Climate Change -Doubts, Denials, Scepticism and Politics V

[raytoman]

http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 12909.html

The above article blames domesticated animals for much of global warming. Yet another excuse for the denyers to do nothing and provide ammunition to those in power to procrastinate (even though it's human population growth and "westernisation" of diet that's causing this increase in domesticated animals).

We all know it makes sense to better control population growth and the human footprint, we need more, cleaner, sources of energy, preferably renewable, we need to minimise pollution, etc.

Lets stop arguing about GW and it's cause and focus on doing these sensible things. Whilst we argue, we are already past the tipping point (given built in delayed impacts) so we are not talking about stopping global warming, just preparing for life after the chaos.

If the denyers and the assholes they support had not successfully delayed our response, we might have been well on the way to ensuring at least less strife. As it is, any response now is of the "too little too late" variety so admit they've won (they can spend the rest of their lives regretting it if they live long enough) and focus on something they can't prevent.

Wait a minute, they can't make enough money on that, we're fucked!.

[raytoman]

In all this time talking about climate change, there seems little note taken of the minimal amount of measurement we do.

Whenever we spend a few million trying to measure the CO2 contribution to global warming it comes up supporting the null hypothesis. Shall we spend another few million to disprove it again?

##########

My point was that we didn't measure anything before we had the instruments and processes. Then we had only a few measuring points of a few things, then we had a few hundred globally (say a century or 2 ago) and only slowly increased these. Electronic measuring and computer analysis is very recent.

We've actually taken almost negligible measurements of only a very few things but we can see with our eyes, read about things hundreds of years ago and examine ice, fossils, tree rings, sedimentation, erosion, etc.

If we've never been able to sail the arctic ocean in summer in places we can now, if glaciers are retreating faster and further than ever known and if there are icebergs floating further north and south that ever before, then we need to consider why. That's enough to convince me of global warming.

I remember when the human population was first estimated as 2 billion (only several decades ago (I'm not THAT old)) and I only remembered horse drawn carts and machinery and steam trains. China (not a big producer yet) now makes more cars per year than the whole world used to make only 75 or 80 years ago. We are now over 6 billion and the total world car population is due to double in a decade or so.

How can anyone rational believe that we are not having any significant impact on global warming. I went on to suggest the misunderstanding of ice melt and the fact that it will cause some cooling first before the flood. GW is happening, with humans having a major impact. Stop denying it. And it's not just CO2 we are adding, it's methane, sulfur, etc and we're preventing CO reduction by clearing forsests

[Fact-Man]

Wait a minute, they can't make enough money on that, we're fucked!.

Ahh! The perfect point of it all!

The capitalist juggernaut, driven by growth at any cost, is a beast that will not give up or surrender until it finds itself standing around in the wreckage of what was once the self-defined glories of its economic system and realizes the jig is, finally, up. And I include China in this juggernauting, although they may be smart enough to wake up one of these days and get on with making change.

It is precisely the entrenched interests of the oligarchs and their apologists who stand in the way of sanity and a better more enlightened way forward. The upcoming meeting in Copenhagen could prove to be a blockbuster because it is where the science will confront the juggernaught head-on, and all hell could easily erupt and a real donnybrook ensue.

The dawning of new eras never comes easy, of course, a point that's made clear if you've ever read anything about how Mao managed things in China in the immediate aftermath of the revolution (as elaborated for example in the book "Fanshen"), or studied the dawnings of other new eras in the history of our species, like the Dark Ages giving way to the enlightement and producing the Renaissance.

But, new eras do ultimately make their way into prominence so we can probably expect the upcoming one will do this too, even though it may be in a greatly altered world climate-wise. We can hope that turn of events doesn't drive a regression to older less decent modes of social organization and that science will, indeed, prevail over ignorance.

Probably ought to keep your fingers crossed, however.

And oh yes, hang onto your hat!

[ginckgo]

Man, Anthony Watts is on a roll today doing his best demagoguery.

Just about every tenth post is currently about how the general public is losing interest in Global Warming, as if that's evidence that the science itself has been debunked.

