Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[I_am_John_Galt]

What part of that quote says anything about what I said? Exactly what part is wrong?

They rely on Mann's data.  They are not independent.

Not to mention the logic is a wee bit funny... Mann has co-authored 43 papers, thus there is no indepedant review.

No, the logic is that the "peer" reviewers are his co-authors, and therefore are not independent (by definition).

How about Bunnies are pretty, thus the world is going to explode?

How about a more appropriate metaphor: ask a Habs fan for a critical review of the Habs official website's prediction for how well they will do this season ...

Geeze, if a climatologist did that it wouldn't even get past the universities own internal review system!

This is exactly what they are doing, but it satisifies the political agenda, so no-one seems to care about their veracity.

And by the by, it wasn't bloggers or angry consevatives that debunked "Eugenics" or the "Ether", it was this same process you're trashing.

Why are you talking about "bloggers or angry conservatives"?  Actually, both Eugenics and Ether were the product of "scientific consensus": which is (almost) exactly where we stand WRT climate change.  The process I am trashing is using spurious methodology and misrepresented findings to 'prove' something that is already assumed to be true: this was exactly the problem with Eugenics and Ether and is now with Global Warming.  And moreover, for the record, Eugenics has not been scientifically disproven; it has fallen out of disfavour (I'm not advocating it, just pointing-out your apparent confusion about what "scientific" means).

 

[couchcommander]

They rely on Mann's data.  They are not independent.

Let me make this clear in case I wasn't before. NO THEY DO NOT! I don't think one I quoted cites him, and the instance rate of him being cited is actually a lot lower than you'd think. There is an entire battery of completely "indepedant" and complimentary research. If you don't believe me, PM me and I will give you access to the journal databases.

No, the logic is that the "peer" reviewers are his co-authors, are therefore not independent (by definition).

There are more than 43 climatologists.

Actually, both Eugenics and Ether were the product of "scientific consensus": which is (almost) exactly where we stand WRT climate change.  The process I am trashing is using spurious methodology and misrepresented findings to 'prove' something that is already assumed to be true: this was exactly the problem with Eugenics and Ether and is now with Global Warming.  And moreover, for the record, Eugenics has not been scientifically disproven; it has fallen out of disfavour (I'm not advocating it, just pointing-out your apparent confusion about what "scientific" means).

Look up the Michelson-Morley experiment for Ether, and re: Eugenics the discovery that not everything has to do with "breeding". So yes, they have been scientifically "debunked", but like anything, we're not 100%.

Listen, I don't want to get into a he said, she said game here. Post some research, some evidence from a peer reviewed, published paper, and we'll discuss it. We've talked about Wegman, and I've accepted his conclusions re: Mann, we've talked about Shviv, and he's got serious errors to work out. Neither have seriously affected my case. What else do you have?

*edit* Oh, and I mean "Jig", one "g"... I guess that's what happens when you start drinking in the morning

*edit* To make my point, using EBSCO Host I searched for any paper which cited either MBH99 or MBH98 (the two reconstructions in question). I got 29 returns. Of these, only four used MBH99 or MBH98 to make A POINT, not necessarily THE POINT, but a point using MBH99 or MBH98 alone, 8 used it in conjunction with three or more other, completely unrelated constructions, to make a point (once again not necessarily the point), and the rest were either bashing MBH99 or MBH98 (actually more than those which cited it alone), or were unrelated at all. To put this in context, when searching for "global warming", I get 28,000 hits.  EBSCO is my no means the end all be all, but when I say sideshow, possibly even a jig, this is what I mean. So, I will refrain from using as evidence any report in which MBH99 or MBH98 alone is used to make more than a passing remark, and lets move on.

 

[a_majoor]

What is the point of Kyoto after all? The second comment says it all, I'm afraid

Noticed this last “Earth Day”

From —> http://www.canadafreepress.com/2005/driessen042205.htm

When I helped organize the first Earth Day on my college campus in 1970, I never dreamed we’d be celebrating #35 this year, or that we’d come so far in cleaning up our environment. But the improvements are remarkable.

