The "Global Warming's a crock" or "Global Warming is real" thread.

[Roxanne Appleby]

The "Global Warming's a crock" or "Global Warming is real" thread.

I think it's a crock. Obviously others disagree. Obviously it's a hot issue, and will remain so until the population discovers with embarassment that they've been sold a bill of goods. (I said I think it's a crock.)

Anyway, rather than a bunch of successive threads picking it up and setting it down a few days later, is there any value in just creating an ongoing single-issue political thread? Maybe. If not, electrons are free, so here goes -

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Someone will be along shortly to advise you not to pay attention to WSJ articles because their hearts are not pure. Whatever. I urge readers to make up their own minds based on the actual content. Drop down to the bottom and you'll see this guy's got some street cred.

Global Warming Delusions
By DANIEL B. BOTKIN
WSJ, October 17, 2007

Global warming doesn't matter except to the extent that it will affect life -- ours and that of all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary.

Kilimanjaro's shrinking ice cap is not directly related to global warming.
Case in point: This year's United Nations report on climate change and other documents say that 20%-30% of plant and animal species will be threatened with extinction in this century due to global warming -- a truly terrifying thought. Yet, during the past 2.5 million years, a period that scientists now know experienced climatic changes as rapid and as warm as modern climatological models suggest will happen to us, almost none of the millions of species on Earth went extinct. The exceptions were about 20 species of large mammals (the famous megafauna of the last ice age -- saber-tooth tigers, hairy mammoths and the like), which went extinct about 10,000 to 5,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, and many dominant trees and shrubs of northwestern Europe. But elsewhere, including North America, few plant species went extinct, and few mammals.

We're also warned that tropical diseases are going to spread, and that we can expect malaria and encephalitis epidemics. But scientific papers by Prof. Sarah Randolph of Oxford University show that temperature changes do not correlate well with changes in the distribution or frequency of these diseases; warming has not broadened their distribution and is highly unlikely to do so in the future, global warming or not.

The key point here is that living things respond to many factors in addition to temperature and rainfall. In most cases, however, climate-modeling-based forecasts look primarily at temperature alone, or temperature and precipitation only. You might ask, "Isn't this enough to forecast changes in the distribution of species?" Ask a mockingbird. The New York Times recently published an answer to a query about why mockingbirds were becoming common in Manhattan. The expert answer was: food -- an exotic plant species that mockingbirds like to eat had spread to New York City. It was this, not temperature or rainfall, the expert said, that caused the change in mockingbird geography.

You might think I must be one of those know-nothing naysayers who believes global warming is a liberal plot. On the contrary, I am a biologist and ecologist who has worked on global warming, and been concerned about its effects, since 1968. I've developed the computer model of forest growth that has been used widely to forecast possible effects of global warming on life -- I've used the model for that purpose myself, and to forecast likely effects on specific endangered species.

I'm not a naysayer. I'm a scientist who believes in the scientific method and in what facts tell us. I have worked for 40 years to try to improve our environment and improve human life as well. I believe we can do this only from a basis in reality, and that is not what I see happening now. Instead, like fashions that took hold in the past and are eloquently analyzed in the classic 19th century book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," the popular imagination today appears to have been captured by beliefs that have little scientific basis.

Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate. They tell me that my belief in open and honest assessment is naïve. "Wolves deceive their prey, don't they?" one said to me recently. Therefore, biologically, he said, we are justified in exaggerating to get society to change.

The climate modelers who developed the computer programs that are being used to forecast climate change used to readily admit that the models were crude and not very realistic, but were the best that could be done with available computers and programming methods. They said our options were to either believe those crude models or believe the opinions of experienced, data-focused scientists. Having done a great deal of computer modeling myself, I appreciated their acknowledgment of the limits of their methods. But I hear no such statements today. Oddly, the forecasts of computer models have become our new reality, while facts such as the few extinctions of the past 2.5 million years are pushed aside, as if they were not our reality.

A recent article in the well-respected journal American Scientist explained why the glacier on Mt. Kilimanjaro could not be melting from global warming. Simply from an intellectual point of view it was fascinating -- especially the author's Sherlock Holmes approach to figuring out what was causing the glacier to melt. That it couldn't be global warming directly (i.e., the result of air around the glacier warming) was made clear by the fact that the air temperature at the altitude of the glacier is below freezing. This means that only direct radiant heat from sunlight could be warming and melting the glacier. The author also studied the shape of the glacier and deduced that its melting pattern was consistent with radiant heat but not air temperature. Although acknowledged by many scientists, the paper is scorned by the true believers in global warming.

