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DrumBeat: December 14, 2007
Posted by Leanan on December 14, 2007 - 10:23am
Records aren’t what they used to be. And I am not talking about the steroid stuff. Just take those old records off the shelf because there may not be a new record for oil in 2008. If you like records oil traders will have to live in the past. Year after year, oil has made record highs but this year, it’s not that likely. Every year since 2003, oil has broken the record high set the year before. This has been so common in this era of energy that new highs every year for many traders are just a given. Yet in the year ahead, unless we get a real cold winter or some unusual geo-political event, I doubt that the record high we established in 2007 will be broken in 2008.
Scientists take 2007's temperature
The annual temperature for 2007 across the contiguous United States is expected to be near 54.3 degrees Fahrenheit -- making the year the eighth warmest since records were first begun in 1895, according to preliminary date from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.Worldwide, temperatures were also in record territory. The global surface temperature for 2007 is on pace to be the fifth warmest since those records were first started in 1880, the report said.
Bribery probes seen changing oil services business
A raft of government bribery investigations launched into U.S. oilfield companies is likely to spur reform in the industry, but will also preoccupy top executives and slow business in regions such as West Africa.
Iraqi oil exceeds pre-war output
Iraqi oil production is above the levels seen before the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).The IEA said Iraqi crude production is now running at 2.3 million barrels per day, compared with 1.9 million barrels at the start of this year.
Green Christmas can be hard to achieve
Dave Kerr of Albuquerque, N.M., hand-carves furniture made of wood from plantation trees — not virgin and never ever endangered ones. But rather than an emission-free reindeer-guided sleigh, Kerr climbs aboard a polluting plane or into his gas-guzzling car to deliver a sack full of presents to his family sprawled across three states."It's a hard time of year to be green," the 40-year-old says.
Carbon cuts a must to halt warming-US scientists
There is already enough carbon in Earth's atmosphere to ensure that sea levels will rise several feet (meters) in coming decades and summertime ice will vanish from the North Pole, scientists warned on Thursday.To mitigate global warming's worst effects, including severe drought and flooding, people must not only cut current carbon emissions but also remove some carbon that has collected in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, they said.
"We're a lot closer to climate tipping points than we thought we were," said James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "If we are to have any chance in avoiding the points of no return, we're going to have to make some changes."
Agriculture: the price of adaptation
One of the great gifts of crisis is supposed to be the way it helps sort out the difference between what’s essential and what’s not. As we move deeper into the crisis of industrial civilization, that particular gift is likely to arrive in horse doctor’s doses. Those who insist that the first priority in an age of declining petroleum production is finding some other way to fuel a suburban SUV lifestyle, or who hope to see some favorite technology – the internet, say, or space travel – privileged in the same way, risk finding out the hard way that other things come first.
The price of oil is approaching US$100 a barrel, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is accumulating faster than the most pessimistic scenarios are predicting, anthropogenic climate change is occurring. The recognition that the world's scientists, diplomats and media gathered at the Bali climate-change summit are arguing over - the necessity of moving beyond dependency on a fossil-fuelled, carbon-emission-based global economy - is becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
Soaring energy costs fuel retail sales
Soaring energy costs helped fuel a record jump in wholesale inflation and an unexpectedly strong gain in retail sales, government reports showed Thursday, sending mixed signals about the state of the economy.The figures come as consumers struggle to get a fix on their financial future and economists scrutinize statistics, searching for signs of recession or resiliency. The latest economic data hinted at a bit of both.
Syria faces subsidy crunch as oil exports drop
Syria runs on cheap gas oil but can no longer afford to subsidise the fuel whose sulphurous fumes pervade the traffic-clogged streets of Damascus. State finances are already strained by depleting oil reserves that turned Syria into a net oil importer this year.Economists say delays in tackling the subsidy burden when the economy was in better shape have made the problem worse.
Analysts Warn of Fuel Surplus Near-Term in China
Analysts are warning that the Chinese domestic market could experience an oversupply of fuel in the near future due to significant increases in crude throughput in December, after processing growth in November failed to meet market expectations.
New Campaign: 'No New Taxes Means No New Bridges'
There's a long list of needed repairs, a shortage of money to pay for them and a new campaign to raise the gas tax.
Climate Change Drying Up Mountains in Western US
Barnett studies snowpack at high altitudes in the Western United States and estimates the region's snow accumulation decreased an average of 20 percent between 1950 and 1999.Only about one quarter of this decrease can be reliably explained by natural temperature variations. Computer modeling shows the remainder is "a slam dunk" attributable to human activity, said Barnett.
About 50 percent of the fresh water consumed by people worldwide comes from mountains, so the rate at which snowpack is disappearing is worrying, said Daniel Fagre, an ecologist who works for the US Geological Survey in Glacier National Park in Montana.
The Peak Oil Crisis: The Times Drops The First Shoe
For over 25 years now, nobody in America has had to think much about oil. It was cheap, hardly taxed at all (by European standards), and available in unlimited quantities. In the last few years, this has started to change with gasoline circa $3 a gallon, oil in the $90s and, thanks to the ethanol craze, food prices going through the roof. Our newspapers are starting to take notice. The problem has become too big to ignore.
IEA, OPEC differ on 2008 oil demand outlook
OPEC and major oil consumers on Friday presented sharply diverging views on the prospects for world oil demand next year as fallout from the credit crunch clouds the economic outlook.The gap between forecasts from OPEC and the International Energy Agency underscores the reluctance of the producer group to raise output formally even after a surge in oil prices to a record high near $100 last month.
Chinese Bid for Alaskan Gas Pipeline Opposed
Alaska's proposed natural gas pipeline will not be used for exporting gas outside of North America, the state's congressional delegation vowed this week.Alaska's senators and congressman said they would do everything in their power to keep the contract from going to Sinopec ZPEB, a joint venture of two oil-industry companies backed by the Chinese government. U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, who sits on the China-U.S. Interparliamentary Conference, said he would pass on the message to his counterparts in Beijing.
Тhe Real World: Global energy transformed
The other trend taking place with net oil exporters is the negative feedback loop. The higher the price of oil, the more oil exporting economies boom, thereby stimulating their domestic demand. This leads to falling net exports, and even higher prices. According to a recent report by Lehman Brothers Inc, OPEC countries will match rival China in global oil demand growth through 2008 and beyond. It is this rising demand from oil exporting countries and major consuming countries that may offset the Saudi increases.
FOGL Uncovers 10 Billion Barrel Potential in Falklands
Falkland Oil and Gas Limited (FOGL) reveals encouraging results from the controlled source electromagnetic (CSEM) survey with positive CSEM anomalies indicating the possible presence of trapped hydrocarbons in excess of 10 billion barrels equivalent (mean, unrisked).
Biofuel venture reaps growing benefits from "diesel tree"
A Chinese energy company in the southwest province of Guizhou is awaiting its first harvest of more than 13,500 hectares of a "diesel tree", which will yield 15,000 tons of biodiesel oil for the energy-thirsty country.
CARBON projects to bury CO2 are caught between a rock and a hard place as the concluding Bali climate change talks keep them dangling.
Gore makes Nashville home more 'green'
Al Gore, who was criticized for high electric bills at his Tennessee mansion, has completed a host of improvements to make the home more energy efficient, and a building-industry group has praised the house as one of the nation's most environmentally friendly.The former vice president has installed solar panels, a rainwater-collection system and geothermal heating. He also replaced all incandescent lights with compact fluorescent or light-emitting diode bulbs -- even on his Christmas tree.
Oil at $100 resurfaces as demand estimates climb
The demand for oil is expected to beat forecasts for next year driven by China and the Middle East, raising the prospect that fuel prices could head back towards $100 a barrel if supplies remain at their current levels.According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Paris-based energy watchdog, global demand for oil in 2008 will grow by 2.3 per cent, or 2.1 million barrels of fuel a day as the world's emerging economies continue to thrive.
OPEC raises estimate for oil demand growth in 2008
OPEC on Friday raised its estimate for world oil demand growth in 2008, owing to fast-growing demand for transport and industrial fuel in developing countries, but kept unchanged its forecast for world oil demand this year.
Senate set to OK fuel economy boost
The Senate appeared set to approve a trimmed-back energy bill that will bring higher-gas mileage cars and SUVs into showrooms in the coming decade and fill their tanks with ethanol.
Spanish gas consumption hits all-time record
Spanish gas consumption hit an all-time daily high on Thursday because of high demand from electricity producers and increased domestic use due to low temperatures, network operator Enagas said on Friday.At 1,803 gigawatt hours (gwh), demand was 9 percent higher than last winter's peak of 1,662 (gwh) hours on Jan. 30.
Conoco backs off $1 billion Alaska spending
The budget was prepared in the fall, before the Legislature raised oil tax rates, said Jim Bowles, Conoco's Alaska president.So although the company's top brass authorized $1 billion for drilling and other Alaska oil field work, Conoco now must re-evaluate all its projects in light of the tax increase, Bowles said.
Is America the Villain in Bali?
Despite the scientific work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighting the urgency of deep and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. - along with Japan, Australia and Canada - has resolutely opposed a European push for the Bali delegates to discuss targeted emissions cuts. That opposition isn't surprising, because the Bush Administration has never hidden its opposition to mandatory cuts. But observers here say the U.S. obstructive role has been more egregious, stymieing attempts to craft meaningful action on everything from deforestation to measures to help developing nations manage their carbon output. "The U.S. has been fingered as the problem here - and they really are," says John Coequyt, climate adviser for Greenpeace.
As ice thins, so does Canada's polar bear population
Polar bears in Canada's Hudson Bay area are battling for survival, as climate change reduces the time they can hunt for food, warn environmentalists and locals in Churchill, the self-proclaimed polar capital of the world.
GOP Candidates Debate Climate Change
With the exception of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., global warming is an issue the Republicans rarely bring up on their own.
Climate skeptics say debate stifled
As Al Gore shows off his Nobel Peace Prize and world policy-makers hammer out a new strategy for saving the planet, climate change contrarians say they have been elbowed out of the debate. They say mainstream scientists have stifled healthy intellectual discourse by demonizing dissenters as oil industry lobbyists or lunatics.
UN climate talks inch towards compromise
The United States and European Union stepped back from confrontation Friday as global talks on climate change headed into extra time amid hopes they could still thrash out a compromise.
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A new Finance Round-Up has been posted at TOD:Canada.
A Rational Financial Panic
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/opinion/14krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=sl...
After the Money’s Gone
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 14, 2007
hey Jeffery,
I assume you read "Mish" as well as CR. They are daily reads for me.
D
It is uncanny how events continue to unfold as one would expect--basically following a script from "Peak Oil: The Movie."
I'm anxiously awaiting the musical version before I buy the DVD.
Can you sing and dance? :)
I just found out that the cliche "keeping up with the Jones"
was famous during the Roaring 20's.
And just where did Citi get $58 Billion to cover it's worthless SIV's?
http://www.peakoilblues.com/blog/?p=128
(3) Shopping habits will be hard to break and credit card debt will continue to mount. Many will be incredulous that their homes have not and will not increase in value in the upcoming year, so will continue to rack up consumer debt as if refinancing remains an option. They will believe other people’s houses go down in value, but not their own.
(4) Regardless of their current income, homeowners who begin to believe that their access to ATM home equity has actually stopped will suddenly notice how much more money they owe on their homes and feel dramatically poorer. It will be a shock to learn that even cutting away the “extravagant” spending will not bring their budgets into line. The distinction between “luxury” and “comfort” will be blurry and they will be shocked when forced to realize that “simple pleasures” like vacations or cell phones are “luxuries.” This sense will be pervasive and depressing to them. They will feel “out of it” in being unable to buy the latest “in thing.”
'An economic law of physics
By The Mogambo Guru'
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/IL15Dj02.html
...snip...'So I am looking at this Big, Big Problem (BBP) and how it looks like the whole thing is going to degenerate into real work, when I was saved by a little-known law of physics: "If at any time you find yourself doing a transfinite amount of work, the answer can be obtained by inspection'...snip...
'And if you want more proof that people don't have any money, from online.wsj.com we get the headline, "Surge in Auto-Loan Delinquencies Is Latest Trouble for the Economy'
'An interesting bit of trivia is that "car delinquencies are closely linked to the health of the economy", because the "typical delinquent borrower" made a reasonable, good-faith estimate of the future economy, and buying the car "seemed like a manageable payment". It turns out the economy did NOT turn out as expected, and now the borrower can't make the payment. Bad, Bad News (BBN)'
'With a little history thrown in ("That is the biggest one-month jump in at least eight years"), I will take this interesting bit of automotive trivia to bring up the fact that if you have to choose between your house or your car, a car is more important than a house, as you can live in your car, but you cannot drive your house to someplace looking for a job, or to the street outside of your parents' house where you can park and look so miserable day after day that they finally get embarrassed and agree to let you into their house where you can gradually take over after stuffing them both in a nursing home against their will.
So you get another house to live in, and you still have a car to drive!' :)
For myself, it is the other way around. I could walk to work, shopping, etc. But I must have the house.
Hi
With such a globally interconnected sandcastle tower of debt on debt it shouldn't take much of a shock , possibly like Mrs Murtze not buying that Christmas salad shooter, for dearest cousin Mildred, to cause even the fine porcelain vases in China to tumble off their great wall.
As you might easily discern, and with good reason, I am not the CR that DelusionaL mentions on his recommended financial reading list:)
CR
And the world dumping the USD won't help.
Russia to dump waning dollar - The world exodus continues
Russian oil firm Rosneft will follow the lead of Gazprom and LUKOIL to sell crude in rubles amid the ongoing depreciation of the dollar.
"Selling for rubles is much more attractive," Deputy Chief Executive Officer Leonid Fedun said on December 12.
Iran, the world's fourth most prolific oil exporter, has already abandoned the dollar, Iran's Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari said on December 9, describing the currency as unreliable.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=34978§ionid=3510213
Meanwhile the US dollar soars on the news....me thinks that currency markets aren't as simple as you think.
There's a point when there is a difference between being an optimist for mankind, and a shill for the authority of a particular empire that exploits optimism to steal, kill and pollute.
The United States dollar is the form of capitalist authority, and capitalists and their banks across the world are pulling out all ethical stops to preserve it, instead of investing all they have in the available world-saving technologies that you laud for 15 minutes until the next one comes along. Who does this state of affairs benefit?
There's a point when there is a difference between being an optimist for mankind, and a shill for the authority of a particular empire that exploits optimism to steal, kill and pollute.
Bravo. Thanks for telling it like it is. Now if you could just take him out back and beat the daylights out of him.
right, an euro is only worth $1.44 with the "soaring" dollar
Meanwhile the US dollar soars on the news
And you see this over the last 10 year graph trend?
me thinks that currency markets aren't as simple as you think.
You can thinks whatever you want about your own skills.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners
Psychology - Presented to David Dunning of Cornell University and Justin Kreuger of the University of Illinois, for their modest report, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments".
It'll be a rocky rest of the year in money. So much to hide, so little time.
As I said yesterday, of course the new Fed plan won't work, it can't. And they know that very well. It just buys them time to throw more money at the banks. It's called wealth transfer. That TAF was already a strange attempt to make the discount window more attractive, and now they do one better: they buy paper at the value it had prior to September 2006. Will the Fed now buy people's upside down homes at that value too? Right!
And Citigroup takes its SIVs on the balance sheet, after "pruning" them down from $83 billion to $49 billion. Wonder where the rest of that body lies buried. The move also effectively kills the SuperSIV that Paulson was concocting (and couldn't pull off). That frees up time for even more of these wealth transfer schemes. Someone will pay for all this. You are a prime candidate.
For more on all this gracefulness, see the Finance Round Up.
Stoneleigh,
These roundups are a lot of work and I just wanted to say thank you. I'm having lunch with a friend who is not financially sophisticated and we're going to be reading the links in the most recent roundup. Another associate yesterday did some reading and he is looking into turning his 401k into precious metals. The world is headed for a real mess, but perhaps I get to cushion some people close to me thanks to your editing efforts.
You're welcome, from both of us :)
Me too. The financial round-ups are the first thing I look for. I'm legal conservator for my elderly mother--and I use the round-ups to help educate attorneys and the court on appropriate financial management.
Over 100 Prominent Scientists Warn UN: Attempting To Control Climate Is ‘Futile’
Wow, let's dissect that a bit.
This sounds like quite a bit of rhetoric from those that would have to change their behavior to reduce CO2 emissions. In particular, the words "non-polluting gas" and "essential to plant photosynthesis" are key must say phrases , intended to make our CO2 emisions sound almost benevolent... i.e., 'all of the trees, forests, and plants will be so much more lush and wonderful'.
"future prosperity" depends directly on the measure of prosperity, and refers in this case to profits.
A more appropriate definition would take into account that we need a planet that can support 7 billion people, and climate change may decrease that support ability.
The thread of truth here is that it may indeed be impossible for us to decrease our consumption. One would have to look to historical events where global consumption of resources were reduced, if there are any.
You missed the point all together.
"The scientists, many of whom are current and former UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) scientists,"
There are the VERY scientists who you people have used to claim there was a "consensus".
These guys have obviously had enough of the nonsense and have decided to make their views public.
EU, US in climate deal standoff - CNN.com
Rosa said the European delegation said it is not "blackmailing" Washington, ... that if no deal is completed in Bali, it cannot be built upon in Hawaii. ...
edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/12/13/climate.conference/index.html - 71k - Cached - Similar pages
4TH LD: EU threatens to boycott U.S.-led climate meet if no ...
The European Union on Thursday threatened to boycott a U.S.-led meeting of ... at the Hawaii meeting, Rosa only said he does "not mean to blackmail" the ...
www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8TGJVQG1&show_article=1 - 62k -
If it is not what American wants then it must be "blackmail". Sounds like reverse psychology since the blackmail is actually coming from the US.
Okay, let's take a look at the names...
Out of 100 so-called scientists, only four (4) "FOUR" had any connection with the IPCC, and their connection was "reviewer", whatever that means.
Here are the names...
* Tom V. Segalstad - geologist
* Richard S. Courtney - Technical Editor for CoalTrans International(!)
*Vincent Gray - Coal Researcher
*Madhav Khandekar - meteorologist
But you don't need to believe me, check the names yourself.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/963
Notice, no climatologists whatsoever.
Always, check the source and follow the money.
From reviewer to prominent scientist in one easy step.
"Reviewer" is someone who reads the report - checks it for errors, makes suggestions; a proofreader, basically - and not someone who writes the report.
Assuming you're correct, I would categorize the linked story as intentionally deceptive, and possibly outright lying.
Not only is it deeply misleading to describe 4 as "many of" 100, it's at least as misleading to imply that they were authors of the report, rather than reviewers. That kind of deception appears to be an attempt to give people the false impression that the IPCC authors have changed their minds, when in fact these are simply different people.
More importantly they are not even atmospheric scientists. Meterologists don't typically have enough of an education to qualify for reviewing climate papers.
Give me their names and I'll give you the list of checks cut from Exxon and Chevron. You know how many 'scientists' are in their bankroll??
The phrases are right out of the Exxon marketing pamphlets that go to their nonprofit beneficiaries.
The word SUSTAINABILITY is forbidden to be uttered by any Exxon employee, not in correspondence or email.
Good job spreading their message around jrwakefield. You probably don't even know you are doing it. I suppose you have a little cognitive dissonance. Trying to save your SUV lifestyle are you??
"Give me their names and I'll give you the list of checks cut from Exxon and Chevron."
Dr. Richard Lindzen. Go ahead, show me the cheque he got. BTW, their names are all at the end of their letter did not not read it?
Also, as I have pointed out, with the reference from Newsweek, that the total amount spent supporting AGW is $50 BILLION over the past 20 years, not including donations to organizations like the Suzuki Foundation.
Interesting and typical, again, you attempt to discredit the messenger not the message.
There is nothing wrong with discrediting a messenger when they are paid to defy science which holds polluting and economically bullying industries responsible for their products and their processes. This hasn't been a process with the intent of finding truth, but to cloud uncomfortable conclusions for long enough to cash in for as many fiscals as possible.
Calling this somewhat Homogenized collection of nuanced conclusions reached by a wide range of scientists 'Groupthink' while turning a willfully blind eye to the cynical anti-science and demonstrable Groupthink of the FF Industries and 'Professional Deniers' in this process is intellectually dishonest. I'm sure there are skeptics who arrive at their position sincerely, but I still have to wonder how much their ideas have been manipulated by the obvious vested interests that are working hard to avoid their responsibility.
Bob Fiske
You of course have to prove such messengers are paid to be denialists. Implying by drive-by-smear is no proof. I'm most certainly NOT paid by anyone to post here.
Also, the issue of who has what vested interest goes both ways. How much vested interest do people like Gore have to keep the message going? What will happen to them if things fall apart?
It goes both ways.
The question on everybody's mind: Could you be paid NOT to post here?
You posted a crap article. It's been ripped to shreds. Yet you nit-pick exactly how it's being ripped to shreds. Surely you have better things to do with your time.
I agree that there is too much "kill the messenger" going on here. The attractive thing about TOD is that it is usually more sophisticated than that. JRWakefield is doing a good job stimulating discussion on an important issue.
Following the link to the Canada Free Press article, then to the first paper by Schwartz quoted as overwhelming "evidence", the following statement appears in the conclusions of the paper:
While Schwartz' paper is interesting and probably somewhat thought-provoking to climate modelers, his results were based on a very high-level approach without all the nitty-gritty detail in the climate models. He also de-trended the data to tease out a simpler conclusion. Using this paper as a basis for eliminating concerns about AGW is ridiculous, but the paper is an interesting contribution to the field. If the signatories to the letter are using this as the basis for their position, they have a very weak position.
I disagree. While I haven't read every post he's made, I've seen none that points us to any legitimate science. Anyone clinging to the appeal to authority really does not belong in a serious discussion of a problem of this enormity, do they? All that says is, "There are dissenters!" Well... duh!
All I want from any skeptic is science. They have little or none to offer, and the preponderance is such that short of a smoking gun, even that little means almost nothing.
JRW is doing a disservice to his kind. People are going to die because people like him either lied or were fooled into believing the line fed them by Exxon and the Bush Administration. In many areas of life that is considered negligent manslaughter, manslaughter, negligent homicide or homicide. This is not hyperbole. I am coming to a point.
The weakest point in the armor of the denial crowd is this: they are asking for proof before action. In no other area of endeavor is scientific certainty required before action. There is precious little scientific certainty to be had, for those that actually understand scientific process. Yet, in this one instance, they demand a level of rigor that is not only far beyond the standard, but is, in fact, impossible. This begs the question: Why?
The question begs an answer: Because those intent on creating dissent stated in writing that their aim was to do as they had done with cigarettes: create doubt to prevent action against that which they knew to be true: cigarette smoking kills. This is murder, is it not? Knowingly and intentionally creating a product that entraps the customer armed with the knowledge that it will kill a certain percentage of the customers.
Is the GW debate any different? No. They said so. We have seen the memos. And we have seen politicians gut scientific reporting without cause and without the least expertise. That is, they were not qualified to do so.
So, they ask us to disbelieve a pile of evidence so overwhelming as to swamp almost every other issue of public policy ever discussed. Few public policy issues have had the level and extent of scientific investigation that GW has had, yet people, organizations and nations have acted. Without absolute proof. It is, in fact, what politicians are paid to do: take the disparate bits of information, imperfect as they are, and intuit what is best to be done. It is, as earlier alluded, the rare occasion when they have absolute proof. For, if every issue were scientifically proven, there would be no need for decision makers. Politicians would quite simply not exist.
So, no, this gentleman is not stimulating conversation, he is delaying action.
Then you have not understood a single thing I have written. I have made my points perfectly clear many times in other posts. What you have erected is a straw man argument that does not, in any way, portray my postion. I'm NOT a denier, I'm SKEPTICAL. I see the evidence for warming. I see the evidence that we are some cause of it (But the degree is debatable). What I do NOT see is any evidence at all of the alarmist dier predictions. People a priori jump to the worst case scenario as the MOST LIKELY scenario when there is no evidence to support that. I have used sea levels as the prime example of this many times. As yet NO ONE has been able to show any change in the rate. If the current rate of sea level rise does not change, and hence the dire predictions cannot come true, then AGW theory is in SERIOUS trouble, do you agree?
If that change is not there, how can the predictions of several feet in 30-50 years justified? You say I present no evidence (which I have), but it's OK for the supporters of the AGW alarmism to present predictions with no evidence. That's hypocracy.
I never said don't do any action. I've said that in some areas there is not enough evidence yet to make one claim or another, so the ONLY option left is to wait for more evidence to see if there is a trend one way or another on SPECIFIC issues.
I did say there is action we can do, such as those that will also address PO, but I also said that there are actions that if CO2 is not the main cause of climate change, will do more harm that good in the long run, such as carbon sequestering. I've been very clear that CS will waste huge amounts of both resouces and money to do something that may have no effect.
Carbon trading is another I'm against as all that does is play Robin Hood stealing money from rich countries to put into the pockets of poorer countries (such as India who's industry pocket the credits they get from the EU) and make middle men rich in the process, doing NOTHING to stem carbon emissions.
I've also stated that there could be severe economic consequenses to curbing CO2 emssions, as the new Australian Prime Minister just found out and is now retracting from curbing emissions. (because of a 30% increase in e- prices).
So your generalizations do not apply to me.
Your statements have been a mass of contradictions, attacks on straw men, etc. You have NOT been "perfectly clear".