Since 1976, airborne sulfur dioxide has been reduced 72% … carbon monoxide 76% … lead 98% — according to the Pacific Research Institute’s annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. Automobile tailpipe emissions are down 95% from 1975 levels.

About 80% of US community water systems had no violations of health-based EPA standards in 1993. Last year, 95% had no violations.

For the past five years, our wetlands have increased by 26,000 acres a year — reversing years of decline. We’ve gone from 500 nesting pairs of bald eagles in 1965 to 7500 today, including a half dozen on the river where I grew up, less than a half mile from a big paper mill whose effluents once contaminated the area.

Progress since the “good old days” is even more dramatic. In 1905, average US life expectancy was 47 years; today it’s 78. Few homes had electricity; instead, coal and wood fires created clouds of pollution, and the average home generated 5,000 pounds of wood or coal ash a year.

Over 3 million horses worked in American cities — producing 11 million tons of manure and 9 million gallons of urine annually. Most got left on streets or dumped into rivers; during summers, manure dust was a primary cause of tuberculosis. In New York City alone, crews had to remove 15,000 horse carcasses from streets every year.

The arrival of automobiles changed all that. It also meant we no longer needed vast forage and pasture land for horses, modern farming began increasing production per acre, and we’ve been able to add a million acres of new U.S. forestland annually since 1910………………….

So celebrate! Thank an environmental movement that initiated many of these improvements, before it lost its moral compass. Try to separate our true remaining ecological problems from those that are analyzed incorrectly, exaggerated or simply concocted to promote activist agendas.

Most importantly, remember that our remaining problems are relatively minor. Today’s truly serious health and environmental problems are in the poorest countries. That’s where we should focus our attention…………………

Radical greens conjure up specters of catastrophic global warming to justify their demands that the Third World not build coal or gas-fired power plants. Others use Earth Day to justify their campaigns against hydroelectric projects and nuclear power. The inevitable result, of course is perpetual deprivation, dung fires, poverty, disease and premature death.

Nearly a third of the human population likewise does not have safe drinking water. Families get water from distant wells, rivers and lakes that often teem with bacteria and pollutants. As Danish environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg points out, for the cost of implementing the Kyoto climate change treaty for just one year ($150 billion), we could permanently provide sanitation and clean, safe drinking water to everyone on the planet.

Mosquitoes, flies and fleas spread malaria, yellow fever, typhus and sleeping sickness to over a half billion people annually. Tens of millions become too sick to work, cultivate fields or care for their families for weeks or months on end. Each year, up to 4 million die.

It should be easy to control these diseases. We have the knowledge and tools — and we used them to eradicate these diseases in the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia. But extreme environmentalists, and even the World Health Organization and U.S. Agency for International Development, refuse to support, promote or fund a vital weapon in this war: pesticides — especially DDT. They say the chemicals might harm fish or be detected in mother’s breast milk.

“African mothers would be overjoyed if that were their biggest worry,” says Uganda’s Fiona Kobusingye. She may not know that modern instruments can detect one part per billion — a single second in 32 years. But she knows she lost her son, two sisters and two nephews to malaria. She knows her people are fed up with the death and eco-centric attitudes………………………

Earth Day was originally about our planet and its people. Let’s restore that common-sense approach.

By jerry on 10.13.06 6:32 pm

The real environmentalist movement was hijacked by socialists/marxists in order to gain control of production since socialists can’t win elections because of their ruinous policies.

By Philanthropist on 10.13.06 8:32 pm

 

[Kirkhill]

Further to Arthur's missive - a Terrence Corcoran Golden Oldie.  1998 ruminations Kyoto by then Federal Environment Minister Christine Stewart.  Comments drawn from a Calgary Herald interview also included.

Uncle Jean was our PM and Bill was his much loathed golfing buddy.  Al was advising from Bill's right hand seat.

