adapted to existing climate variation if not developing climate change. Real people – real livestock – real crops.
And where are the pseudo-sceptic scum – banging on about Hansen and Gore – and recklessly trashing all science they can get their deviant little sweaty hands on ….
hunter says
And Luke,
(sorry, wading through your cesspool style of writing is tedious and I over looked the main question)
Just what is the real issue at hand, if it is not prevention of AGW predicted climate disaster?
I must be *really busy*, since when I google:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=climate+disaster&aq=f&oq=
I get 7, 300,000 hits.
I must have been very busy on the disaster front, because when I google:
‘climate apocalypse’ http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=climate+apocalypse&btnG=Search
I get 2,260,000 hits.
My friends are not good poets, it would seem. The more alliterative, ‘climate catstrophe’,
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=climate+catastrophe&btnG=Search
only garners 318,000 hits.
But please, Luke; you are clearly the smartest guy in the room:
Tell us how AGW is not all about terrible climate events nigh at hand…and do tell us what it is all about.
We ‘pseudo denier nazi scum’ would love to know what the real business at hand is.
hunter says
And, by the way, do tell Gavin Schmidt how much you enjoy his flip-flopping about Antarctic temps without even a transition statement. It turns out he was all about showing that the cooling of Antarctica was exactly in line with AGW predictions as recently as 2004.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004/0927sam.html
A cooling Antarcti proved AGW in 2004, just like a warming Antarctic since 1957 proves AGW today.
AGW: the amazing theory that, no matter the results or prior predictions, is always right!
Or how about, “AGW: the science that needs no stinkin’ proof!”
Luke says
Well my little pseudo-sceptic scum-bot – all this trash about Hansen and Gore is just so much paff – the real science effort isn’t worried about their pronouncements. You’re just sucking on the arse of denialist rhetoric designed to raise your blood pressure.
Humanity is ill-adapted to cope with major variations in the existing climate.
Let alone climate change or interactions of climate change and existing variability.
If you’re living in a nice comfortable western society you can just crank up the air-con, source your food supplies from elsewhere and ignore it. Millions cannot.
The serious science business of understanding these issues continues despite the myopic focus of non-greenhouse theorists, faux sceptics, rednecks and wankers about 1% of the science effort.
Discussions shrill and loud – but seldom informational. And in the long term of zero consequence.
The urge to shoot everything that moves so great that any potential for learning is prevented to the level of sludge clogging your ears.
hunter says
Luke,
Now I am a ‘deviant’?
Somewhere, when a psychoanalyst hears you are calling, he smiles, knowing you represent job security.
Luke, when fear mongering is peaking out, evrything is seen through the lens of that popular fear.
As you demonstrate.
Luke says
Face it Hunter – why bother continuing – you know what you know. Nothing will ever change your mind – go home and rest easy in the knowledge that you’re correct.
Luke says
Come on Hunter – you’re just nudging the debate around some more. There’s no great climate fear in western society – lights are on, cars are running, planes are flying. Everyone’s is down at the mall or at the football. Crank up the plasma TV and have a beer mate.
You’ve never had it so good.
Western suburbia doesn’t really gives a rats arse about climate change. Not really. Just a few on places like this.
I don’t see hordes running down the road “in fear” about the climate.
The one’s that are really affected are just quietly suffering out of sight.
hunter says
Luke,
So what you are finally saying is that you cannot clearly state what AGW is about.
You either don’t know the issues, and are only acting out on your feelings, or you know and are too cowardly to come out and say it.
The suffering of AGW is out of sight, because like AGW itself, it is no more than a popular delusion in the minds of those easily swayed.
And all you can do at the end of the day is thrash around, trash talk and exhibit your need for long term counseling.
Luke says
Drying out of the sub-tropical zones is one – read above !
Instant 100% massive global catastrophe on every inch of the planet is not.
10o% totally unambiguous evidence from day #1 would be unlikely given existing climate noise. The science showing unusual trends emerging through that noise.
The issue plays out over decades not years – as it has been.
There may be winners and losers.
Trash talk is what YOU’ve been doing for weeks. You just don’t like getting it back. And par for the course as a pseudo-sceptic you’re a reckless science trasher and attempt to corral the debate on 1% of the issue.
Graeme Bird says
You idiot Luke. DROUGHT AND COLD ARE ASSOCIATED. You are a such a dummy you fall for your own lies. Whereas on any time scale longer than one or two solar cycles WARM-MEANS-WET and COLD-MEANS-DRY you have spent so much time lying and trying to make the opposite connection that you’ve forgotten that by citing droughts you are actually supporting the proposition that we are cooling.
