“Not all environmental causes are sucker-proof. If one wants to fill up the inner void, by making the world a better place to live, then one should do one’s bloody homework first. And that includes becoming scientifically literate. If one is not willing to take that first step, then one should get a life, and forget about saving the world!” Larry Fields, August 2009
for some context … http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/08/clean-up-just-stirs-up/
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
But isn’t it easier just to see the movie. Then we know and can act to save the world.
The latest documentary is The Age of Stupid, a ‘real’ story of a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance? see http://www.ageofstupid.net/
Once you see the film you can join Greenpeace and WWF and FOE to lobby your government to vote to save the world at Copenhagen at http://notstupid.org/
I don’t suppose anybody’s running a book on whether this propaganda effort contains even less truth and honesty than An Inconvenient Truth? If so, I’m in for $100.
Rick
A C note isn’t enough money to sit though Age of Stupid.
Well that hasn’t taken long at about 5pm 19 August, the greens used this latest film as evidence to demand even more taxpayers’ money be spent.
Green Brown told the Senate “In an age of prodigious threat, of climate change threat, people reading this in years to come will not be able to believe it. I went and saw the film The Age of Stupid in the theatre here last Monday night. It is on in Sydney tonight and I think Senator Milne will be there at the end of that film for a question and answer session. I only wish every parliamentarian would see it.”
One wouldn’t have thought Bimbo Brown would need to top up any of his “stupid”, being amply endowed with that trait from birth. Clearly, some people are born to stupid, some people achieve stupid while others have stupid thrust upon them. The only saving grace is that folks like Wong and Brown are unlikely to reproduce. Perhaps their greatest contribution to the welfare of future generations is their absence from the gene pool.
In an interview earlier this year, James Hansen, who heads up NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, claimed
‘We have only four years left to act on climate change’
Link http://tinyurl.com/6v2bj3
The main reason that Hansen can get away with making such wild statements is that he’s a ‘rainmaker’; his alarmist clap-trap attracts funding to his agency. He’s been at it for more than 20 years, and through the self-hypnotic effect of sheer repetition, I think there’s a part of him who really believes his own codswallop.
A part of me is mildly surprised that Hansen doesn’t wear tights, a cape, and a mask. Of course, I’m not privy to his fetishes.
If you ever find yourself talking like World-saver Hansen, it’s time to go back on your meds! For me, it’s a point of national pride that our Hansen is more certifiable than your Wong.
Cinders
I’m ashamed to say this tripe was produced in NZ. Some AGW deluded 20 something yr. old with fantasies of becoming another Micheal Jackson……not exactly Lord of the Rings though was it Cinders?
I recommend ignoring Age of Stupid . Classified : bomb
should read..
Classified : Suitable for Gullible Morons.
( Children should be accompanied by a Half Wit.)
Rating :(out of 5 stars)
bomb.
“The main reason that Hansen can get away with making such wild statements is that he’s a ‘rainmaker’; his alarmist clap-trap attracts funding to his agency. He’s been at it for more than 20 years, and through the self-hypnotic effect of sheer repetition, I think there’s a part of him who really believes his own codswallop.”
He has been remarkably accurate in his predictions.
If his science is correct, then four years it is, and even then he is talking about limiting the damage, not preventing it. Once the CO2 is up there, it’s going to be very hard to put it back in the ground.
” Once the CO2 is up there”
I thought CO2 was a heavy gas. hanging down around the ground. Collected by displacing air in an open cylinder.
Mack, I will forgive you for having the producer being from New Zealand, clearly New Zealanders, like umpire Billy, don’t recognise when you over step the mark, especially if its against the Poms.
In relation to your comment on CO2 being a heavy gas, I saw a powerpoint slide the other day it said “Carbon Dioxide (CO2 ) is:
1. Naturally occurring
2. Invisible
3. Odourless
4. Non-toxic
5. Necessary for all plant life (photosynthesis)
6. Emitted by all animal life (breathing etc.)”
I thought the Australian Government and the greens have labelled it polution! I better watch the film or check all those images in the media of black smoke spewing out of chimney stacks that accompany climate change predictions.
SJT wrote:
“He [Hansen] has been remarkably accurate in his predictions.”
My impression is that Hansen’s gloom-and-doom pronouncements are the pseudo-scientific equivalents of the end-of-the-world prophesies made by his Christian Fundamentalist counterparts. If you really believe what you’re saying, please post a list of ALL of Hansen’s public falsifiable nontrivial terrestrial climate-change-related predictions for which the expiration dates have already passed. We’ll be the judges of their veracity.
Mack wrote:
“I thought CO2 was a heavy gas. hanging down around the ground. Collected by displacing air in an open cylinder.”
