Climate Change: The Way Forward

[elganned]

Forget it, rb. You should know by now that Sstashmoo's personal experience is the only valid personal experience, and that his anecdotal material trumps facts and statistics every time.

[ccbatson]

Amazing...confronted with reality on all sides, liberals continue to recite the programmed and false pablum from the very people taking advantage of them.

[rb336]

Amazing...confronted with reality on all sides, liberals continue to recite the programmed and false pablum from the very people taking advantage of them.

this from someone who thinks his ideological beliefs trump scientific data [[ESPECIALLY in this case)

[ccbatson]

Philosophic ideology is a realm separate and different from science...just as valid, but in a different way.

Not surprising that someone incapable of comprehending this can't see the distinction.

[Sstashmoo]

Quote: "I was around back then, and yes, they were. Almost 30 years ago, promoting an upcoming album, Joe Strummer said that London Calling was inspired by an interview where he heard a guy talk about global warming"

We-he-hell, if Joe Strummer said it, then by-golly I better scrap my whole argument and re-plan my future. Anecdotal? I have one question here, Who the F is Joe Strummer? Is he like Abby Hoffman? He was going to levitate the Pentagon if I remember correctly. Lots of crazies back then and many associated themselves with the scientific community. Hell, the EPA is/was basically made up of descendants of the hippy movement. The folks that were predicting the end of the world back then with their love-ins and waving their "save the planet" signs.

Information is so easily manipulated, I wouldn't put much stock in anything so controversial when the present day opinion flies in the face of what so many of us remember emphatically.

[ccbatson]

The first gullible believer of the hoax is no better or more correct than any other.

[ziggyselbin]

And this would be different from the millions, potentially billions, who will starve due to famine, drought, and displacement from a permanently changed climate?

I expect nothing will be done. The current wrangling in Copenhagen is merely symptomatic of the larger opposition to facing reality which is expressed here by our out resident deniers.

As George Carlin once put it, when commenting on a number of "Save the Planet" t-shirts in his audience, "Save the planet? What bullshit. What unmitigated hubris. The planet will get by just fine; it's people who are fucked!"

The choice is simple, and stark: We face the facts and do something, or refuse to believe and in a few generations the human population of the earth will be decimated. Maybe that's not a bad thing, in the overall scheme; dynamic systems have a way of correcting themselves, and humans have been gumming up the mechanism for a few million years now.

Atlas may finally be about to shrug--not economically, but environmentally.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...696721506.html


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...307712862.html

[d.mcc]

I am surprised no one here has commented on Inhofe's big trip to Copenhagen

[ccbatson]

Elganned, you misinterpret George Carlin...he meant that people were F-d up as in wrong, not doomed to some environmental disaster. How do we know this? Read his book.

[rb336]

Philosophic ideology is a realm separate and different from science...just as valid, but in a different way.

Not surprising that someone incapable of comprehending this can't see the distinction.

It ceases to be valid if facts that run counter to it are thrown out, disbelieved, etc, without any foundation for so doing, or when people decide that non-scientific comments about the science are more reliable than the actual science, and attempt to imbue the science as corrupt in order to discredit it, but, yet again, have to manufacture bullshit to do so.

[Sstashmoo]

Rb, I'm not a scientist, but if I was, and the data was contradicting my hunch like the data is doing to the global warming THEORY, I would have to reconsider. Only a fool keeps arguing a point when the data clearly shows an opposite trend. Try trading stock like that and see how it works out for you.

[[I went hunting a few days ago, sure could have used some global warming, bitter cold. Unusually bitter cold, for even near Mackinaw this time of year. So cold, the deer weren't even moving.)

[rb336]

Rb, I'm not a scientist, but if I was, and the data was contradicting my hunch like the data is doing to the global warming THEORY, I would have to reconsider. Only a fool keeps arguing a point when the data clearly shows an opposite trend. Try trading stock like that and see how it works out for you.

[[I went hunting a few days ago, sure could have used some global warming, bitter cold. Unusually bitter cold, for even near Mackinaw this time of year. So cold, the deer weren't even moving.)

data clearly shows nothing of the sort. I keep asking for actual scientific literature, but so far no one has ever posted any peer-review articles to back that up, while I have posted links to dozens

[elganned]

Elganned, you misinterpret George Carlin...he meant that people were F-d up as in wrong, not doomed to some environmental disaster. How do we know this? Read his book.

Nice try at spinning it, but no cigar.
I was there when he said it. I know what I heard, and I know how he meant it.

[ziggyselbin]

Religious zealots and fundamentalists are what you are dealing with satchmoo rarely do they open their minds.