Graeme Bird says
Look we’ve seen enough haven’t we? We know this crowd are simply lying all the time like good neo-Marxists? What more do we need to see? Surely we could just grab these people on sight, rough them up a little bit, put them in a stockade and have small children throw rotten fruit and eggs at them. This problem would be solved so fast if we could take this sort of timely action. These people have caused immense harm and hurt already. Surely rotten fruit, eggs and public humiliation is only a very mild form of social reprimand given that they have been trying to ration our energy, hurt our nation, and impoverish their fellow Australians.
Luke says
Says a blowhard who couldn’t even near elected when tested at the polls. A disgrace to his community, his party and electorate. You need to be deported to Ball’s Pyramid for being a wanker.
hunter says
Luke,
The difference is when I trash talk you, people laugh at you.
When you trash talk me, people go ‘yecchhh’ at you.
Luke, I thought you guys were talking climate, not weather.
But time and time again, it is Hansen’s picking ‘two years’ as the next big heat spike. Or claiming every storm with serious damage as *proof* of AGW. To now pretending that places that get droughts, having droughts, is *proof*yet again. It just really means to more and more people that you guys see a weahter event and declare it a trend.
And if the trend is not there- no problem. Your leaders will fabricate one, knowing that the sheep will simply repeat the latest line of the day.
And you still cannot enunciate in plain words the level of threat.
Gore, Hansen, the IPCC, Lovelock & co., as I have correctly quoted them, claim it is going to be worldwide and really bad. You seem to reject that vehemently. And now you even say it is not going to be worldwide. You say it is going to play out over decades, yet the AGW leadership says we only two to four years to avoid the tipping point. So if you disagree with them that much, why not be clear with what you think?
Graeme Bird says
Yeah I’ve read what Luke had to say in response. I still think the rotten fruit is a great idea. I reckon we could end this controversy in a matter of weeks and not hurt anyone permanently.
Eli Rabett says
Coleman starts by trashing the news media for being “unfair”. Poor dears didn’t let the segs have their say, or the guys who thought the Vietnam war was a good idea for the US and now they are picking on the poor denialists.
Except Eli showed that
a. The segs had their say, unfortunately
b. The meida was strongly on the side of the warhawks until 1968 at the earliest and important parts of the media stayed there even unto this day
c. The national paper in Australia and at least one important British paper (not to mention many other papers many places, the Murdoch empire and more) are denialist to the core.
Whatever.
MattB says
Not that it means much, but I laugh at you Hunter.
Graeme Bird says
Well it means nothing Matt. You are just part of the dumb drooling cheer-squad. What could it possibly mean?
Louis Hissink says
Eli,
anyone who addresses himself in the third person has problems of a Hamlet size. At least you don’t have the ponderous prolixity of Stephen Jay Gould, or Harry Pearson of TAS, (The Absolute Sound).
Luke says
Hunter
Who cares what Gore & Hansen are saying – I don’t follow them. Tipping points – well who knows. Matter of conjecture – has happened before and if you go over some sort of edge well you’re in uncharted territory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change
Anyway the people who you assert to be “THE LEADERSHIP” aren’t – so doesn’t matter much what they say.
Drought isn’t weather matey boy. Weather is now to about 7 days hence. When you have unprecedented droughts running over many years – since 2001 in southern Australia, 30 years rainfall decline in SW Western Australia. Starts to become climatic.
Changes in global drought frequency http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai_pdsi_paper.pdf
You’re the sort of guy that doesn’t look at stress cracks in bridges
Also the sort of guy that doesn’t learn what happens when bridges have fallen down before.
The sort of guy that doesn’t believe anything bad happens when bridges fall down.
The sort of guy that doesn’t mind other people’s bridges collapsing
Actually proof for you is to be on a bridge when it collapses. Even then you’d say “oh well shit happens. WTF”
Level of threat ? well it’s ongoing and getting worse – very serious for those ALREADY being impacted. SEE ABOVE !
Perhaps you’d like a job as a gaucho shooting dying cattle in the Argentine?
And if we get off your rant points – really you have nothing to say. nothing…. like Bird – just another blog escapist dreamer. Interesting – but essentially nuts.
Louis Hissink says
Luke: “You’re the sort of guy that doesn’t look at stress cracks in bridges”
Especially when they are the results of computer modelling but not from empiricism.
