"In the troposphere (the lowest layer of the atmosphere) greenhouse gases trap infrared radiation, causing the well-known "global warming" effect "


It is indeed "well known" but for some crazy reason it just isn't happening. Checked the temperature over the last few years?

And if you would, please let us know what the thermostat should be set to for best effect. During the planet's history it has been both warmer and cooler, I'm just trying to get a feel for the correct temperature here. Can you help me out? Can you tell us how to get there?

This heat being shed by the upper atmosphere, any idea where that originates?

I find your motion to control my avatar amusing, but wonder if it is a symptom of something else.

<------------ Some of those people reallly don't like me because this is what I fly. :D:p

Re: Happy Earth Day
 

I think your little monkey wrench is a bust.

- It's a blog entry trying to pass for science. To me, it showcases why peer reviewed science is still the gold standard.

- He starts out claiming the above so I went to the GISS paper and, honest to Jeebus, it starts with the following sentence:

I got the impression that Asher isn't even reading the data he's referencing.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailin...14_GISTEMP.pdf

Quote:

---

Summary. The Southern Oscillation and the solar cycle have significant effects on year-to-year global temperature change. Because both of these natural effects were in their cool phases in 2007, the unusual warmth of 2007 is all the more notable. It is apparent that there is no letup in the steep global warming trend of the past 30 years (see 5-year mean curve in Figure 1a).

“Global warming stopped in 1998” has become a recent mantra of those who wish to deny the reality of human-caused global warming. The continued rapid increase of the five-year running mean temperature exposes this assertion as nonsense. In reality, global temperature jumped two standard deviations above the trend line in 1998 because the “El Nino of the century” coincided with the calendar year, but there has been no lessening of the underlying warming trend.

---

Strike two.

-Then there's the graphs he passes off as global temperature averages, when in fact they are global temperature anomaly graphs. While it may appear to track the temperature for the whole year from Jan 07 to Jan 08, it isn't. I believe it's tracking the average temperature of Jan 07 and comparing it to Jan 08. At any rate, I'd want confirmation from the people who provided the data.

- Finally, I can't find anywhere on the Hadley site where it talks about global cooling. However, it does say this:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatec...e/projections/

This is where I packed it in. I think Asher is a hack.

Wow, this thread is really heating up….. Get it? …..hahaha ….heating up…..

God I crack myself up.

Hmm.

……well, it sounded funny to me, but then again, I'm freezing my butt off right now.

Shouldn't it be warmer in May?

I heard a little rumor that some of the temperature tracking devices were in some real interesting places - on airport properties where heat was registered from a/c . I found that bit of information too be very interesting .
I think Fred has touched on this and I agree with him about what we are told by people we don't really know .
How do you as a individual know if an individual who is informing you of so-called climate change is really telling you the truth?
Like I posted in a previous post on here and that is the fact that I am from Russia and propaganda was the order of the day everyday so what makes the American people think that propaganda is not being used to put forth an agenda that has very drastic consequences for all concerned.
Think about what is being said and think for yourself because if this come' s to pass life as we know it here in America will change drastically .

Ally

Well there is certainly no shortage of gas in the air on this subject. Peer reviewed. I like that. Let's see what the peers say on the UN report you think so highly of:

The over 700 dissenting scientists are now more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. The 59 additional scientists hail from all over the world, including Japan, Italy, UK, Czech Republic, Canada, Netherlands, the U.S. and many are affiliated with prestigious institutions including, NASA, U.S. Navy, U.S. Defense Department, Energy Department, U.S. Air Force, the Philosophical Society of Washington (the oldest scientific society in Washington), Princeton University, Tulane University, American University, Oregon State University, U.S. Naval Academy and EPA.

The explosion of skeptical scientific voices is accelerating unabated in 2009. A March 14, 2009 article in the Australian revealed that Japanese scientists are now at the forefront of rejecting man-made climate fears prompted by the UN IPCC.