We are told that the melting of the arctic ice will be a disaster. But during the famous medieval warming period -- A.D. 750 to 1230 or so -- the Vikings found the warmer northern climate to their advantage. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie addressed this in his book "Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000," perhaps the greatest book about climate change before the onset of modern concerns with global warming. He wrote that Erik the Red "took advantage of a sea relatively free of ice to sail due west from Iceland to reach Greenland. . . . Two and a half centuries later, at the height of the climatic and demographic fortunes of the northern settlers, a bishopric of Greenland was founded at Gardar in 1126."

Ladurie pointed out that "it is reasonable to think of the Vikings as unconsciously taking advantage of this [referring to the warming of the Middle Ages] to colonize the most northern and inclement of their conquests, Iceland and Greenland." Good thing that Erik the Red didn't have Al Gore or his climatologists as his advisers.

Should we therefore dismiss global warming? Of course not. But we should make a realistic assessment, as rationally as possible, about its cultural, economic and environmental effects. As Erik the Red might have told you, not everything due to a climatic warming is bad, nor is everything that is bad due to a climatic warming.

We should approach the problem the way we decide whether to buy insurance and take precautions against other catastrophes -- wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes. And as I have written elsewhere, many of the actions we would take to reduce greenhouse-gas production and mitigate global-warming effects are beneficial anyway, most particularly a movement away from fossil fuels to alternative solar and wind energy.

My concern is that we may be moving away from an irrational lack of concern about climate change to an equally irrational panic about it.

Many of my colleagues ask, "What's the problem? Hasn't it been a good thing to raise public concern?" The problem is that in this panic we are going to spend our money unwisely, we will take actions that are counterproductive, and we will fail to do many of those things that will benefit the environment and ourselves.

For example, right now the clearest threat to many species is habitat destruction. Take the orangutans, for instance, one of those charismatic species that people are often fascinated by and concerned about. They are endangered because of deforestation. In our fear of global warming, it would be sad if we fail to find funds to purchase those forests before they are destroyed, and thus let this species go extinct.

At the heart of the matter is how much faith we decide to put in science -- even how much faith scientists put in science. Our times have benefited from clear-thinking, science-based rationality. I hope this prevails as we try to deal with our changing climate.

Mr. Botkin, president of the Center for the Study of the Environment and professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of "Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century" (Replica Books, 2001).

 

[Wildcard Ky]

I think the planet is getting warmer, but I think our role in it is WAY overblown.

I do not think we're the cause of it, but we do contribute to it. It's kind of like someone throwing gas on an existing fire. They didn't start the fire, but they add to it.

We do need to be better stewards of our planet.

 

[Goldie Munro]

Whether we are to blame or whether it is a natural warm up, the planet is getting warmer. We have to deal with the consequences of that. The consequences are huge.

 

[Oblimo]

I'm with George Carlin on this one:

The planet is fine. The people are fucked.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Mostly true, somewhat overblown, financially not-worth-avoiding.

 

[Weird Harold]

My concern is that we may be moving away from an irrational lack of concern about climate change to an equally irrational panic about it.

Many of my colleagues ask, "What's the problem? Hasn't it been a good thing to raise public concern?" The problem is that in this panic we are going to spend our money unwisely, we will take actions that are counterproductive, and we will fail to do many of those things that will benefit the environment and ourselves.

Mr Botkin pretty much sums up my feelings about global warming in the quote above.

 

[Pure]

move on...

surely the 'crock' folks are rarer these days.

the new 'right' talking points seem to be:

A. it is real but will be a boon to mankind*. and

B. it's real but there's nothing that can or should be done; the human role is too small.

move on, rox!

----
*i note mr botkin has already moved ahead to this!....

PS. By the way, rox, did you notice botkin expressed some concerns about other species, e.g. orang utans? sounds dangerously leftist to me. next thing you know.... statism, in the form of laws regulating hunting!

 

[Seattle Zack]

Interesting how these Flat-Earthers can sit through a talking head on Faux News describing the deterioration of arctic glaciers and the apologists from the oil execs ... and believe both. Amazing. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

 

[Pure]

right on, zack!.....

but the main group HAS moved on, beyond the "it aint so." phase. the new phrases are 'so what!' and 'don't follow those who sow panic.'

---
if ever there was a group that is NOT panicked, it's the US Senate.

 

[WRJames]

The Earth goes through natural cycles of heating and cooling. There was a a warm phase about a thousand years, and a cool phase that started about five hundred years ago (the so-called Little Ice Age). When Greenland was first settled, it was possible to farm there -- those farms failed during the Little Ice Age. Now agriculture is possible again in southern Greenland.

