fayfreethinkers.com

DAR
Hmmm, science or politics? Close call.

***
Arctic Climate Study Produces Startling Findings
By Michelle Macafee
The Canadian Press

Tuesday 14 February 2006

Winnipeg - An extensive international study on the effects of climate change in the Arctic has reached some startling conclusions on issues ranging from how fast polar ice is melting to the impact on Inuit communities.

About 120 scientists from 11 countries involved in the Canadian-led research project, which started in 2002, are meeting in Winnipeg this week to present and discuss their findings.

One of the most surprising for David Barber, a sea ice specialist at the University of Manitoba, was the fact polar ice is melting at a rate of about 74,000 square kilometres each year - an area about the size of Lake Superior - and has been for the last 30 years.

"This is a very significant result, and it's not some sort of trend that's going to shift back the other way," Barber said Tuesday.

Barber added there is increasing concern in the scientific community that there are factors actually speeding up the melt, but he cautions it's too late to reverse the trend.

"The time to act actually was a few decades ago," he said.

"We're not going to be able to shift the economies of the planet to get off this fossil fuel addiction in a week, a year or a decade. But we have to start the process now to have some stability for future generations."
--snip--
Fortier calls Kyoto a small step, "like a toddler starting to walk," but said North America and Europe will have to do as much as 20 times more than what is outlined in the deal to really solve the problem.

Further delaying progress is the use of heavier polluting substances such as yellow coal by emerging economies such as China and India.

"This will be extremely polluting but there's nothing we can tell them that will stop that," said Fortier.

"It's difficult for us to say, 'We got rich polluting the atmosphere, creating the greenhouse gases problem, but you can not do it yourself.'"
***

See the rest here:

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/021506EB.shtml

D.
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"There's no longer any serious doubt that climate change is real, accelerating, and caused by human activities. President Bush's policy is flat wrong on global warming. We'll have meetings like this 40 years from now on a raft unless we do something."
-- Big Dog Bill Clinton, slicing Monkey meat at the global warming conference in Montreal

Actually, it's very easy for the current administration to say "We got rich screwing the planet and everybody on it, but we aren't going to let you get rich that way (unless it will make us richer)."

The study indicates we're passed the "tipping point" on sea ice - that quite probably means polar bears and some species of seals are goners - and the cultures that depend on them, as well. We may not be passed the "tipping point" on global warming en toto - the point at which nothing we do will stop the cycle, which will be so drastic that society will not survive it even if people do (and that's another maybe) - but anything we do will have about a 25 year lag time before we see any results. Unfortunately for our "instant gratification" society - since it's unlikely we (as a nation - I'm already personally doing everything I can) will do anything at all that doesn't show results in under a year. On the other hand, if we escalate the Middle East "crisis", we may totaly bust our economy (remember how much money we owe to various Asian nations) to the extent that we won't be able to continue polluting - having run out of the wherewithal to purchase the products, the materials to make the products, the labor to make the products, the equipment to make the products, and the energy to run the equipment to make the products. Is this the "dark cloud in front of every silver lining"?

An extensive international study on the effects of climate change in the Arctic has reached some startling conclusions on issues ranging from how fast polar ice is melting to the impact on Inuit communities.

I've been reading Collapse by Jared Diamond. The Inuit culture arose in the Bering Strait region before 1000 AD and, due to the MWP (Medieval Warm Period), spread to Greenland by 1200 AD. (They had dogsled tech.) This isn't the first time that a warm period has effected Inuit lifestyle.

One of the most surprising for David Barber, a sea ice specialist at the University of Manitoba, was the fact polar ice is melting at a rate of about 74,000 square kilometres each year - an area about the size of Lake Superior - and has been for the last 30 years.

It doesn't say whether this is faster or slower than the similar meltoff during the MWP. We do know that there is today a much heavier ice cover over Greenland than there was toward the end of the MWP (approx 1250). My reply to global warming alarmists is that I'll start worrying when they start growing grains and grazing livestock in Greenland again, like the Vikings did during the MWP.

(Some global warming alarmists want to have it both ways; they use Inuits and icebergs in Greenland as "proof" of apocalyptic global warming, but when you point out that it's still a lot cooler than the MWP, they turn around and claim that it's only a regional phenomena.)

I pretty much agree with Michael Creighton, that anthropomorphic greenhouse gasses are rather insignificant compared to other factors such as land-use patterns, when it comes to climate change. Most of the chicken-little stuff comes from government-subsidized scientists who know where their grants are buttered. Beware the apocolypse abusers!

Barbara> Actually, it's very easy for the current administration to say "We got rich screwing the planet and everybody on it, but we aren't going to let you get rich that way (unless it will make us richer)."

Yes, that's very short-sighted and shoves costs on others. I see that same attitude in the Kyoto protocols, which would limit development in third-world countries. The reason the LDCs don't like it is that Kyoto rules would prevent the very type of industrial devolopment that the developed countries went through to overcome famine, low standards of living, etc. Should you keep the brown foreigners starving so the privileged can feel warm and fuzzy green - and maybe, just maybe reduce the temperature 1 degree C over the next century? Have-nots don't think so.

Hogeye wrote: I've been reading Collapse by Jared Diamond.

DAR
I am glad you are reading that. I just bought a CD of a lecture he gave on this topic (I think at Cal-Tech) for Michael Shermer's skeptic group.

Hogeye wrote: My reply to global warming alarmists is that I'll start worrying when they start growing grains and grazing livestock in Greenland again, like the Vikings did during the MWP.

DAR
This is simplistic. The anecdotal stories about how toasty Greenland was were partly a sales gimmick. As this site notes:

"He called this new land "Greenland" because he "believed more people would go thither if the country had a beautiful name,"

According to this same site, Europe was going through the Little Ice Age at this time. So this supports the claim that MWP was regional and not really relevant to the global warming we are experiencing now.

The American Heritage Dictionary has for the:

Medieval Warm Period

NOUN: The period from about 1000 to 1400 in which global temperatures are thought to have been a few degrees warmer than those of the preceding and following periods. The climatic effects of this period were confined primarily to Europe and North America. Also called Medieval Warm Epoch.