And then he talks up the letter by the handfull of physicists, opposing the official APS stance; ironically titled:

A GAGGLE IS NOT A CONSENSUS

I'm going to guess neither Watts nor his brain-dead minions can see the irony.



And WTF has a rift opening in Ethiopia to do with AGW?

On the serious side, University of Rochester researchers have found evidence that Earth, doing what it darn well pleases despite our protestations, is making a new ocean in the African desert.

Anti-science at it's clearest.

The man is a a troll that could give Detritus a run for his money.

[MacDoc]

Dontchaknow volcanoes produce more C02 than man.eh - where ya been....new rift - more volcanoes eh...stands to reason eh....

[JohnBrandt]

"They are making what are basically extremely puerile political arguments. They depend on pedantry, cherry-picking, arrogance, and appeals to base instincts. They are basically George W. Bush with a bellyful of bourbon and his nuts in a puddle of MDMA. They are incoherent nutbags picking cherries like a paedophile in a schoolyard. They are Ronnie Rayguns insisting that ketchup is a vegetable. They are William Jennings Bryan explaining that he was not a mammal. They are fools and miscreants and whiners. They are, in short, the best example of what's wrong wrong with our species."

Meh...I've been called worse.
But "pedophile"...? That's a low blow...

I believe I know who the ones who are really getting upset about things are...I could be wrong, but I don't believe I have seen "abuse" of global warming proponants by "denialists" stoop to that level.

EDIT: Just wondering...how long a post by a "delialist jihadist denidiot" would last on here before being deleted by mods if we came out with a tirade of frankly disturbing abuse like that...

[ginckgo]

John, learn to quote.

[Reverend Blair]

JohnBrandt: I never called anyone a pedophile. I said that the denialists pick cherries like a pedophile in a schoolyard. So I called the denialists cherry-pickers. The English language is an interesting thing, you should learn to use and understand it better. t is your mother tongue, after all.

You should be much more concerned with being compared to miscreant morons like Bush, Reagan and Bryan, anyway. They each did far more damage to the human condition than any pedophile.

[ginckgo]

Australia is dryer than a dead dingo's donger.

Hey, you calling our fine country a dessicated dog penis?

[Gallstones]

[MOD COMMENT]

The problem seems to be most biologists don't know how to destroy creationists' arguments by correctly applying logical propositions.

Well fuck you and the motherless donkey you rode in on.

For fuck's sake ginckgo. Unnecessary roughness.
Some needling is going to happen here, but this crossed a line.
You know better than to lose your cool like this.

'motherless' donkey?

Am I going to have to babysit this thread tonight? Please don't make me do that.

[/MOD COMMENT]

[Zappi]

"They are making what are basically extremely puerile political arguments. They depend on pedantry, cherry-picking, arrogance, and appeals to base instincts. They are basically George W. Bush with a bellyful of bourbon and his nuts in a puddle of MDMA. They are incoherent nutbags picking cherries like a paedophile in a schoolyard. They are Ronnie Rayguns insisting that ketchup is a vegetable. They are William Jennings Bryan explaining that he was not a mammal. They are fools and miscreants and whiners. They are, in short, the best example of what's wrong wrong with our species."

Meh...I've been called worse.
But "pedophile"...? That's a low blow...

I believe I know who the ones who are really getting upset about things are...I could be wrong, but I don't believe I have seen "abuse" of global warming proponants by "denialists" stoop to that level.

EDIT: Just wondering...how long a post by a "delialist jihadist denidiot" would last on here before being deleted by mods if we came out with a tirade of frankly disturbing abuse like that...

That's why I don't read anymore what the reverend says. It seems gincko is going down towards that same path.

[Gallstones]

[MOD COMMENT]

MacDoc and Ginckgo and Tarby and Sheridan:

Dudes, if I may call you that so I have some recourse when I'm accused of belittling others by calling them that later even though I have every intention of belittling them because they are, after all, idiots, but I don't mean to belittle them by calling them dudes but instead wish to establish some familiarity so they'll feel guilty when they accuse me of not being nearly as stupid as they are...