Luke says
A clueless comment Louis. By now I know you have actually less than any idea on the topic.
Funny that you think modellers are somehow divorced from the real world when comparison with observation and processes is the preoccupation.
In the case I put above – observed information, from somewhat known processes, whose frequency is departing the norm, which happens to be what some of the models predict. ANd round the loop it goes again.
The reality Louis – you don’t know these people – you don’t associate or converse with climate scientists – you don’t attend their meetings – you don’t read their literature – and you are clueless about what they really do. But you like to think you know.
hunter says
Luke,
I thought ET aliens were supposed to be wise and clever. Able to phone home with scraps of toys.
Do you realize that paleoclimate shows that there have been many periods of decades-long droughts in many parts of the world?
And that of course these periods all happened pre-industrial.
How gullible does one have to be to swallow the AGW fear mongering hook line and sinker?
And instead of simply saying what *you* believe, you are still so cowardly that you have to make pathetic and laughable attempts to speak as if you know what *I* believe.
If you do not follow the AGW leadership, as you assert, then show one place where you are believing anything significantly different?
Are they mongering too much fear?, too little? Not calling for jailing of enough skeptics? Too many?
Are you not following them because they have not called on you to guide them?
But back to your laughable attempt to speak for what I care about. My career is involved in risk management. Looking for ways to prevent problems and get people back to whole when problems happen is what I do. And the outside company I am involved with develops energy savings technology. You know less about me than you do about climate science or how climate has behaved in history. And you know,except for derivative self-referential pap, basically nothing at all on that issue.
Your pathetic attempts do not stop there. Instead of showing any examples outside the normal range of climate and weather, you simply shout louder that people, unidentified and unknown are suffering, and it is really really getting worse. And they are suffering because of that wicked CO2.
But don’t ask how or where or why, and especially don’t ask ‘is it really true?’. Just make sure dessshhhpicable denialist scum nazis are silenced. Then everything will be alright.
hunter says
And here is what happens when droughts end:
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/massive-dam-overflow-threatens-further-n-qld-flooding/11109
BTW, when Australia and much of the SH was having no summer a while back, was that AGW as well?
And is this guy someone else who does not speak for you?
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-warming4-2009feb04,0,7454963.story
After all, he is selling the idea that California will be uninhabitable, destroyed by AGW catastrophe.
If not, what do you believe that is significantly different at all?
Luke says
Yep – and drought ain’t ended in southern Australia which is very interesting in a La Nina year. Which is THE point of the Indian Ocean study.
Tomorrow the hottest day in history? http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-sun-rises-on-our-worst-day-in-history-20090206-7zzf.html
Bushfires, blackouts and death http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/blackouts-bushfires-and-deaths-feared/2009/02/06/1233423496747.html
Well goody gum drops that there may have been megadroughts in paleo history. You won’t be coming through them with 6 billion humans. Will you? The MWP is a test case for what happens when it warms.
Push up the temperature quickly and subtropical droughts expand – which it is – latest science
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16516-drought-warning-as-the-tropics-expand.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/cdeser/Docs/LuDeserReichler.pdf
SO now we have the ultimate descent into denialist buffoonery – there can never ever be any evidence that would be acceptable as AGW evidence as at some point millions of years ago in Earth’s history something would have been be bigger or worse. Holy doley – that’s brilliant mate.
If you’re in risk management heaven help your customers. Fancy having a non-science illogical dickhead as a sales rep for a technical product.
hunter says
Luke,
That you still cannot openly state what you believe is starting to get to be a lot fun. Please continue.
It is the AGW community that has hung the mantra of ‘weather is not climate’ up high for years and years.
Now, you guys are reduced to claiming each weather event is *proof* of AGW and the necessity of AGW policy prescriptions.
But if the big droughts of the past were not AGW, and it is big droughts today you guys are afraid, (having had to leave big storms behind for lack of big storms) and it is big droughts in our future, will we better off being bankrupted by carbon schemes, or would we better off, you know, fighting the effects of the mega droughts?
I mean, can we manage the climate by controlling carbon or not?
Have we, as Lovelock claims, passed the tipping point already and Gaia is prepping a roundhouse xenocidal punch? Or do we have, as Gore or Hansen claim, ‘4 more years! to save planet?
Luke, as the past being prologue, it is only because the rational world beleives that physics and chemistry are pretty much unchanged, and so if physics and chemistry worked a certain way in the past, we can probably bet on similar results today.