As I have shared with you before, we really don't have good numbers or dates for the MWP or the LIA, as this climatologist points out:

***
Medieval Warm Period ("MWP")

Period of relative warmth in some regions of the Northern Hemisphere in comparison with the subsequent several centuries. Also referred to as the Medieval Warm Epoch (MWE). As with the 'Little Ice Age'(LIA) no well-defined precise date range exists. The dates A.D. 900–1300 cover most ranges generally used in the literature. Origin is difficult to track down, but it is believed to have been first used in the 1960s (probably by Lamb in 1965). As with the LIA, the attribution of the term at regional scales is complicated by significant regional variations in temperature changes, and the utility of the term in describing regional climate changes in past centuries has been questioned in the literature. As with the LIA, numerous myths can still be found in the literature with regard to the details of this climate period. These include the citation of the cultivation of vines in Medieval England, and the settlement of Iceland and southwestern Greenland about 1000 years ago, as evidence of unusual warmth at this time. As noted by Jones and Mann (2004) [Jones, P.D., Mann, M.E., Climate Over Past Millennia, Reviews of Geophysics, 42, RG2002, doi: 10.1029/2003RG000143, 2004], arguments that such evidence supports anomalous global warmth during this time period is based on faulty logic and/or misinterpretations of the available evidence.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=33
***

Hogeye wrote: (Some global warming alarmists want to have it both ways; they use Inuits and icebergs in Greenland as "proof" of apocalyptic global warming, but when you point out that it's still a lot cooler than the MWP, they turn around and claim that it's only a regional phenomena.)

DAR
There are no end of very good evidences for global warming and this is why climatoligists universally accept the fact of it's occurance and that humans are to some degree causing it. There may be a handful, and I do mean literal handful, with some qualifications who are still making a little noise but this is to be expected with almost any field. Perhaps especially one with such high stakes and vast oil money to throw around. I would be skeptical of any climatoligist who claims to have "proof of apocalyptic global warming" but I don't know of any that claim this. If they do, they are outside of the mainstream.

Note: You do not have good evidence for your claim that the globe is:

"...still a lot cooler than the MWP"

Hogeye wrote: I pretty much agree with Michael Creighton, that anthropomorphic greenhouse gasses are rather insignificant compared to other factors such as land-use patterns, when it comes to climate change.

DAR
I think that global warming deniers have to now resort to fiction writers and their works of fiction to support them is very telling about just how bad it is now for their position. My February 20 issue of TIME mocks them by providing this quote on page 13:

"It is fiction. But it has the absolute ring of truth."
--Larry Nation, spokesman for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, which awarded its annual journalist award to Michael Crichton, whose latest novel, State of Fear, dismisses global warming as a conspiracy.

This is the fellow that gave us "Jurassic Park" with the Dino's recreated from mosquito blood locked in amber. Makes for a nice story, but it is fiction. I think you will find more a more accurate source with Jared Diamond and the non-fiction.

Here's a synopsis of Crichton's book:

"Drake is frustrated by the public’s lack of fear about global warming and, hence, lack of enthusiasm for funding NERF [the environmental group Drake runs]. To remedy the situation, he plans a high-profile conference on “abrupt climate change,” a phenomenon that is essentially fabricated. To make sure folks are good and scared about the imaginary threat, he contracts with the Environmental Liberation Front (ELF) — …a sophisticated, highly coordinated, techno-savvy worldwide terrorist network of dreadlocked hippies — to create a series of floods, hurricanes, and tsunamis that will devastate the world on the eve of the conference."

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/09/27/crichton-science/

To read a good roast of the bad science in Crichton's work of fiction, you can go here:

http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/ ... midt-fear/

And here:

http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/fe ... 050128.htm

Hogeye wrote: Most of the chicken-little stuff comes from government-subsidized scientists who know where their grants are buttered. Beware the apocolypse abusers!

DAR
Yes, beware of those who overstate their case on either side. The idea that all climatologists are fudging it in order get government subsidies I find wildly implausible and absurd. If there were good qualified climatoligists about to put out good solid science that supported the Bush administrations overwhelming desire to make global warming (and the profound expense and trouble of dealing with it) disappear, I don't see why they would have any trouble getting oodles of grant support to do their work. We are to believe that Exxon, Bush/congress et al and the petrolum industry don't have a little butter to spread around for this cause? Please.
Instead, the petrolum industry now has to resort to giving little awards to fiction writers.

D.
--------------------------
From Scientific American:

"From an intellectual point of view, these contrarians are pathetic, because there's no scientific validity to their arguments whatsoever," [climatologist] Mann says. "But they're very skilled at deducing what sorts of disingenuous arguments and untruths are likely to be believable to the public that doesn't know better."

Mann thinks that the attacks will continue, because many skeptics, such as the Greening Earth Society and the Tech Central Station Web site, obtain funds from petroleum interests. "As long as they think it works and they've got unlimited money to perpetuate their disinformation campaign," Mann believes, "I imagine it will go on, just as it went on for years and years with tobacco until it was no longer tenable--in fact, it became perjurable to get up in a public forum and claim that there was no science" behind the health hazards of smoking.

http://tinyurl.com/cq36y

Darrel> The anecdotal stories about how toasty Greenland was were partly a sales gimmick.

Greenland climatology is not based on Eric the Red's salesmanship; it is based on hard evidence such as ice bores, archeological digs which uncover what diet, crops, and such the Viking settlers had. Diamond has plenty of evidence in his book supporting climate change in Greenland.

Whether the MWP was global or regional, I don't know. Many scientists paid by governments say no; many scientists paid by voluntarily funded organizations say yes. The usual dueling scientists.

Darrel> There are no end of very good evidences for global warming...

I agree. My claim was about apocalyptic global warming. Global warming has been going on for over a century, since the end of the Little Ice Age. Looking at longer trends, icebergs have been melting for 6000 years, so you could say global warming has been going on that long. The big questions are whether global warming is something to worry about, and whether there is anything cost-effective that can be done about it. I answer "no" to both.