Minister Stewart: 'No matter if the science is all phony,' she said, 'there are collateral environmental benefits.'
Minister Stewart: 'Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.'
Minister Stewart: "We don't know the cost,"

Global Warming: The Real Agenda

Editorial by Terrence Corcoran
Copyright 1998 Financial Post (Canada)
December 26, 1998
What is the most important problem facing Canada? When the annual Maclean's/CBC year-end poll asked that question, there was at least one clear answer: Not the environment; in fact, anything but the environment. Ranked by percentage of people who identified one subject or another, the top worry among

Canadians is unemployment (15%), followed by government spending, the economy, health care, national unity, taxes, poverty, education and crime. At the bottom of the list, garnering only 2% support, is the environment.

The possibility that 98% of Canadians are not in a state of high anxiety over global warming, freaky weather, ozone depletion, pollution and scores of other Green scares must be a teeth-gritting irritation to environmentalists. They have, after all, spent decades fertilizing the idea that we are on the brink of environmental disaster. Ottawa and the provinces have spent billions on the campaign, which includes turning the weather into a propaganda tool and the school system into an indoctrination camp that begins in kindergarten.

The poll is a testament to the good sense of Canadians. Despite relentless scare-mongering by bureaucrats and activists, Canadians remain unwaveringly fixed on a national economic agenda of growth and prosperity rather than on fantastic claims of apocalypse. When David Suzuki says global warming 'is the most urgent slow-motion catastrophe facing humankind,' nobody is paying much attention.

Except our politicians. Backed by an army of bureaucrats and researchers, governments are systematically preparing to shut down the engines of economic progress in the name of environmentalism. In Canada, the heart of the stop-growth campaign is Environment Canada, where key bureaucrats dedicated to imposing an environmental agenda on the country have seized control. The focus of their effort is global warming and climate change, which they intend to use as a lever to impose what can only be described as a new economic order.

The politician nominally in charge of all this is Environment Minister Christine Stewart. Whether Ms. Stewart fully understands what's going on around her is unknown, but during a recent visit with the editorial board of the Calgary Herald she certainly demonstrated her conversion to the religion of global warming.

Ms. Stewart said that, 'as minister of the environment, I am very worried about global warming,' which for a politician isn't saying much. Politicians are habitually 'very worried' about one thing or another. The trouble starts when they use their power to fix problems they're worried about, even if the problems don't exist. Ms. Stewart said she's prepared to do exactly that. 'No matter if the science is all phony,' she said, 'there are collateral environmental benefits.'

Environment Canada, therefore, is prepared to act on global warming even if there's no such thing as global warming. On the strength of phony science, the federal government would still be willing to impose new taxes on energy consumption, cut economic growth, reduce our standard of living, and create bookshelves filled with new regulation governing most facets of the lives of Canadians.

In another statement quoted by the Herald, Ms. Stewart gave another reason for adopting the religion of global warming. 'Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.' Here she gets closer to the core motivation of some of the leading global warming activists. Where socialism's attempt at a global redistribution of wealth ended in economic catastrophe, global warming is being wheeled in as the next new economic crusade.

Consolidating Ms. Stewart's statements, we reach some horrific conclusions. Whether global warming actually exists is irrelevant. It is, in the hands of government and environmental activists, a convenient front for the introduction of programs and economic policies that Canadians - and most citizens of the world - would not otherwise accept.

Ms. Stewart, perhaps unintentionally, has identified the two key foundations of the global warming movement. One is based in environmentalism, which essentially claims that human beings are a problem in nature. The other foundation is the old business of economic redistribution. Both these movements are linked in the international climate change treaty Canada signed in Kyoto. Environment Canada has already given up trying to examine the science. It never really tried. Instead, it spends hundreds of millions of dollars churning out propaganda on the hypothetical effects of global warming. Its latest reports include hundreds of studies warning of everything from spreading insect-borne disease to increasing forest fires.