Best Hopes for Your Presence Elsewhere,
Alan
Only if you fraudulently include all money given to anything related to "climate" or "alternative energy" as "spent supporting AGW". link
That would be highly dishonest, of course, but your link today shows that that should hardly be surprising.
Dr. Richard Lindzen. Go ahead, show me the cheque he got
Will this do?
Ross Gelbspan, journalist and author, wrote a 1995 article in Harper's Magazine which was very critical of Lindzen and other global warming skeptics. In the article, Gelbspan reports Lindzen charged "oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; [and] his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels and a speech he wrote, entitled 'Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,' was underwritten by OPEC."
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_Lindzen
That will do quite nicely. I do enjoy seeing dissenting opinions on this site w.r.t AGW, Peak Oil etc. But it is amazing how often those opinions can be pulled to pieces like a ratty old sweater. Thanks!
My ratty sweater has a lot of pockets with lots of articles stashed in them.
Ratty
Well, you nicely fell into my trap.
Have you even thought of actually emailing Lindzen to see if these alegations are true? I did, last spring. He categorically denies getting a dime from any such source. He sends out a stock statement:
So what we have is a clear smear attempt on the WEB that is totally baseless and absolute lies. This is what dogmatic positions do in an effort to discredit someone who challenges the orthodoxy.
Thanks for taking the bait.
Wakefield is ticked off because he believes he is unemployed due to his personal opinion on climate change. He alluded to that a few days ago when he said someone was fired for not buying in to climate change "dogma".
WHAT????!!! Where the F@#%$# Did you get that from? I'm employed, never been otherwise, in a field that has NOTHING to do with climate science.
I find it simply amazing that people like you will smear someone without knowing the slightest thing about the person.
That is grossly dishonest.
Unless you can prove your allegations I HIGHLY recommend you stop with the unwarranted insinuations.
I agree.
Now let's get back on to the topic of your bullshit dishonest link that supports your obviously well informed anti-AGW stance. I hear you have good evidence that proves the scientific community wrong.
If not you then name the names you claim have lost jobs because of not buying into climate change "dogma".
Stay tuned, working on getting this list from reliable source.
This letter is just another piece of disinformation from the professional denialist camp. Like all good propaganda, there's just enough truth in the letter to hide the falsehoods.
These folks are correct in one sense, we aren't trying to "control" natural climate change. Climate has been changing slowly for millions of years. We are in the midst of a long term period of Ice Ages, but, just now (meaning, for the past 10,000 years), things have warmed enough so that man's invention of agriculture has been able to take hold. Were the climate to follow a natural course, Ice Age conditions can be expected to return eventually, but the best estimate is not for thousands of years. The problem is that our climate is no longer "natural" as we have changed some basic parameters. Thus we are in the midst of a situation which is like an experiment without any control of the result, somewhat like playing Russian Roulette. So far, we have not seen many life threatening results from our "experiment", but will we survive?
There are quite a few well known denialist scientists on that list. They have been shouting at the top of their well paid lungs for years, and they continue to do so, even when shown to be wrong. I've had some interaction with Bob Carter from Australia and he refuses to admit that the data he uses in his Congressional testimony is wrong. Vincent Gray is in the same category, judging by his writings. But, even better are the 8 people listed as "economists". Then too, there are the engineering folks, who aren't likely to understand climate.
E. Swanson
I'm going to guess that a large percentage of those 100 scientists can be found here:
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php
These three I don't even need to check. They are well-known in the anti-GW charade, and in taking money for their efforts.
David R. Legates
Richard S. Lindzen
S. Fred Singer
I checked the rest:
Clark, Deming, Essex, v. Gray, W. Gray, Hayden, G Idso, S Idso, Priem, Illarianov, Jawarowski, Karlen, Kininmonth, Lupo, McKitrick, Morner, Patterson, Sharp, Singer, Spencer and Wojick all present and accounted for.
"Richard S. Lindzen" and you know this for a fact that he recieves money from Big Oil to be a denier?
What I dislike most about you, and "deniers" in general, is that you are dishonest. Look at the phrasing of your question. Is it a legitimate question? No, it is not. Did Exxon or anyone else write a contract with him saying explicitly that was his job? Of course not. How could they? That would reveal all too clearly their intent as enunciated clearly in their own memos. You know this, so you phrase your question to get a "no" that is not a reflection of the truth.
Has Lindzen been paid BECAUSE he is a denier and encouraged by said money and/or other direct or indirect means to BE a denier? Yes.
Your dishonesty is further shown by the question being asked at all. If you had followed the exxonsecrets link you would know the answer already. I cannot copy and paste from there to here, so you'll have to follow the link.
Suffice to say he has been known to consult with oil companies for $2,500 a day. Follow the link, do the search, then post an honest response.
Note the post further up where Lindsen himself categorically denies these accusations. He NEVER got a dime.
But I suspect you wont belive him either will you? "Of course he will deny it!" I hear you saying. So this begs an important question. If I promote an incorrect allegation against you about anything that is not true, how do you defend youself? How do you convince people who WANT be believe these alligations? They will just say to you "Of course you would deny them! But I don't believe you!"
So since Lindzen has not gotten any money for his "denial" stance, how does he counter all these lies about such on the web?
And, thanks to you for taking my bait.
The "peer reviewed" study was reviewed by geologists. It didn't cast doubt on anthropogenic global warming. It claimed the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 was less than climatologists generally believed. It will be interesting to see how the study stands up, but I'm skeptical, especially considering we already have more warming by 2007 than they claim will happen by 2100.
The "100 scientists" trick is basically the same thing the Discovery Institute does to put a veneer of scientific credibility to their evolution denialism. It is just an "argument from authority", hoping that the average unscientific citizen doesn't understand the difference between a climatologist and a meteorologist or the difference between a working scientist and a senile old obsessive like Dyson.
And uing Inhofe's web site as a source is especially hilarious, though it is a good reference for any given state of denialist propaganda. Five years ago all you could find there was "evidence" there was no warming at all. Remember the denialist creed:
1. The earth is not warming
2. If it is warming, it is not man's fault.
3. If it is man's fault, the earth is not warming very much
4. If it is warming very much, a warmer world won't be bad
5. If it is bad, there's nothing you can do about it
Yes, Inhofe's website (or at least it did the last time I went through it) actually list research papers that support AGW -- the problem is naysayers are not scientific thinkers and cannot read through the papers themselves so they depend biased analysis -- like Fox News reports that the Earth is not actually warming because NASA revised the warmest year for the US (of course, the naysayers here believe the US is the world just like they believe the Sun revolves around the Earth).
Did you not read the article?
"The letter was signed by renowned scientists such as Dr. Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists; Dr. Reid Bryson, dubbed the “Father of Meteorology”; Atmospheric pioneer Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, formerly of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute; MIT atmospheric scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen; UN scientist Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand; French climatologist Dr. Marcel Leroux of the University Jean Moulin; World authority on sea level Dr. Nils-Axel Morner of Stockholm University; Physicist Dr. Freeman Dyson of Princeton University; Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Poland; Paleoclimatologist Dr. Robert M. Carter of Australia; Former UN IPCC reviewer Geologist/Geochemist Dr. Tom V. Segalstad, head of the Geological Museum in Norway; and Dr. Edward J. Wegman, of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. "
Well, can you link to the GW research papers published in peer-reviewed journals that each of these scientists have submitted?
It's not in their letter. But you can go to www.worldclimatereport.com as they do review published papers that do not support AGW theory.
Just to be a bit of a poop, jrwakefeild, I counted 90 not 'over 100' signatories, seems a bit of disingenuous reporting right from the opening.
And www.worldclimatereport.com uses some of the exact same language, word for word, in situations that indicate shared work, that the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a known project of the carbon industries does.
The same list of 30-40 skeptics gets recycled over and over again, in a perpetual effort to sow confusion and doubt. They are well known and are profiled by Wikipedia and SourceWatch. Of that small group, only a handful are active climatologists doing research and publishing in peer reviewed journals. The skeptics are far better at PR than they are at doing science.
Again GW is quantum physics … and your list doesn’t list any such people – but some from the Geological Museum you have ...
But there is an easier approach through Boyle-Marriott, though..
.. but sadly none of these understand the principles behind Boyle-Marriott's Law, a law you Mr Wake-up-field even never have heard of.
THE AGW 6-YEAR-OLD-TEST (!) Try this Mr Wake-up-field :
Mentally, remove all the earth’s atmosphere: then tell me, is it getting colder or warmer? (ANNUAL AVERAGE that is...)
Regardless of your answer to my mental test – obviously the opposite will happen if we “increase” the atmosphere … NO ?
Simpler test - cloudy nights in winter are warmer than cloudless ones.
"The current UN focus on "fighting climate change," as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems."
#6 - If its bad then we need to focus on adapting.
They are not saying its not real - just what to do about it. Adapting may be the best course.
But if American corporations intentionally spent the last 20 years preventing people from believing that it was happening because it was cheaper for THEM to adapt later than prevent earlier, then a crime was committed, perhaps the biggest crime since the white colonization of the New World. Early awareness would have meant damage claims to the US from the rest of the world: taxes, taxes, taxes. Throwing up your hands in the air and saying it's time to triage means Americans take care of their own guilty asses while the rest of the world burns.
In fact, corporations are required by law to maximize shareholder wealth, so they could have been sued by shareholders for NOT lobbying against climate change awareness.
Oh and you missed Chevrons meme communicated to THEIR non profit scientists.
Global Warming is good for the planet. It increases growth rates of plants and increases moisture.
That seemed to be in one of the missives that stated it is a harmless gas necessary to photosynthesis. Straight from Chevron, that.
Hilarious stuff if it wasn't so devastatingly awful for humanity. Did you catch the articles about houses being torn down along the Texas Coast because of the global ocean rise. The house owners are trying to figure out who to sue for their 'land taking.'
I would try Mother Nature, but I don't think she pays.
And you know for a FACT that the current changes there are due to sea level rising because of global warming and not the normal sea level changes that have been taking place?
Have a look at the DATA:
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_states.shtml?region=tx
Pick one and show us which one shows a change in rate due to climate change.
More Fear, Uncertainty and Disorder sowing from the denialists. Just because you can't pick a single event and say, "That is due to global warming" doesn't mean it isn't happening. Things are changing on average, but the amount of noise is sufficiently high and the system is complex enough that you can't pick a single event and say it is due to climate change. So just stop it already.
Then YOU make sure you say the VERY same thing to ANYONE who makes a 1 to 1 link between an event and climate change. I will hold you to dong that with anyone, not just those who object to the dogma.
Sodium is an essential mineral in the human diet but too much sodium can kill you. How much CO2 a plant can convert depends more on how much light it gets than the atmospheric concentration of CO2.
Thank you for concisely laying out what I call the "trenches" of the layered denialist defense. These trenches were set up to be manned by different varieties of "expert" and "patriot", each trench supporting the other by creating public confusion while logically contradicting each other. First the experts retreat from an advanced trench to a more reasonable one, while the ideologues stay behind awhile to keep the enemy busy.
These positions were worked out by experts in public opinion, with a goal in mind: No dissent against Big Business no matter what!
The day the experts abandon trench #4, in effect the corporations will be telling the guilty consumers of America: Now the world is a lynch mob come to take away your goodies, so you must stand with us and fight them until enough are killed off to accept that we've gotten away with our crime.
If the ideologues follow the Big Business experts into that monstrous final position #5, then they were always stooges. If they continue to deny that anything has gone wrong, then they were always fanatics of the capitalist religion. A fanatic will never accept that there was a crime to get away with.
The Degree of Knowledge (and Length of Observations) Required for 99.5% (rather than say 95%) of Scientists to Agree is so Great, that Human Understanding will Develop Far Past the Last Date for Effective Mitigation !
Best Hopes for Discerning the Delta between the Certainty Required for Massive, Expensive Changes in Public Policy (50%) and the Certainty Required for Absolute Scientific Consensus (99.98%)
Alan
This is the key point Alan is recognising. I'm not an expert in climatology (it's not my field of research and I don't try to push my expertise into areas where I can't read the research in an informed way) but the majority of views seems to be that the probability that AGW is NOT happening is significantly below the about 75% I'd say was a high enough level not to try and change human behaviour just in case.
They might well have a good point that, regardless of whether changing global human behaviour would have a beneficial effect, it ain't gonna happen because we're a screwed up species. Indeed, if I was in charge of a substantial public budget, I would put it towards researching ways my country could deal with AGW than with lobbying for agreements precisely because I think with so many vested interests it's unlikely to happen.
Incidentally, you might want to actually scrutinise some of the people signing the release. Dr Lubos Motl the ex-string physicist dislikes the idea of global organisations ideologoically and from that has derived "physics" reasons he dislikes AGW, most of which turn out to be wrong (which is understandable because his training is in purely mathematical physics). Unfortunately he tends to censor any blog comments which don't present him in a glowing light so these counter-arguments have to be found on other sites.
It's always tough to sort out the competing agendas, here.
Here's a line from the letter..
"We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation. "
I am fine with the first half, but the 'need to Generate Wealth and Promote Economic Growth' is a narrow way of expressing the course for solutions at best. As we've seen with a number of environmental issues, actually working the problems HAVE created jobs and boosted economies, for example the growth of the organic food industry after the many problems with pesticides and the quality of our diet were seen as too threatening to the big businesses that depended on selling their Sugar Cereals.. but when it's expressed that Generating Wealth IS the key to solving the problems, then I really have to wonder what is the Ideology behind the commentary.
Whether we can stop climate change shouldn't be a reason to continue throwing the offending matter up into the air.. for any number of Health, Environmental and Economic reasons.. just as we should ALSO be developing strategies for coping with the changes that look like they could be coming at us. Doing all that would be generating huge amounts of business.. just not Business as Usual.
Bob Fiske
The Arctic is ice free in 5 years.
This is proof that we have left the Holocene.
Civilization is not possible outside of the Holocene.
If Atlanta doesn't get this latest storm system....
http://www.infarmation.com.au/news/07/12/article13995.asp
GrainCorp stops share trading
14 Dec 2007
"Grain handler GrainCorp yesterday called a halt to trading of its shares for two days with analysts tipping that the company will announce a capital raising to help it get through cash flow problems resulting from the drought."
This is/was Australia's second largest grain mover I believe.
It was supposed to compete with the AWB.
Civilization is not possible outside of the Holocene.
Ok, this I'd like to see 'proof' of. Ok, other references, as 'proof' would be a 'wait and see' event.
The proof is that civilization has not existed outside the Holocene.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc, "Since that event-Civilization- followed this one-the Holocene, that event must have been caused by this one."
Post hoc ergo propter hoc-Latin for "after this, therefore because of this", is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) which states...
But in this case I believe that "proof" rests on those
who think that the Arctic is not going ice free and that we are not
leaving the Holocene.
And I say we are and have based on the Arctic Melt
we're seeing now.
Do you really want to play this game of risk?
"then I really have to wonder what is the Ideology behind the commentary."
And what is the Ideology behind the IPCC editors who not only reject conserns those very scientists in the IPCC have about the message, but order these scientists as to what they must say for the final report?
And what of the IPCC scientists who think the IPCC report is too conservative?
Why does this most recent report for policymakers not assess the probability for changes in sea level due to icesheet melting?
I have stated that I think volcanic activity has something to do with climate change (via ocean warming, and gas to some extent). here is a link to an article about the Greenland ice sheet. Seems there is at least one large volcanic hot spot under the ice sheet. They think that the melting and the "slipping" of the ice sheet into the sea might be caused or part of the slippage into the sea.(were it melts I believe). Fact not fiction
http://www.livescience.com/environment/071213-greenland-magma.html
I can't seem to be able to snip a part, the article is brief.
There has been denial that volcanic activity or magma has anything to do with climate change. I think that view must now be reexamined
Logic says no. How does a hot spot under Greenland affect anything beyond ice melt? It doesn't. If this hot spot exists and is affecting melt, then Greenland is just going to melt that much faster.
That hot spot would NOT cause surface melt, btw, so what is causing all the surface melt?
But it might cause increased melting at the ice:rock interface and explain some of the acceleration in glacier speed.
"scientists discovered a thin spot in the Earth’s crust under the northeast corner of the Greenland Ice Sheet"
"The corner of Greenland where the hotspot was found had no known ice streams, the rivers of ice that run through the main ice sheet and out to sea, until one was discovered in 1991. What exactly caused the stream to form was uncertain."
So this hotspot is not even correlated with the region where most of the melting and ice stream accelertion is occurring. Clearly hotspots don't explain the melting of the glacier from the top where water makes its way through fractures to the bottom.
Ice Loss Map
The citation of this article to fob off the climactic impact on Greenland's ice sheet is a bit rich. The volcanic hotspot has to EXPLAIN the melt and not just exist somewhere.
"And what of the IPCC scientists who think the IPCC report is too conservative?"
The evidence is supposed to sort it out. Otherwise political points of view are trumping the evidence. Since the allegation is that the report editors dictated to the scientists what was to be concluded, it is clear there is some sort of political agenda. In no other place in science would this be tolerated.
jrw -- so now you are saying that making an allegation proves that the IPPC report was clearly the result of a political agenda....?
Your conclusion does not follow at all from your premise: "Since the allegation...it is clear that...."
Once again, people have noted that this supposedly impressive collection of signatories is actually a collection of disgruntled ideologues and paid shills for the fossil fuels industry, and that there really is no substance to their allegations or to their very non-scientific discussions of climate change.
The individuals involved are motivated by money as paid shills, by ideology and by politics rather than by physics or science -- as has been pointed out.
Then you come along with a non sequitur which is absurd on the face of it to defend you position.
Why do you continue to post this obvious and thinly veiled, easily debunked propaganda?
"The IPCC, like any UN body, is political. The final conclusions are politically driven." Philip Stott, emeritus professor of bio-geography at the University of London
Yes. It is a politically motivated organization. Their editors told scientists what had to be in the reports.
Provide evidence that, for one, Richard Lindzen, got money to be a denier. Provide the link(s).
Richard Lindzen -
He is a Professor of Meteorology, OK... not much there.
However, he is sitting in the endowed chair entitled Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology.
He is being supported by a foundation created from the estate of Old Al, the fearless leader of General Motors for many (50?) years and took GM from a tiny company to the behemoth of the 1950's and '60's... he was in charge when GM destroyed the electric in-city mass transit routes.
Provide evidence that, for one, Richard Lindzen, got money to be a denier. Provide the link(s).
This is the kind of comment *I* had in mind when I talked about you changing the goalposts.
It seems easier for you to prove to the readers that you are not a paid shill. I look forward to copies of all tax forms that relate to you and copies of each deposit instrument into all bank accounts you control.
I don't know what their agendas are. This is an area where science has to look to politicians, and it's right to keep your eyes open and be sceptical. Both groups are said to have humans with human faults in their ranks, so mistakes will be made.. just make sure the criticisms are germane.
If the electrical inspector is telling you that 'your wiring poses a extreme fire hazard', do you ..
A) Correct his grammar
B) Insist that all the electricians in town agree on the problem before you consider accepting the diagnosis
C) Complain that there would be a chilling effect on your home budget if you were forced to make any substantial changes
D) Consider getting your wiring fixed.. even if it cost a lot and still didn't guarantee that your home would never burn..
LMAO !!!
So, so, so true !
Alan
The denialist replies, "But it's never burned down before!"
Also, the electrician has seen the cause/effect relationship of houses that have burned down that had bad wiring, I would wager.
On the other hand, one can build a new house... The planet? Um. no.
Nice analogy, but perhaps closer is a block of 200 apartments, and an expensive consultant has advised us the old wiring is extremely dangerous.
Even getting a meeting of all the body corporate members is difficult enough (half of them are absentee landlords, a few more are retirees close to dementia, others are working 2-3 jobs just to get by, etc). Can they vote the $50,000 to do the job properly? Do we spend another $2,000 on a second consultancy to really prove we need to do this?
Is there enough (any) money in the capital fund? Do we have to pay a one-off levy? What about the swimming pool we were going to put in next summer to improve the value of everyone's investment?
And why should we fix the wiring just here? The ten new developments around us are jerry-built and there's more going up all the time, and even if we go to all that expense to fix ours, there's a bigger chance we'll eventually get burnt down in any case.
I vote for the new pool - I think the whole thing has been overblown - my brother-in-law thinks there's nothing we can do to fix the wiring anyway short of pulling the whole place apart - the $50K will become $100K - just you wait. And I didn't like that first consultant, there are some hidden agendas there I reckon ...
It's even worse than that. The consultant says there is a problem (BTW he doesn't charge that much comparatively), but in reality noone has any idea how realistically to fix it. The builders of the block never thought wiring should ever need to be changed and the only even remotely possible way to do it is to break all walls and hope the block stands up.
People forget that all the time - there are NO viable substitutes to FFs on the scale we are talking about. Renewables are not ready (at best), most require a backup (fossil fueled!) and god knows if they will ever be. Nuclear can provide similar amounts of energy as FFs, but it has its issues too. Actually no other alternative of FFs is shown to be readily available, other than not using energy at all. And here comes the crux of the problem - nobody in the block is willing to switch off or reduce his electricity. The poor guys need it for heating, the rich guys don't won't to part their A/Cs and jacuzzis - otherwise they won't be rich anymore.
Good example. I'll try to remember that one! ;-)
GREAT way to put it! Bravo...
let's see.... A) and B) if I were a paid shill for the coal industry or the like....c) if I were a politician deep in the pockets of industry....and of course D) if I were a rational, wise human
Well, that depends. If I figure that he (or she) is merely saying that in order to feather his nest, or to ride a high horse and flatter himself that he is "saving the world" (as with some mental-health professionals in the day-care witch trials of the 1990s) then I see a problem that may lie elsewhere than in the wiring.
In normal life, somebody may, from time to time, try to sell me a hugely expensive and potentially impoverishing solution to a "problem", the very existence of which I can validate only by consulting reports produced by others using opaque technological magic, and which has absolutely zero consequences (so far) for my daily life. In such cases, I get a second and maybe even a third opinion.
So if a doctor wants to cut off my leg because he (or she) says I have a cancer, I want to be damned sure that not only is that true, but that the cancer is likely to grow fast enough that "watchful waiting" is an inappropriate response. Call that cancer denialism if you must, but I will call it finding the best response to bad circumstances.
That's all the more so if the doctor, like Al Gore especially, or even James Hansen lately, appears to make a handsome living and/or enjoy great fame and adulation by scaring people silly. That wouldn't mean the doctor is necessarily wrong on the facts, but, after all, corruption is a widespread fact of life, so I need not trust everything just on say-so. I may trust the doctor even less if the doctor never was, or is no longer, an active doctor, but has actually been only a politician, administrator, or public spokesman in recent years. ('When the final score is tallied on the field of loss and gain, ain't no politician worth a good, slow two-inch rain.')
Oh, and people do utterly stupid things - such as investing heavily in poorly protected residences at or below sea level - all the time. Blaming the inevitable consequences on some grand outside scheme is just an age old shtick for shifting the blame to somebody else and sticking them with the bill. And AGW seems to the archetypal grand scheme, a Rorschach test that brings out the totalitarian blame-shifting social engineer in everyone, as has been amply demonstrated by numerous posts in these pages.
Of course, the parallel with electrical inspectors is inexact, because, well, the government has the guns. So if it's a small and totally unnecessary change to the wiring - and the codes overflow with capricious and arbitrary well-lobbied stuff that has absolutely no purpose but to enrich tradespeople - one might just do it, rather than go through the tremendous expense of contesting the inspector in court.
Feather His Nest?
Not to doubt that there are scams and scammers about, and I'm not one to hire the Inspector or his brother's company to rewire my house, just on his say-so.. but to make the comparison a little more applicable, I'd say that this inspector would have pointed out some frayed asbestos insulated wires, some rusted exterior fixtures or service boxes, (Greenland Ice Sheet, North Pole Ice-mass, a few hundred-thousand articles, papers, charts, the logical conclusion of watching how many exhaust-pipes and smokestacks we've committed to daily belching for a century plus..) you get my point. We've had considerable evidence presented to us, which we may not have an expert's ability to evaluate, but can make some reasonable judgements on, and start to gauge whether we should extend them some additional trust, at least in the realm of the Precautionary Principle.
And just to make the sourcing a little more useful, say it was a couple-thousand electrical inspectors, and they've been telling you your house is a fire hazard for the better part of a couple decades, while a few dozen others persistently say 'don't worry about it.. why do today, what you can put off for tomorrow? There's still DOUBT, so why get all crazy and spend your precious money? It's just your HOUSE!'
We've had lots of experience with 'Fear-mongering' at this point, so I don't think much of the public would be unaware that this game has been played on us in pretty much every sphere we travel through in our daily lives.. Clear enough that the hyping of the war, gay-marriage, immigrant-'Them-mania', and Penile-AntiGravity Pills have been well worn paddles that have been beating on our heads and hearts day in and out.. and yet that would fool no-one that there aren't still wolves out there to be cautious of..
As Far as James Hansen or Al Gore.. come on! Exxon just got their Airport Restroom Craig-ing yesterday as the Loyal Republican Guard lined up, kneeled down and kept those billions in Tax Breaks safe and sound. You want to compare a dinky little hundred thou or so and some press in 'Sweden' to the ability to confound the proper functioning of all branches of the US government?
As Mastercard would value it.. 'Priceless.'