Darrel> The idea that all climatologists are fudging it in order get government subsidies I find wildly implausible and absurd.

That's a strawman, of course. I merely claim that government subsidies and grants bias research. I don't think you dispute that they biased cannabis research. (The squelching of the 1970s MIT study indicating cancer-retardant properties is only one example that has recently come to light.) I don't think you dispute that the government biases space travel research. (Note that a private firm launched a manned craft into space two times in two weeks winning the Ansari X prize, at a fraction the cost of NASA programs.) I don't think you dispute that many governments have a bias toward military research.

As a freethinker, you need to maintain your skepticism, even when the government line happens to agree with you. In ten years, you'll be sitting in a Freethinkers meeting listening to a lecture about how those poor deluded fools used to believe in global warming, with explanations of why you can't extrapolate millenium-range trends from a few decades of data, and the dangers of trying to amalgamate wildly divergent data into "proxy" data. We'll be laughing at global warming alarmists the way we today laugh at, e.g. Paul Erlich for predicting copper would run out in the 1970's.

Hogeye wrote:

Darrel> The anecdotal stories about how toasty Greenland was were partly a sales gimmick.

Greenland climatology is not based on Eric the Red's salesmanship; it is based on hard evidence such as ice bores, archeological digs which uncover what diet, crops, and such the Viking settlers had. Diamond has plenty of evidence in his book supporting climate change in Greenland.

DAR
Diamond is extremely pessimistic about our paltry and anemic efforts to curb global warming. Incidentally, here is what Greenland is doing now, from New Scientist:

"Greenland's Water Loss Has Doubled in a Decade
EVERY 40 hours, the Greenland ice sheet loses a cubic kilometre of water as icebergs crash into the Atlantic. That's the same amount of water as Los Angeles consumes in a year. The most detailed study yet of the "ice balance" of the world's second largest ice sheet puts the total annual loss, after allowing for snowfall, at 220 cubic kilometres. That is more than twice the amount lost a decade ago.

"These results absolutely floored us," says Eric Rignot of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who led the study (Science, vol 311, p 986). "The glaciers are sending us a signal. Greenland is probably going to contribute more and faster to sea-level rise than predicted by current models."

Virtually all the glaciers south of the Arctic circle have speeded up their discharges into the ocean, as a result of a regional warming of 3 °C. That is the threshold beyond which glaciologists think the ice sheet may be doomed.

Much of the acceleration, Rignot says, is caused by meltwater penetrating crevasses and lubricating the glaciers' flow. The ice is in effect sliding into the ocean on rivers of water. He warns that the models glaciologists are using to predict ice-flow rates do not include these physical processes."

LINK

Whether the MWP was global or regional, I don't know. Many scientists paid by governments say no; many scientists paid by voluntarily funded organizations say yes. The usual dueling scientists.

DAR
You can say oil companies, it's okay. These guys don't have the backing of solid science anymore, that's why they are reduced to giving awards to fiction writers with no training and zero qualifications on the subject.

I agree. My claim was about apocalyptic global warming.

DAR
Well I guess I would need to know how you are defining apocalyse. Is it an apocalypse if it takes 200 years to manifest and kills half the population? We are very sensitive to temperature swings. We had a heat wave in France a couple of years ago and it killed 30,000 people. If you lined those bodies up end to end they would stretch for 28 miles. That would maybe be a mini French apocalypse?

Looking at longer trends, icebergs have been melting for 6000 years, so you could say global warming has been going on that long.

DAR
Really? It was my understanding that there has been a long term (thousands of years) cooling trend, until this latest spike in the last half century or so.

The big questions are whether global warming is something to worry about, and whether there is anything cost-effective that can be done about it. I answer "no" to both.

DAR
I answer yes, and probably no. Or no, in the sense of we probably won't. Because there too many who worship markets and the dollar and this goes against that interest. Perhaps if people lived a couple hundred years they would be more interested in long term self-interest.

I merely claim that government subsidies and grants bias research.

DAR
Bush has no doubt tried his best, but even now in his sixth year, he just can't seem to get the researchers to line up and confirm the fiction in Crichton's book. Why can't Bush and his administration and both houses of congress all controlled by his party and who have such distain for the global warming idea (Bush loved Crichton's book which makes it out to be a conspiracy) get the bias in the research he wants? Instead we have practically 100% of climatologists agreeing that global warming is occuring AND it is to some degree caused by humans. That's not what Bush wants to hear. But now he and Exxon cave, because the evidence is so strong and building everyday.

I don't think you dispute that the government biases space travel research. (Note that a private firm launched a manned craft into space two times in two weeks winning the Ansari X prize, at a fraction the cost of NASA programs.)

DAR
Oh it's easy to come along now after decades of NASA research and development and tens of billions of dollars and improve on the situation after all the heavy lifting has been done. That's a no brainer. Where was your private firm in the early sixties?

As a freethinker, you need to maintain your skepticism, even when the government line happens to agree with you.

DAR
I am only interested in following the best science on this. What I see are some real reasons to be concerned. Probably not so much in my lifetime but in the big picture it would be a shame to screw everything up within just a few hundred years because people took claims from Rush Limbaugh and Crichton seriously.
I also see that the few global warming deniers are regularly either not qualified (or are at least very secretive about their supposed qualifications) or blatantly biased by oil/coal/gas/carbon money. I don't buy for a minute that the hundreds of qualified climatologists who agree with my mundane claims above are fudging it to appease a government.

In ten years, you'll be sitting in a Freethinkers meeting listening to a lecture about how those poor deluded fools used to believe in global warming, with explanations of why you can't extrapolate millenium-range trends from a few decades of data, and the dangers of trying to amalgamate wildly divergent data into "proxy" data. We'll be laughing at global warming alarmists the way we today laugh at, e.g. Paul Erlich for predicting copper would run out in the 1970's.

DAR
Well if this situation occurs we'll have you give the lecture and I'll have a party after. In fact, your prophecy is pure fantasy with near zero chance of happening. What could even happen in ten years that would negate the information we have now?
Perhaps you should stop getting your information from works of fiction written for the purpose of selling books and tickling the ears of dittoheads (and presidents).