Prominent Japanese Geologist Dr. Shigenori Maruyama, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences who has authored more than 125 scientific publications, said in March 2009 that “there was widespread skepticism among his colleagues about the IPCC's fourth and latest assessment report that most of the observed global temperature increase since the mid-20th century ‘is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” Maruyama noted that when this question was raised at a Japan Geoscience Union symposium last year, ‘the result showed 90 per cent of the participants do not believe the IPCC report.” [Also See: The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. [ See: Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' & see full reports here & here –More analyses of recent developments see report’s introduction here. ]

200 plus more pages of peer dissent here:.: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Minority Page :.

Latest NASA data:The temperature in the United States in 2008 was not much different than the 1951-1980 mean, which makes it cooler than all the previous years this decade.

NASA - 2008 Was Earth's Coolest Year Since 2000


I'm sure you won't like my sources, but it is hard to argue with official testimony far removed from grant grubbing and the political motives of the UN. :D

I'll admit, I used to buy into global warming because I heard that supposedly the vast majority of scientists believed it to be true. Whether or not that is correct, I really dont know, I havent researched the subject a great deal. In recent years, I have just decided to remain neutral on the subject because it seems like there isnt a clear cut answer.

I just look at it like this--Would it be healthy to stand behind my car and breathe in the exhaust? Obviously not. Whether or not emissions contribute to global warming or whether "global warming" is even true is irrelevent to me. Have you ever be to Los Angeles? Sometimes it seems like you cant see 100 yards ahead of you because the smog is so bad. Now do I think we need to go crazy with emissions controls and outlaw every SUV/Truck on the road? Definitely not. But do I think it might be a good idea to atleast be conscious of the amount of pollution we are puting into the air? Absolutely.

No argument there, and we are polluting much less than before, but even so cramming millions of vehicles into a small basin area can be unpleasant.
Air quality across the US is much better than it used to be and that is true in most industialized western countries.
Living without emissions right now is an impossible dream, possibly at some point in the future it can be done.

Just a few more thoughts for our gentle readers who may have come in late or don't want to muddle through the previous pages.

Carl Sagan presented his baloney detection kit as a way to evaluate new ideas.

He introduced it this way:

“If you’re so inclined, if you don’t want to buy baloney even when it’s reassuring to do so, there are precautions that can be taken; there’s a tried-and-true, consumer-tested method.

“What’s in the kit? Tools for skeptical thinking.

“What skeptical thinking boils down to is the means to construct and to understand, a reasoned argument and—especially important—to recognize a fallacious or fraudulent argument. The question is not whether we like the conclusion that emerges out of a train of reasoning, but whether the conclusion follows from the premise or starting point and whether the premise is true.” (The Demon-Haunted World, p. 210)

Here are some of the tools Sagan suggested.

• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts.

• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

• Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities,” at best there may be experts).

• Spin more than one hypothesis—don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy. If there’s something to explain, try to think of all the different ways it could be explained, then think of the tests whereby you might disprove each of the alternatives.

• Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours. Try to think of ways to prove it false. What are the best arguments against it?

• Quantify, wherever possible. Being able to assign numerical values to whatever you are attempting to explain makes it easier to evaluate and to choose among competing hypotheses. In the absence of the ability to make quantifiable measurements, the task becomes much more difficult.

• If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work, including the premise.

• Occam's razor - if there are two hypothesis that explain the data equally well choose the simpler.

• Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result?

Additional issues are:

Conduct control experiments - especially "double blind" experiments where the person taking measurements is not aware of the test and control subjects.

Check for confounding factors—separate the variables.

Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric

Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.

Argument from "authority." Authorities have been wrong in the past and will be wrong in the future.

Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavorable" decision).

Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence). This is the claim that whatever has not been proven false must be true, and vice versa.

Special pleading (typically referring to god's will). This is done to rescue a proposition that is in trouble. One of the classic examples is the appeal to divine mysteries to explain how a perfect deity who is good could allow evil to exist.

Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way a statement or a question is phrased). For example: “How did ‘God’ create the universe?”

Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses). This is a favorite trick of psychics and others who claim paranormal powers. They always remind us of any prediction that is even close to the mark. They never mention those that miss wildly.

Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).

Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)

Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved").

Non sequitur—"it does not follow"—the logic falls down. “America has prospered because we are a ‘Christian’ nation.”

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.

Meaningless question (“What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?”). If there is such a thing as an irresistible force, there cannot be such a thing as an immovable object. The opposite is also true.

Excluded middle—considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is). Example: Either morality comes from ‘God’ or it’s based on individual whims and wishes.

Short-term v. long-term—a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").

Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).

Confusion of correlation and causation.

Straw man—caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection must be false because it fails to explain the origins of life. In fact, Darwin never claimed to explain the origins of life and the subject is not part of the theory of evolution at all. Theories about the origin of life are classified as theories of abiogenesis.

Suppressed evidence or half-truths.

Weasel words—for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. Talleyrand said, “An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public.”
(From The Demon-Haunted World, p210-216)






The argument starts:

- global climate change is happening
- mankind is causing it
- it's going to be bad

The defense is full of errors. How many can you spot?


One side starts with a set of foregone conclusions. One side admits doubt about the conclusions and the possibility of other explanations.

Re: Happy Earth Day
 

Instead of just carping about one report, let these hundreds of dissenters
defend their arguments in writing and show their work.

Peer reviewed science is supposed to be rigorous - that's the whole point.

Main Entry: carp·ing
Pronunciation: \ˈkär-piŋ\
Function: adjective
Date: 1567
: marked by or inclined to querulous and often perverse criticism

How dare I question any conclusion. Sorry. Just looking for some answers. Got any yet?








Scientific issues often deal with items that are too complex and technical for many people to grasp. When these issues touch on public policy, the problem of educating the public is compounded because partisan special-interest groups often mischaracterize or disregard the best available evidence in order to further their agendas. Obviously, this can often result in the enactment of ineffective or counterproductive laws or government programs and also unnecessarily excite the public.

A National Academy of Engineering report says, "As a society, we are not even fully aware of or conversant with the technologies we use every day. In short, we are not ‘technologically literate.'" (1)

Peer review is supposed to help in this area. What is it?

"Peer review is the process by which research and scholarship are evaluated by other experts in one's field. The depth and breadth of formal peer review varies by field; for example, the number of reviewers, as well as whether or not they and article authors will remain anonymous to one another, differs across science, social science, and humanities disciplines. Informal peer review also takes place after research results are published in an article; others in the field weigh in with observations and experiences that question, critique, or support the authors' assertions," reports Leslie Madsen. (2)

Yet, as John Moore writes in Nature,

"It's been peer reviewed so it must be right, right? Wrong! Not everything in the peer-reviewed literature is correct. Indeed, some of it is downright bad science. Professional scientists usually know how to rate papers within their own fields of expertise (all too often very narrow ones nowadays). We realize that some journals are more stringent than others in what they will accept, and that peer review standards can unfortunately be too flexible. A lust for profits has arguably led to the appearance of too many journals, and so it can be all too easy to find somewhere that will publish poor-quality work." (3)

Peer reviewers merely give advice to the editor as to whether a paper should be published. There is no warranty that the results are correct or that they can be reproduced. The reviewers whom the editor picks say yes, we would like to see this in the journal; that is the start and finish of it. (4)

Yet, the term ‘peer review' is often equated with ‘gold standard'. Hence, the politically motivated, lazy or unscrupulous can use the peer-reviewed literature selectively to make arguments that are seriously flawed, or even damaging to public policy. Chris Mooney, in The Republican War on Science (Basic Books, 2005) provides several examples of how this operates in the political world. (3)

Ragner Levi observes,

"As every experienced medical reporter knows, there is no guarantee that published studies are reliable-far from it. Though peer reviewed articles are generally less biased than non-reviewed articles, even highly unreliable results can be published in peer reviewed scientific journals. In a randomized controlled trial looking at peer review, a paper with eight significant errors was sent to 420 reviewers in JAMA's database. None spotted more than five errors, and most not more than two." (5)

Here's another example. Another report in JAMA found that one-third of studies published in three reputable peer reviewed journals didn't hold up. John Ioannidis looked at 45 studies published between 1990 and 2003 and found that subsequent research contradicted the results of seven of those studies, and another seven were found to have weaker results than originally published. In other words, 32% did not withstand the test of time.