Bob
Tell me there's never been an electrical inspector that has been wrong. (We once had an interesting problem and had a licenced electrician come and figure it out. He couldn't. My son and I finally figured it out and fixed it ourselves.)
Why do people go to other doctors to get a second opinion? Because doctors can be wrong! (BTW, my mother died due to misdiagnosis by more than one DR.)
Me, personally? I'd ask this inspector exactly where and why he feels that way and make my own judgement.
Sure they can be wrong, and you check to see.
But we're WAYY past our second opinions at this point.
Bob
But if half of Americans already believe that business is never wrong, growth is never wrong, for-profit technology is never wrong, and the vast maldistribution of wealth between Americans and non-Americans, whites and non-whites, "Christians" and non-Christians, etc, etc is never wrong, then how can I trust anything those people say about the possibility that business, growth, and for-profit technology will lead to mass death among non-Americans, non-whites, and non-Christians? Doesn't that bias overwhelm any supposed socialist conspiracy run by millionaire Al Gore?
That is the one that always gets me, when the U.S. claims we should not take difficult measures to fight global warming because it would do damage to the U.S. economy. Whenever I hear that my blood pressure goes way up and I start arguing with the radio.
My analogy has always been when the doctors tell you you need an operation immediately to save your life, you don't say no because the incision will hurt afterwards and leave and ugly scar.
Of course fighting global warming instead doing what we've always done will hurt the economy, you dimwits!!! It's just the price you have to pay to fight a bigger problem.
Surprisingly enough, in an oil constrained environment, the best economic policy is the best environmental policy.
Have your cake & eat it too !
Best Hopes For minimum GHG, minimum Oil Use and maximum GDP,
Alan
Hi Alan,
Are you by any chance going to publish your plan from the other day as a lead article? I hope so.
The ideology is that a 10% chance of preventing mass death is more important than the protection of the sacred and lucrative American Way of Life.
Wait, that's not ideology, that's decency.
Then lobby to move everyone out of Los Angeles as the next "big one" is expected to kill 300,000.
Just to make sure there is no confusion here,
Atlanta has to evac by Valentine's Day if they
don't get precip.
And the Arctic is going beyond all Computer Models.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071213/ap_on_re_eu/climate_naysayers
Human Nature rearing its ugly head
"Lomborg accepts that the Earth is warming because of man, but says a changing climate, including the threat posed by rising sea levels to small island nations, is a less urgent problem than, for example, AIDS or malnutrition."
AIDS/malnutrition are symptoms of complexity.
The fact is we're in the Sixth Extinction period now.
The fact is that we're losing the Amazon now.
The fact is that our Civilization-the last one in the past Holocene-cannot live w/o the Amazon, the Arctic, Antarctica,
the Mediterranean Climates
as they are now.
Grain production plummeted this year.
We'll be lucky to hold to something between 1886 and 1930.
Funny!
I have that exact quote in my clipboard.. looking for a place to put it.. you beat me.
My responses to his sense of Success were..
'Be careful what you wish for..'
or
'Winning the battle, losing the war..'
Bob
Now why would anyone pay any attention to anything Bjorn Lomborg says? The man is a blooming idiot.
Enough oil to cover our total energy consumption for the next 5,000 years! Could anyone who knows anything about oil or world energy consumption make such a statement? To believe that we have 5,000 years of oil left you have to be as dumb as a rock.
Ron Patterson
yes, that “Bjorn Lomborg”-bloke is truly a stupid human being, but he is frank enough to show his face in MSM and TV, I salute him for that
But of course. Even a fool wants to show his face on MSM and TV. What the hell does that prove? Remember the old proverb; "A fool's name and a fool's face is always seen in a public place"?
Ron Patterson
The ability to make accurate predictions of future observations is supposed to count for a lot in science. Two hundred years ago it was predicted that releasing massive amounts carbon dioxide (a known greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere would cause the earth to warm. Two hundred years and a boatload of CO2 later, the earth is warming. Duh!
The physical evidence is becoming overwhelming: the ITCZ has moved poleward, glaciers are melting, the subtropical arid zones are moving poleward, the range of the anopheles mosquito is expanding, arctic ice is melting (in December!).
Against the basic physics of increasing greenhouse gases producing warming, the denialists have nothing. All they do is nitpick and cherry pick at old data, and they'll still be doing it when they're poling their punt down Broadway.
We lost at least ten years because of these bastards, largely thanks to the likes of Exxon. When the Earth goes down, who will begin the criminal proceedings. These are crimes against humanity, the planet, and all of its extinct or soon to be extinct species. Economic growth will not protect us against this scourge; it will only exacerbate it.
"When the Earth goes down, who will begin the criminal proceedings.
That would be Judge, Jury, and Executioner....Mama Gaia (in the Greek mythological sense, not Lovelock's)!!
This is what I really want to know: Where does the money trail lead? Who is it that really benefits from all the denial and obstruction?
It is becomming popular to say that "we" are "all" top blame for global climate change, and that it is "up to all of us" to each do our part to help mitigate. Cow Cookies! Clearly, all of us are not all equally to blame. Those who have been living frugal, simple lives (a few by choice, a lot by necessity of being poor) are by no means equally to blame. Some are responsible for pumping a lot more GHG into the atmosphere than others. I rather suspect that those responsible for producing the most GHG emissions have also profited the most from it, and thus have the most to lose by any seriously effective mitigation strategy, and thus have the most to gain by promoting a strategy of denial and obstruction.
So where does the money trail lead? Who are those that have gained the most by producing the most GHGs, and who have the most to lose by mitigating them?
Exxon certainly is near the top of the list. Give them credit for not covering their tracks, I guess. We don't know for sure that they actually are public enemy #1 based on money or tons of GHG. They've put themselves there by being so visible in their denial and obstructionism. It is quite possible that there are bigger fish to fry, ones that are a lot smarter about staying invisible to the public.
One thing I am certain of: Exxon must surely not be alone. There are a good many others that truly belong in the rogue's gallery. It is truly time to name names, and publically identify who belongs in the hall of shame.
At some point soon, the costs will come due. Settlements in low-lying areas will have to be dismantled and people relocated, to mention just one example. That will be hugely expensive. Where will the money come from? The aforementioned list, once established, will be a good place to look as revisions to our tax policies are contemplated.
just so
There will be many, many individuals who have bought into the consumer growth ethic, and have clawed themselves up the ladder from student poverty days, to McMansion + 2xSUV + ATV status, working long hours and perhaps sacrificing the smell of the roses in the garden to do so. They will resist any notion that is seen to jeopardize their investments, or that sheds light on their fatuous dreams.
Yes, but while such are not guiltless, I am doubting that it is these people that have been bombarding the White House with phone calls, demanding that the US take a hard line at Bali against any effective mitigation measures.
More likely, the White Houose is doing the bidding of a very small group of people with very deep pockets. These are the ones I'm talking about.
WNC Observer,
Every day I look at all the Christian Americans who have been getting screwed since Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, and I think, after Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush, they're choosing between Giuliani the Nazi and Huckabee the religious bigot to screw them again.
This is about ideology. Exxon is like the plantation elite that ran the old South under slavery and then Jim Crow. Objectively, ordinary whites did badly under this racist system because the elites suppressed education and political inquiry, and kept black and white laborers from uniting for better wages. Yet look at the track record: since Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 poor whites have grown ever more obedient and loyal to an ideology of property-based inequality. The ability of the rich to manipulate the very fabric of society has become a breeding program, not of blacks, but of obedient white peasants. Southerners were trained to define their well-being in the terms that profit the elites, no matter how objectively destructive they are.
Since 1980, the project has been to spread that mentality throughout the nation. See the book "What's the Matter With Kansas?" It involved the literal combining of capitalism and Christianity into a faith.
Yet to blame one plantation owner for all these vast evils would seem silly. He was performing his role in a bad system. So was Exxon, which was legally obligated to maximize shareholder value in any way that didn't violate the law.
A time came in 1860 when the plantation elite turned to their subjects, and said, "Our caste system is the only way you know you're better than dirt, and these Outsiders dare to take that away from you! To war!" Yet millions of back-country Southerners refused to support Secession. Now the time is coming when Exxon turns to a hundred million brain-dead suburban rednecks and says "Cheap goodies are the only way you know you're better than dirt, and these Outsiders dare to carbon-tax that away from you!" Bet that gets a better approval rating than Jefferson Davis.
It has been well discussed on The Oil Drum how cheap fossil fuels replaced slavery. These are the sociological systems that support those forms of exploitation.
This is about ideology. Exxon is like the plantation elite that ran the old South under slavery and then Jim Crow. Objectively, ordinary whites did badly under this racist system because the elites suppressed education and political inquiry, and kept black and white laborers from uniting for better wages. Yet look at the track record: since Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 poor whites have grown ever more obedient and loyal to an ideology of property-based inequality. The ability of the rich to manipulate the very fabric of society has become a breeding program, not of blacks, but of obedient white peasants. Southerners were trained to define their well-being in the terms that profit the elites, no matter how objectively destructive they are.
You are on a roll! Don't forget the tie, the modern slave collar, and symbol of servitude. Also, the clothes they make you wear, that you really can't do anything in without destroying them, physically training the body to slow cautious movements, not really physically alive, until you are soft and weak.
Slow down, don't run. Be quiet, your too loud. Sapping your energy, YOUR LIFE, at every turn. Don't forget to worry about how you smell, how you look, what other's think about you.
Now that they have all been fleeced, do you think they will finally show a little backbone, or mearly refuse to recognized what has been done to them, becoming even more fervently the trained dogs that they are, begging for scraps from the master's table.
It sounds like you have been channelling da Rat :>)
So that list of scientists, many from the IPCC, who wrote the letter are wrong.
by "many from the IPCC" you mean 4 - a geologist, a weatherman, and two guys working for big coal
yep, great find JR - you've really poked a whole in the AGW theory here
I think what Pitt said expresses it best...
"Not only is it deeply misleading to describe 4 as "many of" 100, it's at least as misleading to imply that they were authors of the report, rather than reviewers. That kind of deception appears to be an attempt to give people the false impression that the IPCC authors have changed their minds, when in fact these are simply different people."
Yes. Incontrovertible visual evidence verifies the physics of CO2 induced global warming. Serious metigation attempts will destroy some industries, coal in particular, that have developed deep iron triangles over the last century, and have their greatest ever political power in BushCo.
What follows is a repost from late yesterday.
Yesterday, I said BushCo’s climate policy is homicidal. I see no reason to change that assessment.
Fortunately, there are other, powerful organizations outside of the USG that can and are fighting the problem and offering a solution. One of these is achitecture2030, http://www.architecture2030.org/home.html One of the organization’s founders has an excellent presentation now being shown and repeated often on UCTV, as shown by this schedule, http://www.uctv.tv/schedule3.asp?keyword=13667 The presentation argues that if we can stop the building of additional coal-fired power plants, we will likely avoid dangerous climate change, http://www.architecture2030.org/current_situation/stop_coal.html This can be done by reducing the enegy used to power buildings, which use over 73% of all coal-produced electricity in the US.
If you get UCTV, or know someone who does, please watch this presentation; it’s more than worth the 1 hour. As this article notes, there is a sea-change happening within public opinion regarding climate change here in the US. The presentation is powerful, especially the way the call for action is made at its end. There are also webcast presentations, which I have yet to watch, http://www.architecture2030.org/2010_imperative/webcast.html and http://www.architecture2030.org/news/multimedia.html
There’s one way to circumvent the USG on climate change at the local level that can make all the difference: Amending building codes to require high enegy efficiency of all new and retroffit construction, which Santa Barbara just did. We may not be able to kick all the corrupt, venal politicos out of DC, but we can change the conditions on the ground at our own locales that will present the USG with a fait accompli where it can either lead or get out of the way.
As "michigan" pointed out in a post at 10:28, only FOUR of the scientists on that list took part in the IPCC. IIRC, the total number of scientists particpating in the 2007 IPCC was about 1400. So we should reject the IPCC report and predictions based on those FOUR objectors?
What do we do then with the IPCC participants who object to the report's predictions as too conservative? According to a quick search of news reports just now there are more than FOUR members of that group, and, like your much-touted list, there are others who did not take part in the IPCC process who agree with the "too conservative" argument.
Are we to believe that four deniers from among the IPCC participants should carry more weight than all the rest of the IPCC participants, including a small group of particpants who claim the IPCC report was too weak or watered down?
No, you go with the evidence, and not a priori reject any evidence that does not support the orthodoxy. You get a balanced view. That is not happening with AGW. When ever I post such evidence, I get attacked instead of dealing with the evidence. Such are the methods of dogmatic faith based systems of belief.
Huh - AGW is the result of about 100years of work since Svente Arrhenius observation of the heat trapping nature of CO2. So, instead of trying to turning it around and claiming that some automatic consensus exists that the honest skeptics are trying to challenge, a more accurate summation is that there is a small body of denialists who are unpersuaded by the large and mounting body of AGW evidence.
The only dogmatic person I see here is you - unfazed by the evidence, you continue to seek out old and discredited evidence to support your view.
Next you will be trying to spin the theory of evolution, quantum mechanics and germ theory of disease as dogmatism.
Mr Wakefield please display some honesty in this and admit that you are the dogmatic one here.
no, you get attacked for relying on non-peer reviewed materials, for hyperbole, and downright deception - your so-called "evidence" is often repudiated immediately with counter-posts with links to articles, but you never come back and say "huh, I didn't know that, that is interesting" - which makes your "work" here polemical and in many folks' opinions (including mine) suspect
FOUR represents "many" JR? and NOT ONE A CLIMATE SCIENTIST? In fact, two of the four have jobs involving coal? - THIS is your "evidence" against AGW?
you also get attacked for your non-stop work on AGW denial on a Peak Oil website - it gets tiresome - look at this drumbeat - completely dominated by your inane discussion - go to Realclimate and have at it with people who actually work in the field - and let the rest of us read articles about oil, oil production, depletion, substitution etc.
Last February I predicted the Arctic ice would be melting a lot faster than they thought, and that sea level rise would be going up much faster than the IPCC said.
Do I get a prize?
Question to the poor, deluded fellow causing all this ruckus: If *I* knew this, what does that tell you? I'm not a scientist. I'm not a climatologist. How did I know?
Hint: it's called analysis and common sense.
Look at plots of CO2, temperature, oil/ff consumption and population. What do you see?
Hint: a long very slow rise then a rapidly ascending curve.
Why?
"that sea level rise would be going up much faster than the IPCC said."
Show me this. What reference do you have that shows the rate of sea level rise has changed?
This is a foolish question. Do you not read any of the science? Do you not know how to use google? Do you think asking a question makes your implication true even when the facts make your attempted accusation by implication false? You are making a fool of yourself at this point.
Sea level is rising three times faster than it was, say, ten years ago. Google it, friend. I will not waste my time on dishonest, insincere questions.
No need to be insulting.
I HAVE looked at the measurements, specifically the Tide and Current's website and there is NO CHANGE IN THE RATE! If, as you claim it's "rising three times faster than it was, say, ten years ago" then that should show up as a hockey stick on the graphs, but there IS NO HOCKEY STICK!
Show me this change in rate from this graph.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.shtml?...
So show me how I have been dishonest in showing this graph of measurments.
Why? Cumulative effects leading to passing tipping points.
Evidence please. This is a PREDICTION, you know for a fact this will happen? Show me the evidence to support your claim.
Link?
Here:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174863
According to the How Dry I Am Chart of "livability expert" Bert Sperling, four cities in Southern California, not parched Atlanta, top the national drought ratings: Los Angeles, San Diego, Oxnard, and Riverside. In addition, Pasadena has had the dubious honor, through September, of experiencing its driest year in history.
And then, there's Atlanta, its metropolitan area "watered" mainly by a 1950s man-made reservoir, Lake Lanier, which, in dramatic photos, is turning into baked mud. Already with a population of five million and known for its uncontrolled growth (as well as lack of water planning), the city is expected to house another two million inhabitants by 2030. And yet, depending on which article you read, Atlanta will essentially run out of water by New Year's eve, in 80 days, in 120 days, or, according to the Army Corps of Engineers -- which seems to find this reassuring -- in 375 days, if the drought continues (as it may well do).
the question that seems to me so obvious I find it hard to believe everyone isn't thinking about it; the one you would automatically want to have answered -- or at least gnawed on by thoughtful, expert reporters and knowledgeable pundits. Every day for the last month or more I've waited, as each piece on Atlanta ends at more or less the same point -- with the dire possibility that the city's water will soon be gone -- as though hitting a brick wall.
Not that there hasn't been some fine reportage -- on the extremity of the situation, the overbuilding and overpopulating of the metropolitan region, the utter heedlessness that went with it, and the resource wars that have since engulfed it. Still, I've Googled around, read scores of pieces on the subject, and they all -- even the one whose first paragraph asked, "What if Atlanta's faucets really do go dry?" -- seem to end just where my question begins. It's as if, in each piece, the reporter had reached the edge of some precipice down which no one cares to look, lest we all go over.
http://www.peakoilblues.com/blog/?p=128
(6) The sense of loss will be felt most acutely around the children: no longer being able to “afford” better neighborhood schools or private schools, computers, lessons, cable TV and high-speed internet, and extra-curricular activities. They may face teen anger at no longer enjoying the “necessities” of life like cell phones. They may face guilt and feel like bad parents.
This is actually one of the reasons that I think that it can be very helpful to go back and see what happened the last time that we went in to a Warming Period. As I wrote on November 6th :
"I am one of those folk that think that we can learn from the past, and so I went to see what the history of droughts were in the South-West. I found that we appear to be heading back into the same sort of cycle that hit about 1100 years ago. And one of the things of concern, if one looks at the following graph, is the length of time that the droughts lasted. I have noted, earlier, that droughts in New York at this time lasted around 200 years. The evidence from Southern California, reported by Seager, Herwijer and Cook seems to show the same sort of duration.
Heading out, I have read many tens of similar studies as this from all round the world and it is fact that climate change is the norm not the exception. The AGW crowd simply blank this info. They do not want to hear it, enguage it, discuss it. it shakes them to their foundations.
Marco.
Uh, yeah. Right.
That might be a reasonable argument if not for the fact that anyone old enough to give a rat's rear grew up when catastrophic AGW was not widely accepted.
If anyone's in danger of being shaken to their foundations, it's the AGW deniers.
I admid that last statement I made was not accurate!
But I swear I get no serious engagement on the issue of past climate change, even denial, when I talk about this with people face to face. It's like they are scared it will undermine their 'GW relgion' to coin a phrase.
Marco.
Also i think the guys bitching below about the amount of GW discussion there is are right! We should have a separate thread for this stuff. thoughts?
My thought was that, dopey as this discussion has been for the most part, there have also been some good replies.
However, I don't want another thread like this. Once is enough.
Good. I don't mind reading it either, but it has become more than tiresome with the same arguments, and the same disdain that borders or explodes into personalities. Pretty much both sides.
And a very nice rear it is, darlin'.
Getting a bit warm, tho.
Rat
Climate change is the norm., however anthropogenic CO2 emissions are changing the climate more rapidly than natural fluctuations. It's not that that this isn't discussed, it's just that you haven't taken the time to read about it. Go here and read.
Appreciate the link but I've actually been on that site and read the reports. Very informative. Thank you. I have taken time to read it. you just come to a more rapid conclusion than I do.
It's not that I've come to a rapid conclusion, it's just that I've taken the time to educate myself since I read in its entirety the third assessment report by the IPCC in 2001 and The Ice Chronicles by Paul Andrew Mayewski and Frank White. These issues have been written about and discussed by the public since the 2001, why is it that we are still discussing this? Its almost as if no amount of research or results will convince people who are paid to not believe it. Isn't there a quote about that???
Ahh, here it is: Mark Twain said "A man can never understand something if his livelihood depends on his not understanding."
Those droughts essentially wiped out many aborginal tribal settlements (e.g. the Hopi in the 1200s) and were probably a part of a larger regional pattern that destroyed the Mayan civilization (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/03/0313_030313_mayadrought....). Given that they occurred in non-global warming climate regime suggests (more like implies) that we will see even more massive droughts over sustained periods (e.g. decades) in our newly warmed climate regime.
The whole variability argument shows a clear lack of education in the subject at hand. The noise of weather reaslizations is NOT the issue. It is the accessible energy for these realizations that is. The above graphs do NOTHING to dispel the fact that global warming will allow even more severe variations in the weather in the future (and today). Using variability to deny (damaging) variability is quite inane.
If you check the dates you will find that the period of most significant droughts (900 - 1300) coincides with the Medieval Warming period.
Yes, it is quite ominous what is heading our way considering what that blip managed to produce.
Temperature timeseries
The problem here is that you are confusing "background"
change rate with Homo Collosus (HC) change rates.
HC's are increasing the volatility of the "Background".
In other words, we are eliminating buffers.
Giving the Planet no time to rest/repair.
http://www.rewilding.org/thesixthgreatextinction.htm
" Soulè (1983) points out that some of these factors “do not become operative until one or more of the other factors have reduced the local populations to a very small size.” Note that he lumps the natural and human causes. Most of these factors are at play in today's mass extinction.
Soulè warns, however, that “It is disappointing that we know so little about natural extinction.” Why does modern science know so little about this fascinating subject? It is because “no biologist has documented the extinction of a continental species of a plant or animal caused solely by nonhuman agencies.”
The grim truth is that we humans are the cause of modern extinctions."
Please. There are patterns in history? OH - MY - GOD!
Seriously, anyone who has read anything at all on GW knows the climate is always changing. Anyone who knows anything about Chaos Theory knows it should have, has, and will change in ways not predicted/expected. You've said nothing of consequence here.
My question is, are you intentionally ignoring, or do you truly not know, that some believe the climate is being pushed into a cycle it has not experienced before because of human actions? I.e., the Earth likely is heading into a period of permanent warmth if human production of GHGs continues?
The GW crowd is fully informed in my experience. It is the deniers, such as yourself, that cherry pick. I easily accept any and all science on the subject because I let it speak for itself. When I see something that seems contrary, I want to know why. Is it significant, anomalous, or just part of the chaotic pattern? Only a fool would do otherwise.
Let us follow this logic a bit further. Since I look at the scientific reports and the natural evidence and see a 99% to 1% preponderance of evidence for GW and you look at the same and cling to the 1%, do you really think you are the more open of us two? Let me repeat that I predicted 10 months ago the melting would be accelerating well beyond the IPCC reported levels, and have been right thus far. Can you make such a claim?
NOTE: the only legitimate study I am aware of on this point actually found a 100% to 0% preponderance, so...
At my town govt there have already been some serious discussion about how to cope with "water refugees" from Atlanta. No sign of them yet, but it is probably just a matter of time.
It is probably unkind of me to say it, but the thought does occur that Atlanta might well burn to the ground for a 2nd time once there is no longer enough water left for fire fighting.
Are you implying that the water problems in Atlanta has to do with burning of fossil fuels? Or what do you mean?
The only reason our cities don't burn to the ground on a regular basis is that we have very good fire fighters with lots of modern technology and a reliable water delivery system. Once the water is unavailable, the fire fighters have been disarmed, and there is nothing left but to watch it burn. They can use a few tricks up their sleeves as last-ditch delaying tactics to facilitate evacuations, but that's about it.
In a major metro area like Atlanta, there are fires happening all the time, one does not even need to posit any type of malice or social disorder. Of course, one can not rule out the possibility of such happening either. Some would probably speculate that in a full-scale urban shut-down and evac scenario, such chaos is probably likely, if not certain. The behavior of some people in NOLA during Katrina, or in LA during the riots, does not inspire much confidence that Atlanta would be all that different.
Given drought conditions, once several fires are going full blaze and not being put out, the chances are that some will spread to nearby buildings, then more, and before long you'll see a huge conflagration develop. Add in a little wind, and you'll have all the makings for a Hamburg or Dresden style firestorm. There might not be much left at all once that finally burns itself out.
Another non linear event that hadn't occurred to me.
Thanx.
He was referring to the burning of Atlanta by General Sherman at the end of the American Civil War.
I'm getting worried about refugees also. In Huntsville, Al we are also in a drought, but not as bad off of as Atlanta.
Fires in Georgia blanketed the city for about a week this year, and forced me to take a week of sick leave.
I get the feeling I'm living in the path of a freight train.
An apt expression, especially the old steam smoke belchers.
I really fear the magnitude of wildfire that could envelope the southeast next summer if the drought continues.
Things are dire, but they're not quite that bad:
http://atlantawatershortage.com/wiki/index.php/Predictions
BTW, 'ACE' is Army Corp of Engineers. For whatever reason their estimates have been all over the map.
My understanding is the 'deadpool' is the level at which the turbines in the dam stop generating power because of insufficient pressure. So there will still be water available, but I think at that point you start making plans to move elsewhere.
One other thing - lake Lanier took 3 years to fill after the completion of the dam, so even when the rains return we're looking at a LONG period to build back to what we had.
I prefer this link for monitoring the water level:
http://waterdata.usgs.gov/ga/nwis/uv/?site_no=02334400&PARAmeter_cd=0006...
If you set the parameter to 30 days you can see the last historic low.
Thanks BOC, great link. So it looks like Lanier is 16 feet over the dead pool level (1035 ft) now, and dropping about 2.5 feet per month, so it looks like the dam will stop producing power around May/June. Of course that's not taking into account rainfall, water conservation measures, or the taper of the lake as it drops.