Of course in the magic world of AGW, CO2 today is special and does not apparently behave like CO2 not produced by human technologies.
hunter says
Luke,
And as to the last bit, I have two jobs, and in both I excell.
I doubt that you have even one, based on your obvious personality issues.
Luke says
Are you thick? Open the ears mate!
Weather is now today to about 7 days hence.
Climate can change for a number of reasons. A past reason may not be a current reason. Some of the major climate changes in the past would be devastating to a planet with 6 billion humans.
Carbon schemes ? Well that’s another issue isn’t it. Being a moron you can’t conceptualise that carbon schemes and climate change science are different issues.
You can’t “precisely” control climate – but you can make the existing climate variation, which humanity is ill adapted to, much worse.
Hansen, Gore, Lovelock – who cares what they’re saying? Does it help you think through this issue.
Do you think the Chinese will sit there with no water?
If you want a past analogue to AGW it is not the ice age cycles. You need an example where over a very short space of time vast amounts of CO2 are injected into the atmosphere in a short time. Want a paleo example – try the PETM. Hot stuff !
Somehow you think the because climate has changed in the past that we can easily cope with those changes. Half the species don’t make those transitions. We’re not talking changes over 1000s of years – we’re talking 50-100 years. With 6 billion humans going on 9 billion.
SJT says
“And here is what happens when droughts end:”
No, the drought is still firmly entrenched down south. Another day of extreme temperatures on the way. But as people say, we can adapt, and turn on the aircon. The other species haven’t invented aircon yet. What do I tell them?
hunter says
SJT,
Do you AGW guys actually think these droughts are special?
And whatever have you told the other critters so far?
Luke says
Hunter – if you wonder up to the lead post I answer your question.
But being silly and in the interests of an ongoing attempt at communication, here’s a go ….
Much of the planet is affected by El Nino – Southern Oscillation and its opposite La Nina (or ENSO and anti-ENSO). The effects depend on each event and time of the year.
But in general – El Nino brings drought to eastern Australia, southern Africa, India and the north of Brazil. Southern USA is wetter.
La Nina brings drought to Kenya and the southern USA. Australia gets very wet.
Some of the current drought would easily be attributed to La Nina – e.g. Kenya and maybe Argentina. And hitherto El Nino events have also affected Australia is recent years.
So ENSO has wreaked havoc on the world for thousands of years. And the wider scale Pacific Decadal Oscillation can make things more or less intense depending on its mode. (PDO)
There are obviously other oscillations that have effects more regionaly – e.g. the Idian Ocean Dipole, North Atlanctic Oscillation, Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation and others.
AND climate science has a big role in researching these things as useful forecasts 6-12 months in advance would be a great help to to world. These foreacasts are currently only 60-70% useful. Far from perfect (and will never be perfect due to chaos). But managers want 80-85%….
Weather occurs on the time scale of a few days.
But droughts persist over months and sometimes years.
They “lock in” due to major changes in atmospheric circulation and sea surface temperatures over large areas. e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o-Southern_Oscillation
El Nino typically runs from the austral autumn to austral autumn. Usually then the events “breaks down” and “normal” conditions return, or a La Nina or less El Nino continues.
So climate variability (as opposed to “climate change”) has been going on for thousands of years.
OK so far? All this is conceded ….
But AGW theory suggests that the ongoing imbalance from extra energy will eventually start to make these oscillations change behaviour – somewhat or heaps.
So the problem becomes how do you detect a trend emerging from what is already a noisy system.
This is obviously hard stuff.
But observations are made, circumstances occur, and detective work with statistics and models are undertaken. One need to be able to explain the observations with science not just hand wave.
Will start new comment.
Luke says
El Nino has become more frequent – but this itself is not a cincher, as multi-year El Ninoi events have occurred before (Los Ninos?). Uncommon but possible.
But what is interesting is now a decline in the Walker circulation which the models explain as an AGW feature.
The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) appears to have changed behaviour due to a warming Indian Ocean.
The Antarctic Southern Annular Mode (SAM) has been more in one mode than another.
The southern subtropical ridge (STR) has changed latitude
The mid 200s Dai paper show increasing areas of drought over 30 years. A drying sub-tropics
The latest paper above reinforces with an expanding tropics.
The monsoon behaviour in China has changed over recent decades.
In Australia – La Nina didn’t break the southern Australia drought – models say thanks to SAM, IOD and STR.
Same in SW Western Australia which is on a 30 year decline
Southern Australian drought has been building since the mid-1990s
the Eastern Australian current has changed and Tasman Sea has warmed
So if sub-tropical drought is expanding – this is a major issue for the millions that live there in already variable climates.