This translates into a lot of medical misinformation! Ioannidis reviewed high-impact journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and Lancet, along with a number of others. Each article had been cited at least 1,000 times, all within a span of 13 years. In a number of cases, the explanation for the discrepancies was in precisely what you'd suspect, sample size. The smaller the group, the shorter the study, the more likely it was that subsequent, deeper investigation contradicted or altered the original thesis. Where was the peer review? (6)

Garrett Lisi notes,

"This old system persists because academic career development often depends on which journals scientists can get their papers into, and it comes at a high cost-in money, time and stress. I think a better peer review system could evolve from reviewers with good reputations picking the papers they find interesting out of an open pool, and commenting on them. (7)

There is hope for improvement. In his book The Great Betrayal, Horace Freeland Judsonb agrees there is a distressing downward spiral in the peer review system, but holds out hope that ‘open review,' which prevent reviewers from hiding behind anonymity, and open publication on the Internet rather than in peer reviewed journals, may solve some of the problems. (8)

Notes

1. Technically Speaking: Why All Americans Need to Know More About Technology, G. Pearson and A. T. Young, Editors, (Washington, DC, National Academy Press, 2002), 1

2. Leslie Madsen Brooks, Peer review in science -- is it broken? | BlogHer, March 14, 2009

3. John Moore, "Perspective: Does peer review mean the same to the public as it does to scientists?," Nature, (2006), doi: 10.1038/nature05009

4. Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, "The Hockey Stick Debate: Lessons in Disclosure and Due Diligence," (Washington, DC, George Marshall Institute, May 11, 2005)

5. Ragner Levi, Medical Journalism, (Ames, Iowa, Iowa State University, 2001), 64

6. John P. A. Ioannidis, "Contradicted and Initially Stronger Effects in Highly Cited Clinical Research," JAMA, 294 (2), 218, July 13, 2005

7. Greg Boustead, "Garrett Lisi's Exceptional Approach to Everything," seedmagazine.com, November 17, 2008

8. Horace Freeland Judson, The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science, (New York, Harcourt, Inc., 2004)

We have to be sensitive to marketing issues too, right?



Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus
JOHN M. BRODER
Published: May 1, 2009
WASHINGTON — The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.”



The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives. A summary of the group’s latest findings and recommendations was accidentally sent by e-mail to a number of news organizations by someone who sat in this week on a briefing intended for government officials and environmental leaders.

Asked about the summary, ecoAmerica’s president and founder, Robert M. Perkowitz, requested that it not be reported until the formal release of the firm’s full paper later this month, but acknowledged that its wide distribution now made compliance with his request unlikely.

The research directly parallels marketing studies conducted by oil companies, utilities and coal mining concerns that are trying to “green” their images with consumers and sway public policy.

Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center poll released in January found global warming last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists. “We know why it’s lowest,” said Mr. Perkowitz, a marketer of outdoor clothing and home furnishings before he started ecoAmerica, whose activities are financed by corporations, foundations and individuals. “When someone thinks of global warming, they think of a politicized, polarized argument. When you say ‘global warming,’ a certain group of Americans think that’s a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues.”

The answer, Mr. Perkowitz said in his presentation at the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language. “Energy efficiency” makes people think of shivering in the dark. Instead, it is more effective to speak of “saving money for a more prosperous future.” In fact, the group’s surveys and focus groups found, it is time to drop the term “the environment” and talk about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.”