D.
----------------------------
Bush's Chat with Novelist Alarms Environmentalists
Bush invited fiction writer Michael Crichton to the White House last
year to chat about his book "State of Fear," which dismisses global
warming as a conspiracy by environmentalists. Bush read the book "avidly" according to a reporter, and agreed with everything in it.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/022006EA.shtml

Greenland's Water Loss Has Doubled in a Decade
EVERY 40 hours, the Greenland ice sheet loses a cubic kilometre of water as icebergs crash into the Atlantic. That's the same amount of water as Los Angeles consumes in a year.

This is the kind of shoddy, anecdotal "evidence" that makes people ridicule global warming alarmists. I suppose the reader is supposed to invalidly conclude that the end is nigh. Notice how the writer gives absolutely no context. Is the ice sheet thicker or thinner than it was in 1200 AD? He doesn't say. The target is supposed to make the erroneous conclusion that things are worse than ever, when in fact there is a thicker layer of ice than in the past, as shown by ice bores, etc. Talk about misleading propaganda!

Darrel wrote:We are very sensitive to temperature swings.

I guess I'd need to know what you mean by "sensitive." I would say we are rather tolerant to temperature swings. Europe, if not the whole earth, went through the MWP and the LIA without too much problem. The current temperature change is a mere blip compared to those. But there were some significant effects: they don't grow grapes in England much anymore, nor graze sheep much in Greenland.

Darrel wrote: I am only interested in following the best science on this.

Me, too. It concerns me that you are buying into this bunk science. It also concerns me that you reject the findings of scientists for ad hom reasons. It especially concerns me that you can see how someone getting paid by Exxon might be biased, but apparently don't see the guys getting paid by the government as biased. To you, all the "other" scientists are biased, but all "your" scientists aren't. That's bull. I think you should be skeptical of everyone.

Darrel wrote:What could even happen in ten years that would negate the information we have now?

A number of things. E.g. The realization that temperatures are not out of line compared to past history. The realization that the fudge factors for land use have been biased, that land use is more highly correlated with temperature change than greenhouse gasses are. The evidence for cataclysmic global warming is no more solid than was the evidence for past false apocolypses like the silent spring that never happened, the population bomb that never went off, the global cooling that never happened, and so on. The global warming thing is simply the latest apocalypse fad. It will blow over just like all the others.

DAR wrote:Greenland's Water Loss Has Doubled in a Decade
EVERY 40 hours, the Greenland ice sheet loses a cubic kilometre of water as icebergs crash into the Atlantic. That's the same amount of water as Los Angeles consumes in a year.

HOGEYE
This is the kind of shoddy, anecdotal "evidence" that makes people ridicule global warming alarmists.

DAR
I made no claim or conclusion regarding this recent story in the news regarding Greenland. Notice I prefaced it with "incidentally." It's in the news and it's regarding Greenland's icebergs melting at twice the rate of 1996. Partly what is of concern is this acceleration of warming being observed.
From a similar article on this issue:
***
Rignot and Kanagaratnam said their report is the first to include measurements of recent changes in glacier velocity in the estimates of how much ice most of Greenland is losing.

"What we found is this is probably the dominant response of the ice sheets," Rignot said.

Gino Casassa, who studies glaciers at Chile's Centro de Estudios Cientificos, called the study a "major finding," since it may provide a missing link to the understanding of shrinking glaciers in Antarctica, Patagonia, Alaska and elsewhere around the globe. Previous studies have only hinted that increased flow rates played such a prominent role, Casassa said.

"This is the first time, with hard data, to conclude this," he said.
***
LINK

I suppose the reader is supposed to invalidly conclude that the end is nigh.

DAR
Certainly not. I think I see why you keep mistakenly assuming people are claiming the end is nigh when they are not. You would rather assume that all is fine based upon rightwing junk science from works of fiction by Crichton. I don't think that is a good idea.

Darrel wrote:We are very sensitive to temperature swings.

Hogeye wrote: I guess I'd need to know what you mean by "sensitive."

DAR
The 30,000 people that died in France were rather sensitive to the temperature swing.

I would say we are rather tolerant to temperature swings. Europe, if not the whole earth, went through the MWP and the LIA without too much problem.

DAR
Not according to this guy:

***
Impact on Health

The cooler climate during the LIA had a huge impact on the health of Europeans. As mentioned earlier, dearth and famine killed millions and poor nutrition decreased the stature of the Vikings in Greenland and Iceland.
...
Malnutrition led to a weakened immunity to a variety of illnesses. In England, malnutrition aggravated an influenza epidemic of 1557-8 in which whole families died. In fact, during most of the 1550's deaths outnumbered births (Lamb, 1995.) The Black Death (Bubonic Plague) was hastened by malnutrition all over Europe.
***
More here: http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia ... e_age.html

Darrel wrote: I am only interested in following the best science on this.

Hogeye wrote: Me, too. It concerns me that you are buying into this bunk science.

DAR
What bunk science, specifically, have I bought into? Have I been relying upon Stephen King or something? In fact, I think (actually I know) it is you who is up to your eyeballs in junk science and fantasy GW denial. I suspect the driving force for this is because it conflicts with your love of, and near worship, of market capitalism. The market doesn't give a flip about the potential of a runaway greenhouse effect a couple of centuries down the road. Up until recently, republicans didn't either but that is changing now that the evidence continues to pour in.

It also concerns me that you reject the findings of scientists for ad hom reasons.

DAR
Examples please. Readers may not know that I debated this issue with you, somewhat extensively, last spring so some of my references are referring to claims and material you have provided in the past. Post it and I'll roast it, AGAIN. I have copies of it all. Much of the material you had was ridiculous standard rightwing claptrap and this is very easy to show. It's not ad hominem to point out that the people you were quoting were unqualified and secretive about their funding (McIntyre and McKitrick), or just rightwing hacks engaging in blatantly dishonest political trickery (i.e. the "Oregon Petition").

It especially concerns me that you can see how someone getting paid by Exxon might be biased, but apparently don't see the guys getting paid by the government as biased.