The Medieval Warming Period brought mega-drought to SW USA, China and Africa and other places.
The detective work with the best models can explain much of the changed behaviour we’re seeing. It’s the net result of additional ongoing CO2 forcing.
It suggests an “anthropogenic influence” – that’s “influence” or contribution. Not 100% attribution. Natural factors are also at play.
So Hunter – why would you not be interested in these diverse findings from very many research groups.
Is it not fascinating?
Graeme Bird says
“The Medieval Warming Period brought mega-drought to SW USA, China and Africa and other places.”
Yes it brought drought to the West of the USA and in general wetter milder conditions elsewhere. Don’t jive us about China and Africa. I’ll believe that when you come up with the impeccable evidence. But it brought drought to the American West. And warmth and moisture most everywhere else. You tell me specifically where in the West of Africa and China you think the Medieval warming period brought drought to. Did you word this with plausible deniability so you could later claim you didn’t mean the continents entire?
I don’t see what your point is. Warmer weather brings wetness on any timescale much larger than a single solar cycle. Colder weather brings drought in a similar way. The 70’s were cold and wet. Thats a situation that can never last. And CO2 won’t bring either since we will get colder so eventually we will have horrid droughts. CO2 won’t bring that or keep it away.
What it will do is help us and the natural world deal better with the droughts when they come. Thats if we can keep the CO2 levels high which is pretty doubtful.
Graeme Bird says
“If you want a past analogue to AGW it is not the ice age cycles. You need an example where over a very short space of time vast amounts of CO2 are injected into the atmosphere in a short time. Want a paleo example – try the PETM. Hot stuff”
Thats all bullshit too. We know that had nothing to do with CO2 as well. You are talking about a 100 000 year event 55 million years ago. The CO2 didn’t precede the event and then heat it up. Thats all lies.
We know that the heat buildup came earlier then that. The giveaway is the 40 000 years of current coming off the bottom of the ocean. Nothing to do with CO2. And never a reason to believe such a thing.
Graeme Bird says
You keep saying these El Nino’s are getting more frequent. They aren’t. Unless you can provide a start and end we have to assume your are lying. What are you talking about.
See how much of a fraud this is. You crowd always leave out the key information so you can just bullshit your way through.
Now lets have those years when you reckon there is an upward trend in El Nino’s or just admit that you were lying.
Luke says
Brid – look I know you’re an unelectable arts student moron. Either back up your assertions with references or piss off. The fact you can’t even muster any votes in a Federal election itself indicates you’re a dickhead who’s way out of his league.
I’ll give you some evidence matey – but you need to prove you’re worthy of any effort – to date you look like a science ignoramus to me. Put up some science boofhead.
hunter says
Luke,
You offer not one link or reference for your assertion.
AGW fundies are long on assertions and devoid of evidence.
As you demonstrate.
You are as uptight over this as the AGW community was in the Atlantic basin hurricane cycle, until it became clear ACE was actually normal or declining.
Droughts in the desert continent of Australia. Wow, what a concept.
Droughts in arid southern South America. Wow.
Again, the meg droughts are part of the normal climate.
If you want to do something about them, do somethign about them. Don’t destroy the very industries and tech that can save us.
But you are far off from CO2, except for inferences and weather spotting.
Please do continue.
SJT says
“Luke,
You offer not one link or reference for your assertion.”
A classic ploy here. When Luke spends considerable time putting together links and evidence, you are nowhere to be seen. When he makes assertions based on previous links, you wonder where the evidence is.
Eli Rabett says
Gentlemen (well Eli does often exaggerate) using the third person has a long and honored history in pamphleteering. Your ignorance is your problem. That it bothers Louis and Graeme is an unpaid bonus.
Luke says
Well Hunter – thanks for demonstrating your complete descent into dickwit-ism. You would have to be the rankest amateur I’ve ever come across. Listen peanut – drought is a relative concept. A desert is an arid to semi-arid environment – IT IS NOT IN DROUGHT ! Similarly rainforests which are wet environments can experience drought (and Brazil has in recent years).
Drought is usually defines as the bottom 5-10% of the rainfall percentile distribution. Something quite uncommon. And that distribution varies are to what climatological region you’re in. Arid environments have different rainfall distributions to rainforests.
Politicians equally stupid as you like to refer to arid environments as droughty – they’re not. They’re simply arid.