BTW, if there's anyone who knows for certain what reaching 'dead pool' really implies please explain. Between the newspapers, the bloggers, the politicians, and the Army Corp of Engineers I'm getting more confused by the day. The loss of power generation makes the most sense, since I wouldn't expect there to be water in the lake that the dam can't release, but who knows? Too many things to know these days. My brain hurts.
Here is an explanation.
Thanks Gwydion, but it was actually that page that started my confusion. Compare their explanation with this article:
It does go on to say that water released from the dam should be ok after 'mixing' in the river's flow, but that tells me that the dead pool level is not meaningless. So the question remains: does it mean loss of electrical generation, poor quality water, both, or neither?
What about oxygen intake level.
Atrophication?
Keep in mind it's not just the water actually in the lake that is a water source. It's the related aquifer too. I haven't a clue about the size or permeability of the aquifer surrounding Lake Lanier, but the at the edge of the lake the elevation of the aquifer is the same as the elevation of the lake.
If the lake is drawn lower than the aquifer, water flows out of the aquifer into the lake until thing equilibrate. If there was suddenly a big rainfall that recharged the lake to a level higher than the aquifer, then water would seep into the ground raising the aquifer.
So the water in the aquifer is part of the water supply picture too. A big question is the porosity and permeability of the aquifer. If either one is low, than water will only seep into (or out of) the lake at a low rate. But if they are high, the below ground water storage could add considerable volume to the lake over time as it's drawn down.
A good point about the aquifer.
I took a look at the volume and lake level data last weekend to try and predict when it would run dry.
I decided it was just to complex a problem for weekend tinkering.
I have no specific information on Lanier, but it is a reservior, not a natural lake I believe.
Reservoirs are sited, constructed and sealed to minimize any loss through seepage. Typically the largest losses are from evaporation.
In any event, I would suspect the operators have a good handle on this, including the soil moisture retention characteristics of the watershed to predict refill via rainfall events.
Yes, it's a reservoir.
And sadly, other communities will fail to learn from Atlanta's mistakes.
On that same site I promptly find an article
claiming that everything my doctor (any doctor)
says about cancer, stroke, diabetes, arthritis,
Alzheimer's is an unmitigated lie.
So much for your sources.
"Many of whom"? How many is many? Did you check who they were and their qualifications?
Fantastic 10 year research & survey.
Asks all the right Q's IMO
Addresses "consensus" saying, getting this many scientists (IPCC) to agree is unpresidented.
"The American Public's Views of Global Climate Change"
http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=21211&fID=345
Public opinion on climate change has shifted dramatically over the past 20 years, thanks to intense media coverage about global warming - coverage that, for better or worse, shaped both popular attitudes and the national political debate. Social Scientist Jon Krosnick of Stanford University argues that Americans' perceptions of climate change were severely distorted for years because so many journalists portrayed global-warming research as a heated argument between rival factions instead of what it actually was: namely, a growing body of shared knowledge. Krosnick's analysis is an eye-opening look at how Americans know what they know, and why they believe what they believe.
LOL! Agreed, the IPCC's work is certainly "unpresidented" in this Administration! No GWB in AGW.
I must have missed your response showing a plan for no longer placing resources into coastal areas and instead making sure inland areas are ready to take in the people who used to live on the coasts.
Can you re-post?
This announcement sounds suspiciously like an attempt to put pressure on Congress to lower rates. Funny that the announcement comes so close to the Energy bill legislation.
OPEC’s Monthly Oil Market Report is out this morning with the November production numbers. (Click on this link then on the PDF logo to bring up the report.) The production numbers are on the last page of this 61 page PDF report.
The OPEC 12 was down 80,000 barrels per day. (This does not include Ecuador as they were not part of OPEC last month.) So the Platts report that reported OPEC up b 40,000 bp/d was simply wrong. The OPEC 10, that is all OPEC members that were subject to quotas, was down 190,000 barrels per day. This drop was due to the UAE being down 510,000 bp/d. They had a lot of production off line for most of the month for maintenance.
Other than the UAE those with the largest changes were Saudi up 170,000 bp/d, Iraq up 70,000 bp/d, Nigeria up 50,000 bp/d, and Angola up 40,000 bp/d. Angola and Iraq were not subject to OPEC quotas. Angola, who produced 1.8 mb/d in November was given a quota of 1.9 mb/d at the last OPEC meeting.
All OPEC members, in November, were supposed to be producing at their new quota. (Whether they were producing at their max possible capacity is another question.) But as most of you know, all members began ramping up last month and were up quite a bit in October. But the quotas were issued in mid September against their output in August. So it is necessary to measure their increase against August production to see how much they have actually changed.
OPEC 10, from August, up 90,000 bp/d. But the UAE, due to maintenance, was down 450,000 bp/d from their August production. Saudi Arabia was up 280,000 bp/d from their August production numbers. The only other big increases came from Angola and Iraq, who were not subject to Quotas. Angola was up 130,000 bp/d from August and Iraq was up 310,000 bp/d from August. Iran was down 30,000 bp/d from August and down 10,000 bp/d from October.
Angola and Iraq combined are up 440,000 bp/d since August. Iraq is bringing production back on line that was down due to the war and Angola, who most certainly has not peaked, is still ramping up new production. But they only have another 10,000 bp/d to go before they hit their quota. Whether or not they pay any attention to it is another matter.
Ron Patterson
I'm waiting on Mexico's numbers.
Anyone disabusing the fact that Cantarell is collapsing by 10k bbl's per week?
Latest numbers I've seen from Pemex show October production at 2.995 mbpd, down from 3.161 in September and down from 3.221 of October last year. I'm not sure how much of this is due to weather.
http://www.pemex.com/files/dcpe/petro/eprohidro_esp.pdf
Ron,
Thanks for posting this. I appreciate you parsing the numbers for us.
I'm sorry it got lost in the midst of another idiotic global warming debate.
Have you ever thought of setting up a blog where you can track these numbers? I'm sure I wouldn't be the only visitor.
The UN Climate Change Numbers Hoax
All you supporters of AGW dogma, your "consensus" just evaporated.
Fine, just what i have been beginning to suspect. This groupthink is costing us a lot of money that could have been used for better purposes in our societys.
Do you even understand the meaning of the word "consensus"?
I got my climate change ouija board out and last night, closed my eyes, and let the spirits speak.
Tell me, Leanan, what means Hrothgar?
My board came up with Hothgar...maybe he has an evil twin. What pisses me off is that all this wastes bandwide and looking at a whole bunch of crap that has little to do with TOD also wastes my time. Yes, AGW is important. That is why other forums are devoted to it and that's where JRW needs to go.
Do you remember GreenMan's solution during the Dave Matthews and Hothgar nonsense?
It still works like a charm and is available at:
http://www.hovenweeptrading.com/gm/index.html
Drops 147 comments of the 199 (so far this morning) connected to a certain AGW deny'er.
Thanks Will, have been trying to find it again.
I've wasted a lot of time trying to point out to denialists the difference between consensus and unanimity. They refuse to get it, even when I point out we don't have unanimity on the shape of the planet...
Welcome to the Flat Earth Society Homepage! Please, be our guest. Just sit back at your computer, and let us do the talking. We'll tell you who we are, what we're doing, and what we're accomplishing in the world. You can look at some of our latest theories and insights, and, if you're interested, you can even become an honorary member of the Flat Earth Society. So stick around.
http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/FlatHome.htm
What Leanan said.
Talk about a newspaper article without substance. The scientific consensus on AGW has nothing to do with the IPCC report. It has to do with the science.
The actual real world (which for the reality-based community is the final arbiter of these things) is saying that AGW is worse than the IPCC's worst case scenario.
The IPCC issued a flawed report, becasue it is essentially a political organization producing a political document. Denialist governments watered down the contents of the reports to make them tamer than science suggested was accurate. All the "article" you cite does is quote some of the denialist moles.
Unbelievable. Here we are, with scientists from the IPCC itself saying the report is way over blown and what we are seeing is just natural variations, and you now reject those scientists!!!
Your dogmatic belief in AGW is so strong that when the evidence is right there in front of you in black and white you still cling to it.
What is it about the letter these scientists, former and current UN IPCC scientists, part of the "consensus" that is often quoted here, do you think they are wrong about? Point it out, and specifically show how their statements are wrong.
Or is it you are so entrenched in AGW dogma that you simply cannot fathom any possibility that it may all be horribly wrong.
You (as always) fail to discern between the certainty required for Massive Expensive changes to Public Policy (50% I would argue, others might claim 75%, 80% or even 90%) and the certainty required for absolute scientific consensus (>99.98%).
Alan
Alan, can we please ignore Wakefield? IT is on the site daily trolling and distracting, obviously being compensated or in denial because of McMansion guilt. Why do we have to listen to the same old baloney from IT day after day when we have obvious physical evidence of manmade GW? When you feed the monkey peanuts you are encouraging the monkeys behavior...To return and beg for more peanuts. Thanks. :)
There are so many professors with so many "studies" in this huge world that if I accepted a mere 50% "certainty" for Massive Expensive changes, there would be absolutely nothing left in life but to rush in blind panic after one "precaution" upon another and another and another, without end. No thanks, life is also for living.
I think a 50% risk is harder to reach than you do.
However, I understand your point and it is a good argument for, say, 85% certainty before acting (with more than minimal measures).
Alan
As you undoubtedly know, there are many IPCC scientists who state that the reports are not nearly strong enough in their conclusions.
A few of them who sign a poorly written letter in a right wing Canadian paper, it's all not very convincing.
Wakefield is walking us article by article
through a wingnut website. Everyone should
go to Canadian Free Press, have a laugh, and
ignore this guy.
I whole heartedly agree!
Unbelievable!!! They are just reporting on a letter set by former IPCC scientists that AGW theory is not supported by the evidence, and you attack the website!!! How LOGICAL is that!
Deal with the LETTER and the scientists who wrote it. It will likley be reported in your papers too soon enough.
Just curious why you would chose the view of a small minority of the scientists rather than the majority consensus. Don't call on corruption or bias - that works both ways and doesn't advance the argument. Anyone can cherry pick arguments to support their view, but that is not how science is supposed to work.
If you have read all of the IPCC papers, are qualified scientifically to scrutinize their merits, and can put out a cogent article looking at all sides, then I may give you some credence.
Otherwise I would believe you are supporting the scientific and other dissenters because they say what you would like to hear.
Since I don't have time or expertise personally to do the evaluation I am describing (as I doubt you do), I chose to go along with the consensus of experts. I am aware that the issue is complex enough that honest people can have divergent views, but the only responsible course is to go with the consensus, given the possible consequences. As others have noted, this consensus didn't spring out of nowhere and did not exist initially, it gradually built as increasingly compelling evidence has emerged.
"The IPCC leads us to believe that this statement is very much supported by the majority of reviewers. The reality is that there is surprisingly little explicit support for this key notion. Among the 23 independent reviewers just 4 explicitly endorsed the chapter with its hypothesis, and one other endorsed only a specific section. Moreover, only 62 of the IPCC’s 308 reviewers commented on this chapter at all." The analysis concluded: “The IPCC reports appear to be largely based on a consensus of scientific papers, but those papers are the product of research for which the funding is strongly influenced by previous IPCC reports. This makes the claim of a human influence self-perpetuating and for a corruption of the normal scientific process.”"
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/ipccprocessillusion.html
SPPI - what a joke. That website contains ONLY AGW denial articles. Kinda like you - they cherry pick the research that backs up their prior chosen views.
The president of that group has strong links to FF industries. I am sorry but just because the website has science in its name, does not make it scientific.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Robert_Ferguson_%28Science_an...
I'm not sure I have ever seen such weird backwards logic. Lets see... A chapter is sent to 308 reviewers who are supposed to critique the science. Only 62 comment, some with trivial comments, some supportive, and they state one in particular had most of the negative comments.
When I wrote an article for publication, I was delighted with sections the reviewers let stand - by definition that meant the content passed muster and was to be accepted without further revision. This is what reviewing is. Here, 246 of the 308 (lets see - that is 80%) are agreeing with the conclusions by having them pass without further comment. Many of the rest are not necessarily disagreeing - but the paper you link doesn't break it out in positive vs negative vs neutral (stylistic) comments. So well over 80% are good with it - and this isn't a consensus? You won't find much better.
What is UNBELIEVABLE is you've been asked to show a plan that addresses the coastal areas going underwater after admitting the globe is warming, and yet you've not addressed the matter.
If anyone is not 'dealing' it is you Sir.
Have you not see the links I've posted to Tide and Currents website on MEASURED rates of sea level for the past 100 years, that those rates have not changed? I've posted those links, including in this thread, many time before. Deal with that evidence. The rate HAS NOT CHANGED. What we are seeing is normal and has nothing to do with current climate change.
A July 2007 analysis of peer-reviewed literature thoroughly debunks fears of Greenland and the Arctic melting and predictions of a frightening sea level rise.
A February 2007 study reveals Antarctica is not following predicted global warming models.
So your position is that Greenland and the Arctic is not melting?
debunk....Greenland and the Arctic melting
My "position" is and always will be, what ever the EVIDENCE shows. I just don't dogmatically reject evidence because it does not fit my "worldview".
Do you?
What do YOU think these links say?
My "position" is and always will be, what ever the EVIDENCE shows.
So you are not going to answer my question?
Fine.
I just don't dogmatically reject evidence because it does not fit my "worldview".
Do you reject it when you are paid to then?
A fair question, as you refuse to answer my simple question.
Do you?
When a GOOD argument can challenge what I know as evidence, yes. I've asked my question(s) of you to gauge how your position should be viewed. And the result, right now, is you are not to be a trusted source.
Because of your very evasive responses.
But hey, if you think you are arguing from a position of correctness, then directly answering a question can't be too hard for a honest man.
What do YOU think these links say?
That they lack credibility because of basic flaws. But hey, don't let that stop YOU from spinning your wheels....going no where.
There is evidence that the ice sheets are melting faster than in the recent past, at the margins. There is evidence that there is significantly increased snow fall in the interior. Question is, does the one cancel out the other?
How many times do I have to say I'm NOT getting paid for this! Answer to the direct question -- NO I would NEVER compromize my position for money. Never.
What flaws? I'll pick one from one of the links and you post the link to the flaw.
"An October 2005 study in the journal Science found Greenland’s higher elevation interior ice sheet growing while lower elevations ice is thinning. According to a November 8, 2005 article in European Research, “An international team of climatologists and oceanographers, led by the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC) in Norway, estimates that Greenland’s interior ice sheet has grown, on average, 6cm per year in areas above 1 500m between 1992 and 2003.” Lead author, Ola M. Johannessen of NERSC “says the sheet growth is due to increased snowfall brought about by variability in regional atmospheric circulation, or the so-called North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO),”"
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1115356v1
Yes, Greenland's interior ice mass has been increasing because of increased snowfall, due to more favorable conditions for snowfall in that part of the world because of global warming.
But of course, you fail to mention that OVERALL Greenland's ice mass is DECREASING, as measured by the GRACE satellite system.
See
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/greenland_slide.html
And in reference to a previous post about a magma hot spot in Greenland causing melting, note on the graph in the above link that most of the melting is in the south, not the northeast where the supposed hot spot is.
There is evidence that the ice sheets are melting faster than in the recent past, at the margins.
Gee, Mr. I believe in Science - how do you THINK ice melts?
The 'margins' is where the state changes from solid to liquid.
What flaws?
Per your summary - no ice melting in Artic/Greenland.
Now you have claimed the world is warming but ice is not melting:
How many times do I have to say I'm NOT getting paid for this! Answer to the direct question -- NO I would NEVER compromize my position for money. Never.
I don't know what "compromize" is, but there is a simple answer.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3378/277749
Even if I did all that, you would still not believe me because you CHOOSE to not believe me. Wouldn't matter what I say or produce as evidence, you've made an allegation about me that is false and you are stick with it regardless.
Given some of the dubious conclusions the web site comes to, quite.
For example, they assert:
"In total, only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter in which this statement appears, the critical chapter 9, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”. Of the comments received from the 62 reviewers of this critical chapter"
They appear to have assumed that anyone who did not comment on a chapter did not read or review it. That is a false assumption.
Typically, a reviewer will comment on only the parts he or she finds to be flawed. If someone doesn't comment on a section, it could be that he or she didn't read it, but - based on my reviewing experience (with, admittedly, shorter papers) - it's more likely that the person did read it and simply found nothing they wanted to comment on.
i.e., they agreed with it.
I'm sure some of them didn't read the chapter, but I'm also sure that some of them did and decided they found nothing they felt needed attention urgently enough to comment on it. I've certainly done that for sections of papers I've reviewed. Accordingly, the web site's repeated claims that only 62 people reviewed that chapter are not only false, but display either ignorance about how reviewing works, or an intention to mislead.
The letter was sent to the UN and REPORTED in the paper. The politics of the paper means nothing. If fact, the politics of the Toronto Star forces them NOT to report on the letter. It will show up soon enough in other papers who have the guts to report it.
Classic shoot the messenger because you disagree with the message.
Sorry Shagrash but you are wrong in your second sentence "AGW is worse than the IPCC's worst case".
Global warming appears to be worse than the IPCC's worst case scenarion. You have to believe that man is respnsible before you call it AGW.
Keep things in perspective. Yes there is overwhelming scientific concensus that current trends in temperature co-incide with C02 increases in the last 150yrs but remember the earth has gone through literally thousands of significant warming and cooling periods that would be equally alarming if the cave men back then had the avbility to measure the changes. No one likes to debate the previous warmings because it is very easy by those arguments to nullify AGW theory.
I have stated this before and patiently state again, it is through my own interest in climate change that led me to research papers and various studies on paleoclimatology and thereby realise, as many people have, that the earth is not a static enviroment and that climate change is the norm, not the exception. It appears to take a leap of mental agility to work this out - but fact it is.
Now before you get all high and mighty just remember there are some people like myself, who for the benefit of doubt, and other reasons are trying to lower their carbon footprint.
Anoter samll irony missed on most people is that if it hadn't been for previous catastophic warming phases in earths grand 4500000000 year history (of which we have really only been taking climate readings for a few hudred years of say 0.00001% of geoligical history, 30 years from the sky!) then we would not now be burning fossil fuels which are the possible cause of the earths current malaise.
Hopefully i have offended neither the AGW fanatics or the GW deniers. Just trying to resore a bit of parity to the debate as Swede has pointed out has been stifled.
Marco.
*IF* the primary force for Global Warming is a natural cycle, *THEN* we should respond *FAR* more strongly to reduce CO2 and other GHG emissions.
If we are reinforcing a natural trend with our unnatural forcing (there is zero doubt that increased CO2, freon, etc. increases the Greenhouse effect, NONE !#), and nature is leading us to a climate disaster, then we cannot make it worse !!
OTOH, if nature, in the absence of increased CO2 et al, would be plunging us into a Little Ice Age, then we have some small breathing room, and a small (say 1/4th of today's ???) level of GHG emissions would be beneficial because it could very roughly stabilize the climate as is.
Best Hopes for Mr. Wakefield's Departure from TOD,
Alan
# 1) Lab experiments show infrared absorption spectra for CO2, freon, ...
2) World CO2 levels are rising dramatically (see 50 years of observations from Mauna Loa)
3) Mathematical models show a heat forcing from #1 & #2 (vaguely remember that the Greenhouse effect was equal to one 100 watt bulb every 25 m in a grid, N-S and E-W over the earth's surface, left on 24 hours/day for decades, with more bulbs added every year).
The impacts of adding that much heat are quite complex, and uneven, and are into a chaotic system. But there is NO DOUBT that we are adding heat into the system via #1 and #2.
I'm with Alan on this one. Beyond differences of opinion, ideology, and simple ignorance there are willful behaviors calculated to confused, distract, and impede. This appears to be what we're facing now ...
I bet he'd quit TOD a lot faster if no one responded to him.
Best hopes for y'all to start ignoring him.
That is a righteous method of putting the bored and mentally impaired back beneath their bridges, but when big money is on the line sterner measures may be required.
Ever faced a "paided" troll on a stock board when the company is being used in a P&D scam? Their job is to show up and increase the noise to signal ratio such that any real information is quickly scrolled away, ensuring those who come to investigate the company are either overloaded with their blabber or so disgusted they just leave.
TOD is a bit different. People are going to keep looking and keeping up the appearance that there is some sort of "debate" over AGW is a strategic initiative for all of the legacy fossil fuel extraction businesses.
I have not been here long enough to predict how this will play out, but I'm hoping Leanan has not misplaced the Hammer of Hrothgar.
This is, unfortunately, something only too common in trying to address this type of issue. As long as only one side is presented, then it is considered acceptable. Other opinions are derided in "ad hominem" attacks on the posters, and points that should be discussed are rolled over with blanket statements. Are we to accept that censorship is acceptable when applied by those that promulgate the idea that Greenhouse Gases are the only cause of the current state of Climate Change? (But of course not the other way around). That is not how we make advances in knowledge. I had not heard, until the above post, about the hot spot under Iceland. Should that knowledge be suppressed because it doesn't create conditions that conform to current theoretical models?
Iceland sits atop the Mid-Atlantic spreading ridge, which is essentially a crack in the earth allowing magma to spread across the ocean floor thus expanding the ocean's basin. Iceland is going to 100% geothermal power because it sits atop this spreading center.
Greenland is in close proximity to this spreading center, and it's quite likely its main islands (yes, Greenland is now considered a series of islands, not one continental mass) are of a volcanic origin linked to the spreading center and would logically contain hot spots. But any hot spots would have existed for millenia and caused no desernible melt to date or provided any help to those Norse who settled or the natives that preceded them.
This World Atlas link, http://encarta.msn.com/map_701514666/Mid-Atlantic_Ridge.html was the best I could find showing the ridge as it goes beyond Iceland.
Oops, sorry I meant to write Greenland.
With respect: It's all about signal-to-noise ratio.
Almost all of what Wakefield has provided has been shown to be falsifiable and almost certainly intentionally deceptive. It is noise. At some point, that kind of noise can drown out why we come to TOD.
If he wants to post quality and on-topic evidence of whatever direction, I'll read his comments with interest. But does anyone really want to argue that that's what he's doing?
If I had a vote, it would be for the hammer.
I'm inclined to agree. I'm not going to argue about on topic or off, or fair or not fair. It's signal to noise, and this is mostly noise. It's okay this once, but it's not happening again.
Alan on gut instinct i would agree with your first statement that we actuallty need to act more rapidly than we think in case man is actually reinforcing a natural cycle. On reflection however it has always been in mans arrogance to effect change on a sytem whose system is not fully understood.
What I want to see is more analysis and debate on prehistoric climate change. As it stands there is currenlty only educated conjecture on what caused the previous warming cycles. Anything from volcanoes to Milankovich cycles. Once the causes of past climate change are fully understood, mans step input to the system can also be factored in and we can therefore glean a more balance view of what needs to be done. I would not immediately agree that trying to burn less fossil fuel will make a big difference. To me it is like trying to stop a supertanker with a small puff of wind.
One could take the fatalist viewpoint: many agree that global population increases have put a great burden on the planet and why are we trying to save ourselves now if what the earth really needs ig a good out purge of population. A reduction of population would solve many problems.
i do not take this viewpoint. Realists usually get crucified.
Marco.
I would not immediately agree that trying to burn less fossil fuel will make a big difference. To me it is like trying to stop a supertanker with a small puff of wind
It depends upon what one's definition of "trying" is.
To repeat, the Millennium T21-USA model with three major inputs in addition to "market".
1) Colin Campbell's Oil #s
2) Maximum Push for Renewable Energy
3) Maximum Push for Electrified Rail & TOD
resulted in 2038 (for the USA) in
GDP +50%
GHG -50%
Oil Use -62%
Cutting Greenhouse Gases in half for the USA would mean about a 1/8th reduction in world GHG (I assume other nations would follow this policy as well, and a 33+% reduction in Global GHG emissions would be possible).
that is enough to reduce the effects somewhat, and is a path that can lead to further reductions.
Best Hopes for Best Efforts,
Alan
Yes, but I would see the GHG reductions as the "icing on the cake" rather than the primary rationale for the policy bundle. We don't really know for sure how much of an impact, if any, those will actually have on how GCC pans out. Maybe they'll help, or maybe they'll be like trying to build a seawall of sand on a tsunami-threatened beach. We just don't know.
What we DO know for certain, however, is that energy security, food security, water security, and economic security are hugely important issues, and that we neglect them at our peril. Something along the lines of your plan puts us in a better position than any other plan out there, and certainly better than the no plan that we have now.
Hi WNC,
Thank you, thank you!
re: "What we DO know for certain, however, is that energy security, food security, water security, and economic security are hugely important issues, and that we neglect them at our peril."
How many more rationales and/or rationalizations are necessary than these obvious ones?
What are the main obstacles?
Because money is to be made for certain entities when the result is a *decrease* in security? eg. food from far away, water supply contingent on a functioning (steadily increasing) FF input, etc.
Alan let me put some perspective on the situation, and this time I think you may agree with me.
Greenland hsa 110,000 - 130,000 worth of ice build up. Almost all of the ice has been melting with a certain periodicity coinciding reasonably well with C02 levels.
Now here is the problem. We are now at 400ppm, higher than at any time in history for at least 800,000 years. AGW vs GW arguments aside we are screwed and too late to do anything. greenland ice sheet has melted before many tim es on less C02 than now.
We are too late.
Marco.
(110,000-130,000 YEARS!) sorry.
Forced Ethanol Usage and Starvation
Converting the entire U.S. grain harvest to ethanol would satisfy only 16 percent of U.S. auto fuel needs.--Earth Policy Institute
http://www.icis.com/blogs/biofuels/archives/2007/01/there-aint-enough-co...