“Another key finding: remember to speak in TALKING POINTS aspirational language about shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency while avoiding jargon and details about policy, science, economics or technology,” said the e-mail account of the group’s study.

Mr. Perkowitz and allies in the environmental movement have been briefing officials in Congress and the administration in the hope of using the findings to change the terms of the debate now under way in Washington.

Opponents of legislation to combat global warming are engaged in a similar effort. Trying to head off a cap-and-trade system, in which government would cap the amount of heat-trapping emissions allowed and let industry trade permits to emit those gases, they are coaching Republicans to refer to any such system as a giant tax that would kill jobs. Coal companies are taking out full-page advertisements promising “clean, green coal.” The natural gas industry refers to its product as “clean fuel green fuel.” Oil companies advertise their investments in alternative energy.

Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, an expert on environmental communications, said ecoAmerica’s campaign was a mirror image of what industry and political conservatives were doing. “The form is the same; the message is just flipped,” he said. “You want to sell toothpaste, we’ll sell it. You want to sell global warming, we’ll sell that. It’s the use of advertising techniques to manipulate public opinion.”

He said the approach was cynical and, worse, ineffective. “The right uses it, the left uses it, but it doesn’t engage people in a face-to-face manner,” he said, “and that’s the only way to achieve real, lasting social change.”

Frank Luntz, a Republican communications consultant, prepared a strikingly similar memorandum in 2002, telling his clients that they were losing the environmental debate and advising them to adjust their language. He suggested referring to themselves as “conservationists” rather than “environmentalists,” and emphasizing “common sense” over scientific argument.

And, Mr. Luntz and Mr. Perkowitz agree, “climate change” is an easier sell than “global warming.”

For our gentle readers who might like to contemplate this further, let's take a look at "carbon trading" and where that may lead. Interesting stuff.





The Bottomless Well: The Twilight Of Fuel, The Virtue Of Waste, And Why We Will Never Run Out Of Energy
by Peter Huber and Mark P. Mills

Peter W. Huber
Bound to Burn
Humanity will keep spewing carbon into the atmosphere, but good policy can help sink it back into the earth.



Cheap coal, like that extracted from this Chinese mine, is essential to the developing world’s economic growth.Like medieval priests, today’s carbon brokers will sell you an indulgence that forgives your carbon sins. It will run you about $500 for 5 tons of forgiveness—about how much the typical American needs every year. Or about $2,000 a year for a typical four-person household. Your broker will spend the money on such things as reducing methane emissions from hog farms in Brazil.

But if you really want to make a difference, you must send a check large enough to forgive the carbon emitted by four poor Brazilian households, too—because they’re not going to do it themselves. To cover all five households, then, send $4,000. And you probably forgot to send in a check last year, and you might forget again in the future, so you’d best make it an even $40,000, to take care of a decade right now. If you decline to write your own check while insisting that to save the world we must ditch the carbon, you are just burdening your already sooty soul with another ton of self-righteous hypocrisy. And you can’t possibly afford what it will cost to forgive that.

If making carbon this personal seems rude, then think globally instead. During the presidential race, someone was heard to remark that he would bankrupt the coal industry. No one can doubt Washington’s power to bankrupt almost anything—in the United States. But China is adding 100 gigawatts of coal-fired electrical capacity a year. That’s another whole United States’ worth of coal consumption added every three years, with no stopping point in sight. Much of the rest of the developing world is on a similar path.

Cut to the chase. We rich people can’t stop the world’s 5 billion poor people from burning the couple of trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have within easy reach. We can’t even make any durable dent in global emissions—because emissions from the developing world are growing too fast, because the other 80 percent of humanity desperately needs cheap energy, and because we and they are now part of the same global economy. What we can do, if we’re foolish enough, is let carbon worries send our jobs and industries to their shores, making them grow even faster, and their carbon emissions faster still.

We don’t control the global supply of carbon.

Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80 percent of the planet’s oil reserves—about 1 trillion barrels, currently worth about $40 trillion. If $40 trillion worth of gold were located where most of the oil is, one could only scoff at any suggestion that we might somehow persuade the nasty people to leave the wealth buried. They can lift most of their oil at a cost well under $10 a barrel. They will drill. They will pump. And they will find buyers. Oil is all they’ve got.

Poor countries all around the planet are sitting on a second, even bigger source of carbon—almost a trillion tons of cheap, easily accessible coal. They also control most of the planet’s third great carbon reservoir—the rain forests and soil. They will keep squeezing the carbon out of cheap coal, and cheap forest, and cheap soil, because that’s all they’ve got. Unless they can find something even cheaper. But they won’t—not any time in the foreseeable future.

Full article here:Bound to Burn by Peter W. Huber, City Journal Spring 2009

Brilliant
 

Jungle:

Brilliant, as always.

A segue from a previous post that Jungle pontificated from, and my comment http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/mo...cap-trade.html (Cap and Trade; 3-16-09):

How do you get the destitute in the third-world to stop burning tires, leaves, twigs, and dried dung for fuel?

Oh, right...give them carbon-credits. Get 20 credits and you get a bag of rice from UNICEF.

Big Business and Big Government are in the business of herding masses of people towards their next money-making scheme or pacification plan. Cap and Trade might work in the Western-world, where we are 'enlightened,' and guilt is a major societal controlling-force (feel guilty if don't buy a hybrid car, are against any 'social reform,' or eat meat).

But the majority of the people on this planet have never heard of Al Gore, Obama, Cap and Trade, and probably don't know what Carbon---or for that matter, an atom---is. Tell them their cooking fire is going to cost extra? Won't work...who's going to enforce it?

Anyone else notice how the great 'swine flu' pandemic has fallen out of the news after only 4 days? Guess there wasn't any money to be made from it.

But there's plenty of money to be made from the fear of carbon.

Have you ever read anything good about global warming? Why is all the news always bad?

Objectively speaking, any environmental change should have both positive benefits and negative effects. For example, theory predicts and observations confirm that human-induced warming takes place primarily in winter, lengthening the growing season. Satellite measurements now show that the planet is greener than it was before it warmed. There are literally thousands of experiments reported in the scientific literature demonstrating that higher atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations -- cause by human activity -- dramatically increase food production. So why do we only hear one side about global warming?

Perhaps because there's little incentive for scientists to do anything but emphasize the negative and the destructive. Alarming news often leads to government funding, funding generates research, and research is the key to scientists' professional advancement. Good news threatens that arrangement.

This is the reality that all scientists confront: every issue, be it global warming, cancer or AIDS, competes with other issues for a limited amount of government research funding. And, in Washington, no one ever received a major research grant by stating that his or her particular issue might not be such a problem after all.

Re: Happy Earth Day
 

"Global warming" is really the wrong label to apply. It's really global climate destabilization we're talking about.

In your example, a longer growing season may also mean that insects harmful to the crops stop dying off in the winter. Declining snow pacts to replenish the aquifers means water becomes an issue. Rain fall patterns change so breadbasket states like Kansas and Nebraska in the corn belt may turn into desert states like Nevada and Arizona. Really inconvenient if you're a farmer in Kansas.

For those who believe addressing global climate change now is an economic boondoggle, I would submit that the price is going to go up the longer we wait.

I'm terribly sorry... Global climate destabilization it is- global warming is far too specific.

I think you are missing my point. The science really never seems to be "settled", only the politics. Consider the past predictions 30 years ago. Perhaps we will be reading this 30 years from now scratching our heads as to why anyone entertained or predicted such an idea. The inconsistencies among scientists over the years are astounding, and yet only previous scientists have been wrong. New scientists are always right!:rolleyes:

Consider 2000-2005; "Scientists" professed that the ice caps are melting in two seperate instances.

1) Down in Antarctica, scientists made headlines in several periodicals by claiming that global warming (as was called back then) was actually melting away Antarctica.....