This is the sign that you are utterly stupid having failed the most concept in climate understanding. You utter dope.
In any case the areas under discussion are not deserts – they are agricultural and pastoral production regions – far from being deserts.
AGW does not make a claim of increasing hurricane numbers – moreover likely to decrease and be more intense. Wake up dope.
On links – you’ve probably had about 30 references now if you read this thread and the lead “Gone Fishing” post. You are an unscholarly unscientific denialist. We get zilch from you numbnuts. Stop wasting my time and run off and moan about Gore and Hansen for a while. That’s your level – an ignorant feral little whinger.
Louis Hissink says
Eli,
No, it amuses me along with your tendency for prolixity. In your case it’s pompous pampleteering?
hunter says
Luke,
Fillibuster is clearly something you are expert at.
I would suggest from your long winded, self-revelatory diatribes that you are the one who does not ‘get’ climate and weather variability.
You are simply galvanically linked to the AGW leadership, sort of like a special effects puppet on a stage set.
How long have the regions in Australia been pastoral?
And as for the pitiful back down over storms, the history of predicted increases in storm strength and intensity were the accepted consensus position- the AGW leadership you mimic but deny still claims they are doing both.
Learn to read about ACE, ace.
As to your inability to not speak like a jerk, it is probably amusing to you, but it is sad, really.
Luke says
You really are an utter goose.
“How long have the regions in Australia been pastoral?” …… oh since about European settlement expanded in the early 1800s
Holy cow – are you that much a dope. We export beef to the US and Japan mate. http://www.dfat.gov.au/facts/affaoverview.html
“Australia is one of the world’s leading producers of cattle and was the world’s second largest exporter of beef after Brazil in 2004-05”
See Australian land use map on page 3 – adl.brs.gov.au/mapserv/landuse/docs/Land_use_in_Australia_at_a_glance.pdf Get yourself educated. You’ll know strangely that Victoria, Gibson and Simpson deserts aren’t grazed Well fuck me ! How would have thought that eh? Jeez graziers must be smart.
The areas under hydrological drought in the Murray River boundary area. http://kids.mdbc.gov.au/encyclopedia/agriculture for what goes on in the Murray-Darling Basin.
In SW Western Australia – note the wheat belt is in a 30 year rainfall decline.
Note these areas are crop production heartland.
How long has the drought been brewing Figure 4 !!!!!! http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs16.pdf
There is no back down over “storms” – you’re just a twit who hasn’t understood a very clear position ! ftp://texmex.mit.edu/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/NATURE03906.pdf
And this would have to be your “best” (barf) exposition as a point of rebuttal yet “I would suggest from your long winded, self-revelatory diatribes that you are the one who does not ‘get’ climate and weather variability.” Oh what a massive retaliation. giggle ….
Well jeepers mate – someone has to change something – and it isn’t you having a big sooky whine about Hansen or Gore is it.
“I would SUGGEST” sunshine that you wouldn’t know if your arse was on fire.
Eli Rabett says
Truly, Louis you ARE duckwitted
Louis Hissink says
Eli,
All it proves is that liberals rely on personal attacks to score points when the argument is lost and that has been the modus operandi for the AGW supporters from the start of this blog.
As for me, its just water off a duck’s back.
(Gee this is all like geo.sci some years back when some made the mistake of questioning plate tectonics – then it was a different subject, but the same verbal abuse of those who dared question the litturgy – amazing what guvmint science needs to do, to prevail).
hunter says
Luke,
And the long term droughts *this time* are due to AGW, but the other, larger ones were due to…….
Keep playing the arrogance. It is all you got.
Luke says
You’re getting smaller. Squeak. Squeak.
Eli Rabett says
Eli is going to enjoy this:)
Hissink: All it proves is that liberals rely on personal attacks to score points when the argument is lost and that has been the modus operandi for the AGW supporters from the start of this blog.
Of course, this discourse is also inhabited (in this post alone) by a clown called Hissing.
Hissing:anyone who addresses himself in the third person has problems of a Hamlet size. At least you don’t have the ponderous prolixity of Stephen Jay Gould, or Harry Pearson of TAS, (The Absolute Sound).
Hissing:Cohenite, your original assessment of our Wil was right, and sort of balances Luke – a balanced sort of dumbness.
Hissing:You must not ask SJT for answers above his official pay grade level.
Hissing:No, it amuses me along with your tendency for prolixity. In your case it’s pompous pampleteering?