How closely is the current warming trend linked to human activity? Very hard to say. The problem here -- if the planet IS really warming up, if we really do face droughts, major huuricanes, all the dire things that the we are being warned about -- and if human activity is NOT the cause -- if there is nothing we can do to keep it from happening -- well, we should be taking some steps to adapt to the new situation, rather than trying, in vain, to keep it from happening. Which means, for example, that we should building a lot of desalinization facilities to free us from dependence on changing rainfall patterns. And where will we get the energy from? Most likely nuclear or geothermal.

We might also start to consider some long term stategies to keep ocean levels stable -- for example -- the Great Basin in the Soutwest used to be a gigantic inland sea. If we refilled it, some of all of it -- how much water would that contain? What about the Aral Sea and Caspian Seas, or the Dead Sea? Could we turn the center of Australia into a giant lake? Ice caps are not the only way to keep water out of the oceans.

 

[elsol]

Here's the thing...

It's advice I gave to male friend after his divorce when he 'got' interested in a new woman.

"We can talk about it all you want... but the truth is you're going to walk into this relationship no matter that's it too soon, especially with this woman. So let's not talk about, instead you accept that you ARE going to do it. Let's save all of this stuff for afterwards... hey, maybe there's won't be an afterwards and you'll both die in a car crash."

We're not going to do anything about global warming.

The talk is bullshit because if it's not real... the side who thinks it's real will keep spewing the same stuff for the next 1000 years anyway.

IF it is true, everyone who we could look at and say "Fuckhead!" will be dead... including us.

Fuck it! I inherited my parent's bullshit... why shouldn't our kids inherit ours? Isn't that what kids are for?

 

[Pure]

el.

grouch.

 

[Seattle Zack]

Hate to break it to you, but we have actually ...

face droughts, major huuricanes,

Even without the extra U, still something to reckon with. And the new season is just getting started ....

All at once now,

"You're Doing A Heckuva Job Brownie!"

 

[Carnevil9]

I would be more willing to entertain the notion of Global Warming, and maybe even Man's Contribution To Global Warming, but for one thing: every, and I mean every, proponent of the global warming crisis is a bleeding heart liberal. That makes me think that Global Warming is really just a smoke screen for another agenda, like the destruction of capitalism and the advancement of socialism.

 

[Darkniciad]

Mr Botkin pretty much sums up my feelings about global warming in the quote above.

I'm with him.

Although, I'm not all that convinced that mankind's contribution to the warming has any realistic impact. But, there are plenty of other reasons for rational reductions and solutions. Cleaner air, cleaner water, better gas mileage, less dependence on foreign oil... I can get behind greener solutions that move that direction without some envirovangelist demanding everything change over night and pronouncing the coming of fire and brimstone if we don't.

All you need to do is look at the refrigerants rammed down everyone's throat at great expense that have proven no better than what they replaced to see knee-jerk at its worst - pissing money down a hole for zero results.

Next up, the compact flourescent bulb...

 

[Seattle Zack]

I think it's a crock. Obviously others disagree. Obviously it's a hot issue, and will remain so until the population discovers with embarassment that they've been sold a bill of goods. (I said I think it's a crock.)

Absolutely hilarious, how interesting is this. Rather than accept a scientific discovery, you're going to contest it to the bitter end. Those studies are crooked, I tell you, funded by Evil Liberal Acacamics. Forcing lesbian sex amongst those lithe college co-eds ... I despair to even imagine it ... wait, I'm still despairing ... leave me alone....

 

[StrixVaria]

"Climate Change" is real. The telling issue is the RATE of change and what may help cause it.

That said, the effects are unavoidable.

Legislators in Georgia are talking about desalination plants along the coastline to provide water to Atlanta. What they don't seem to understand is the fact that desalinating water takes about 1150 AMPS per gallon - then you have to push that pure water uphill with a gain of 1100 feet over 250 miles. To be able to attain that goal, you would have to build THREE new nuclear reactors... which would provide enough water to allow the current rate of growth for another thirty years or so.

Fill Death valley with water? The dead sea? Other low-lying areas? Dear god... Do you realise the amount of power that would take?

Don't take me wrong, I'm not saying that we should radically change anything until we get more data - climate data is best observed over centuries.... but when ice caps start melting in years (not decades), I think we should all look at what is causing the change and take appropriate action.

 

[AnonymousTroll]

The real problem.

The real problem is all the hot air from liberals and conservs. Get em all ta quit eaten beans and stop farting and that will solve everything.

and just think, if the world turned off all the 'puters used for commenting on shit like this, we'd save a ton o energy. Now that would be a real green statement. All the heat from all those 'puters. You betcha man. Serious problem dere.