“Study shows Antarctic glaciers shrinking” –Associated Press, April 22, 2005

A month after such a story was created, they realized that... wait! Simple physics would suggest that Global Warming around Antarctica should be causing increased snowfall thereby increasing Antarctica's land mass...so all of the sudden, Antarctica is growing again! Amazing! So which is it really?

“Warming is blamed for Antarctic’s weight gain” –New York Times, May 20, 2005

2)Up in the arctic,

In August 2000, the New York Times headlined on the front page that "The North Pole is Melting" and that "the last time scientists could be certain that the Pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago."

It turns out that two United Nations scientists were onboard a Russian icebreaker serving as a tourist ship when they encountered water at the North Pole. They told this to the newspaper without bothering to check the historical record. Open water is occasionally found at the North Pole at the end of summer. The Times ultimately retracted the story -- but that retraction appeared far away from the front page.

Why didn't the polar scientists check first before calling the paper? And why didn't the New York Times check the facts before publishing? The answers are obvious. Stories like this sell newspapers and generate government research grants. There's no incentive in telling the larger truth, not for science, not for the media, and certainly not for those public officials who lavish funding on global warming science.

The bottom line here is what I've said before... Science isn't settled on all of this, but the politics are. Who wants us to throw an increasing amount of money on this flim-flam?

As a side note: I'm certainly no Al Gore, or even a leading climatologist... however I do live in FL... we don't have much snow down here, but we do have aquifers and springs so I'm not sure where you are going with water being an issue.

Re: Happy Earth Day
 

That's correct. We're learning all the time.

Einstein had a different idea about the physical world from Newton and so gravity is still theoretical to this day.

I had a theoretical apple fall out of the tree and hit me on the head over the weekend.

May explain a few things.

Sophistry
 

Global warming was, and is, the meme used by your side when dealing with grade schoolers and half-wit adults. Your simple syllogism--CO2 causes warming and, since it is warming it is caused by CO2. It is a demonstrably bad logical sequence, but it moved the ball as long as temps increased. Now that the temps are going down you are trying to move off your global warming position. No way--you guys own that position, it got you where you are, and now you're going to have to live with it.

WW

Re: Happy Earth Day
 

Irritable much?

Actually, there's nothing inconsistent when using the terms global climate destabilization or global warming - it's just that the former is more descriptive.

At any rate, I'm drawn to the substance rather than the semantics.

YouTube - Sir David Attenborough: The Truth About Climate Change

Wednesday, 15 April 2009
David Attenborough to be patron of Optimum Population Trust
The Times
April 14, 2009

Parminder Bahra, Poverty and Development Correspondent

Sir David Attenborough said yesterday that the growth in global population was frightening, as he became a patron of an organisation that campaigns to limit the number of people in the world.
The television presenter and naturalist said that the increase in population was having devastating effects on ecology, pollution and food production.
“There are three times as many people in the world as when I started making television programmes only a mere 56 years ago,” he said, after becoming a patron of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) think-tank.
“It is frightening. We can’t go on as we have been. We are seeing the consequences in terms of ecology, atmospheric pollution and in terms of the space and food production.