Hissing:I also noticed my recent posts have caused a serious verbal constipatory effect on some of the climate clowns here. Again, non reply to those suggests a belief that not thinking causes things to cease their existence.
Homlier comments come to mind but I won’t write them here as we do have standards. 🙂
But they are, wankers.
Hissing:So if the government scientists can come up with the crap idea of a runaway greenhouse effect and no one since has bothered to refute it, don’t assume that they can’t come up with some other crap idea to bolster AGW nonsense.
They have come this far, and they are not going to give up – their jobs and lifestyles are at stake.
Hissing: Slurring the dead now are we? You really are a ‘little person”, aren’t you. Your ignorance of eugenics is quite interesting – AGW was around for a 100 years? Got any documentary fact to support this or are we, yet again, to take it on your ‘little” authority.
Hissing: Mead—whose 1928 book on the sex life of South Pacific Islanders was later found to be a fraud—recruited like-minded anti-population hoaxsters to the cause:
and of course, the temperate Birdie:
Birdie:What are you talking about Wes? What are you talking about? You are a MORON Wes. Come on now! Make an accounting for yourself. Lets have that explanation you complete idiot. Its time to pull out the clue stick and start beating people like you and Robin Williams over the backside with it.
Birdie:SJT you are a complete idiot. The logic of this is so idiotic. Now knowing that, do you see how incompetent you are to judge this matter and why you are too dim to see that it is a clear science fraud? Well you should do. But that would require logic.
Has anyone ever claimed that the research grant whores are allowing themselves to be manipulated in order to become multimillionaires. Is this the sort of argument you are trying to counter you dirty little pig SJT?
Come up with some evidence you dishonest jerk. Stop the filibuster. Lets have some evidence
Birdie:You cannot prove a scientific consensus you FILTHY LYING DOG. You don’t have a scientific consensus you filth!!!!!!!!!!
Retract that lie NOW!!!
You are just a liar mate. You don’t have a scientific consensus. You are filth mate.
Take it back.
Birdie:So this is what you get. Monstrous filthy leftist liars. Lying all the time. Never taking a holiday from these hateful lies.
Birdie:Well I wish I could shoot the messenger. Because the messenger is a traitor and a liar. You too SJT. Take time out from lying for one moment and make good with the evidence or admit you are wrong and have been dishonest the entire time that you have been coming here anonymously like some hardcore traitor-pervert.
Birdie:Look we’ve seen enough haven’t we? We know this crowd are simply lying all the time like good neo-Marxists? What more do we need to see? Surely we could just grab these people on sight, rough them up a little bit, put them in a stockade and have small children throw rotten fruit and eggs at them. This problem would be solved so fast if we could take this sort of timely action. These people have caused immense harm and hurt already. Surely rotten fruit, eggs and public humiliation is only a very mild form of social reprimand given that they have been trying to ration our energy, hurt our nation, and impoverish their fellow Australians.
Louis Hissink says
Eli,
I won’t even bother reading your rant. Seek counselling.
SJT says
“I won’t even bother reading your rant.”
I would strongly advise you not to, Louis. It just points out what a hypocrite you are, I doubt you could cope with the shock.
Louis Hissink says
SJT” I would strongly advise you not to, Louis. It just points out what a hypocrite you are, I doubt you could cope with the shock.”
Shock of what?
Eli Rabett says
So Eli hied off to the local RCS (Rabett Counselling Service) where Sigmund Bunny told him not to make fun of the mentally inefficient. Eli has indeed been a very bad bunny:)
peterd says
After the smoke has cleared, the hissing has stopped, and the rabbits have run, it is time to pause and collect one’s thoughts. I have one small observation to make. It has to do with the Louis Hissink note above: “All it proves is that liberals rely on personal attacks to score points when the argument is lost and that has been the modus operandi for the AGW supporters from the start of this blog.”
It is amusing to see that Hissink chooses to abuse his opponents by calling them “liberals”. As he variously describes them as socialists, the implication is that he is following the quaint and idiosyncratic American usage, where left-leaners or socialists are described as “liberals”. But what is a liberal in America? And what is a conservative? Let’s start with the latter. A conservative, European or American, can only be one who conserves the past. For the USA, however, the past is a liberal one: it is the past of the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and so on. These are all based on, and embody, liberal principles. It follows from this that American conservatives must be liberals, whatever they call themselves. [I am indebted to that acute Scottish philospher, Alasdair MacIntrye, for this insight, as set out in an essay/book review on American liberalism, circa 1980.] As Louis Hissink is so fond of paying lip service to the kinds of principles embodied in American liberalism, he should wake up every morning, look himself in the mirror, and shout: “I am a liberal!”