DAR
It's clear why and how the Exxon shills are biased, and even Exxon has largely folded on this now. But you don't explain the basis for this profound conspiracy of near unanimous concensus of climatologists which agree that humans are causing global warming. It makes no sense.

To you, all the "other" scientists are biased, but all "your" scientists aren't.

DAR
Of course I have never said that. I am very moderate on this issue and rely and look to moderate sober scientists. You seem to be rather fanatical about it and this is no doubt a reflection of the radical material you read and have referred to on this issue. Unlike many of the people you have relied upon, my guys are in the open and scientists qualified in their field of expertise. You passed along the "Oregon Petition" nonsense and appeal to economists and mining guys like "McIntyre and McKitrick." And now it is the junk science of Crichton you are impressed with.

That's bull. I think you should be skeptical of everyone.

DAR
How about a little bit of skepticism regarding Michael Crichton.

Darrel wrote:What could even happen in ten years that would negate the information we have now?

hogeye wrote: A number of things. E.g. The realization that temperatures are not out of line compared to past history.

DAR
I think it is already too late for that. Certainly the speed at which they are changing, and the very likely reason they are changing is reason for concern. Humans are burning 80+ million barrels of oil per day. In 1993 the US along was burning 2 million tons of coal per day. This has resulted in:

"Since 1750, the carbon dioxide concentration has increased by 31%, methane has increased 151%, nitrous oxide has increased 17% and tropospheric ozone has increased 36%."

etc.

The realization that the fudge factors for land use have been biased, that land use is more highly correlated with temperature change than greenhouse gasses are.

DAR
We'll see.

The evidence for cataclysmic global warming is no more solid than was the evidence for past false apocolypses like the silent spring that never happened,

DAR
A little before my time but I have actively debunked that one when it came up.

the population bomb that never went off,

DAR
Skeptic mag, or perhaps it was Skeptical Inquirer, had a good issue on this several months ago. I found the over population debunkers persuasive, as usual.

[quote
the global cooling that never happened, and so on. The global warming thing is simply the latest apocalypse fad. It will blow over just like all the others.[/quote]

DAR
It would be nice if you turn out to be right but I haven't seen much from you to think you happy happy sunshine position is right and I think there is just too much evidence showing you are probably wrong. And this is too serious of an issue to get it wrong.

D.

**
The concensus:

1) The earth is getting warmer: http://tinyurl.com/d74yn

2) People are causing this: http://tinyurl.com/cdmej

3) If GHG emissions continue, the warming will continue
and indeed accelerate: http://tinyurl.com/938l7

We were aiming for another mini-iceage (cooling trend) until the industrial revolution starte in Europe. Temperatures started moving up by the end of the 1700s - the correlation is to CO2 in the atmosphere - with approx a 50 year time lag between increase in CO2 and temperatures - the graph is very similar, but off by 50 years. Since the change is not mathematical, we don't have a straight line here, it started slow enough that it was difficult to tell the difference - grandfather stories were blown off as myth - but rate of increase has reached the point that it's obvious to anyone paying attention (all long-time gardeners know). The greatest majority of climatologists not only say it's happening, they said the cause is human activities. These people include scientists on gov't payrolls speaking out after their reports have been "edited", scientists on non-Exxon corporate payrolls, and scientists working for non-profits (a number of which were formed in response to lack of gov't and corporate response to their reports).

I don't have the timeline on the Greenland icesheet - but I know it won't do us any good when it's gone, since most of our major cities will be under sea level, and it will decrease the oceanic salinity to the point of stopping the climate-driving currents (like the Gulf Stream). I do have the timeline on the glaciers in Glacier National Park - they are expected to be gone by 2025. I have no idea whether or not I will still be here when that happens, and I'm not sure I care - but I do care that my grandsons, who will be in their late 20s and early 30s then, will have to deal with this mess - if, of course, the apocolyptic scenarios don't come true - if they do, nobody will be around to deal with it.

Alternative energy, if pushed 30 years ago, would not have prevented us from getting to the point we are now - but this would have been the peak and it would have just started cycling down again. Alternative energy is the answer for 3rd world nations - the insistence that the only way to have the benefits of industrial society is to use the same filthy, greedy, grasping, devastating means that we used to achieve them is part of the problem - electricity does not now and never has cared what generates it. Solar, wind, and biofuels can generate just as high a quality of electricity as fossil fuels - and without a net increase in atmospheric CO2. Alternative energy generation is what we should have been converting to and helping 3rd world nations acquire - and time being what it is, we can't start before today, since we didn't already.

The thought that never seems to occur to anyone is - it took this earth system some 3.2 billion years to get enough CO2 out of the atmosphere for mammals to develop and survive. We've spent the last 250 years putting it back as fast as we are technologically able. At what point will there be so much CO2 back in the atmosphere that mammals (including humans) can't survive? We seem to be trying to find so many ways to kill off the human species in the great race to make the filthy rich filthier (I mean richer), it also seems to be a race as to which will take us out first.

Societies are not likely to survive the end result (shouldn't reach that for another 50 years or so) of human-aided global warming. The species might. We need to work on reducing human impact on climate. With the time lag between action and perception of results, we probably won't - unless we have a nice apocolyptic nuclear war (W's working on that) to suspend our ability to continue this sort of destructive behavior.

Hogeye refers to "the silent spring that never happened."
However I think Rachel Carson was referring in her title to the potential decimation of songbird populations due to pesticides and other environmental toxins. Last I heard, numbers are down in many species of songbirds, although there may be other reasons as well such as developments along their flyways and nesting grounds or West Nile virus.
This is purely anecdotal, but I don't see/hear as many birds on my houselot (which has quite a few trees and bushes on it) as I did when I purchased it ten years ago.
I also know several people who are chemically sensitive--canaries in the coal mine. Thousands of new synthetic chemicals are introduced into the biosphere every year, without being tested for their effects on human and other life. We don't even have much research about how prescription drugs interact with each other. There appear to be several new epidemics that could be related to environmental or lifestyle toxins--autism, Alzheimers, ADHD, breast cancer, etc.
Maybe you expected the silent spring to happen overnight.