The Maclean's poll shows Canadians aren't going along with the government or the claims of environmentalists. If they knew what Ms. Stewart has in store for jobs and living standards, and why, they might take a greater interest.

http://www.sepp.org/Archive/reality/realagenda.html

Concerned about cost of Kyoto


Copyright 1998 Calgary Herald (Canada)
Concerned about cost of Kyoto
Editorial By Peter Menzies
December 14, 1998

DEAR DIARY: The environment minister came calling this week with the news that one year after signing it, she still has no idea what the economic impact of the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming will be in Canada.

"We don't know the cost," Christine Stewart said.

Oh good, I thought. The federal government is flitting about the world, signing treaties which provide -- as the minister conceded -- for more "equity" in the world's economy and hasn't the foggiest idea how much it will cost. She did point out that some people think it will cost Canada a two- to three-per-cent decline in its GDP growth over 20 years but, oh heck, what's a loss of $ 100 billion dollars between friends if it's going to help those nice Indonesians?

We do know, though, that because Kyoto doesn't place the same restrictions on our many despotic friends in the Third World, it will help people like the Chinese to leap-frog their economy into the modern era. Well, if it's good for the Commies, I say, why not? I mean, what harm have they ever done?

But Stewart says that leaders in emerging economies are deeply concerned about the environment.

"If you don't think China is worried, if you don't think Mexico is worried . . . well, they are," she said.

I have not been, dear diary, to China, (where I understand they have recently exhibited their profound eco-conscience in the cavalier construction of a new dam) but I have been to Mexico City and can report there is little evidence of action on the environment. One might as well suck on an exhaust pipe as take a walk.

But lest I be accused of acting in ignorance of the environment, let it be said that such an allegation is entirely without foundation.

Stewart's new four-pronged call for action on clean air, clean water, climate change and nature has my complete backing. Further, I love my Mom. I am in favour of all these things -- climate change in particular if the past two balmy Decembers are anything to go by. I even have some sympathy when Stewart concedes that while the "international community" has decided that global warming is occurring due to human activity, "nobody" is 100-per-cent sure that this theory is true.

I just think that when people sign treaties they should have some idea what they are getting themselves into. Aren't I the old-fashioned one?

Still, the last word goes to Stewart.

"No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits."

http://www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/controversies/concerned.html

PS Why is it that Progressive leaders of the world can meet, expressly shunning leaders like our own PM, and be lauded by the press?  Can't imagine the reaction if all the NON-Progressive leaders decided to meet and intentionally shunned all left wing heads of government.

 

[GAP]

On Kyoto, Afghanistan and winning in Quebec  
National Post Published: Saturday, October 14, 2006
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=6d1e39e5-5eab-4324-b232-278e1906bf82


Following are responses Michael Ignatieff provided to questions submitted by the National Post. Some have been edited for length. For additional questions, and the full responses, visit nationalpost.com and look for Online Extras.

Q Can Canada meet its Kyoto commitments by 2012? If so, how?

Michael Ignatieff Canada must stay committed to the Kyoto process and do what it can to meet the 2012 targets, but time is now desperately short if what that means is changing the way Canadian industry works, to not only stop growth in carbon emissions, but actually roll it back to 1990 levels.

The Conservative government has displayed a profound lack of leadership in this area. We must exercise leadership within the Kyoto process, and think beyond Kyoto, setting longer-term targets and implementing enforceable policies.

Q How much would you be willing to spend to meet the Kyoto commitments?

M.I. It's not about spending. It's about tough environmental leadership. This means moving beyond the Conservatives' short-sighted thinking and implementing serious measures to prevent the environment from being used as a free garbage dump.

I have proposed a comprehensive set of policies to work toward the Kyoto targets, but also move beyond them, reducing emissions to 50% below 1990 levels by 2050. My plan includes market-oriented measures on renewable energy generation, carbon sequestration and vehicle emissions standards. I have also proposed a cap-and-trade system for large emitters and a shift in the GST and excise taxes on fuels to reward cleaner fossil fuels while penalizing dirtier ones. If we implement tough market-oriented regulations, big spending is unnecessary.