Louis Hissink says
Peterd
I used the term liberal in responce to Eli Rabbett – knowing full well that it has a problematical meaning but in general U.S. usuage is taken mean socialist. Perhaps I should have used the term “Leftist” but that isn’t too representative either.
And if you did some homework you would find that I can be classed as a Liberalist as understood by Mises, Hayek, Rothbard and other devotees of the Austrian School of economics.
I am a capitalist.
peterd says
Louis, sounds like you’re blowing smoke again. I really think you have tooo much free time on your hands.
peterd says
After some months of not looking at this site (to spare my sanity), I decided to torture myself by having another peep. Nothing much has changed. Scanning through the post here, I notice that Bird has pronounced on the PETM:
“Thats all bullshit too. We know that [the PETM] had nothing to do with CO2 as well. You are talking about a 100 000 year event 55 million years ago. The CO2 didn’t precede the event and then heat it up. Thats all lies.”
It’s the usual monosyllabic grunts, shouts and abuse from Bird.
But why does he believe this? He doesn’t produce a shred of evidence for this viewpoint. To quote from the abstract of a quite recent paper: “The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) has been attributed to a sudden release of carbon dioxide and/or methane…..These correlations support the view that the PETM was triggered by greenhouse gas release during magma interaction with basin-filling carbon-rich sedimentary rocks proximal to the embryonic plate boundary between Greenland and Europe.” (Michael Storey, Robert A. Duncan, Carl C. Swisher III, Science, v.387, p.587 (2007).
peterd says
Louis, getting back to my first post and your response, you do not explain the connection between your own avowed “liberalist” philosophy and your claim to be a “capitalist”. What is the connection? It would be quite open to, say, a social democrat to lay claim to having a “liberalist” social philosophy as well.
peterd says
Bird:
“The initiation of the
PETM is marked by an abrupt decrease in the
delta 13C proportion of marine and terrestrial sedimentary
carbon (1, 6), which is consistent with
the rapid addition of >1500 gigatons of 13Cdepleted
carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide
and/or methane, into the hydrosphere and
atmosphere (7). The PETM is thought to have
lasted only 210,000 to 220,000 years, with most
of the decrease in d13C occurring over a 20,000-
year period at the beginning of the event (8).”
(Storey et al, as cited above).
100,00 years not.
peterd says
100,000 years not
Louis Hissink says
Peterd,
You got the obligatory, curteous reply. The rest is ignored.
peterd says
Louis, you continue to surprise me. You respond to me with the tart suggestion that “if [I] did some homework” I would discover you were a “liberalist”. So, I am supposed to spend my time snooping around the internet to discover your views on politics. How long, pray tell, do you imagine that would take? (FYI, I just googled “Louis Hissink” and was led to Tim Lambert’s deltoid site, but that is perhaps not the kind of site you’d like to have as representing your views on anything?) As to your being “courteous”, the questions in my last post were politely posed, even as I struggled to get to the bottom of your (perhaps incoherent) political views, so I guess that makes us about even.
And the Bird has flown.
Louis Hissink says
Peterd:
“So, I am supposed to spend my time snooping around the internet to discover your views on politics. ”
It’s called research to make sure we don’t plagiarise someone, or repeat what one of our predecessors previously published, and it’s usually summarised in the list of citations accompanying a scientific report.
Per your previous post you wrote “you do not explain the connection between your own avowed “liberalist” philosophy and your claim to be a “capitalist”. What is the connection? ”
I have an avowed “liberlist” philosophy”?
Better come up with some concrete examples before turning the light on your youthful intellectual onanism.
David says
Jennifer,
its about time you levelled with your readers and admitted that you are in the process of changing your mind, and are coming to realise that mankind is changing the world’s climate in a dangerous way.
Come clean, before it is too late to save what reputation and self-respect you may have left..
Just take a good hard look at yourself, and then at the tribe of idiots you have been quoting… as you say, one side is usually right in matters like this…
It’s for your own good. Much of your writing about the environment is worth reading, I enjoy it, I must say.
You would have a lot to contribute to the future of the world if you wasting your talents and energy by denying the plain and obvious truth.
David
Jan Pompe says
“Jennifer,
its about time you levelled with your readers and admitted that you are in the process of changing your mind, and are coming to realise that mankind is changing the world’s climate in a dangerous way.”
Do you really think so?
http://listentous.org.au/