Coralie wrote:Hogeye refers to "the silent spring that never happened."
However I think Rachel Carson was referring in her title to the potential decimation of songbird populations due to pesticides and other environmental toxins.

Right! Hi, Coralie. Maybe we're dating ourselves. The point is, the dire apocalyptic prediction did not occur. Instead there have been managable, more incremental problems.

Darrel wrote:It's not ad hominem to point out that the people you were quoting were unqualified and secretive about their funding (McIntyre and McKitrick)

That's called argumentum ad hominum - circumstantial. What is relevant is the truth and validity of the argument, not the arguer. Their sources of income are totally irrelevant, and their qualifications are only relevant insofar as you evaluate claims on the basis of their expertise rather than examination by your own mind.

Darrel wrote:But you don't explain the basis for this profound conspiracy of near unanimous concensus of climatologists which agree that humans are causing global warming.

I think that government funding - through NSF, DoD, NASA, and such - has a bias toward global warming alarmism. It's not a conspiracy - it's an invisable hand process, the usual public goods problem. You may know how certain oil, construction, and munitions corporations can push govt foreign policy toward oil wars. Environmentalists organize special interests groups, too. It's in a lot of people's interests to keep the mid-east war going and the global warming research money-mill running.

Darrel wrote:The concensus:

1) The earth is getting warmer: http://tinyurl.com/d74yn

2) People are causing this: http://tinyurl.com/cdmej

3) If GHG emissions continue, the warming will continue
and indeed accelerate: http://tinyurl.com/938l7

1) I, and most "global warming skeptics" agree that the earth is getting warmer. Non-controversial.

2) "People are causing this" is too strong; not even your source agrees with that. I think you meant: people influence this. Again, I and most skeptics, agree. Again, non-controversial.

3) "If GHG emissions continue, the warming will continue and indeed accelerate." This, I don't know. The source you cite doesn't seem to say this, at least in the executive summary you linked. Your source says that a bunch of computer climate simulations were used to calculate the difference between (the avg earth temperature from 1961-90) and (the avg predicted earth temperature from 2021-2050). The average computer simulation for one set of assumptions (IS92a) gave +1.3C etc. For another set of assumptions (SRES A2) it was +1.1C. Nothing about acceleration there. If you believe all the assumptions of the computer models, and all the assumptions of radiative forcings (which they admit they know little about), you might conclude that avg earth temperature might increase a little over a degree in 60 years. That's with the Malthusian assumption that GHG emissions will continue at current rates.

So whether the warming is accelerating is an open question. Suppose it is. Then one might ask whether it is accelerating faster than in past climate changes. Maybe it's following the normal pattern of climate change. Finally, there is one more question that is not scientific, but political.

4) Is it a good idea for governments to attempt to solve the problem, if there is one?

The "Silent Spring" hasn't happened yet, and the slowing of progress toward that unhappy future is due to actions taken - many of them governmental (like banning DDT) - to prevent it. Whether or not enough HAS been done to stop it, I do not know, but enough has been done to slow it down so that enough CAN BE done.

As far as I can figure out from Hogeye's arguments, we aren't supposed to trust the gov't authorities who say human-cause global warming is a fact because the gov't is paying them to (never mind the gov't is currently editing and otherwise attempting to suppress this information from its own scientists), we aren't supposed to pay attention to non-profit scientists who say the same because they are terrorists trying to create the situation that will make them donations, and for some reason I really don't understand, we aren't supposed to pay attention to non-Exxon corporate scientists who are saying the same thing. Since the Exxon scientists have recently come on board, I guess we aren't supposed to pay attention to them, either. That leaves us with the current administration's editted reports that say 1) there is no global warming, & 2) if there is, it's just a natural event and we can't do anything about it - either way, let's just keep on with business as usual. Me, I don't trust this administration on anything else, why should I trust them about the nonexistance/natural causes of global warming?

However, admitting that there is a problem and human actions - having been to a significant extent been the cause of it - can do something beneficial about it, that leaves the question of who should do it. I contend governments have to start it - they are the only entities big enough to effect a global problem, who might be willing to, at the first step level. The tax/subsidy and business structures being the way they are, Market Forces aren't going to do it. Business only cares about the Stock Market's reaction to the next quarterly return. Anything longer range - especially anything requiring capital expenditures - lowers the quarterly return and causes the stock to fall, so they don't do it. Governments changing the tax/subsidy structure and enacting base regulations (leaving companies to design their own methods of meeting those regulations) is the key to bringing Market Forces in on this. Ultimately only Market Forces can produce the turnaround, but they aren't going to until Government creates the environment that makes it more profitable for them to do it rather than to fight it.

Barbara wrote:As far as I can figure out from Hogeye's arguments, we aren't supposed to trust the gov't authorities who say human-cause global warming is a fact because the gov't is paying them to... we aren't supposed to pay attention to non-profit scientists who say the same...

No, you misunderstood. I said you should look at the facts and theories and judge for yourself, and be skeptical of all "scientific" claims since they have been politicized.

Barbara wrote:However, admitting that there is a problem and human actions - having been to a significant extent been the cause of it - can do something beneficial about it, that leaves the question of who should do it.

Well, there's also a cost/benefit calculation to do. Even if there is a problem and something could be done, it may be too expensive to eliminate the problem. That's the main knock on the Kyoto agreement. It effectively requires third-world contries to stay third-world, and not advance into and beyond an industrial stage of development (due to emissions requirements.) So, to the extent that these countries overpopulate, Kyoto would condemn them to mass starvation and death. That's too expensive to a lot of people, like third-worlders for example.

Barbara wrote:Ultimately only Market Forces can produce the turnaround, but they aren't going to until Government creates the environment that makes it more profitable for them to do it rather than to fight it.