Since the push for renewable energy use went towards forced ethanol usage mandated by U.S. federal policy makers, the world is in danger of a super spike in food prices. This would also result in less discretionary income and a curtailment of consumer spending for items and services produced by other industries.
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
This paper has already been refuted. It turns out that assuming the ocean is only 110 meters deep does not give good results in predicting climate.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/09/climate-insensitiv...
Then we will have to wait for the peer reviewed papers won't we. Seems clear the science is most decisively NOT settled. I'm sure Schwartz will defend, or have to alter, his paper in response.
This just supports what I have been saying all along. It's NOT settled. Much has yet to be found out. What if Schwartz turns out to be right after further study? There is no way of knowing until it happens. Thus one must remain Skeptical.
BTW, I did read the RC reply.
So if you've read the RC article, you can see there are serious problems with this peer-reviewed article by Schwarz. You already know that the IPCC was synthesis of all the peer-reviewed work up to that time. You know that the vast majority of that work is in agreement that GW is mostly anthropogenic.
Sure, you have found a few articles that question the mainstream consensus, and you acknowleged that the peer-review process will weed out most of those that are flawed, like Schwarz's.
After Schwarz's flaws are thoroughly extirpated, what odds would you place that another few articles appear that also cast doubt on AGW?
According to your argument, there can be no policy decisions about the response to GW until there are absolutely zero peer-reviewed articles that question the consensus? Are you a relative of Goudot?
If you like I can find a few articles that question the reality of plate tectonics. I believe Baumgartner has a few. Do you realize you are placing yourself within the same scientific philosophy as the YECs?
You seem to be placing equal weight on a few papers that are poorly reasoned and poorly supported by questionable data, versus a huge number of papers, most with good data and reasoning.
If you can find one good article, with a good, robust data set supporting it, I'm sure you'd find a productive, civil discussion here or at RC.
And that's where we differ. What I see is a challenge to his paper. What I want to see next, BEFORE I pass any judgement, is what Schwarz will do next. If he is right ne will defend his position. So I'm SKEPTICAL of the results of this. But I do not a priori think his paper is flawed.
You are making an assumption that will happen. What if it turns out he is right after all? Don;t you want to see what he said before sentencing him to guilty? Does he not have the right to defend his position?
What odds? There is no way of knowing until more pile up. We just have to wait.
That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that there very well could be a time when the evidence will shift away from the consensus. What politicians do is up to them. But that said, it is grossly unfair to force politicians to act with alarmist predictions that have no basis in the IPCC reports or in science in general. Sea level rise is a prime example. The rates are all over the map and the higher the rate that is predicted the more scarier the scenario is. Scare makes politicians act.
And BTW, if there is no change in the rate of sea level from the current measurments, AGW theory is in SERIOUS trouble. Just that one alone can kill it.
I have done that many times and just get thrashed.
*IF* the primary force for Global Warming is a natural cycle, *THEN* we should respond *FAR* more strongly to reduce CO2 and other GHG emissions.
Alan,
If the people who like pointing at graphs and dinosaurs while saying "the Earth has been warmer" are correct, the effort to stop CO2/GHG from humans is going to be for naught.
Figuring out where to put humans so they have fresh water for drinking and not have structures under sea water is going to be the only response.
And, for the people who used to be on the coasts, others "have title" to dry land.
The people who maintain this site perhaps should consider to add a rating feature to each of the posted comment so that each registered blogger here can simply rate the comment as worthy or worthless to spend time on.
Edit: And at some negative rating, the comment folder should stay shut unless a reader who wants to read it to click it open. It can save lots of bandwidth.
Agreed.
The editors should consider slashcode. It is open-source, and uses "karma" points. If it were being used today, jrwakefield would be reborn as a cockroach.
I usually browse this site during breaks and weekends, so don't have time to read everything. Silly debates like today's are a waste of time.
This seemed to me like the most logical response days ago during the fourth-previous explosion of all the arguing surrounding this topic.
(Whether or not we will really do anything that matters, well, that's really the question.)
How can you possibly know I was wrong? That is a very dogmatic statement you made.
I would agree with you that my statement went beyond what is 100% certain (that the earth is warming). What is not known with certainty is the percentage of the warming that is caused by man. It could be 90% (best guess). It could be 50%. It could be 125%.
I understand that there is natural variation, but before you assume that variation is warming, you would have to present some evidence. The natural variation occuring now is just as likely to be cooling as warming.
Natural variation does not mean random variation. There is not some deity up in the sky rolling dice to see how the climate changes. Natural processes produce natural variation, and most of those processes are understood.
Since we entered the current ice epoch, the dominant factors in climate variation (as opposed to weather) have been the eccentricity of the earth's orbit and the precession of the equinoxes. In the not-too-distant future (a thousand, perhaps a few thousand, years in the future) those will line up for another period of warming as the current interglacial comes to an end.
The sun is also slowly getting brighter. However that trend is over billions of years (thankfully), and the short term trend for solar output is either flat or slightly decreasing.
In other words, the evidence presented by natural processes (excluding the production of greenhouse gases) says that natural climate variation should be small. It is not.
So, in short, my statement that "AGW is worse than the IPCC projections" is absolutely not wrong. It is just not as certain (say 95%) as the statement that "GW is worse than the IPCC projections" (99.9%).
Science isn't about parity. It is about explaining nature. When denialists have some evidence that doesn't crumble at first glance, they'll be taken seriously. Until then, they really need to be countered at every opportunity.
First of all 'variation' means cooling or warming. no need to qualify that it also means cooling.
Secondly I am going to explain in more simply why it is wrong to assume AGW. I agree fully with all of the science that says the earth is currently warming. As it has happend many times before (with even less C02 input) this increases the probability that the curves are co-incidental - note we DO NOT LIVE IN A HISTORICALLY STATIC CLIMATE. This means there re lots of up slopes and lots of down slopes. What we need to figure out is how to filter natural variablity out. Not yet done as we no not fully understand natural variablity.
Your sentence about dieties, dice and "and most of those processes are understood."
No they are not. Climate science is in its infancy.
Next sentence from you "Since we entered the current ice epoch". If afraid to tell you that we are actually in a warm interglacial. You really need to educate yourself a bit more.
Next crap you write:"The sun is also slowly getting brighter. However that trend is over billions of years "
Wrong again there are many solar cycles and I can ussure you it is in far shorter timescales that "billions of years." (Trust me I am astronomer) If you request i will give yuo the URL to my telescope making website!
You make 2 further erronious statements that others may want to point out.
Marco.
New paper shows that cycle:
From
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&Content...
New peer-reviewed study finds global warming over last century linked to natural causes: Published in Geophysical Research Letters: Excerpt: “Tsonis et al. investigate the collective behavior of known climate cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, and the North Pacific Oscillation. By studying the last 100 years of these cycles' patterns, they find that the systems synchronized several times. Further, in cases where the synchronous state was followed by an increase in the coupling strength among the cycles, the synchronous state was destroyed. Then a new climate state emerged, associated with global temperature changes and El Nino/Southern Oscillation variability. The authors show that this mechanism explains all global temperature tendency changes and El Nino variability in the 20th century. Authors: Anastasios A. Tsonis, Kyle Swanson, and Sergey Kravtsov: Atmospheric Sciences Group, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A. See August 2, 2007 Science Daily – “Synchronized Chaos: Mechanisms For Major Climate Shifts” (LINK)
The link is to Senator Inhofe. A person
entirely opposed to science.
We have to believe that Wakefield is unable to
discern the difference between advocacy and
science or we have to conclude he is a troll.
What is it about "Published in Geophysical Research Letters" you don't get? This report was of a PEER REVIEWED paper.
You guys just don't get it. I DELIBERATLY post links from source you don't like, even though the orginal refernce is valid, just to show that you attack the messenger, not the content of the actual data being presented. You are in NO WAY defending AGW or making a logical reply to the evidence, but instead showing clear signs of dogmatic faith based defence mechanisms to challenges to your orthodoxy.
What is it, oldhippie, about the cycles of climate patterns that is wrong?
You gather your garbage at sites that are
created to supply such as yourself with
factoids, red herrings and ammunition. None
of these sites are science sites. Most of them
feature material that is tasteless, offensive
or even harmful. Case in point your Canada Free
Press cites(how many today) where there is
bannered editorial content telling readers to
quit listening to their doctors and wallow in
snake oil "cures". Your World Climate Report
where the editors rant on about how Gov.
Schwarzenegger loses "manliness" by talking
green.
When I see Inhofe's imprimatur on your site I
don't need to check further. Inhofe is bought
and sold scum and any who read him are fools.
You did not read Geophysical Letters and then
do research to find that Inhofe had picked up
on it. You read Inhofe because you enjoy his
brand of swill.
I've checked 10 or 12 of your links at this
point. They are all ridiculous. You are
ridiculous. Shoot that messenger.
I don't even know who Inhofe is. Is he some neo-con you hate?
I don't even know who Inhofe is. Is he some neo-con you hate?
Gentle readers - here's the example of how much of a handle Mr. Wakefield has on the topic he claims to know.
He posts a link (which the powers that be have deleted) to this page:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&Content...
Then claims the above quoted part. Amazing.
No one's deleted it. It's still up there.
No. The one I was looking for was a reply to me. Where he actually answered my question. (The answer was not at all persuasive, but I give him props for answering the question - better than others who post then run away) Where he used that link and his comment was about how that link showed how the Arctic/Greenland was not melting.
Hence my responses about how can one have a warming globe (which Mr. Wakefield agrees with) and no ice melting. (Which was Mr. Wakefield's statement - the ice is not melting)
Well, I didn't delete any of his posts, and I don't think anyone else on the staff did, either. Maybe he deleted it himself.
I didn't delete anything. I never said that the ice is not melting at either polls. I go where the evidence says. That said, I absolutely deny that the entire ice of all of Greenland and Antarctica will totally melt in the short time frame the alarmists claim. It's physcially impossible. It would takes 1,000s of years to melt all of it.
So where has all this water gone? It hasn't changed the rate of sea level rise.
Congratulations Marco - in this response to Shargash's reasoned comments you have managed to be offensive, patronising, and very wrong, concurrently. It isn't even completely clear that you read or comprehended their arguments. Perhaps initiate some off-balance-sheet bilaterals with Mr Wakefield, and let the site return to its core purpose.
I object to the very wrong bit. I was pointing out 2 of his most blatant mistakes.
This includes, then, the very scientists in the IPCC who contributed to the reports. Since they are now coming forward claiming the IPCC summary is way over the top that they are now "denialists" and have to be rejected?
This includes, then, the very scientists in the IPCC who contributed to the reports.
That VASTLY overstates the list of those that signed. Overstatement to the point of deception.
Best Hopes for Mr. Wakefield's departure from TOD
Alan
Alan, I like to think I am a moderate voice and I love debate but I cringe when I see people trying to kick Mr wakefield out of the debate. In this whole thread all he has tried to do is put forward some points to debate and all everone has done is criticise hime without countering any one of his arguments to any academic degree. This treatment is unfair in the extreme and it smacks of the denialist attitute, the very same accusation you and other are making of HIM.
Please counter his points 1 by 1 if you disagree not attack him. Surely this is always a better solution.
Marco.
I have countered his faults in logic repeatedly.
There is a dichotomy between scientific truth (according to Mr. Wakefield only math can be truly proven) and public policy.
I will *NOT* play on his denier's terms. He has wasted my time on Ontario electrical production, where he has a series of false beliefs and proven himself to be immune to engineering facts, that I wasted two plus days detailing in great detail.
He is a professional denier, not a searcher for truth.
Best Hopes for Mr. Wakefield leaving TOD,
Alan
(
While I don't agree with Mr. Wakefield‘s AGW views, logically he is correct. Because all science rests on observations that are inductive the only possible answers we can get is probability, possibly a high degree of probability, but probability nonetheless. One must be careful not to confuse contiguity with causation. That said, a person probably would not live very long if he always required perfect evidence
Hi bruce,
re: "...logically he is correct"
Well, some mathematicians might disagree with the way this is phrased, in the sense that math has conventions for proof, given deep assumptions - not necessarily "math can be truly proven". But I digress...
Heading Out received a suggestion and I also expressed an interest in reading an article where he shares what his views are on the current crises, and the intersection between climate change and peak oil.
I'm especially interested in "plans" and ideas - such as a filling out of Alan's grid/renewable energy plan - and plans that address what WNC referred to as our security needs WRT food, water, etc.
JRW has received a suggestion to take his questions to "RealClimate". (Perhaps he could then return to share the results of his queries.)
"He is a professional denier, not a searcher for truth."
And again, Alan shows that he completely misrepresents me. I'm in no way paid to post here, so his ascertions are demonstrably false. He just doesn't like the fact that I challenge orthodoxy, or is that an unjustifiable statement Alan?
JRWakefield, if you are not paid to post here, why do you? This site is ostensibly devoted to the oil supply situation. Your constant interjection of GCC propaganda is inappropriate and from my point of view unwelcom. YOu have been told as much. So if you are not paid, STOP with the GCC postings!
Then ask that no more GCC postings of any kind occur in the Oil Drum then.
Alan, you, and others, obviously want to shut be up because I present EVIDENCE that does not support your dogma.
Instead of trying to discredit me, deal with the ISSUE! Show us, with your great wisdom, where these scientists who signed this letter are wrong. Then write them and show them why they are wrong.
Dogma? AGW is common sense to me. With the amount of forests paved over, with a thousand barrels of oil being burned a second, with 17 million tons of coal being used in my city alone this year, etc... Then factor in the earth is warming. It's not dogma, it is brutally obvious we are having effects on our environment.
In the faith based reality of the neocons and their fellow travellers fundamental science is open to question. Forget about thermodynamics impacts of CO2, N2O, O3, CH4, CFCs they don't exist if they go against the neocon dogma. This planet was placed here to be used and abused by God's crowning creation, mankind. So it "follows" that nothing bad can happen if we do anything we please to the planet since it is basically God's plan. These people are another species of the Taliban who think science is the work of the Devil even if not too openly.
Some are claiming that the denialist propagandists are not getting fair treatment since scientists and others are not debating them. It is quite clear that the denialist definition of debate is quite different from that in the dictionary. How can one debate previously debunked talking points? I have yet to see any denialist thinking that can withstand any serious scrutiny. There is way too much coddling of their drivel.
Even simple logic shows their whole position to be magical thinking nonsense. For example, if you increase the CO2 in the atmosphere you will eventually reach the regime seen on Venus. So the negative feedbacks are not exactly offsetting the thermodynamical impact of CO2. If one bothers to get informed one will see why. The all important cloud albedo effect is nowhere near a perfect mechanism, even in the limit of the Venus cloud regime, the atmosphere will always be gray and not white. There is also no infrared iris that will magically radiate away the heat in just the right amount. Thankfully we are not able to screw up Earth enough to turn it into Venus. But screwing around with the composition of the atmosphere will have definite effects that cannot be hidden by variability. There is no fixed balance between the nonlinearity of the Navier-Stokes equations and the thermodynamics of the atmosphere.
i am just wondering, what level of co2 would be deadly for humans ? it is my understanding that the involuntary breathing response (exhaling) is triggered by a rather minute rise in co2 in the lungs.
According to: http://www.inspect-ny.com/hazmat/CO2gashaz.htm
* At 1% concentration of carbon dioxide CO2 (10,000 parts per million or ppm) and under continuous exposure at that level, such as in an auditorium filled with occupants and poor fresh air ventilation, some occupants are likely to feel drowsy.
* The concentration of carbon dioxide must be over about 2% (20,000 ppm) before most people are aware of its presence unless the odor of an associated material (auto exhaust or fermenting yeast, for instance) is present at lower concentrations.
* Above 2%, carbon dioxide may cause a feeling of heaviness in the chest and/or more frequent and deeper respirations.
* If exposure continues at that level for several hours, minimal "acidosis" (an acid condition of the blood) may occur but more frequently is absent.
* Breathing rate doubles at 3% CO2 and is four times the normal rate at 5% CO2.
* Toxic levels of carbon dioxide: at levels above 5%, concentration CO2 is directly toxic. [At lower levels we may be seeing effects of a reduction in the relative amount of oxygen rather than direct toxicity of CO2.]
Humans are not likely to experience CO2 concentrations as high as 1% on this planet unless there is some cataclysmic
outbreak of volcanic traps. But of course this does not mean that we can ignore the climate impact.
Then you have missed what my position is.
What we have been seeing here is classic dogma. In science when you have a theory, such as AGW theory, you must always keep in the back of your mind that it is possible that one day evidence will come along and discredit the theory. That's what is supposed to happen in science. So you remain skeptical of the theory. Never in science are the words "The science is settled" or "the AGW is fact" used because that is not how science works.
When those statements are used then we have clearly moved from the realm of science into the realm of dogma. That is adopted by people who already have a worldview that is supported by the dogma.
What we see here are people who have clearly stated that they hate the current capitalist system, hate their form of government, hate their own country. They see the very serious issues we have as a civilization and try to work it into fitting their already preconceived notions of how the world should work. Along comes AGW and to them the silver bullet has arrived. See, we knew it all along! We are going to kill the planet with our evil ways! Thus the legitimate science of climate change becomes the GOD of a new dogmatic belief system.
Any challenges to that belief system must be destroyed at all costs. We have clearly seen that here with replies to my post. Only a few have actually posted references countering the references I post (that part is good, and needed for a balance view), but the others, with their mechanisms of attack are nothing more than the reactions people have when their dogma is challenged. Attack the messenger, not the message. Such actions in the past has lead humanity to do despicable things to each other. How many out there would love to burn me at the stake?!
So, what we have here, goghgoner, is clear dogma.
The Center for the Study of Strawmen.
There is a difference between being skeptical of a widely-held (for good reason) theory, and crying "dogma! dogma!". The vast majority of researchers in the field disagree with you. It's simply the current state of the science. If there really IS the evidence you suggest, it will come around. It will - science really does work that way. But this "dogma" claim nonsense is just that - nonsense.
A large proportion of your posts consists of logical fallacies, hotbutton-pushing, comical exaggerations, and numerous other polemical bullshit techniques, which again suggests you are a silly troll. If you want to have people treat your utterances with any kind of respect, you need to show some in return. Look over your posts here, and stop wondering why you are being treated with derision.
Speaking of comical exaggerations:
"Attack the messenger, not the message. Such actions in the past has lead humanity to do despicable things to each other. How many out there would love to burn me at the stake?!"
Aren't you the noble martyr! Oh please! This is really over the top. I hate to disappoint you, but nobody wants to burn you at the stake. But I'll bet I'm not the only one that wants you to get a grip, and go away. This wannabe martyr thing is really quite silly.
I do not hate capitalism, nor do I know of anyone posting on this site who has stated that they hate capitalism.
Furthermore, I doubt very much that any members of the IPCC hate capitalism.
I have looked a bit more closely at the "Canadian Free Press" and see that it is a rather dubious source of information and analysis.
For example, this article:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/956
The article is an effort to resurrect the reputation of the terrible "Anti-communist" crusader Senator Joe McCarthy who ruined countless lives by jumping to conclusions and calling people "Communists" and then using his position of power to destroy those people without due process, careful consideration of evidence, or even any kind of intellectual integrity.
From a Wiki article:
'The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist pursuits. Today the term is used more generally to describe demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.'
McCarthy was censured by the US Senate for having spread confusion and division while promoting a destructive "fraud and a hoax."
I mention this because I find jrw's remarks to be a storm of "demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations" designed so that he can play the role of a much-abused Martyr-and-Champion-of-Reason-Against-Orthodoxy-and-Dogma."
In fact jrw seems to be very much a champion of extreme right wing political orthodoxy and dogma.
This ultra-right dogma is thinly veiled in reckless and destructive pseudo-scientific attacks on those who wish to formulate careful public policy based on science.
Wiki's article on McCarthyism notes that such NeoCons as Ann Coulter continue to try to rewrite the history of McCarthy and McCarthyism -- who wanted to imprison people for believing the wrong things, by the way.
I guess that is what I've found increasingly disturbing about his posts.
The Neocons are trying to rewrite the history of the IPPC and the science of global climate change as it happens.
Way up the thread, I noted a non sequitur that jrw threw out as he attacked the IPCC as driven by a political agenda.
Specifically, I noted that allegations do not prove a "political agenda" on the part of the IPCC.
I'm increasingly convinced that jrw's reckless use of attacks is not directed toward meaningful discussion, but is merely used as a tactic of distraction and intimidation -- an extension of the politics of fear, confusion, and division employed by Neocons as a matter of course in defending their own Orthodoxy and Dogma from the threats of science, reason, and logic.
The truth will come out. Meanwhile, we are all hurt by intentional ignorance in drag as curmudgeonly criticism.
Then you must have missed the "debate" on capitalism from a few days ago. Yea, there are a number here who hate capitalism.
I got told recently that Wiki is nonsence and is not to be used as a reference. Gee, too bad. Doesn't matter what the paper the letter was reported in. It was also the National Post. Yes, a conservative paper, but SO WHAT? Personally, I read both sides papers (Star and Post) to get a balanced view from both sides.
BTW, you are wrong. I'm in the middle of the political spectrum not a "neo-con", where the vast majority of Canadians reside too. And, oh, Liberals have never rewitten history!? Give me a break. Every political party does what it can to twist history to fit their idology. No party is immune. And the UN is very much a politically motivated organization, who bends to the will of those countries that control it.
Evil governments and economic systems also have their dogmatic defenders. Plenty of them have hidden behind science as well. Conscience is the ability to recognize that one side in a dispute is willing to see (or ignore) the deaths of millions rather than concede their real or imagined interests, and the other side is willing to sacrifice its own well-being to try to prevent as many of those deaths as possible.
Emphasis on "own well-being."
Bingo.
Mr. Wakefield.
1) How many of those signed were members at one tiem or another of IPCC ?
2) How many members of IPCC are there ?
Your statements were of such limited truth that there were misleading.
You made a declarative statement, so back it up with the two facts I requested.
Alan
Alan, all I did was post the quotes. If you have issues with them take it up with those that signed the letter. It is competely unfair to expect me to do that for you.
Just as it is completely unfair of you to expect us to debunk the same old crap that's been debunked many, many times before. Go away, troll. Take yourself to RealClimate, and maybe there you will learn something.
All I asked of you was two numbers to support YOUR claim.
Such as 4 & 1,423. That is 4 of 1,423 IPCC scientists signed the letter that started all of this.
Please supply me with those two numbers to support YOUR personal claim that former IPCC scientists were turning against the "dogma" (and that is YOUR cliam !).
Alan
Alan asked 2 questions that someone who is 'an authority' on AGW should know.
Why can't you be bothered to answer them?
jrwakefield: why does Alan have to prove anything about his poistion on GCC [global climate change]? Why do the rest of us have to reply to your posts?
What is your real name?
New study claims UN IPCC peer-review process is "an illusion." A September 2007 analysis of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) scientific review process entitled “Peer Review? What Peer Review?” by climate data analyst John McLean, revealed very few scientists are actively involved in the UN's peer-review process. According to the analysis, “The IPCC would have us believe that its reports are diligently reviewed by many hundreds of scientists and that these reviewers endorse the contents of the report. Analyses of reviewer comments show a very different and disturbing story.” The paper continued: "In [the IPCC's] Chapter 9, the key science chapter, the IPCC concludes that 'it is very highly likely that greenhouse gas forcing has been the dominant cause of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.' The IPCC leads us to believe that this statement is very much supported by the majority of reviewers. The reality is that there is surprisingly little explicit support for this key notion. Among the 23 independent reviewers just 4 explicitly endorsed the chapter with its hypothesis, and one other endorsed only a specific section. Moreover, only 62 of the IPCC’s 308 reviewers commented on this chapter at all." The analysis concluded: “The IPCC reports appear to be largely based on a consensus of scientific papers, but those papers are the product of research for which the funding is strongly influenced by previous IPCC reports. This makes the claim of a human influence self-perpetuating and for a corruption of the normal scientific process.” (LINK)
Climate data analyst John McLean?
Possibly he records rain gauge readings every day. In fact he is a Melbourne-based "writer" described by The (non-partisan) National Forum: "John McLean has an amateur interest in global warming following 25 years in what he describes as the analysis and logic of IT." (Whatever that means). He bears a grudge against mainstream scientific institutions in Australia (CSIRO, etc), and was a strong supporter of former Prime Minister Howard's dogma-driven decision to not sign the Kyoto Protocol.
You have such credible sources Mr Wakefield! By the way, the best thing to do when you're deep in a hole is to stop digging. Didn't your parents ever tell you that?
How do you explain this:
New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears
This is why it is safer to be SKEPTICAL than to be dogmatic in any direction. We are going to have no choice but to wait out for more evidence.
You have hit the nail on the head with this comment. I am also sick of people calling me a denier because I want more answers, more debate, more science and yet I am not a denier. I am an engineer - analytic by nature and as a hobbyist an astronomer. These things make me more tuned in to what dogma is. It's what annoys me most about the whole one-sidedness of the debate.
There is such a sheep mentality when it comes down to it. Most people who argue the case really don't understand the science very well.
Marco.
Sorry, but it comes down to risk.
If we accept that the vast majority of evidence points to human created CO2 rise and the link from that to global temperatures - then the ONLY sane course of action is substantial reduction in man-made CO2. And yesterday.