Now porn is the next problem to tackle. See, all those movies and picture shoots, they all require really bright, hot lights. Heating up the air man, not to mention all dat sex goin on heatin up everting. then every butt licker watching gets off and more heat. See. I mean really. Think about it.

This shit bites ya in the ass, let me tell you. Remember back when Mcdonals had them styro thingies for yer sandwich, kept it all together and nice n hot like a wet pussy? Then the enviro-nazi's started bitchen bout it. News folks fired up ther hot lamps and made a fuss and lots a hot air. Next ting you know, micky is changing to paper & cardboard. Talk to this guy at the paper co that got da contract. He laughin his ass off cuz it turns out. The fuckin paper stuff takes TWICE the energy to make than the styro did. Geez Willy ya Know.

An weren't it mister gore dat wanted to haul ice bergs down and use the water. everyone's eyes poppin cuz that ice up dere is meltin and he wants to make it go faster. Oh sure dat smart lemme tell ya.

Ah. I've said more den I should. Guess I go 1-bomb I mean rate some storys #1 some.

ant

 

[amicus]

Amicus is pleased.

A few years ago, three or four, when I first ventured naively into the Author's Hangout, and dared mention my opinion that the Global Warming thesis was a hoax, not a single person agreed.

I reached my conclusions, following a great deal of research, more than twenty years ago.

It is a bit of a social curse being ahead of the times. One tends not to be appreciated.

Global Climate change is always occurring. We are still discovering the mechanics behind it; it is a most interesting study.

Another interesting aspect into chronological events is the abstraction that many scientific types make, in that, 'if it happened before, it will happen again...' syndrome.

There may never be another Ice Age.

There may never be another, 'super volcano', or asteroid impact, bringing about an ELE, an extinction level event, (movie, Deep Impact).

The earth and our solar system, including the sun, is entering what might be metaphorically referred to as, 'middle age', wherein activity lessens.

Something to think about.

Amicus...

 

[S-Des]

I think the best quote I've heard about this came from a caller to the Dennis Miller show. Dennis maintains Gore will have egg on his face in 10-20 years. The caller corrected him, saying, "If the Warming catastrophe doesn't happen, he'll just take credit for saving the planet."

Let's keep improving things because it's the right thing to do. Get off oil, find sources better than nuclear, and convince countries coming into the modern age that they don't need to make pollution worse to achieve gains. The funniest part of the debate was reading an interview with several of the worlds' foremost GW scientists (the ones who are warning everyone of the situation). They seemed quite shocked at the hysteria projected by certain groups. One scientist said he was quite optimistic that we were going to turn things around. I think he missed Gore's movie. Luckily, in order to graduate college now, you often have to watch it several times so you can be properly panicked.

 

[amicus]

I think the best quote I've heard about this came from a caller to the Dennis Miller show. Dennis maintains Gore will have egg on his face in 10-20 years. The caller corrected him, saying, "If the Warming catastrophe doesn't happen, he'll just take credit for saving the planet."

Let's keep improving things because it's the right thing to do. Get off oil, find sources better than nuclear, and convince countries coming into the modern age that they don't need to make pollution worse to achieve gains. The funniest part of the debate was reading an interview with several of the worlds' foremost GW scientists (the ones who are warning everyone of the situation). They seemed quite shocked at the hysteria projected by certain groups. One scientist said he was quite optimistic that we were going to turn things around. I think he missed Gore's movie. Luckily, in order to graduate college now, you often have to watch it several times so you can be properly panicked.

~~~

In a way, S-Des, you make a good point, about the 'right thing to do'...

But you seem to disregard common sense, dollars and cents, and economic reality.

There is a 'mind set', that Liberals seem to have, not necessarily saying you are one, which goes like this: "If we had control of everything, we could direct the future in a way that we see beneficial to all..."

The 'liberal', the left winger, the socialist, the social democrat, call them what you may, are aghast at the idea of leaving the future to the control and direction of the unwashed masses of individuals seeking self survival and sufficiency.

"They", think the 'intellectuals', should be in control of the future and mankind's aspirations.

The 'market place', free human choice, will determine the solutions to the transition from fossil fuels to the future; not the intellectuals.

The free market place is trial and error and the 'profit motive', which is inherently untidy and messy.

The alternatives are German Fascism, Russian Communism, and Chinese Communism, or Indian mixed economy or European social democracies, a bastardization of both.

Take your pick.

Amicus...

 

[Liar]

I would be more willing to entertain the notion of Global Warming, and maybe even Man's Contribution To Global Warming, but for one thing: every, and I mean every, proponent of the global warming crisis is a bleeding heart liberal.

Um. No.

 

[keeblercrumb]

~~~

In a way, S-Des, you make a good point, about the 'right thing to do'...