This I can agree with, again using the Nockian sense of "government." Rather than seeing it as you seem to do, in terms of regulation and tax incentives, I see it in terms of property rights definition in the legal system(s). You don't need a State, you just need legal systems which make oceans and atmosphere private property intead of commons. Human-caused air pollution is a classic case of tragedy of the commons. As unpolluted air becomes scarce, we should make it property. In this case, switching from the statist paradigm to the liberty paradigm amounts to switching from a regulatory model to a property rights model.

It just requires a value be set on the commons. Right now basic accounting doesn't include the commons - polluting the air, water, and land is free because the damage isn't accounted for. Turning the commons into private property is a very bad idea from the standpoint of everybody except whoever gets to claim ownership. Check out what happened in Victorian England when they passed the enclosure laws, keeping the lower classes from grazing a goat on common pasture or a pig in common woodlands - for that matter, the British method of assigning ownership to rivers has been just as bad about putting harmless people in jail (poor folks fishing in "somebody's" river) as America's laws on marijuana.

As to Kyoto - it doesn't mandate 3rd world nations remain poor, it just says don't use fossil fuels - there is not only nothing in Kyoto that precludes 3rd world nations from using alternative fuels sources, those same 3rd world nations could make money under Kyoto by using alternative fuels & selling "carbon credits" to 1st world nations while they (supposedly) convert over to alternatives themselves. If they'd work it instead of try to get out of it, it's a totally win-win for 3rd world countries. Since they are starting from scratch, they don't have conversion costs - and they could get start-up funds from 1st world nations trying to meet theirown levels.

Hogeye, By the way - where are we supposed to get the facts and theories about global warming (or anything else of that nature), if not from scientists?

Barbara wrote:It just requires a value be set on the commons. Right now basic accounting doesn't include the commons - polluting the air, water, and land is free because the damage isn't accounted for.

On this we agree.

Barbara wrote:Turning the commons into private property is a very bad idea from the standpoint of everybody except whoever gets to claim ownership.

That's not true at all. It depends a lot on how it is privatized. E.g. In the colonization of America, the places that were granted to corporations like the Virginia company (which sold land to settlers) were soon owned by a diverse lot of people. Those places granted to individuals as feudal holdings (who tried to make money by charging quitrent instead of selling) took a much longer time to be dispersed to the people. The first method was not as just as homesteading, but it did benefit people in general to get it out of statist control compared to the feudal model.

I would favor starting out with some kind of mutual ownership, e.g. give everyone living in the Beaver Lake watershed one share of ownership; or give landowners in the watershed 1 share per acre owned. Let these owners sell Beaver water to the various water districts and collect the proceeds through dividends. Let the locals own it rather than that uncaring foreign bureaucracy called US Army Corp of Engineers, which has no stake in the local environment.

Barbara wrote:Check out what happened in Victorian England when they passed the enclosure laws...

Right - this is an example of the rulers giving land to cronies and maintaining the feudal model. The problem wasn't that it was privatized, but how it was privatized. If it was privatized on the homesteading model, with common law easements, and with allodial rather than feudal tenure, then things would have been much better.

Barbara wrote:The British method of assigning ownership to rivers has been just as bad about putting harmless people in jail..."

This is news to me. From what I've read about British private ownership of waterways, it has been wonderfully successful (compared to the US) in keeping them unpolluted and fishable. In Monte Ne on Beaver Lake, a government entity polluted the lake, and the local people were helpless - they have no property rights. Contrast that to the British fishermen who shut down anyone that pollutes their stream or lake through standard property law.

Barbara wrote:As to Kyoto - it doesn't mandate 3rd world nations remain poor, it just says don't use fossil fuels - there is not only nothing in Kyoto that precludes 3rd world nations from using alternative fuels sources...

Except that no country has ever done it without going through the dirty phase. You're saying these third world countries are allowed to develop, but not allowed to do it like every other country has done it. How are they to do it? Blank out - no one knows how they possibly can.

Barbara wrote:Since they are starting from scratch, they don't have conversion costs...

??? No one starts from scratch. China currently has coal-dominated energy generation. Haiti relies on charcoal.

Barbara wrote:Where are we supposed to get the facts and theories about global warming (or anything else of that nature), if not from scientists?

Get the info from scientists, but be skeptical. Especially in areas that have been politicized, like forbidden drugs, global warming, or military technology.

Darrel wrote:It's not ad hominem to point out that the people you were quoting were unqualified and secretive about their funding (McIntyre and McKitrick)

Hogeye wrote: That's called argumentum ad hominum - circumstantial.

DAR
The ad hominem fallacy is committed if you substitute personal attack for argument. I haven't done that in the case of McIntyre and McKitrick. I provided substantive peer-reviewed rebuttals to their claims. The FACT that they are unqualified and secretive about their funding just adds insight into why their science probably fails so spectacularly. It's a bonus, but not essential to the rebutting argument at all.


HOGEYE
What is relevant is the truth and validity of the argument, not the arguer.

DAR
Right. But when we are dealing with very complex matters of climatology I have to make a judgement call. Look to respected scientists like Mann, or unqualified free market economists and miners like M & M. It's not even close. Mann eats their lunch.

HOGEYE
Their sources of income are totally irrelevant,...

DAR
If it's totally irrelevant how come you keep bring it up? Of course it isn't irrelevant. Money provides a bias. But I have never found your claim that the science being put out by climatologists has been so overwhelmingly biased by grant money. It makes no sense. Consider this comment:

***
"Common sense" is supposed to be applied to all these issues, right? We could always be generous and say this is a synonym for "scepticism" or "Occam's Razor", both of which I am rather fond of.

So let's apply some common sense to the theory that all these scientists are applying a prevailing paradigm, and that any brave dissenters are being punished by mockery and exclusion.

Now these venal scientists, so busy defending themselves, their jobs and their empires, are hardly likely to bite the hand that feeds them.

So why on earth have they formed a vast unified community to say something that absolutely guarantees that the government and corporate interests that funds them, hires them and honours will be completely and totally PISSED OFF?"
***

It doens't make sense. And this, myth number 3 from realclimate.org:

**
3. All the scientists say the same thing because otherwise they will lose their jobs. This one fails to explain the existence of skeptics like Lomborg, Lindzen, Spencer or Svensmark. And it fails completely to understand the nature of scientific society. It isn't some kind of Sekret Kabal. Its an open process: if there are holes in a theory, you can make a name for yourself by pointing this out. I would say that consensus-busting papers stand more chance of being published (on an assumption of equal technical merit) than those supporting it: purely because of the requirement for novelty which journals impose.