If we take that action then not only do we address the warming we know of, we also address many peak oil aspects and act to reduce the 'intensity' of global human impact. That's a good thing when the global population seems to rise without end.
If we don't then the evidence is against us, we get none of the other benefits and we are essentially betting against ourselves, and our best knowledge, with the future of mankind.
The debate was over decades ago. Science is never settled, but the right course of action is. There is no benefit or reason for delaying action, and indeed the action we have already taken has been woefully inadequate. There is a need to take things really seriously, and for those who continue to insist that black equals white and there is not enough evidence for action to stump up for the risk premium they are trying to make everyone else take. Their position is as unacceptable as it is wrong headed.
So, if you want to continue to wait, I want you to pay for the risk privilege you try to impose on all. That way those of us who do want to take the sane course of action now can at least have a damn good party when you finally admit you were wrong; as the water is lapping around your feet.
I am not waiting, i have taken all the actions that i can to reduce my carbon fotstep. But that don´t mean that i believe in man made GW. It may or may not be right.
I don't have an issue with your basic premise except to say if the CO2 we emit is not an issue with the over all trend in climate, then efforts to subdue those emissions, such as the carbon trading system or carbon sequestering, will waste not only money, but resources that would be better put into solving the issue of FF depletion. Would you not agree?
Of course, none of these actions for any of the two issues will ultimately be solved as you correctly state "global population seems to rise without end."
Carbon trading, etc. is an effort to put a price on carbon - to minimise it.
Therefore the cheapest solution ends up being not to emit it in the first place. No burning FF = no emit. Therefore it's entirely compatible with minimising FF depletion, providing you cost it right.
In the end, controlling population is the elephant in the room.
Marco,
There are two types of debate relevant to Global Warming.
Public Policy debate and scientific debate.
There is no need for further debate on Public Policy. Even if the projections are overstated by 2/3rds (as alleged elsewhere), that should have almost no effect on the required changes in public policy.
As we are frantically installing wind turbines and electrified rail, we can engage in the intellectual debate on the science.
Best Hopes for Seeing the Difference,
Alan
BTW, the Best Mitigation for Peak Oil is also the Best Mitigation (with a minor delta) for Climate Change, and it gives the largest economy. The best public policy for all three is a MAXIMUM push for renewable energy coupled with a MAXIMUM push for a non-oil transportation system focused on electrified rail and bicycles (including eBikes).
That you may have received some scientific training as an engineer does not mean that you can judge on the science done by others. I too an engineer by training and have taken the time to study the GW problem over a period of more than 30 years. I've also looked at many of the complaints from the denialist and I think the denialist are mostly wrong, just as I think the young Earth Creationist are wrong. If you want more data, etc, go to the literature referenced in the IPCC reports and study the various issues. The IPCC does not do research, they rely on the published literature. There's been a tremendous amount of work done and most of it points to the present warming trend being due, in large part, to mankind.
E. Swanson
But we DO have other choices, JR.
Exxon will be very happy if we keep waiting for more definitive proof, although as yesterday's discussion showed, there are lots of ways to define happy.
Meanwhile, people who want to make plans for next year, for the kids or for the fabled 7th generation might find that it's sensible to make a number of reasonable changes, investments and precautions when it seems pretty likely that we are on a course towards trouble.
Skepticism can help to be a course correction mechanism.. and it can be a pathological need to rebut, to tussle and to waylay our 'decision/action' process.
'Don't just sit there. Well, ok, Just sit there. ABC'
-Subway Ad seen in NYC
Bob
'Obey your obstinate procrastination.'
.. in other words, Skepticism can become its own Dogmatic approach.
We are going to have no choice but to wait out for more evidence
WRONG !
We do have a choice !
Ontario can go to a 99% non-GHG grid, with massive Light Rail build-out ($6 billion could be Step 1). Or Ontario can burn coal while continuing to sprawl to Exurbia and drive everywhere, as one relevant example.
You want to wait and wait and wait till it is too late to do anything. We HAVE the certainty required for a MAJOR change in Public Policy, whether that threshold is 50%, 75%, 80% or even 90%.
But you are immune to facts & reasoning.
Best Hopes for Mr. Wakefield leaving TOD,
Alan
According to Dave Rutledge at CalTech, the realistic global warming trend is better than the most optimistic IPCC case because the IPCC uses 18 Tboe as the amount of coal that will be consumed, while the Hubbert Linearization derived number should be 1.6 Tboe. If people here believe anything about HL with respect to oil, they should find Rutledge much closer to the truth. Rutledge points out that Ken Deffeyes first raised the issue of the actual coal supply.
Sorry for the misunderstanding Sterling but I was correcting Shagrash's AGW to GW, not asserting the statement (should have made that clear).
Sorry as well that I did not read your comment more carefully. I just wanted to drop that point into the discussion and your post seemed to give me a good departure point.
I am a GW skeptic, not in that I question their projections given their assumptions, but that I think the IPCC and their ilk use assumptions of resource availability that are seriously flawed. However, I get that using realistic resource numbers would take a lot of wind out of their sails. It’s not that I think we face a less serious crisis but that I think we face a different crisis, imminent peak fossil fuels.
The IPCC (more specifically the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios, or SRES, modeling teams) have vastly overstated the fossil fuel reserves.
However, the climate modeling groups (more specifically Working Group 1) have vastly under appreciated the timing and rate of change likely due to positive feedbacks in the Earth System. The reasons for this are complex, but primarily have to do with poor knowledge of the responses of vegetation and giant ice sheets to the extra heat forcing already underway.
Therefore, in spite of the issues with SRES, Working Group 1 outputs are under representing the actual measures of change seen in the real world, right now.
This means that because of the under represented positive feedbacks, the planet is more sensitive to a rise in greenhouse gas concentrations than most scientists have so far suggested.
OK. But let's first nail down what we think those concentrations will be. Rutledge says we max out at about 460 ppm in around 2080 if we burn up all the coal or about 1.4 degrees C temperature rise, by his model, which is not all due to burning fossil fuels. (See page 40 and 41 of his presentation cited above.) Maybe there will be a higher temperature rise as a result of greater sensitivity.
So, what can we do? Oil and gas will run out faster than we can possible restrict their use. The worst offender and the only one that we can potentially do something about is coal. Maybe we can leave a fair amount of coal in the ground with a big nuclear buildup.
The trouble with all climate models right now (including the one used by Rutledge) is that they don't incorporate the very feedback loops that are most important in the long term. The key here is that the delayed feedbacks expected in the "long term" are starting to happen "today." So 460 ppm is perhaps a low ball because of co2 release from unexpected sources.
Furthermore, if you look at IPCC's Working Group 2, Impacts, they don't expect the sorts of changes we are seeing now in the cryosphere and biosphere to be happening until temperatures are much higher than they currently are. Big, big oops!
About what to do? I recommend the recent article by Ross Gelbspan.
http://www.energybulletin.net/38315.html
The hypothesis that other, natural factors are responsible at least in part for global climate change is certainly worthy of further research, and can in no way be ruled out at present.
However, the fact that we have dug up and burned over the past few centuries massive amounts of hydrocarbons that had been geologically sequestered is clearly a major disequilibrium, and the hypothesis that this does constitute an anthropogenic cause for GCC certainly has a lot of credible evidence in its behalf. The alternative hypothesis - that such massive amounts of gasses (experimentally demonstrated to be capable of causing a greenhouse effect) can and have been released into the atmosphere with no observable effect upon global climate whatsoever - does not appear to have much real scientific support. There is no absence of people that would cite it, were such evidence to really exist.
Whether we really can stop or reverse GCC at this point is a debatable question, though. Whether or not it might have been theoretically possible a few decades ago, I am afraid that the evidence appears to be increasingly pointing to the conclusion that whatever we can realistically do at this point -- even if we had universal consensus -- would be much too little, much too late. Perhaps we should direct most of our focus to adaptation rather than mitigation.
At this point, arguing about what percentage of GCC is really anthropogenic, and to what extent it can be mitigated, sounds a lot like a debate on the decks of the Titanic as to whether or not the gash in the hull was caused by negligent watchmen, poor navigation, or stealthy iceburgs, and whether a gash of that magnitude really will or will not sink the ship. Carry on that debate, if you will, but I think it is time to be looking for a lifeboat.
The first question to ask when an extraordinary story like this appears is "who are the authors".
One is a fellow by the name of Tom Harris, who has officially taken the position that climate change is a hoax. He is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an unbiased reporter.
Tom Harris (lobbyist) - Wikipedia
Tom Harris - SourceWatch
The second author is a Mr. John McLean, who recently published a long report about how climate change is not that bad.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_originals/peerreview.html
Science and Public Policy Institute - Wikipedia
Science and Public Policy Institute - SourceWatch
Always make sure to watch the sources, and don't forget to follow the money.
How does this discredit the letter to the UN by these scientists? Many of them from the IPCC itself? You are attacking the messenger in the hopes to discredit the message.
Ah Wakefield. Remember when I asked you to put together something and get it over to realclimate.org? How did that turn out? If you haven't done that make sure you include the stuff you are pushing today and please report back with results. Like I said before they are more qualified to give a detialed rebuttal to what you post here.
I don't need to. (I have tried to post to them in the past, but never could get through). It will be very interesting to see what RealClimate says about this letter.
My guess is in the short term, they will do their best to discredit these scientists. In the long term they will be eating crow once more evidence emerges that does not support AGW dogma.
Odd you can't get through. I've posted two
short queries there, and had response. I see
other names from TOD there. HMMMM.
Can't get through? What are you saying, that they are denying you access? What a lame excuse on your part; this just demonstrates that you are afraid to talk to real scientists.
Not sure what's going on. Every time I tried to sign up, i cant log back in. I've emailed them but no reply. maybe they are just blackballing me, but that's just speculation.
Ever tried posting anything that doesn't agree with Lubos Motl's (one of the "world authorities" on the letter) viewpoint on his blog? You can measure how long it takes to get removed in minutes. If you're really lucky, you may get namechecked as a "subhuman" or something similar in a later post. Even if you are blacklisted (about which I don't have the evidence to judge), this is clearly not restricted to one side of the issue.
You really need to get the experts who can actually critically read the papers carry out a debate rather than pick a side based on whom you feel makes a more dramatic narrative when you label that side "dogmatic".
I suspect that Mr Wakefield is being somewhat dishonest (no, really!) about not "getting through". Maybe if he spent as much time dredging up his junk as debating on RealClimate.org, he might actually educate himself. If only...
What do you mean you don't need to? So your point of view does not need balance specifically coming from the proffesionals that are qualified to evaluate the data? Then you say you can't post there? Right.
Seriously leave. Ignore button activated.
Of the 100, only 4 were IPCC reviewers, 2 of whom were coal industry.
See other thread for the details.
Including a lot of Economists.
Here's the consensus problem we should be worried about, JR.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/friday/chi...
"But the U.S. has been singled out at the meeting as the biggest obstacle to progress, not only because it has attempted to remove targets and deadlines for emissions cuts from any deal but also because it has blocked agreement on issues like the transfer of clean technology from richer to poorer countries."
"Most climate negotiators argue that such transfers are key to helping developing countries and emerging major polluters like China and India build cleaner power plants and adopt more environmentally friendly manufacturing processes. But Bush administration delegates have raised concerns about the loss of intellectual property rights, among other issues."
'What's mine is mine, and what's Yours is mine!'
Follow the money.
I am not the man to tell who is right in this issue, but i have got a clear impression of "groupthink" in the "manmade climatchange" camp. Those who try to question this are ridiculed.
Anyway, what´s the problem, the oil and coal era is soon over. Of much more concern is the heavy pollution for example in China with burning of fossil fuels without cleaner methods.
Yes, and the world will likely end up with a climate roughly +5C warmer if no restraints are put upon extraction of fossil fuels.
Sweden shall be "interesting". If the Gulf Stream shuts down (or more likely takes a mid-Atlantic shortcut) your climate will be like the Arctic coast of Siberia. But if not, malaria may become a problem, and air conditioning will be essential during the summer.
There is certainly enough coal to fry the planet.
Alan
Hi AlanfromBigEasy
You may or may not be right. I sure don´t know which is right in this matter.
But about Sweden, it´s not sure, that a stop of the Golf stream should make Sweden to a new Siberia. I have read that the more important factor is the wind direction. We have westerly winds that blow from the Atlantic over Scandinavia, and that causes the mild climat here. So a change of the wind direction should propably cause a greater effect on our climat.
God Jul och Gott Nytt År
“New research from Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven National Lab concludes that the Earth’s climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) assumes,” wrote AEI’s Schwartz, who hold a master’s degree in planetary science from the California Institute of Technology.
The study’s “result is 63% lower than the IPCC’s estimate of 3 degrees C for a doubling of CO2 (2.0–4.5 degrees C, 2SD range). Right now we’re about 41% above the estimated pre-industrial CO2 level of 270 ppm. At the current rate of increase of about 0.55% per year, CO2 will double around 2070. Based on Schwartz’s results, we should expect about a 0.6 degrees C additional increase in temperature between now and 2070 due to this additional CO2. That doesn’t seem particularly alarming,”
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
This paper has already been refuted. It turns out that assuming the ocean is only 110 meters deep does not give good results in predicting climate.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/09/climate-insensitiv...
Oh come on, don't get in the way of Mr Wakefield's happy cherry picking. No matter how discredited the source, how muddy the messenger - as long as it "disproves" AGW.
Unless those who criticize the paper have their own agenda doesn't it. We will have to wait and see how this pans out on both sides. That is, we must remain skeptical.
That is, we must remain skeptical.
WRONG !
There is no "need" to remain skeptical, especially with regard to public policy. There *IS* a need for mitigation action, while 1% of the climate scientists debate the other 99% of the climate scientists over fine details, magnitfude, timing, etc. and all of your links.
This is NOT intellectual masturbati0n like Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, where the results matter not.
Alan
I inserted a zero for an o for filters.
The intelligent design vs. evolution debate most certainly matters, because the evolution side is the only one that leads us to understanding of the evolution of the diseases that have gained resistance to antibiotics.
The world is unlikely to end on January 1st, 2071, so the issue of long term damage from CC is very much an open question as of that date (unless the effects are so profoundly terrible by then that discussion is moot).
Your time frame does not support your position !
But of course you will ignore that bit of logic.
And the uncertain negative effects of a 0.6 C change are large enough to justify significant mitigation efforts. Such as shutting down Ontario's coal plants.
Best Hopes for You Leaving TOD,
Alan
Google. Copy. Paste. Google. Copy. Paste.
Damn you trolls are getting crazy smart.
Enuf, troll, enuf. Get thee to a nunnery.
Schwartz' sensitivity estimate
Via email, I hear that this paper from Stephen Schwartz is making a bit of a splash in the delusionosphere. In it, he purports to show that climate sensitivity is only about 1.1C, with rather small uncertainty bounds of +-0.5C.
Usually, I am happy to let RealClimate debunk the septic dross that still infects the media. In fact, since I have teased them about their zeal in the past, it may seem slightly hypocritical of me to bother with this. However, this specific paper is particularly close to my own field of research, and the author is also rather unusual in that he seems to be a respected atmospheric scientist with generally rather mainstream views on climate science (although perhaps a bit critical of the IPCC here). However, his background is in aerosols, which suggests that he may have stumbled out of his field without quite realising what he is getting himself into.
Anyway, without further ado, on to the mistakes:
Mistake number 1 is a rather trivial mathematical error. He estimates sensitivity (K per W/m^2) via the equation
S=t/C
where C is the effective heat capacity (mostly ocean) and t is the time constant of the system (more on this later).
His numerical values for t and C are 5+-1, and 16.7+-7 respectively (with the uncertainties at one standard deviation). It is not entirely clear what he really intends these distributions to mean (itself a sign that he is a little out of his depth perhaps), but I'll interpret them in the only way I think reasonable in the context, as gaussian distributions for the parameters in question. He claims these values gives S equal to 0.3+-0.09, although he also writes 0.3+-0.14 elsewhere. This latter value works out at 1.1C+-0.5C for a doubling of CO2. But the quotient of two gaussians is not gaussian, or symmetric. I don't know how he did his calculation, but it's clearly not right.
In fact, the 16%-84% probability interval (the standard central 68% probability interval corresponding to +- 1sd of a gaussian, and the IPPC "likely") of this quotient distribution is really 0.18-0.52K/W/m^2 (0.7-1.9C per doubling) and the 2sd limit of 2.5% to 97.5% is 0.12-1.3K/W/m^2 (0.4-4.8C per doubling). While this range still focuses mostly on lower values than most analyses support, it also reaches the upper range that I (and perhaps increasingly many others) consider credible anyway. His 68% estimate of 0.6-1.6C per doubling is wrong to start with, and doubly misleading in the way that it conceals the long tail that naturally arises from his analysis.
Mistake number 2 is more to do with the physics. In fact this is the big error, but I worked out the maths one first.
He estimates a "time constant" which is supposed to characterise the response of the climate system to any perturbation. On the assumption that there is such a unique time constant, this value can apparently be estimated by some straightforward time series analysis - I haven't checked this in any detail but the references he provides look solid enough. His estimate, based on observed 20th century temperature changes, comes out at 5y. However, he also notes that the literature shows that different analyses of models give wildly different indications of characteristic time scale, depending on what forcing is being considered - for example the response to volcanic perturbations has a dominant time scale of a couple of years, whereas the response to a steady increase in GHGs take decades to reach equilibrium. Unfortunately he does not draw the obvious conclusion from this - that there is no single time scale that completely characterises the climate system - but presses on regardless.
Schwartz is, to be fair, admirably frank about the possibility that he is wrong:
This situation invites a scrutiny of the each of these findings for possible sources of error of interpretation in the present study.
He also says::
It might also prove valuable to apply the present analysis approach to the output of global climate models to ascertain the fidelity with which these models reproduce "whole Earth" properties of the climate system such as are empirically determined here.
Perhaps a better way of putting that would be to suggest applying the analysis to the output of computer models in order to test if the technique is capable of determining their (known) physical properties. Indeed, given the screwy results that Schwartz obtained, I would have thought this should be the first step, prior to his bothering to write it up into a paper. I have done this, by using his approach to estimate the "time scale" of a handful of GCMs based on their 20th century temperature time series. This took all of 5 minutes, and demonstrates unequivocally that the "time scale" exhibited through this analysis (which also comes out at about 5 years for the models I tested) does not represent the (known) multidecadal time scale of their response to a long-term forcing. In short, this method of analysis grossly underestimates the time scale of response of climate models to a long-term forcing change, so there is little reason to expect it to be valid when applied to the real system.
In fact there is an elementary physical explanation for this: the models (and the real climate system) exhibit a range of time scales, with the atmosphere responding very rapidly, the upper ocean taking substantially longer, and the deep ocean taking much longer still. When forced with rapid variations (such as volcanoes), the time series of atmospheric response will seem rapid, but in response to a steady forcing change, the system will take a long time to reach its new equilibrium. An exponential fit to the first few years of such an experiment will look like there is a purely rapid response, before the longer response of the deep ocean comes into play. This is trivial to demonstrate with simple 2-box models (upper and lower ocean) of the climate system.
Changing Schwartz' 5y time scale into a more representative 15y would put his results slap bang in the middle of the IPCC range, and confirm the well-known fact that the 20th century warming does not by itself provide a very tight constraint on climate sensitivity. It's surprising that Schwartz didn't check his results with anyone working in the field, and disappointing that the editor in charge at JGR apparently couldn't find any competent referees to look at it.
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2007/08/schwartz-sensitivity-estimate....
I assume you sent this to Schwartz and will report back to us as to his reply?
Read the comments at the site and find out for yourself.
I did. I don't see any reply by Schwartz. What I do see is people posting support for his paper. We need to see what he says to the criticisms. I would think that if he was in such error that his paper would not pass peer review. Would he make such a mistake? There's more here than meets the eye, we need to hear from him.
Why didn't you do this simple math yourself jrwakefield?
I looked at Wharf Rat's analysis and it is relatively straightforward.
I think the standard premise of "dispersion" of time constants also has great validity on oil depletion analysis. I have recently been researching dispersion on discovery profiles and reserve growth (and it has been shown to be important for the log-normal distribution of reservoir sizes). The key thing to remember is that not one single time constant rules over these kinds of time series. Interestingly, the dispersion has positive effects on oil resources, in that it leads to greater reserves than we may currently believe, but the same effect has negative consequence as the longer time scales in GW analysis lead to lags in heating that Schwartz evidently misses, and non-skeptical sorts like jrwakefield gobble up.
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2007/12/dispersive-diffusion-model-of-r...
Maybe I should thank jrwakefield for his relentless idiocy. If it wasn't for his caterwauling, I wouldn't have seen Wharf Rat's analysis, which appears already a few month's old. Great stuff Wharf Rat.
If 100 people are standing around looking at 5 cows and 99 of them say there are 5 cows, it is going to look like groupthink. And yes, they are going to ridicule the one who says there are no cows there.
The era of oil and coal will indeed soon be over. However, there is more than enough coal in the ground to trigger catastrophic climate change if it is burned in a relatively short period of time, which it increasingly looks like it will be.
Look at that article from Leanan on SA's mines
suffering from electricity outages.
And Heinburg and the Energy Watch Group say that the Top 5 coal producers are way behind in doing coal inventories.
" there is more than enough coal in the ground to trigger catastrophic climat change"
How do you know that is so sure? I ain´t so sure about anything.
Yes. As we fall off the FF cliff, the tendency will be to lean on worse and worse fuels, meaning those with lower and lower H:C ratios, ending with coal. There are ten trillion tons of available coal still in the ground, according to earlier articles on this site. Thus there is IMO a real possibility that the contraction phase of our civilization could be much worse for what remains of the environment than our current unsustainable state of affairs.
The problem boils down to a long-recognized effect of overshoot, where life-support capability becomes so depleted that the post-crash carrying capacity for humans is far lower than the pre-industrial levels. Who knows how long it will take for the biosphere and its survivors to adapt and recover?
I agree with you that we are in overshoot regarding to recources and population. But what has that to do with climat change?
Swede,
As FF availability declines, the struggle to maintain BAU will result in more CO2 being released per unit heat generated, because we'll eventually have to resort to burning coal and bitumen to keep the TV's humming in suburbia.
So it's possible that even as economic output shrinks, the rate of CO2 injection into the atmosphere will increase, for awhile at least. Reference the decline of the Soviet Union, how unconcerned people are about the "environment" when they're freezing their cods off.
The point is that the problem will not solve itself in a nice way. As the deserts expand and the seas rise, the very thing most needed to mitigate the human suffering - cheap energy - will become unavailable, forcing the use of ever more destructive practices, from Athabasca to Newcastle, in desperation to preserve the existing order.
So it's the collision of BAU intransigence with FF depletion that can lead us to a much worse place climatically than if society were to suffer a near-term, total collapse. Not civilization, mind you, I mean society - consumer-driven, debt-driven, growth-driven society.
This "discussion" of climate change science is the biggest, ugliest pile of rubbish I've seen in two years of reading TOD almost daily. Anyone coming to TOD for the first time today, I'm sure would make it their last visit.
Comments like wakefields sometimes turn up on RealClimate, where REAL discussion of climate change issues goes on, though it's usually too technical for maybe 90% of people. When it does, one of the editors writes a concise, point-by-point refutation and any further trolling-type posts simply get removed. Perhaps wakefield and a few others should go there and get educated.
Doc,
I agree with you 100%! I was just about to write virtually the same thing. This discussion is very odd. It seems to be going around and around in ever decreasing circles of relevance, like bizarre vortex. I fear in a few years time, if any of us can be bothered, we'll look back on many of the climate change skeptics with incredulity and a lot of sadness.
Agree completely. The best question to come out of it is whether all of the coal left in the ground would be economically minable if liquid fuel costs suddenly exploded. That is, it takes a lot of energy for machinery to tear the top off a mountain to get at a thin bed of coal, and it takes even more risk tolerance for human miners to remove remaining pillars of coal (about 40% of the amount originally present) holding up the back (roof) of old underground room-and-pillar coal mines (as tragically demonstrated in Utah last summer).
nelsone
I think i will stop posting anymore today. It´s late in Sweden now and i am going to bed, and i don´t know how to answer your post. But anyway have a nice day sir.
The IEA is out this morning with the Highlights of the latest OMR.
Inventory stocks are falling everywhere. Yet production is supposed to be up! Where are all those missing barrels?
Ron Patterson
Consumed by the producers, like Westexas says?
Demand for refined prod is greater than supply( even IEA said so).Next surge in crude price will be led by product prices(esp diesel,fuel oil).
I tripped across this yesterday. Apparently the Pope is concerned about energy supplies, as well.
From the article:
The pope did not play down the urgency of coming to a conclusion about what needed to be done about climate change. Developed countries like America must change their wasteful ways, because "the problems looming on the horizon are complex and time is short."
Rich countries, he wrote, are "facing two pressing needs: to reassess the high levels of consumption due to the present model of development, and to invest sufficient resources in the search for alternative sources of energy and for greater energy efficiency."
Developing countries should not be "forced to undersell the energy resources they do possess." Exploitation of poor countries for their energy supplies sometimes meant "their very political freedom is compromised," which was "clearly humiliating."
Link
http://www.nysun.com/article/67983?page_no=1
if the Pope is concerned about population explosion -- which is partly what is driving all this, it is not apparent to me.
"Rich" countries "should" do this or that. Fat chance.
Follow the money -- that's where the fat cats are -- and the Holy Apostolic Roman Catholic Church, for that matter.