Rev please.
This is the doubts, denials and skepticism thread. Doubts, denial and skepticism are appropriate. You seem surprised at that. This is not the make fun of doubters, denialists and skeptics with barely veiled insult thread. Doing that can get you a warning for trolling. Stop it.


Additionally, can you stop taking about each other?

[/MOD COMMENT]

[Reverend Blair]

I was merely expressing my skepticism of the motives and tactics of the denialists and their politics.

[Gallstones]

I was merely expressing my skepticism of the motives and tactics of the denialists and their politics.

Yes of course you were. Didn't I acknowledge that? How remiss of me.

[Reverend Blair]

Is this where I'm supposed to promise to be blandly polite and communicate only through the use of other people's words?

[ginckgo]

[MOD COMMENT]

The problem seems to be most biologists don't know how to destroy creationists' arguments by correctly applying logical propositions.

Well fuck you and the motherless donkey you rode in on.

For fuck's sake ginckgo. Unnecessary roughness.
Some needling is going to happen here, but this crossed a line.
You know better than to lose your cool like this.

'motherless' donkey?

Am I going to have to babysit this thread tonight? Please don't make me do that.

[/MOD COMMENT]

You know me, not generally inclined to such outbursts, so you can probably understand how much trolling is necessary to set me off. Out of my system now.

[Gallstones]

Is this where I'm supposed to promise to be blandly polite and communicate only through the use of other people's words?

Oh hell no. That would be torture as we'd all die slowly of boredom.

[Gallstones]

You know me, not generally inclined to such outbursts, so you can probably understand how much trolling is necessary to set me off. Out of my system now.

Well, you never burst out like that in a Seth thread, so you must have felt it was really bad. Glad you're feeling better.





Forget I was here.

[ginckgo]

You know me, not generally inclined to such outbursts, so you can probably understand how much trolling is necessary to set me off. Out of my system now.

Well, you never burst out like that in a Seth thread, so you must have felt it was really bad. Glad you're feeling better.

Well, I did call his online persona some pretty bad names once.

[JohnBrandt]

ANYWAY....

"Australia is dryer than a dead dingo's donger."...good old Australianism right there!!!

Today in my area it has been around 36 degrees Celsius. Normal reasonably warm day for this time of the year. The Melbourne Cup raceday was hot, very hot, and of course a few people immediately and automatically said "climate change", but meteorologists (strangely, that's one of the few disciplines quoted when claiming global warming is happening ) have said it "isn't anything out of the ordinary.

[Fact-Man]

ANYWAY....

"Australia is dryer than a dead dingo's donger."...good old Australianism right there!!!

Today in my area it has been around 36 degrees Celsius. Normal reasonably warm day for this time of the year. The Melbourne Cup raceday was hot, very hot, and of course a few people immediately and automatically said "climate change", but meteorologists (strangely, that's one of the few disciplines quoted when claiming global warming is happening ) have said it "isn't anything out of the ordinary.

There's no way in hell anybody can judge whether a particularly hot day is the result of AGW, just wait 'till next week, things will cool down again.

AGW can only be specifically detected as a long term rising trend in earth's mean annual temp data. This in effect is what your meteorlogist was saying.

Ya gotta get off this local weather thing. It has no meaning vis-a-vis AGW.

AGW, as evidenced by the rising long term trend of earth's mean annual temp data, can be corroborated in a wide variety of ways, including northward migration of species, melting of permafrost, loss of ice in the Arctic, increased melt rates in Greenland and Antarctica, acidification of the oceans, substantial losses of glacial ice in the mid-latitudes, and so on.

I see some of this kind of corroborating evidence every day as I watch a flock of wild turkeys cruise through my land. There were no wild turkeys in this valley 20 years ago, 30 years ago, forty years ago. But they have been here a number of years now and don't look to be going anywhere any time soon. I think they've found a home.

This is true for other species of birds as well, many new arrivals.

My valley is warming.