But you seem to disregard common sense, dollars and cents, and economic reality.

There is a 'mind set', that Liberals seem to have, not necessarily saying you are one, which goes like this: "If we had control of everything, we could direct the future in a way that we see beneficial to all..."

The 'liberal', the left winger, the socialist, the social democrat, call them what you may, are aghast at the idea of leaving the future to the control and direction of the unwashed masses of individuals seeking self survival and sufficiency.

"They", think the 'intellectuals', should be in control of the future and mankind's aspirations.

The 'market place', free human choice, will determine the solutions to the transition from fossil fuels to the future; not the intellectuals.

The free market place is trial and error and the 'profit motive', which is inherently untidy and messy.

The alternatives are German Fascism, Russian Communism, and Chinese Communism, or Indian mixed economy or European social democracies, a bastardization of both.

Take your pick.

Amicus...

I am so confused. And I am sure it all this pot that the kids and I in the commune are smoking is responsible... but give me a chance to understand this here...

I think I fully subscribe to the free human choice theory of things... I am all in favor of democratic processes to decide public policy within the confines and protections afforded to the minority such as is embodied in the bill of rights (for example). Are we in agreement so far?

Then within that human choice, one man / one vote public policy framework, we have this spirited market place thing which with the benefit of the profit motive, messy and untidy as it may be, fills in the balance of these decisions for us as to what will work or not work. So we get us a few Bill Gates' and on the other end a few of us losers out here on the commune. I'm cool with that. We still okay?

Now.... as to what the hell this has to do with whether or not global warming is “A” real, and/or “B”man made and/or “C” :a bad thing for us all.... welll that's a little murky but it must having something to do market forces or you would not have brought it up, I am sure.

Let's try to hold that thought for a second.... (it ain't easy... this is some good shit).... I would have thought the global warming thing was basically a scientific debate, regardless of whether Al Gore wants to be President or not. So.... Why don't we just leave it there?

This science stuff is difficult. We are all the time making mistakes and having to go back and try it again.... (Kudzu, carp, and killer bees comes to mind)(the unintended consequences thing?) But man, we just got to keep trying, we have no choice.

The environmental protection concept has been solidly in the Human Choice policy arena (not the free market) for a long time. Starting in the 19th century English chemical industry (Widnes area, I believe) which resulted in the poisoning of all the surface water (because of the air pollution). Since the people had developed a taste for clean water and insisted on it, the government developed an underground storage and distribution system to deal with the problem. I know. I lived on top of the reservoir they built at that time. This was not the market place in action, it was that other human choice thing, voters.

As a lad growing up in the beautiful finger lakes area of upstate New York, we had this continuous plume of dark smoke drifting above the lake all the time emanating from the coal fired power plant downwind. And when the first nukes came on line, this smoke plume ended and I thought that was a good thing. I still do.

This was a period of monopolized utilities... Nuclear power never made economic sense (except it allowed for a massive expansion of the power hungry economy) but it was a hell of a lot cleaner then the fossil fuel it replaced. But Nuclear power had it's environmental risks and costs (nothing is free)....

Sooooo, as we all know, "Environmental" concerns (and a de-regulated and competitive power industry)(aka, the free market) killed off nuclear power. It is one of life's little ironies that the resulting dependence on fossil fuel MAY have resulted in the global warming phenomena.

Now while YOU studied whole problem 20 years ago and concluded that global warming was not A” real, and/or “B” man made and/or “C” :a bad thing for us all, I guess I should just chill out and not worry about it.

But.... I don't know Amicus..... it just kind of bothers me a little that somebody who cannot talk to what is transparently a scientific AND public policy issue without babbling on about those nasty little liberals... just may not provide the most reliable basis for deciding what we should do.

So...... I still don't know what the answer is. I don't know if global warming is a bad thing and/or it is actually occurring and/or man made. But I think it is important enough a topic to continue researching and studying and trying to come to some rational conclusion so I am willing to listen... even to Al Gore, whose period of study is somewhat more current then your own.

Damn it. Now look what you did! The fucking joint went out.


-KC

 

[Pure]

i find it quite amusing that the self said devotees of reason-- amoco, rox, etc.--- continually make the following arguments:

i reject the proposal of global warming because it's coming from liberals.

i reject the claim of global warming since it's made by 'statists.'

well, duh.... back to Logic 101, you guys.