Yes, very interesting that the pope did not mention the prime driver of global warming...population.
Also of interest is that when populations drop drastically TPTB have to come to terms with the shortage of workers that remain. For instance, after the Black Death raged throughout Europe there were few workers left and they could, and did, bargain for better wages and working conditions. The same happened in the coal mines of England during WW1 when many young men died while charging headlong into German machinegun positions. It is in the interests of TPTB and capitalisim to have a continualing expanding population and other ideologies, attempting to compete with capitalisim, attempt to do the same.
"Race is social classification, not scientific one," Exhibit A:
James Watson is black
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's a complicated issue. But I can't help laughing, seeing as this is the guy who claimed Africa's problems are because blacks are less intelligent than whites.
Wow, Leanan...You left a LOT of people off the list. Peyton Manning? No wonder he is a good qb. :)
Actually, those "DNA ancestry tests" are a money-making fraud of no scientific value whatsover. Not that the question affects the worth of Watson's race comments, which to my mind is equally nonexistent.
That is the argument the article makes.
Though I have to say, I'm still kinda tempted. It would be interesting, even if the "ancestry" they come up with is not accurate (as to percentages, etc.). Some people have done it and been extremely surprised by the results. Like the guy who grew up thinking his family was African-American. Only to have the DNA test come back with zero African ancestry. Older relatives explained that it was true, they weren't really black. Turns out, Grandpa claimed to be black so he could romance the pretty mixed-blood ladies without social repercussions.
That is simply not possible, if we refer to the web page a nice guy had put here recently, which shows the first human migrations, we all come from Africa..
Well, you're right. In that sense, we are all African. The question is how long ago. :-)
The Watson article I posted sort of deals with that. We really can't tell ethnicity from genes (yet, anyway). Those DNA tests typically work by choosing certain types or segments of DNA that don't vary much, and comparing them. (Watson had his entire genome done, but the limitations still apply, because the only way we have to determine ethnicity is to compare his results with a worldwide genetic database.)
The NY Times had an article on the limitations of this method a couple of weeks go.
I had no idea Watson ever made such a claim. But I have another question. If race cannot be determined from your DNA, how is it possible to determine that 16 percent of his genes came from black ancestory?
Truth is Leanan, every heritable characteristic you possess is in your DNA. The size of your nose is in your DNA. The color of your hair is determined by your DNA. If you have black hair, the reason is because of your DNA.
If there is any such thing as race, then it is in your DNA. Your only argument then, would have to be that there is no such thing as race. If that is the case, you are merely arguing semantics. However even if you are arguing semantics then the arbitrator of any such argument must be the dictionary. From Dictionary.com:
Leanan, ALL the above characteristics can be ascertained by examining the DNA. Therefore if the dictionary is correct then your race, or any race, can be ascertained from your DNA. And besides, the debate has already been settled scientifically. New study links race and DNA material
Ron Patterson
Read the article. The claim is not that DNA isn't what gives you your physical characteristics. It's that physical characteristics are not what determines race.
That is nothing but politically correct BS. It is not whether they have any scientific meaning or not, it is whether these racial categories can or cannot be determined by examining one's DNA. And there is absolutely no doubt that they can. Whether or not they have scientific meaning is in the judgement of the observer. If you have a big hooked nose, like many of your ancestors, it may have no real meaning but it sure as hell is in your DNA.
That is all beside the point. The point is all the above characteristics can be ascertained by examining the DNA of these people. Every heritable characteristic you possess is in your DNA.
This is all very true. But it simply does not matter. That is the one thing you simply cannot seem to grasp. Your quote refutes your argument. It starts off with "genetic groupings." That means it is in your DNA!
Useful to whom? The fact is your race can be determined from your genes, useful or not.
Leanan, to say that your race cannot be determined from your DNA is nothing but politically correct claptrap. Every heritable characteristic possessed by you can be found in your DNA.
You cannot be scientifically correct and also politically correct at the same time. You obviously choose the latter. The problem with taking such a position is that the attempted scientific arguments supporting what the world ought to be like are so pathetic.
Ron Patterson
I grasp it. What you don't seem to grasp is that those "genetic groupings" do not equal race as most people mean the term.
That is why, in the definitions you yourself posted, the anthropology entry carries this note: no longer in technical use.
Okay, I should have learned by now that one simply cannot argue with a science denier, especially one of the politically correct variety. But I will give it one more try.
Somewhere around 100,000 years ago, give or take a few thousand years, humans came out of Africa. Some went north and west, some went east and some stayed in Africa. Those who went north and west eventually evolved into what is known today as the Caucasian race. Those who went east are today known as the Mongoloid race. Those who stayed in Africa are today known as the Negroid race. There are many sub branches of these three races, far more from the Mongoloid race than of the other two.
Now you may not call these races because the term “race” is a politically incorrect word. However the scientific world is not necessarily politically correct so the term is alive and well within scientific circles. But I digress.
After about 5,000 generations considerable genetic differences have evolved between these three basic races. These differences are readily detected via the DNA. And in direct contradiction Leanan, most people readily recognize these differences and identify them as different races. Simply declaring what you think “most people” mean does not make it truth. If you were to poll “most people” I believe you would be shocked to find that “most people” fully understand and accept what is meant by the term “race”. For you to simply declare that “most people” do not believe that there is a heritable characteristic called “race” is political correctness gone to seed!
From your DNA it can be determined whether your ancestors came out of Africa and went West, East or stayed in Africa. And, in the case of mixed races, it can even be determined what percentage of your ancestors went East or West or stayed in Africa.
Thanks for the exchange Leanan. I have no further interest in arguing with science deniers today, especially of the politically correct variety. I quit debating so-called scientific creationists years ago. And today, I do not even argue with AGW deniers. So why the hell am I arguing with you over something that is so scientifically obvious with one whom I thought was scientifically savvy. I guess politically correct blinders are far more powerful than I ever imagined.
Ron Patterson
I really would appreciate if you could give me even a cursory sample of these "subraces". Italien, French are subraces? Iranian? Kazakh? Inuits? Where do you put these?
I saw some pictures from Afganistan, some people really looks like europeans, other less, in which race will they be classified?
And in South America, all the people with pre-colombian and Spanish origins, do they create a "new" race?
With so many races, can we still claim that there is races at all?
When you have races, like with the dogs or horses, you must have pure races. Where are the pure human races?
Manmax, I did not use the term "subraces" so please do not put words in my mouth. The term I used was sub branches, meaning branches from the main racial group.
Europeans are basically all the same race. I thought I was quite clear when I said: “There are many sub branches of these three races, far more from the Mongoloid race than of the other two.” I was thinking of Filipinos, Chinese, Eskimos, Polynesians, Australian Aborigines and I am sure you can think of several others.
You may branch many times but there are only three primary races. I know that after many branches it gets fuzzy. But that does not change the fact that the fact that it can be determined from their DNA that Native Americans descended from the Mongoloid race.
Is that quite clear or do you need further clarification?
Ron Patterson
Perhaps hiding in Paraguay? :-)
Yeah, I'm a notorious science denier.
No, that's not the reason. I'd have no problem using that word if I felt it was accurate. I used to think as you do. It's genetic analysis that has changed my mind.
Actually, if you look at the genetics, there are two large groups in the world. One of them consists entirely of Africans. The other consists of the rest of the Africans, plus Asians, Caucasians, American Indians, Australian aborigines, and all the other "races" of the world.
Now, if geographical and physical characteristics alone were used to group people, all Africans would be together in one group. But that is not genetically accurate.
The big difference, genetically, is not between the "three racial groups." It's between two groups, who both still have representatives living in Africa.
L2 and L3 both descended from L1. The L3 group is the one whose descendants left Africa and peopled the rest of the world. That means East Africans in the L3 group are grouped with Asians and Caucasians, rather than with other "negroids" in L2.
Admittedly, race as a biological concept is still something scientists are debating. (Oddly, the Human Genome Project has only muddied matters.)
Anyway, for those really interested in the debate, here are two respected scientists, on whether race exists.
George W. Gill says yes. C. Loring Brace says no.
And Jared Diamond points out that if we were talking about non-human animals, such as birds, there probably wouldn't even be an argument.
Just to add a little bit to what Leanan said, there is more genetic diversity in Africa than in the entire rest of the world combined. See, for example, here.
If we're basing our classifications on genetics, the idea of a "negroid race" would never even get out of the starting gate.
What you are getting into here is biogeographic variation due to shifting populations. Actually, and I've noted this before, the term species, subspecies and especially the higher taxa, are undergoing a massive shift due to phylogenetic analysis. The Linnean system is slowly dying.
Whether or not races exist is a matter of semantics. What is important in evolution is in reproductive isolation and subsequent selection. The phylogenetic branching.
For example. You can have a stable population that has a wide geographic range (such as humans). Type members of the population will generally be in the ecological middle (Africans). Those on the periphery will be under different environmental selection pressures due to differing local environments. That will tend to skew members at the periphery of the population to be slightly different. The degree of genetic flow from the type members to the periphery members will dictate the degree of differentiation these peripheral members will have from the type members. The more isolated, the greater the phenotypic differences.
Clines are a prime example of this. Example, sea gulls in the Arctic. They are a called a ring cline, where each subpopulation can interbreed with each other around the ring, except at the 2 ends where the populations meet. Such as A-B-C-D. A mates with B, etc, but D and A, which are in contact cannot mate, they are sexually isolated. On that bases A and D would be separate species, but they are not, they are the same species but the phenotypic differences at the extreme ranges of the single population make them sexually isolated.
So it's not a simple matter of there being races, but what the differences are between each of the races and why. The why is simple. Selection on the phenotype which is indirect selection on the genotype which must be from DNA. Mutations along the way, point DNA mutations, can be used as a road map of how the branches of this biogrographic radiation of humans occured. It's called phylogenetic systematics. It uses nothing but the DNA changes to get that branching.
But "DNA" isn't one thing, in this context. Many of the characteristics we embody are held in the epigenome, which is strongly influenced by environment, unlike the genome.
Heritable traits MUST be transmitted from generation to generation through the DNA. That is how selection works. It acts by selecting those individuals in an environment that have the best chances for producing more generations. That MUST be done through DNA only. Selection acts on the traits that were formed due to the code in the DNA. Race most definitely is that. By definition it must be that, for races in a population are the first steps to speciation.
Unless you want to start to accept Lamarkism.
Under some circumstances, traits can be inherited without DNA changes. For example, the grandchildren of men exposed to famine may be at lower risk for diabetes (if I read the article correctly). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
[not my field, but it seems plausible]
J Whitland
Selection acts on the phenotype which is the physical expression and functions of the genotype. So selection acts on the genotype through the phenotype. What ever the cause appears to be, it must be through genetics as that is the only mechanism by which inheritance can occur.
Epigenetic inherited traits, if you read the Wiki page, is between cells of the organisms, not between individual organisms. The sperm is basically just DNA in a wrapper, so there is no other mechanism by which a male can pass traits onto offspring except through DNA. And it is that pairing of male and female DNA that produces mutations, which produces variation in the population's phenotype, upon which natural selection acts.
Is that like african americans voting for Clinton because Obama is not black enough?
No, it's worse, he's a chimpanzee.
After all, something like 94% of his genes say he should be holding pencils with his feet, and have an inordinate fondness for bananas.... and be really hairy.
This thing about warming extent look at the RealClimate website. Thois is the one site run by actual climate scientists. According to their best estimates a doubling of co2 levels will lead to a warming of 4 watts per square metre,or 3C. They find nothing to support the wilder figures quoted by various (green)sources.
A doubling is a long way off and assumes we will be using FF's in to the indefinate future. This I doubt.
Gregory Jeffers, unfortunately, is probably right. Most people will give up their keys to their SUV's and McMansions when their SUV's are repossessed and their McMansions foreclosed. In any case, the constant assurances from ExxonMobil, Yergin, Lynch, et al, that high oil prices are temporary don't help matters.
http://mentatt.blogspot.com/
Thursday, December 13, 2007
By: Gregory Jeffers
“If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.”
.. ergo..
'That line sums up why a “Power Down” will never happen.'
Murray, I don't have time to unravel your logic!
- Oscar Madison
I guess it makes me wonder if 'Alpha Males' actually exist, as I hear yet another desperate Viva,Viagra ad on the radio. I'm sure he's right about the driving over the cliff, as long as it's understood that his WE doesn't actually include everyone.
Where have you gone, Captain, My Captain Kirk?
Bob
The "alpha male" is always relative to the choices a woman has available, and each individual woman has her own criteria for what constitutes a suitable mate, her alpha male.
The concept of the "alpha male" is an idealized (archetypal?) set of the behaviors exhibited by men that tend to attract women.
But this whole argument boils down to the pursuit of sex (or fear of loss of sexual activity) in a competitive environment being the overriding motivating factor for all of human activity. And there may be something to that, and may partially explain governments' and religions' attempts to control the supply and demand of sex through institutionalization (marriage) and shame.
Has 100+ messages spent on refuting JrWakeup's claim of no global climate change done anything more than clog up a good drumbeat?
Looks like Mission Successful for Jrwakeup.
But it hasn't been refuted, that is the whole point. No one is willing to enter the debate with him to refute him. As i stated above there is no serious enguagement of his arguments. Also he is not claiming that there is no global climate change.
However I would agree with you that the drumbeat is often getting clogged with GW issues and we maybe need a separate thread for it as I would not call the subject entirely off topic.
Marco.
No one is willing to enter the debate with him to refute him.
He's moved goalposts. More than once.
Also he is not claiming that there is no global climate change.
And yet somehow he won't answer the question - where is the plan to abandon the coasts (as we know them)
Debate works many ways - If TOD is about 'making and showing off planning' - where is the response to the increased temp?
So far its:
1) Never abandon a city that is 20 feet under the waterline that needs 20+ 300 HP electric pumps to keep the city dry
2) The ice can still stay frozen if we just stop putting GHG in the air
3) Some variant of less people (which may be the solution that is arrived at by design or what just happens)
Mr. Wakefield is at odds with humans being able to effect the warming - fine. So what's the plan to deal with the effects - unless he somehow thinks that humans CAN NOT plan to deal with the effects.
Of course I have not made any specific plans for specific problems. I've never said I'm capable, nor is anyone else, of coming up with some sort of all encompassing plan.
I have said, on many occations, some solutions to help us after we go through a crash or what is refered to as the Post Carbon Era. I have repeatedly stated what can be done now while we have the fuel to do it. But seems those suggestions have gotten lost in all the confusion.
People who live in coastal areas will have to do what they have to do. Not sure how you relocate the millions of people in New York or Bangladesh for that matter.
Bottom line is we really have no clue what the effects are going to be. What we have seen is predictions that have no basis in science, but just orchestrated to cause fear and sell more memberships, or more newspapers, etc.
If the past of humanity is any indication we will continue along as is until some major crisis comes along. It won't matter what anyone here hopes to have planned for humanity, as the future is often very surprising.
Besides, as long as the population continues to grow, and as soon as the economy collapses for what ever reason, we won't be able to implement any but very locallized plans. Who is drowning half way around the world won't matter to those trying to stay alive here.
That's my postion. Are we clear?
I have said, on many occations, some solutions to help us after we go through a crash or what is refered to as the Post Carbon Era. I have repeatedly stated what can be done now while we have the fuel to do it.
You admit that the globe is warming - yet you chose to cite as an example that the Artic ice is not melting.
I'm wondering what physics of phase change has heat injected into a system, yet the phase state of matter does not change. The pressure is going to go up?
Bottom line is we really have no clue what the effects are going to be. What we have seen is predictions that have no basis in science
Errr, you agree that the globe is warming, yet today your summary pointing to Sen. Imhotep was that the Artic and Greenland is not melting.
Science is rather clear - add heat to ice and it melts. Unless you increase the pressure.
Is that the out you are going to take? That the pressure will increase on the Artic/Greenland thus keeping ice, well ice-y?
Who is drowning half way around the world won't matter to those trying to stay alive here.
Right, because humans stopped living in a global economy, and the United States lacks coastlines.
Marco;
I think you are partially right- however, the discussion has been active from both sides, and aside from a couple peeved comments about his finding the door and going, I have not seen any serious attempt to shut him out of discussion here. But this kind of challenge is SO similar to the 'There's still debate, so don't DO anything till we really know FOR SURE.' - it's way too close to the bunk arguments that have been used to forestall any meaningful action for years and decades on issues like Lead Paint, Pesticides, Cigarettes, Energy Policy, any number of Safety Regulations like Mercury Emissions from power plants, etc etc etc,.. so it's not unreasonable to see why there's a lot of anger at having to continue this kind of 'Wait and See' muddle-making..
I do want the challenges to his points to be substantive and germane, and to avoid the name-calling if at all possible. I hope my own posts have met this standard.
Best,
Bob Fiske
edited for grammatical correction..
Hi Bob,
Your posts do, indeed, meet the standard.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1211/p20s01-ussc.html
Johns Hopkins Civility Project makes peace person to person, then nation to nation.
Piero Massimo Forni sees being considerate to one another as the foundation for everything from the environmental movement to women's rights.
Baltimore - Pier Massimo Forni is a peacemaker, not between nations, rather on the fundamental level of individual personal relations. He's not a therapist, psychiatrist, or such. He's a master of the ameliorative skills that are as old as human society and, to him, more productive of social harmony than most people realize.
We're talking about manners, courtesy, civility.
Mr. Forni, a professor of Italian literature, was among those who a decade ago, spurred by widespread concern over the coarsening of society, created the Johns Hopkins University Civility Project. Its purpose was to learn what influence these old conventions retained in modern society. What is the effect of politeness and respect in the work place, and in more tightly closed aggregations like the military and prisons? What are the consequences of their absence?
Thanks, Aniya.
'Always tell the truth. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.' - Mark Twain
'Strive mightily, as Lawyers do in law, but eat and drink as friends.' - William Shakespeare
You're simply wrong.
I, for one, directly addressed the link he was touting, just like I did last time he did this (the videos). I explained, in some detail, why that link is not nearly the damning evidence he claimed it to be, much as I listed some of the problems with the last link he hyped.
He provided links, and those links were found lacking. That isn't the problem.
The problem is the incessant whining that he's right, despite his evidence having been trashed. That is the part that's wasting space. If you want to convince people of something, give them evidence. If they poke holes in that evidence, find them new evidence - that works immeasurably better than complaining about what they did to your old evidence.
So if you think people haven't directly addressed his arguments, I suggest that you haven't been paying attention.
Mr. Wakefield has stated that "he works from home" and his wife commutes via train that he commutes to via "Kiss & Ride".
I am beginning to wonder about the identity of his employer. Most others here have given hints about that, in one way or another, but I can remember no hints from Mr. Wakefield.
This is not the appropriate venue for someone with Mr. Wakefield's obsession.
Alan
It shouldn't matter who employes me. What should matter is the evidence.
But it you must know I'm self employed, currently write the software for www.sheetmusicdigital.com as I have for the past 9 years. Hardly has a self interest in challenging climate change.
And if you must also know, yes I once worked for Shell, their natural gas division, where I wrote their call centre software. Brought in under contract 10 years ago. Their main IT department took over the project after I completed it 16 months later.
Keep in mind that Mr Wake-up-field has used 18 Years of his life to debunk – creation science
… now his focus is the debunking of AGW … (so .... he has just started)
Jrwakefield says :
In this thread http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3308#comment-271509
Anything to add ?
Thanks! I don't read the troll postings, so I missed that.
Well, in the interest of the 'interdisciplinary' potential of this blog, would it be helpful to crosslink to, say, realclimate when such an issue arises, so that the response to such claims can be countered AND backed up more quickly and usefully.
I do agree with Marco to some extent that the actual claim of 'Hushed Dissent' as a problem within the IPCC process was not really taken on. I can't disprove it at the moment, but I suspect there are RealClimate posters who could shed light on that claim in a few posts.
The question of a "Red Meat" topic flooding a Drumbeat does remind me to keep an eye on the other news items of the day, in case there is an effort underway to distract from 'Real News' and important discussions.
I'm waiting for the Pope to make a ruling on the 'Divorce rights for Lesbian Priests', but that probably won't show up til next November.
Bob (Afflicted by AGW-induced-ADD)
I agree with you Samsara ... the trouble with internet-forums and -blogs, is that you can argue a lot - but when written arguments are no longer working the way you like ‘em to” .. … “it’s hard to get physical…”
;-)
I agree. I don't know what his agenda is, but it has nothing to do with science.
It has everything to do with challenging dogma. Which is what AGW theory has become. Especially the outlandish predictions that have no scientific basis at all.
After solving the problem of Dogma and Religion, no wonder you opted to move on to Global Warming.
I agree, what a waste of time scrolling through all that crap. I read this site for news on the coming energy crash, not to read some jackass's political agenda. As long as there are people who have babies nothing will be done about global warming. We'll keep on burning a lot of jet fuel to fly to conferences about it, that's all.
It would be nice if Drupal worked a bit more like Slashdot, at least from a technical aspect.
I just finished installing the greasemonkey application on my Firefox.
http://www.hovenweeptrading.com/gm/index.html
Works like a charm, 222 posts gone.
He changed his name to SlicerDicer
make the adjustment
Yeah, I've been using the todban script for a while. I must have previously blocked that guy because I didn't even know about the thread until someone started a separate thread about it.
Hmmm - I have been actively monitoring TOD for the past few hours - 40 plus some odd posts with two name changes so the greasemonky app would be thrown off for those less tech adept.
IMHO - paid troll
Right On Solardude!!
What is this, The Oil Drum or The Wakefield?
I've made one other post, will make this one, and that's it I'm outta here.
HEADLINE: TOD HIJACKED
here's a new mp3 interview with Al Bartlet
http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2007/12/who_knew.html
Incredible interview, as usual.
Paraphrase:
"If any percentage of the warming of the climate can be attributed to human activity, it is proof positive that humans have exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth."
Fuel crops can't seem to get no respect from peak oilers. Even the media in general is now griping about the corn, high food prices, and low net energy. I have slammed corn ethanol myself a time or two. It can't get no respect except, apparently, from the movers and shakers of world affairs. There is somebody out there who has tripled global ethanol production in just two years and is busy legislating a very aggressive growth model out to 2022 in the current U.S. energy bill. The stock market is witnessing an emerging bull market in agri and water stocks that looks more powerful that what emerged in the oil stocks 4 years ago. What's up with all this? Are they just being misinformed about the worthless EROEI value of corn replacing oil? Maybe not. I get the distinct impression that the markets and the movers and the shakers are seeing past corn and are gazing at a much bigger picture.
First, the current corn thing is hardly the be-all-and-end-all of fuel crops. It is just the first feedstock the U.S. found laying around in their back yard just as sugarcane was in Brazil. Corn is coming to be regarded as a perfectly worthless solution and is described by researchers now as "a first generation feedstock" in the ethanol buildout. Lab work is sprouting all over the globe bringing the computerized gene mapping wizardry of today into focus on the designer fuel crop problem. The net energy of ethanol will not be 1.3 forever. What's coming into view after the bumbling start with corn is cellulose. "Ethanol made entirely from cellulose (which is found in trees, grasses, and other plants) has an energy ratio between 5 and 6 and emits 82 to 85% less greenhouse gases than does gasoline...Grasses and trees can be grown on land poorly suited to food crops or in climates hostile to corn and soybeans." (How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor, Foreign Affairs, 4/24/07). The DOE is starting to fund cellulose plants in lieu of corn and China has barred all new plants from using corn. There is an excellent article in the November Amber Waves going over the current fuel crop scene. You might wonder how fuel crops can cut CO2 by the 85% stated above. But as Amber Waves notes,"Biofuels are theoretically carbon neutral, releasing CO2 recently absorbed from the atmosphere by the crops used to produce them". So ideally, they should cut CO2 by 100% if we burned nothing but fuel crops to make fuel crops. With an EROEI of 5 to 6, cellulosic ethanol begins to rival oil refined gasoline's value of about 8. What if ethanol's feedstock were to be improved to a net energy equal to that of today's gasoline in a few years and then be gradually improved to say twice that of gasoline over the next 35 years? Science has done such amazing things. And what if the U.S. Senate version of the energy bill were actually a feasible, sustainable model for the whole world (we now make about 43% of the world's ethanol)? According to Amber Waves, the current global output of around 17 billion gallons/yr. accounts for about 3% of global transportation fuel. If you make the assumption that about 80% of oil is used for transportation, you can use this as a starting point with the Senate's mandated growth model and make a projection to compare with oil, NG, nuclear, and the whole array of future energy. Projecting fuel crops this way on the projections charted in Stoneleigh's future energy overview post of 11/10 gives this comparison:
Good goobidy goo, it doesn't look so stupid now! It starts to fill the gap between a rolling over of coal and NG as bridge fuels and the growth of solar and other sources very nicely. This curve is an "if, and, and, but" scenario with technological miracles galore including solving the available land constraint problem, which nonfood crops would somehow have to do. But bio-engineering may do just that eventually. Just how did they come up with the growth mandate in the Senate anyway? Maybe they just looked at a map like the one above and said, "This is what we need fuel crops to do."