Winters have become so much warmer here that the larvae of Pine bark beetles survive it, whereas in the colder winters of 50 and 40 and 30 years ago, most did not, which kept their population in check and in balance with what our forests could tolerate and remain vibrant.

No more. This beetle's population has swollen to such enormous numbers it has become a major pest, killing hundreds of thousands of trees ... make that millions of trees ... and driving our biologists crazy trying to figure out what to do about it. The futher North you go in BC the worse the effects are, with vast swatches of forested land standing reddish brown and dead, a major fire hazard. They are beginning to harvest them, before they rot.

That's corroborating evidence of AGW.

I mean, think abut this a moment. The IPCC projects a +6C degree rise in earth's mean annual temp by the year 2100 (it has more than one projection but their max temp increase remains right arounbd +6C degrees). Let's use that number for talking purposes.

Your days probably can range anywhere between a low of, oh, I dunno, 12C to a high of 42C, would that be in the ballpark? Where I am the range is much wider because we have a winter here, my range runs from an o'night low of -40C to a daytime high of 40C, or an 80C degree range in possible daytime highs and o'night lows from one season to the next.

Your range is less than half that but still a substantial degree larger (at 30C) than the 6C increase IPCC projects for the year 2100. In other words you can experience day-to-day or season-to-season fluctuations in temps that far exceed what IPCC is projecting for 90 fookin' years from now.

Now that's because the IPCC number is a mean average for the entire planet and you're dealing with a local situation. If IPCC's projection become a reality, you can expect your daytime high's to be shifted upward a little, like say 6C (but maybe 10C or even 12C) and your o'night lows will be shifted upward a like amount, more or less.

It doesn't take much of an upward tick in earth's mean annual temp to induce major climate change. How the newly minted climate will affect your weather is by and large impossible to say in specific terms; it can only be referred to in general terms but a warmed atmosphere contains a lot more heat and heat is energy and atmsopheric energy is what drives local weather, so you can probably expect to see more energetic weather.

Getting the picture now?

Forget the fucking local weather, it's not relevant except in decadal time frames at the minimum, and even in those time frames AGW affects on local weather are difficult to identify. They may be easier to see in 50 years time.

[Tarby]

And then he talks up the letter by the handfull of physicists, opposing the official APS stance; ironically titled:

A GAGGLE IS NOT A CONSENSUS

Predicted that a page or two ago

A CONSENSUS IS NOT A GAGGLE, either.

I call these 160 physicists the “myth busters”, busting the myth of consensus. And not a moment too soon.

Holy crap! 160 scientists believe there could be more work on the subject. But in the meantime, the association they belong to still says in the very same letter... (my bold)

The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes – natural and human –on the Earth’s climate and the biosphere’s response to climate change, and promotes technological options for meeting challenges of future climate changes, regardless of cause.

* The statement of the APS Council, adopted on November 18, 2007 is as follows:

“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.”

Note that it's still official: The American Physical Society says it's warming, not cooling, so they still haven't changed their statement on the subject.

[Luis Dias]

Doing that can get you a warning for trolling. Stop it.

I seriously doubt that. This is what, tenth warning that people *might* get a formal warning in a row? Bah.

[JohnBrandt]

So..."local weather" or "isolated sea level measurements" aren't evidence against global warming...but if the worldwide trend shows a downward movement in temperature, that also isn't evidence there might be somethign wrong with the idea of global warming.

What would be the odds that if I was not a denilaist jihadist, that I could legitimately use those very same facts (local weather/temps/sea levels/etc) and figures to defend global warming as a reality...?

[Tarby]

So..."local weather" or "isolated sea level measurements" aren't evidence against global warming...but if the worldwide trend shows a downward movement in temperature, that also isn't evidence there might be somethign wrong with the idea of global warming.

What would be the odds that if I was not a denilaist jihadist, that I could legitimately use those very same facts (local weather/temps/sea levels/etc) and figures to defend global warming as a reality...?

Read back through the thread. Plenty of posts explaining why regional cooling, or even some global cooling, is not to be unexpected. If memory serves me correctly, one or two of those posts were directly addressed to you on this very subject.