[ziggyselbin]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...426037244.html

[elganned]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...307712862.html

All of your links are op-ed pieces, and as such offer some cogent arguments [[given their obvious ax-grinding), but none offers any real support for the anti-AGW position, i.e., have any authoritative comment on the actual science.

But the link above struck a particular chord. It not so much speaks to the science as it details the breakdown currently happening in Copenhagen which revolves mostly around...[[wait for it...)...money. [[Surprise!)

It does make a valid point, which is this: If this is the greatest catastrophe yet to face the modern world, why are the developed countries so reluctant to commit resources to combatting it in places which clearly cannot afford to do so on their own?

It reminds me of the constant and chronic battles over education here in Michigan specifically and in the US in general: Everyone agrees it's good and necessary, nay vital, but nobody really wants to pay for it. Despite all the rhetoric which has been spewed through the decades of my life, teachers are still underpaid and schools--judging by their test scores--are still woefully inadaquate.

So, the final verdict is: Death Panels. It's the only affordable option.

[elganned]

Only a fool keeps arguing a point when the data clearly shows an opposite trend.

Now turn that spotlight on the continuous nay-saying by a minority of scientists and large number of pseudo-scientists who have been denying AGW since the 70's in the face of the mounting number of studies which support the premise.

Hoist with your own petard, I would say.

[Sstashmoo]

Elganned, Answer this simple question. Are the winters getting colder and longer in the last 4-5 years?

Sounds like Obama ain't fairing so well trying to ram the lie down the throats of the Europeans. He switched gears and started taking about nuclear arms. The rest of the world knows what our present day government is.

[Sstashmoo]

Look at this chart:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...ure_Record.svg

It is misleading. It is magnification of a variance, isolated for clarity and substance to support an obvious agenda. They are depicting less than 1 degree centigrade change over 120 years. It is in decimal degrees. Any scientist that hangs his hat on such little criteria is no scientist. If that chart were to depict full range of temperatures, it would show absolutely nothing, but a straight line across the field.

Less than 1 degree centigrade, conclusive? Meaningless.

[rb336]

hardly. look at the impact -- the northward drift of growing "zones," increased open sea in the arctic, etc, etc.

hmph. 1 degree centigrade. big deal. very plebian sort of comment. the 1 degree is a damn big butterfly

[elganned]

Elganned, Answer this simple question. Are the winters getting colder and longer in the last 4-5 years?

Depends on where you measure it.

Just like the length of a minute depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on.

[Jimaz]

the northward drift of growing "zones,"...

That jogged my memory about an Audubon Society study so I Googled up this: California Ponders Bird Migration Changes.

Now scientists with the Audubon Society have taken four decades of bird-sighting records and found that some species like the house finch and the Steller's Jay have moved their winter homes hundreds of miles north.

In those same 40 years, the average January temperature in the United States has risen by almost five degrees.

As the temperatures have gone up the birds have gone north. Since the 1960s some species have changed their winter destination more than 400 miles.

Of 305 species studied more than half had moved north an average of 35 miles....

Now all this proves of course is that birds are merely socialists with wings.

[elganned]

"In those same 40 years, the average January temperature in the United States has risen by almost five degrees." Sstashmoo will likely refute this because he remembers last January being colder than usual around where he lives...

[rb336]

Elganned, Answer this simple question. Are the winters getting colder and longer in the last 4-5 years?

according to NOAA [[c&p direct from their sites):

December 2008 – February 2009
average temperature was 33.49 degrees F, which is 0.53 degree F above normal

December 2007 – February 2008
In the contiguous United States, the average winter temperature was 33.2°F [[0.6°C), which was 0.2°F [[0.1°C) above the 20th century average - yet still ranks as the coolest since 2001. It was the 54th coolest winter since national records began in 1895.

December 2006 – February 2007
The winter temperature for the contiguous United States [[based on preliminary data) was 33.6 degrees F [[0.9 degrees C). The 20th century average is 33.0 degrees F [[0.6 degrees C).

December 2005 – February 2006
Globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was 8th warmest on record for boreal winter [[December 2005 - February 2006), 7th warmest for February.

December 2004 – February 2005
The United States experienced its tenth warmest winter on record, according to scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Nationwide, temperatures from December 2004 - February 2005 were much above normal, as drier-than-average conditions persisted in the Northwest and heavy precipitation affected the Southwest. The global average temperature was fourth warmest on record for December-February. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

QED

the last two may feel cooler, but ONLY in comparison with the recent warmer ones. they are still ABOVE THE MEAN

[Sstashmoo]

Reiterate: "Less than 1 degree centigrade, conclusive? Meaningless."

For every place it has been warmer, I can find places where it has been colder. Do you folks not understand mean values?