LINK

HOGEYE
and their qualifications are only relevant insofar as you evaluate claims on the basis of their expertise rather than examination by your own mind.

DAR
Here is a little sample of a roast of M & M by Mann. Just skim, you won't understand it:

***
“MM in their more recent rejected submission to Nature, instead filtered out the 'hockey stick' pattern of low-frequency variability in the North American ITRDB data through the incorrect PCA truncation described above, which censors this pattern by retaining too few Principal Components series in the data. As discussed above, the MBH98 reconstruction and the variants of the reconstruction (i.e., Figures 2 and 3) that address the various spurious criticisms raised by MM, each pass statistical verification. In stark contrast, our reproduction of the MM reconstruction demonstrates that their reconstruction dramatically fails statistical verification (see Figure 5) with an RE score ( -0.76) that is statistically indistinguishable from the results expected for a purely random estimate (as a reminder, RE<0 exhibits no skill, and RE= -1 is the average value expected for a purely random estimate). In short, the supposed ‘correction’ of MBH98 by MM is seen to represent little more than a statistically meaningless, botched application of the MBH98 procedure that relies upon censoring key indicators from the MHB98 proxy data set.”
***

DAR
I'm a busy guy. I don't have time to become a climatologist. So I have to make a judgement call. Go with the guy with qualifications and overwhelming support, or go with the two free market underdog guys, the economist and the miner? It's not even close.

D.
-------------------------
More Crichton roast here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

The commons (which, by the way, is what an easement is) in England were not "given" by the Government to cronies. They were divided up by the number of people living and using them, fenced, and assigned a price (small price for small piece of land - but too large a price for cottage holders to be able to buy each other out or join in a cooperative and essentially restore the commons through joint ownership). None of the cottage holders could use the commons as commons once they'd been fenced off, and so sold them. Once the money was gone they were much worse off than before the enclosure laws, because they no longer had access to enough land to produce food for the household and became totally dependent on whatever local industry there was.

Private ownership of rivers means nobody except the owner & his cronies can legally fish them, just as private ownership of what were commons means only the owner & his cronies can hunt or trap them (it's called poaching & has jailed or "gaoled" more poor folks than any other one crime in the UK - one more source of food denied the poorer classes and one more way of forcing them into virtual slavery of the local industry. Private ownership of an acre (or actually acre/feet - an acre is only a surface measure) of water in Beaver Lake could not stop it from being polluted, since a neighboring acre's pollution would get into yours, and pollution anywhere in the watershed would still end up in the lake. Private ownership of air is even more impossible to manage. And what if you want to take your x cc's of air from the Ozarks to NYC, how do you plan to do that? Natural resources needed by the entire population need to be dealt with as commons. Government is the only entity broad enough to regulate the commons for the common good - which is where the term "commons" came from in the first place.

easement - the privilege of using something that is not your own

commons - something open to common use

These are not the same. Jones may have an easement to cross Smith's land, but that easement may only apply to Jones, and not the general public.

The problem with the enclosure law was not that the commons were privatized, but that they were privatized in an unjust manner. If ownership was given to e.g. the locals who used the land, then things would have worked out much better. Using the concept of current use (homesteading) instead of statist decree of rulers would obviously have been better. In America there was no such problem, as land was plentiful (and there was no ancien regime.)

Barbara wrote:Private ownership of an acre (or actually acre/feet - an acre is only a surface measure) of water in Beaver Lake could not stop it from being polluted, since a neighboring acre's pollution would get into yours, and pollution anywhere in the watershed would still end up in the lake.

Okay, lets compare the regulatory model and the property rights model. With the current regulatory model, where the State owns Beaver, there is little recourse to pollution other than begging the government for relief. (That problem at Monte Ne comes to mind.) In the private property model, the owners have a strong incentive to maintain or increase the value of their property, so would likely sue any polluter. It comes down to whether the decrees of absentee rulers and locals begging rulers for favors is more or less effective than private ownership and a legal system supporting property rights in inhibiting pollution. To me that's a no-brainer - the property model is both more moral and more effective. The effectiveness of private British waterways supports this.

Barbara wrote:Private ownership of air is even more impossible to manage.

Yet people do it all the time with scuba tanks, "conditioned" air in buildings, and so on. You need to remember that property is not a thing like air molecules, but is a relationship between humans with respect to a thing. There is no incentive to create technologies for "fencing off" air or ocean until and unless property rights in air/ocean are acknowledged, at least theoretically. Just as, until private ownership in range land was acknowledged, barbed wire was unlikely to be invented.

Barbara wrote:Government is the only entity broad enough to regulate the commons for the common good - which is where the term "commons" came from in the first place.

No, "commons" came from the notion of "everyone" having use rights to something. The idea preceeds government - pre-State societies like hunter-gatherers had commons. The commons is generally all those things that currently are not economically scarce, hence not property. (Today, minus those things made artificially scare by government decree, e.g. intellectual property.)

Darrel wrote: Here is a little sample of a roast of M & M by Mann. Just skim, you won't understand it:

"MM in their more recent rejected submission to Nature, instead filtered out the 'hockey stick' pattern of low-frequency variability in the North American ITRDB data through the incorrect PCA truncation described above, which censors this pattern by retaining too few Principal Components series in the data."

Let me help you understand it, Darrell. Translation: Mann evades the main criticism of M&M, that the North America Tree Ring Data is garbage - it is not a reliable proxy for temperature. This is not just M&M, but many dendrochronologists agree that the growth patterns in that isolated "thicket" of trees has little or no correlation to temperatures. In short, tree rings in general are weak temperature proxies, and the tree rings Mann chose to represent North America are particularly weak.

I'll start a new thread featuring an excellent global warming debunking page offering an alternative theory to Mann's greenhouse gas hockey-stick theory.