Very funny. Now I’ll try to play straight-man. Carbon dioxide is nearly 38% denser than oxygen at terrestrial temperatures and pressures. Even with no wind, CO2’s rate of dispersion (in all directions) from animals, tailpipes, etc is a bit slower than that of the O2 given off by green plants during daylight hours.
Your phrase “hanging down around the ground” applies more to global cooling deniers–like Hansen–than to CO2.
Yeah right SJT ,
Keep me informed when the CO2 gets “up there”.
Larry Fields,
” Very funny?” I hit SJT with the factual properties of CO2 and you call it funny.
What are you Larry? A closet warmist? Or are you just sticking up for the little guy?
Mack wrote:
“I hit SJT with the factual properties of CO2 and you call it funny.
What are you Larry? A closet warmist?”
No, but I do appreciate humor–intentional and otherwise.
Larry Fields wrote:
While this is hardly exhaustive, here are some links from a google search:
Roger Pielke Jnr says:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/000836evaluating_jim_hanse.html
Lucia says:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/ordinary-eyeball-how-did-hansens-predictions-do/
And here’s what Lubos has to say:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/06/james-hansen-20-years-later.html
Do your own search and see what you get…
Neil,
Thanks for the web searching. However I do need to point out the obvious. As is the case with most mathematical theorems, a typical scientific prediction has an IF part and a THEN part. From that perspective, all of Hansen’s scenarios are garbage. A right-for-the-wrong-reasons claim is still garbage. A naïve Reno oddsmaker could have done at least as well 20 years ago.
Hmm, GHGs and global temperatures are both increasing. I’ll predict that they’ll both continue to increase in the medium term. Yippee, I’m a climate scientist now. OK Harvard, you can send my PhD diploma to this PO box…
I’m assuming that all of Hansen’s predictions are based on the same model. If so, it would be reasonable to test linear combinations of them to see if any can make a prediction that’s within the limits of experimental error. Is anyone game for the donkey-work?
Larry,
hence the link to Lucia, which shows how a very simple prediction (just extrapolation) would have done vs Hansen’s “work”. Seems the “simple” model works better…
As to predictions within experimental error, in order to do that, we’d need to know likely errors. That’s hard, especially given the work shown at the http://www.surfacestations.org and the Pielke’s latest paper on boundary layers as I cited previously. When one considers this body of work, and also includes the “adjustments” done to the raw data (very similar to the “measured” trend!), as well as the chefio blog entry I cited in another thread, it becomes harder and harder to credit that the present warm period is in any way a problem, especially given the variations in temperature that are apparent over geological time and how they don’t seem in any way related to CO2.
As for your prediction, in this case I’ll agree with the alarmists – at least some of them and to some extent – in that I predict we are in for a 30 years or so of stable to cooling temperatures. I hope we are not in for a major cooling such as the Maunder minimum, as that would be disasterous for a lot of people – mostly those who are in the third world.
P.S. I am still waiting for two things from the alarmists here:
1) evidence of validation of any climate model used by IPCC
2) discussion of why adiabatic lapse rate is insufficient to explain why the planet is warmer than black body calculations suggest.
I note that Josh Halpern (aka Eli Rabett) avoids such subjects religeously (and the word “religeously” was chosen quite deliberately, BTW). I’m sure that such things “don’t matter”, because we have “a large body of evidence” that shows global warming – odd that such arguements don’t seem to apply to us denialists, isn’t it? Seems to me that the denialist arguements also paint a picture and that picking out any single element and “discrediting” it is sufficient and “matters”.
Neil wrote:
P.S. I am still waiting for two things from the alarmists here:
1) evidence of validation of any climate model used by IPCC
Welcome to the club. I asked a similar question about physical evidence for the central claim of the Alarmists, that GHGs played a significant role in the global warming episode, way back in the 80s and 90s. One of our resident Alarmists claimed that there’s plenty of evidence, but he couldn’t point to a single example, outside the perspective of his silicon-based theology.
I’ve been told that this is par for the course with paranoid individuals. They make sweeping claims. Then when you press them for specific details, they clam up, or they get emotional, or they try to change the subject.
Since True Believers of all stripes tend to view themselves as part of an elite group with access to the cosmic pipeline, they tend to pooh-pooh the truth, with a lower case “t”. It’s extremely difficult to have a rational discussion with a person who has a lot of his limited self-hood invested in a prefab worldview.
Neil also wrote:
Seems to me that the denialist arguements also paint a picture and that picking out any single element and “discrediting” it is sufficient and “matters”.
Again, par for the course. Sophists are so caught up in their little pissing contests that reality is not a high priority. As you point out, a common tactic is to glom onto the weakest argument of one’s ‘opponent’ (who may or may not think of himself as being an opponent), beat it to death, and then claim ‘victory’.