Q How long do you feel Canada should maintain its troops in Afghanistan?

M.I. I supported the extension of the Afghanistan mission originally put forward by the Liberal government to February, 2009. At the time of the vote of in the House of Commons on this issue, I made it clear that my support of the extension was conditional on the Harper government maintaining the original balance of the mission envisioned by the Liberal government of the day: providing humanitarian aid, ensuring human security and facilitating reconstruction. This has to remain a balanced mission. We can and should be contributing more to the reconstruction and humanitarian efforts to get the country back on its feet.

I do not support an open-ended mission. By 2009, Canada will have been in Afghanistan for seven years and I believe we should then hand the torch over to our NATO partners and to the increasingly able Afghan security forces. We must plan for that transition. We can return home with our heads held high, confident we have fulfilled our moral promise to the Afghan people, as well as our commitment to the democratically-elected Afghan government and to our international allies.

Q Would you limit the activities of the troops to a non-combat role?

M.I. We all recognize this is a very difficult mission, for our troops and for all Canadians. However, eliminating the human security component of the mission misses an important part of the peace-building equation: We can't build schools or hospitals unless the Afghan people are safe in their own country. Moreover, Canada is part of a team in Afghanistan with a mandate from the UN, and we can only ask our NATO allies to do what we are willing to do ourselves. We need to continue to work with our international partners, and do more on the humanitarian and development aspects of the mission.


More on link

 

[couchcommander]

Except our politicians. Backed by an army of bureaucrats and researchers, governments are systematically preparing to shut down the engines of economic progress in the name of environmentalism.

That's really amusing, especially considering it was 8 years ago. If only they hadn't shut down our economy in the name of environmentalism.... oh, wait...

: - the "left" may have some funny ideas and even funnier ways of conveying them, but no one is as good at exaggeration and hyperbole as the "right"

 

[Kirkhill]

CC

Keep in mind that it is the Liberals you are talking about here.  The secret to Liberal success was to engage all those activism inclined progressives of the left in order to create an "army" of supporters.  The leadership however, as noted elsewhere, were nothing if not pragmatists.  Some would suggest duplicitous pragmatists.  Engage the activists to win power at the ballot box so as to dispense favours to those that could actually do them some good.

Their problem now is that the progressive activists are now being hived off to the powerless NDP and the "real" power base is becoming comfortable with the new pragmatist currrently in office.

If you expected the Liberals to accomodate the activist agenda after almost a century of , in the words of many, "campaigning from the left and governing from the right" you were sorely mistaken.

The Liberals no more wanted a revolution in affairs than did the Conservatives.  They just managed to co-opt the radicals long enough to keep them from raising the Bloody Red Rag.

Cheers.  ;D

 

[Rodahn]

Al Gore vs Arithmetic..... Isn't that an oxymoron??????

 

[couchcommander]

If you expected the Liberals to accomodate the activist agenda after almost a century of , in the words of many, "campaigning from the left and governing from the right" you were sorely mistaken.

Indeed, i expected them in their traditional way to stay overwhelmingly mainstream with a hint of a social progressive tilt, and a conservative fiscal and monentary policy. If you're going to get stuck living in a capitalist world, better make a good run of it. I'm a socialist but that doesn't stop me from owning property, stocks, and suscribing to the western way of life.

Like any "Liberal" change however, it really wasn't going to amount to much (keep your expectations low, you will occasionally be pleasantly surprised by politicians). The fact that after more than a decade of Liberal rule the conservatives are upstaging the Liberals in terms of Justice and, in some aspects, environment stewardship (there are serious problems, but its certainly a start) is a testament to this. The fact the conservatives are able to have a bugdet surplus is also a testament to Liberal rule however (yes Mr.Majoor, I do attribute the surplus to the Liberals, not how the moons where aligned or any other such right wing hyperbole ). But, thats another thread.