“I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more. Population is reaching its optimum and the world cannot hold an infinite number of people,” Sir David, who has two children, said.
The OPT counts among its patrons the environmentalist Jonathon Porritt and the academic Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta. However, Sir David’s appointment has already been criticised. Austin Williams, author of The Enemies of Progress, said: “Experts can still be stupid when they speak on subjects of which they know little. Sir David may know a sight more than I do about remote species but that does not give him the intelligence to speak on global politics.
“I have a problem with the line that people are a problem. More people are a good thing. People are the source of creativity, intelligence, analysis and problem-solving. If we see people as just simple things that consume and excrete carbon, then the OPT may have a point, but people are more than this and they will be the ones to find the solutions.” Sir David said that the OPT was drawing attention to the issue of population and being a patron seemed a worthwhile thing to do.
Roger Martin, the chairman of the trust, said that the appointment would put pressure on organisations to face up to the issue of population: “The environmental movement will not confront the fact that there is not a single problem that they deal with which would not be easier with fewer people.”
The trust campaigns for global access to family planning and for couples to be encouraged to stop having more than two children. In Britain it wants to stabilise the population by bringing immigration into balance with emigration and making greater efforts to reduce teenage pregnancies.
Mr Martin said that the UK population must be reduced to a sustainable level because Britain was already the most overcrowded country in Europe.He said the world could not increase production to meet the needs of a growing population: “We can’t feed ourselves with some of the most intensive agriculture in the world — we’re only 70 per cent self-sufficient.”
Mr Martin said that Britain could not rely on the world food market because, when food runs short, exporters do not export it: “Last year, we saw India and China banning exports of rice when there was a shortage.”
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
The first scholar to bring overpopulation to the fore was the Rev Thomas Malthus. His academic work in the late 18th and early 19th centuries outraged and inspired succeeding generations (Tim Glanfield writes).
Malthus grew up in Guildford, Surrey, the youngest of eight siblings, and during his childhood encountered some of the great minds of his age. His father was a friend of the philosophers David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the young Malthus needed little encouragement to study mathematics at Cambridge.
He made his name with a landmark text, An Essay on the Principle of Population, published in six editions between 1798 and 1826 and underlined by strong scepticism for future human generations.
Malthus believed that all previous generations had included a “poor” underclass created by an inherent lack of resources in the world that would continue if population growth were not addressed. His theory is summarised by his assertion that “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in Earth to produce sustenance for Man”.
He saw two significant variables in the world, those that are positive and raise the death rate — famine, disease and war — and those that are preventive and lower the birthrate — birth control, abortion, celibacy and postponement of marriage.
In practising the preventive measures and gradually reducing poor laws, Malthus argued, society would no longer “create the poor which they maintain”.
The expectations of population growth outlined in his essay had a significant influence on Darwin’s evolutionary theories and many modern political theses, but Malthus remains a controversial and much vilified scholar. Shelley branded him “a eunuch and a tyrant”, Marx as “the principal enemy of the people” and Lenin called his work a “reactionary doctrine”.

OK, your perception is keen. I was irritable when I wrote that--score one (but only one :)) for your side.

You are right when you say that we have arrived at a discussion of semantics. From where I sit, it looks like the term "climate change" (or destabilization, or whatever they call it next week) is less descriptive than is "global warming", in that it is less specific. So the temperature can go up or down, flood or drought, and so on. The less specific term allows you to claim that whatever weather you don't like is climate change.

The impression I have is that there is a movement away from the term "global warming" because it is verifiably true that the temps have begun to cool, and have been doing so for about 7 years now. I suspect that if the sun came back to life and our temperatures began to get hotter, we'd hear the last of "climate change", and the term "global warming" would be fashionable again. That is just my take on things.

All that aside, I thought your reference link was the worst one you've posted so far. I watched the video which has "climate change" in the title, but all they talked about was global warming. It had some other holes too--let me know if you are interested and I'll tell you what they are.

Maybe in OZ...
Image Gallery: Glaciers Before and After | LiveScience.com

Interesting, the thing those photos don't tell us is that all glaciers have been receding for about ten thousand years. This can be inconvenient.

And good that they have!
During the Ice Age of the late Cenozoic era, a continental ice sheet, centered west of Hudson Bay (the floor of which is slowly rebounding after being depressed by the great weight of the ice), covered most of N North America; glaciers descended the slopes of the Rocky Mts. and those of the Pacific Margin.
Good skiing,poor lift service.But,as you say, cycles repeat,and there are a lot of factors to factor...
Glacial-Interglacial cycles seem to be controlled by orbital parameters of the Earth (the Milankovtich Cycle).
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vo...619374001.jpeg
source:http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/G102/102ceno3.htm

Re: Happy Earth Day
 

Could be. But despite the drama queen Attenborough, I thought the graph was a useful visual.