Add to all this a dash of big time international political intrigue into the fuel crop porridge, and you have an evolving drama worth watching. The big time international political intrigue starts at a sleepy little company on the Arkansas/Mississippi border at One Cotton Row between Goat Island and Choctaw Bar Island. Here is where you have Delta & Pine Land, a seed company. But not just any seed. They have been quietly working with the USDA on Terminator seeds since 1983. The U.S. government's interest in seeds centers on a view expressed by Henry Kissinger when he said, "Control the oil and you can control entire continents. Control food and you control people." He was known to have used food exports in what he dubbed "food as a weopon". In 1998, Delta & Pine Land patented the Terminator seed, a genetic modification that causes seeds to "commit suicide" after just the first harvest so farmers can't save and plant them next season as they've done for thousands of years. They must instead buy a new supply of seed each season. Well the global agri business cried foul and effectively blocked Monsanto, the world's largest seed developer, in their first attempt to buy out Delta and their patent in 1999. According to an article in Global Research (8/27/06), this global outcry "threatened the very future of the Rockefeller Foundation's Gene Revolution". They convinced Monsanto to shelve Terminator for a few years while they and the other seed giants (Syngenta, Dow Chemicals, etc.) quietly proliferated their yield improving, gene modified fare, developing a very dependent global user base. So the sleepy little company from Goat Island now had the whole international agri world by the seeds. Delta & Pine Land had the huge financial backing of a Little Rock Arkansas investment banking firm called the Stephens Group, which was their biggest shareholder. The Stephens Group prides itself on being the biggest investment bank outside of Wall Street operating in the middle of hillbilly land. They were a prime mover and shaker in the rise of Tyson's, Wal-Mart, and Bill Clinton. Not that they dote on just one president mind you. The Stephens Group seems magically connected to all things shadowy and political. Jackson Stephens was a Navy Academy classmate of Jimmy Carter. During the Georgia bank scandals of Carter's years, Stephens stepped in to bail out Carter cabinent member Bert Lance's bank. And Stephens Group is nonpartisan in their help having done favors for George Bush and others. Their web of influence extends around the globe. Hillary Clinton was a partner in the Rose Law Firm, the house law firm of the Stephens Group. Last year, Monsanto quietly bought Delta & Pine Land and their patent. Delta is busy opening up subsidiaries all over the globe. Now the Terminator seed is ammo for food (or fuel crop) as a weopon and Hillary Clinton from Arkansas will perhaps be in the White House. Intriqued yet? The Global Research article states, "Under the Clinton presidency, agribusiness, especially agribusiness tied to the Stephens' interests, made huge advances". With such high powered backing, I can envision a surprising technological development of fuel crops. They seem to be putting up ethanol plants much faster than LNG terminals or anything else. We may be coming up against an infrastructure squeeze where fuel crops are going to have the edge. The rapidly developing nations of the world have small, agri-oriented populations, a lot of land, and a strong motivation to make something very valuable for export. Enter - the Gene Revolution for fuel crops. If gasoline goes to $10/gal the big, industrialised nations would be forced to fork over $8 or whatever the ethanol exporting nations chose to charge. Kissinger's future counterpart may need to use the seed weopon for leverage in negotiating ethanol import prices we can live with.
In the Bible, there is a prophecy about the end of the age (our age) that says the global government of that day will cause a great transfer of wealth from the big nations to the small. It may not be of Biblical proportions, but the fuel crop thing may play a part in that. the curve in the above chart assumes an unrealistic perfect technology and political storm of the Huber and Mills cornucopian variety and probably won't happen. But it's one of those things that makes you go "hmmmmmm".
It´s a part of the illuminati plan to get rid of a lot of useless eaters, with the biofuel production taking away food production.
As a solution to PO I would put fuel crops just second to coal burning as a risk to the future of humanity and the planet ecosystem as a whole.
I think we don't know what we are dealing with if we indeed start going this way big time. There is no way - I repeat no way - to produce vast quantities of fuel crops without diverting equally massive amount of areable and/or non-arable land for this. Either way it is enormous risk for the food security, the biodiversity and the environment. Bioengineering of crops represents another bag of tremendous risks by itself.
I wouldn't go that road, we may find out that the cure was much worse than the problem.
Netfind;
I'm humbled to see that Swede and Levink have actually made it through your post at all.
You need to break this into paragraphs or something.. it's visually oppressive to look at.
Fuel Crops may be a niche solution.. might be useful for farm equipment.. but large scale and you've got Water issues first and foremost.. I think that one alone as it ties in so intimately with food production will be the death-knell for large-volume biofuels.
Bob
(ps, Darwinian.. I did take the hint about Paragraphs. Thx)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0c2d084a-a857-11dc-9485-0000779fd2ac.html
shell oil looking into oil from algae
shell , oigen ethanol from celulose
I did put indented paragraphs in the oppressive post, but they don't post that way. You can insert blank lines to separate text. Didn't there use to be an "edit" feature on these posts that allowed an author to fix something? I also misspelled a word.
Anyway (note the neat paragraph separation?), fuel crops will indeed forever be a niche solution as you say untill and if bio-work solves the water constraint problem. We probably have more land than nutrients, water foremost among them, to put into the land. They are already working on nonfood crops that can be grown on nonfood land areas (like prairie grass), so the intrusion of fuel crops into the food supply may lessen as technology advances. This is the kind of thing the new focus of agri-science may find solutions for. I know I sound like Huber and Mills and even, heaven forbid, Steve Forbes, when I say that. But there is a heavy flood of money, brain power, and political power being brought to bear on agri-science now.
Fuel crops can't seem to get no respect from peak oilers.
That is because, given present population and demands the conversion of photons to 'energy' can not be serviced by growing a bunch of plants.
Fuel crops can't seem to get no respect from peak oilers.
That is because, given present population and demands the conversion of photons to 'energy' can not be serviced by growing a bunch of plants.
Fuel crops can't seem to get no respect from peak oilers.
That is because, given present population and demands the conversion of photons to 'energy' can not be serviced by growing a bunch of plants.
Yay for worthless ethanol! Yay for it taking until 2020 for cars to be mandated to get 10mpg less than my current car gets on average. Yay for the Truck/SUV loophole! Yay for a sheep in wolf's clothing that's called an "energy bill."
With a few exceptions, I'm convinced the entire house and senate are criminals, and should be jailed.
Sounds like sour grapes to me. It's the nature of politics that no one gets exactly what they want. There is no constituency for power down. Why should the people's representatives vote for it? Now, let me think, what kind of person would want to arrest the entire house and senate and put them it jail? A dictator? A despot? "Democracy is the worst kind of government except for all the rest."
I think the TOD contributors are going to have to make some kind of decision. This site does a wonderful job of giving a balanced look at just about everything else. We see posts in The Drum Beat that do not support peak oil. Though we may have a chuckle out of them, it does give a balanced approach. And that is what is needed to be properly informed.
But that balance is grossly missing from issues around climate change. The postings in the Drum Beat are all supporting AGW theory, even to the extent of posting links to some to outlandish assertions that have no basis in fact, or are even misleading (such as the one that claimed the amount of melting from Greenland would be the same as a kilometer if water over Washington DC. A gross misrepresentation designed to install fear). But no posted links to papers or reviews of material that does not support AGW theory. Thus the balanced approach that make TOD so good is missing in the case of AGW theory. Will that change?
For example, in 2008 there will be a report on the state of polar bears in the Arctic. These animals have been the poster boys for alarmism as they are deemed to becoming extinct due to lack of ice. Yet this report will show that not only is that not true, in fact their populations have been rising from as many as 10,000 in the 1960s to 25,000 today. And they are all well fed and have sufficient pups each year. The report will show that the bears are actually benefiting from the increasing temperatures in the Arctic. Since we have seen Drum Beat links to the dire predicament of the bears are we going to see this link when it comes out that contradicts the current“worldview” of polar bears?
I think TOD is going to have to make a decision as more and more evidence starts to contradict AGW dogma.
Richard Wakefield
Yeah, that melting Arctic sea ice and the interesting Greenland data detailing glacial dynamics sure go a long way to making TOD need to take a stand.
Somehow, I don't think it will be the one you expect, since this site tends to follow a data based discussion.
Wish to discuss causes? The role of human activities on a planetary scale? Provide the data, the discussion will follow.
Want to ridicule various green oriented groups? Like shooting fish in an oil drum - Brent Spar and Greenpeace should provide more than enough factual fun.
Want to say that the opinions vary? So what - TOD is pretty used to that. Peak was 2006, after all.
I don't.
Leanan,
For readability, Please consider using some paragraphs to break up these overly lengthy posts of yours.
Bob
I think you need to simmer down.
The concept of AGW is not "dogma", and to call it that suggests you are a troll or a tool, right off the mark. In fact, much of your ranting has all the earmarks of the troll. I don't know if you are or aren't simply trolling, but it really comes across that way, and surely does not help your argument at all.
Look, AGW has become the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists around the world over the course of decades of research. Many climate scientists who are now on board with it started out quite skeptical. But the evidence has convinced them. You see, that's how science works.
If you can round up some non-climatologists to claim otherwise, that's nice, but irrelevant to the reality or not of AGW.
There is not "more and more evidence" contradicting AGW "dogma". There is more and more evidence corroborating it.
But I think the best advice is to take your rant to RealClimate, and hash it out there. This has gone on here quite long enough.
...suggests you are a troll or a tool, right off the mark...
After 40+ posts or so on the same subject on one day? The way to go without censorship is STOP feeding it.
Samsara,
You are, of course, absolutely right re: feeding trolls. I have no excuse other than that I just snapped :-/
No Problem. sgage. I'm sometimes overbearing or opinionated, but I try to limit myself. :-)
For a little friday night humor.
Monty Python at their finest with the Arguement Clinic.
I Came here for an argument
(no you didn't, Yes I did...)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-572077907195969915
I think you need to stop trolling. I don't usually comment on these matters since AGW is not my area of expertise (nor is it the area of expertise of almost anyone here), but I do know enough about science and the scientific process and the patterns of commercially funded and ideologically driven denialism to say to say that you should take your crap elsewhere.
To the nunnery, Troll. TOD, please make the decision.
Evolve backwards? Is he serious? LSHIPIMP. Danish Economists may devolve back into amoeba.
Debunking Bjorn Lomborg: Part I
The great polar bear irony
Posted by Joseph Romm at 4:59 PM on 13 Sep 2007
For debunkers, Lomborg's work is a target-rich environment. There is even a Lomborg-errors website, where a Danish biologist catalogs Lomborg's mistakes and "attempts to document his dishonesty." Lomborg's latest work of disinformation, Cool It, isn't out yet in Europe to be debunked, so I'll fill the gap for now.
I will start with polar bears for two reasons. First, the nonironic reason: Lomborg starts his book with a chapter on polar bears, presumably because he thinks it's one of his strongest arguments -- it isn't.
Second, the ironic reason. "Bjorn" means "bear"! Yes, "Bear" Lomborg is misinformed about his namesake. Lomborg himself notes (p. 4):
Paddling across the ice, polar bears are beautiful animals. To Greenland -- part of my own nation, Denmark -- They are a symbol of pride. The loss of this animal would be a tragedy. But the real story of the polar bear is instructive. In many ways, this tale encapsulates the broader problem with the climate-change concern: once you look closely at the supporting data, the narrative falls apart.
Doubly ironic, then, that the polar bear is doomed thanks to people like Bear Lomborg, who urge inaction. Lomborg says (p. 7) polar bears "may eventually decline, though dramatic declines seem unlikely." Uh, no. Even the Bush Administration's own USGS says we'll lose two-thirds of the world's current polar bear population by 2050 in a best-case scenario for Arctic ice.
How will the bears survive the loss of their habitat? No problem, says Lomborg, they will evolve backwards (p. 6):
[T]hey will increasingly take up a lifestyle similar to that of brown bears, from which they evolved.
Seriously. Yet, Wikipedia notes:
According to both fossil and DNA evidence, the polar bear diverged from the brown bear roughly 200 thousand years ago; fossils show that between 10 and 20 thousand years ago the polar bear's molar teeth changed significantly from those of the brown bear.
Doh! Lomborg is giving the bears a few decades to undo tens of thousands of years of evolution. In fact, most experts do not believe the bears can survive the loss of their habitat:
Dr. Andrew Derocher, Chair of the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union (a group whose work Lomborg cites) (see below), says:
Nno habitat, no seals; no seals, no bears ... At the end of the day, the sea ice is disappearing. Take away the habitat and the species follows shortly thereafter (or before).
The 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, (a group whose work Lomborg cites), says:
The survival of polar bears as a species is difficult to envisage under conditions of zero summer sea-ice cover.
A 2004 Canadian study finds:
[G]iven the rapid pace of ecological change in the Arctic, the long generation time, and the highly specialised nature of polar bears, it is unlikely that polar bears will survive as a species if the sea ice disappears completely.
And thanks to delayers like Lomborg, the ice will probably be gone long before the USGS projects, perhaps even by 2030.
But Lomborg believes by cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, "probably we can save about 0.06 bears per year." Seriously. As we'll see, Lomborg suffers from an inability to even imagine the possibility of thresholds or tipping points, beyond which irreversible and catastrophic change occur.
There are so many questionable statements in this chapter alone, you could fill a book, or at least a book chapter. From p. 5:
Moreover, it is reported that the global polar-bear population has increased dramatically over the past decades, from about 5000 members in the 1960s to 25,000 today, through stricter hunting regulation.
If I ever say, "it is reported," please shoot me. (Note to self: Don't ever say, "it is reported.") Actually, Lomborg has a source, The New York Times, which also quotes unnamed experts. Well, here is a named expert, Dr. Andrew Derocher again:
The early estimates of polar bear abundance are a guess -- there is no data at all for the 1950-60s. Nothing but guesses.
Derocher has an extended comment on this subject, which serves as a complete and utter rebuttal to Lomborg's whole polar-bear discussion.
Lomborg mocks the notion that polar bears are "today's canaries in the coal mine" (p. 3). He uses the polar bears to argue that "we hear vastly exaggerated and emotional claims" (p. 6) and "our worry makes us focus on the wrong solutions" (p. 7) because we should be focused on stopping people from shooting bears rather than saving their habitat. For Lomborg, you simply can't do both. You must pick one, and you must pick the one that is easier to do now -- even though failure to save their habitat renders all other solutions pointless.
To paraphrase Lomborg,
... this tale encapsulates the broader problem with his climate-change book: once you look closely at the supporting data, his narrative falls apart.
It is Bear Lomborg who has evolved backwards, back to a time when people didn't care about future generations.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/13/105130/672
==
Ask the Experts: Are Polar Bear Populations Increasing?Answered by Dr. Andrew Derocher
Some recent media reports have cited inaccurate data concerning polar bears. For clarification on polar bear numbers, we turned to Dr. Andrew Derocher, Chair of the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group.
Dr. Derocher is a polar bear scientist with the University of Edmonton in Canada. He also serves on PBI's Scientific Advisory Council.
Question: The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has proposed that the polar bear be listed as a threatened species. Yet some news reports state that polar bear numbers are actually increasing. For example, the following paragraph appeared on the Fox News Web site:
"In the 1950s the polar bear population up north was estimated at 5,000. Today it's 20- to 25,000, a number that has either held steady over the last 20 years or has risen slightly. In Canada, the manager of wildlife resources for the Nunavut territory of Canada has found that the population there has increased by 25 percent."
If this is true, then why are scientists worried about population declines?
Answer from Dr. Derocher: The various presentations of biased reporting ignore, or are ignorant of, the different reasons for changes in populations. If I thought that there were more bears now than 50 years ago and a reasonable basis to assume this would not change, then no worries. This is not the case.
The bottom line here is that it is an apples and oranges issue. The early estimates of polar bear abundance are a guess. There is no data at all for the 1950-60s. Nothing but guesses. We are sure the populations were being negatively affected by excess harvest (e.g., aircraft hunting, ship hunting,self-killing guns, traps, and no harvest limits). The harvest levels were huge and growing. The resulting low numbers of bears were due only to excess harvest but, again, it was simply a guess as to the number of bears.
After the signing of the International Agreement on Polar Bears in the 1970s, harvests were controlled and the numbers increased. There is no argument from anyone on this point. Some populations recovered very slowly (e.g., Barents Sea took almost 30 years) but some recovered faster. Some likely never were depressed by hunting that much, but the harvest levels remained too high and the populations subsequently declined. M'Clintock Channel is a good example. The population is currently down by over 60% of historic levels due only to overharvesting. Some populations recovered as harvests were controlled, but have since declined due to climate-related effects (e.g., Western Hudson Bay). In Western Hudson Bay, previously sustainable harvests cannot be maintained as the reproductive and survival rates have declined due to changes in the sea ice.
At this point, we lack quantitative data for an overall assessment of trend in Canada or Nunavut as a whole. There is, however, very strong evidence for a decline in Western Hudson Bay and the Southern Beaufort Sea based on quantitative studies. More recently, scientists working in the Southern Hudson Bay have reported a major decline in the condition of polar bears. A decline in condition was the precursor to the population decline in Western Hudson Bay. There is clear suggestion of a population decline due to over-harvest in Baffin Bay, Kane Basin and possibly Norwegian Bay.
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ask-the-experts/population/
We also have to look at that number 25,000. A population of 25,000 polar bears is equivalent to the size of an average suburb or what a major league baseball team draws in a regular season game.
That number seems on the critical edge of stability however we want to look at it.
jrwakefield oddly seems to revel in the "rising" size of this number and the fact that the pups are well fed as they scrounge around the garbage dumps of Churchill on Hudson Bay.
Just a thought on the long AGW subthread - the idea of censorship may generate more intense heat than it's worth, and it's kind of a hard case to argue AGW is unacceptably far off-topic. And I'm not really that worried about the bandwidth of (more or less) plain text - even with dial-up it would take much longer to load than to read.
But at the top of each post are two lines that read, "Xxxxx on December 14, 2007 - xx:xxpm | Permalink | Subthread | Comments top". Maybe when a post's subthread exceeds some considerable length there could be an option added on the end that says "Fold" or something, which would fold up the subtree and make it easier to find the next item at the level of the post?
It's a good idea, but it would have to be done in javascript so that the page wouldn't have to be reloaded every time you wanted to fold a thread - which would be more cumbersome for both the server and the user than you might expect. And the javascript to do it might be outside the expertise (or time and inclination) of the admins.
US backed oil rich provinces set to secede from Bolivia - Civil War Imminent
Four Bolivian provinces on Thursday declared their intention to break away from the central government in an open revolt against President Evo Morales.
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/6321093.html
President Evo Morales put this nation’s armed forces on a state of alert on Thursday as four of Bolivia’s provinces prepared declarations of secession. On Thursday, he claimed that the autonomy statute was illegal and that the United States Embassy in La Paz was coordinating destabilization efforts here against his government.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/world/americas/14bolivia.html
UK warns against travel to Bolivia
The Foreign Office today changed its travel advice for Bolivia. We now advise against all but essential travel to the cities of Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Trinidad, Sucre, Tarija and Cobija, due to the current tense political situation. The relevant summary point now reads:
"We advise against all but essential travel to the cities of Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Trinidad, Sucre, Tarija and Cobija. There is a particular risk of violent disturbances in these cities at the current time. Travellers to other parts of Bolivia, including La Paz, should also exercise extreme caution and avoid large crowds. The political situation in Bolivia is very tense and there is the risk that demonstrations and confrontations might break out at short notice.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/content/detail.asp?NewsAreaID=2&ReleaseID=338460
South American Nations declare Solidarity with Morales Government
Nine South American countries, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay and Uruguay, have expressed their 'permanent solidarity with the people and government' of Bolivia in the wake of a building political showdown.
The Declaration of Buenos Aires by the nine South American leaders, issued by the Argentine foreign ministry, expressed confidence in 'the ability of the Bolivian political forces to maintain a climate of dialogue and understanding, rejecting all attempts to damage the stability of the institutions and the democratically elected government'.
Morales said he will 'withstand' what he calls a conspiracy by his country's oligarchs and the 'international oligarchy, headed by the US'.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/071212/43/6ocz2.html
I wonder if the oil producing allies of Bolivia will take action against the US. Like Venezuela declaring, " Not a single drop of oil for the United States". This could turn into a region-wide war. Iran, China, and Russia have all been supporting and assisting the Bolivian government of Evo Morales. I can't imagine Venezuela or Iran staying out of this.
It looks like the US is going to nhave to invoke the Monroe doctrine. Should be fun.
Scary article from Drudge on spreading gang violence. Two shootings of note in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in the past week. Homeowners opened their doors and were shot by unknown assailants for unknown reasons. No reports of robbery attempts.
This may be the answer to the question of why Jay Hanson chose to move to the Big Island. He may be more afraid of violence than of a problem with food supplies.
http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/la-gangs-nine-miles-and-spreading/1786...
L.A. Gangs: Nine Miles and Spreading
More codeless, arbitrary and brutal than ever... and coming to a neighborhood near you
By PETER LANDESMAN
Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - 10:00 am
These are kids who don’t care.
They’re going out hoping to die.”
I would wager that others will step forward to Help them. 'I ain't got nothing to lose' is a scary thing to hear.
Maybe LAPD should funnel the gangs into the neighborhoods the politicians live in.
One would wager that the law would soon after allow the LAPD to make the gangs wishes as to their future come true.
It's easier to say that when they're not white, isn't it?
Read "Gangs of New York", the 1927 book, which described the most monstrous behavior of Anglo and Irish teen gangs in old Manhattan during the 19th Century. These are the ancestors of many modern Americans. The author's conclusion: the gangs faded away as social conditions in New York improved.
This has been a problem with LA for a long time - but the amount of violence has been reducing until just very recently.
The LAPD has a lot of funding based on anti-gang violence units being actively funded. As much as there are issues with them the state funding cuts (due to the sub prime mess)are as much of a threat to the city services as the gangs are.
btw. LA street gangs are not just limited to LA - if the conditions are right they can infect any urban/suburban blighted hood very quickly. They recruit local gangs in a franchising concept offering supplies and legal protection to a small extent.
Drudge has a report about the quickly developing budget crisis in CA.
Most members of gangs would come from lower economic strata wouldn't they? And who are the first we would expect would be hit hardest by the economic effects of peak oil? The poor.
So as those who are already disadvantaged become even more strained, some become desperate and lash out. The freedom to engage in violence comes from having nothing left to lose.
This seems like a prelude to generalized breakdown of social manageability.
India speeding up nuclear missile production
Nuclear-armed India said on Friday it was ready to jump-start production of long-range nuclear missiles which can hit targets deep in China or Pakistan.
Military insiders told AFP the announcement was a response to reports of growing cross-border military intrusions into India by China, which has an unresolved border dispute with its smaller Asian neighbour.
The statement came amid reports Friday that India had moved a brigade-sized (6,000-man) army unit to the Bhutan-China border on India's uneasy eastern flank.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071214/wl_sthasia_afp/indiamilitarymissile...
Something in the air? Seems the whole planet is gearing up for war at the same time.
Today I had a nice talk with a Congressman's staffer, visited the regional economic development group's office, confirmed with my part time employer that I'm free to be a state level lobbyist and free to attend a wind energy site selection class, visited with all of the professors at Iowa Lakes Community College's wind energy training program, then had a long private chat with the program director and left with a commitment for long term help in business development from the college and a meeting with the director and the college president next week to see how they can support my ideas on stranded wind and they'll possibly draw me in as a part time instructor in the program.
Half of what I know about energy came from reading the Drum Beat over the last six months, following links, reading up on things mentioned, and back channel discussion.
Had what happened today on Drum Beat been here the first day I appeared I'd have left in disgust and probably limped along doing the telecom business I already know.
No, the todban program mentioned above is not sufficient - not everyone can do that and if the genuine contributors do that we end up operating with "blinders" as a group, allowing any ol' trolliemon to slather up the discussion with a bunch of junk. This is a smart, knowledgeable, focused group, and I'd hate to see it besmirched by what looks more and more like an oil industry funded effort at disruption.
I'm filled with disgust over the noise to signal ratio. I have some other stuff to keep me busy and I'm going to go do that. Maybe I'll come back in a week or so and report on how its going ... unless there is no chance of being heard over oil industry paided troll AGW denialist claptrap.
Someone, please, mow the astroturf!
Hey SCT;
I hear you. I was contributing to the noise today, can hardly deny it. Like Sgage, when he said 'he just snapped'.. you see a bunch of nonsense, and it's so hard to NOT try to put some of your own reason or experience in there to counter it. Just becomes a Tail-chaser at some point.
Been following the talk at TOD for almost 2yrs, now.. and every now and then there's a blowup like this.. and yes, it's often apparently been a troll or a die-hard that tossed a red-meat cookie into the crowd.
There is an issue of self-restraint that must be applied here by all, and the occasional banning has, I think, been used pretty fairly.. but it's still important to be very aware of the difference between dissidence and disruptive trolling. I'm not sure that this was trolling today, but pretty freaking annoying, just the same.
It bothers me that this was happening all day, while there was almost no discussion on the dying efforts at Bali. I had to wonder if there were other, salient issues that were being 'Friday'd Away' under this veil of principled reactionism..
and I didn't get sh!t done today.
Bob
So a deal has been hammered out at Bali. Clearly the world leaders are not taking the problem of AWG seriously because the new rhetoric is so watered down and wishy washy as to appear meaningless in countering the threat of AGW.
It's not just some TOD that need some further convincing on AGW. i'd say it's entire governments that need convincing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/15/bali.climatechange3
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7145608.stm
Basically no body is going to do anything until about 2013. targets for 2020 levels - what is this going to achieve? deal must be reached by 2009. How can something to critical where the science is so definite be brushed off with this failure in policy to seriously address the crisis. unless of course few believe there is a crisis.
Marco.