 

[Kirkhill]

... If you're going to get stuck living in a capitalist world, better make a good run of it. I'm a socialist but that doesn't stop me from owning property, stocks, and suscribing to the western way of life. ....
.

Who's stuck?  Utopia is nowhere to be found.  ;D  I enjoy my reality.  How are you making out in creating yours?

 

[couchcommander]

How are you making out in creating yours?

The wheels are a turn'in

 

[muskrat89]

President Bush on Global Warming: http://www.transbuddha.com/mediaHolder.php?id=1147&pID=1143716

;D

 

[Klc]

Al Gore vs Arithmetic..... Isn't that an oxymoron??????

Closer to juxtaposition, IMHO....

 

[exsemjingo]

Closer to juxtaposition, IMHO....

I'm the one who said it, so I guess I should explain.  In the starting point of this tangent, Al Gore makes an argument that is not just subjectively wrong, not just wrong when examined objectively, but that is wrong by definition.

Read post #1, and you will do this: ???

 

[a_majoor]

I have read the Nicholas Stern "report" about global warming. The prediction of more extreme weather being caused by global warming is a good warning that this (like so much else) is not science. (BBC report here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6093396.stm)

Weather is caused by temperature gradients, so if the Earth is getting warmer, then the differential between the tropics and arctic becomes lesser. Just as a ball rolls faster down a steeper hill, heat energy will move faster between greater, not lesser temperature gradients.

Just another warning sign that people really should stay in their lanes. An economist shouldn't step into climactic science, especially if they are tripped up by high school physics.............

 

[George Wallace]

It is because of the 'Economists' fearmongering in the field of 'Global Warming' and the environment, that we are seeing such outrageous prices in fuel.  It was the fearmongering that the environmentalists carried out during the summer that caused the rise in gas prices, saying that we would run out of oil and that we would be facing oil shortages.  Our Reserves held and in fact we had some major finds of large oil deposits.  All money out of our pockets.  Now we are approaching winter and our gas prices are on average twenty cents less than they were this summer.  A great time to have Shares in the Energy Sector.

We have seen no rise in the ocean levels.  The polar ice caps are in fact a little larger than last year. 

Fearmongering is all these people are doing.  A great cause for the NDP (Jack is in a private session with Steven this morning to discuss the new environmental Bill.).

 

[rregtc-etf]

I'm not a scientist or an economist, however I have been in a closed room where one person is smoking a cigarette and in a closed room where several people are smoking.  My point is this, historical only the US and Western European economies have been smoking, now China and India are lighting up.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that 6 billion Asians driving around in SUV's and going to the mall can't be good for the environment.  It would be interesting to see how things turn out n 50 years, everyone laughs at 1950's era film of school children diving for cover under their school desks at that time Soviet nuclear missiles were the threat.  The long term result was a nuclear arsenal reduction by the S.A.L.T missile treaties .   I wonder how the eggheads will solve global warming.
:-X 8) ^-^

 

[a_majoor]

Do the eggheads need to? Between 1100 and 1400 AD the Vikings lived and farmed in Greenland and Labrador. The climate was obviously warmer than it is today (by archeological records and inferenced from documents from that time period), yet there was no record of mass floods, droughts, violent weather or anything else suggested in this "report".

I suppose Nicholas Stern is going to suggest the Vikings were emitting vast quantities of CO2, but somehow stopped doing so in the 1400's, just in time for the Little Ice Age.

Fear mongering is right

 

[George Wallace]

Lowell Green just updated his "Hurricane Report".  Everyone should take note.  For the past eight weeks of Hurricane Season, there have been no signs of Hurricanes.

 

[Old Guy]

Damned hurricanes!  Don't they know they're supposed to be bigger, meaner, and more destructive than ever before?

I suppose the blasted things are milling around in the South Atlantic, playing Tropical Storm games.

Doesn't God read the danged "Global Warming" script?


jim