Today we had an announcement from the White House that the President has ordered the creation of a new agency to study climate change. I read the headline and immediately rolled my eyes and thought, “here we go again.” Then I stopped myself, reminded myself that I must view the article before I form an opinion. So I did read the article. And then I went, “here we go again.” In light of the events of the past few months in the world of climate change I find myself wondering what is real and what is not. Man-made global warming was a passion of mine for quite a while, as I saw the consequences of government intervention as bad and wanted to understand if it was as dire as the talking heads tried to convince us it was. Regular readers here are already well aware of my opinion on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW= the “man-made” myth). But I remain, as always, open to the discussion and thus open to changing my opinion if anyone can give me the facts to force me to do so. After all, to not change my mind in the face of real facts would be illogical. However, I am not interested in simply hearing how I am stupid while the premise of the article is completely ignored…..
The article was on Fox News. I provided a link below so that the rest of you folks can read it. However, I am copying the main points in my discussion here so you might not feel it is worth your time to do so. Let’s start with what the folks at the press event were saying about the creation of the new entity:
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.
“Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat,” Locke said Monday at a news conference.
Lubchenco added, “Climate change is real, it’s happening now.” She said climate information is vital to the wind power industry, coastal community planning, fishermen and fishery managers, farmers and public health officials.
I know this might be a bit petty, but I have to first ask what exactly this “climate service” is supposed to accomplish. And why exactly is the Commerce Secretary part of the deal. What does the commerce department have to do with climate change? So they will work with NOAA. I become skeptical when someone tells me that they are using taxpayer dollars to set up a new “agency” but fail to give me any clue as to why the agency is needed or what they will accomplish. Lubchenco tells us that climate information is vital to several industries. So is the “agency” supposed to do nothing other than provide information, similar to the National Weather Service? Or is this agency supposed to be the first step in the US towards a group that sets policy based on climate “guesses”?
And of course climate change is real and happening now. No one disputes that. But is what she is referring to that man-made climate change is real? Because if that is what she means, and the rest of the article kind of points in that direction, I would have to say you are going to have to do a lot better than that. Man-made climate change is a myth. There is simply too much contradictory evidence to assert otherwise.
The bigger question is around Locke’s statement that climate change is a threat, whether we like it or not. Because I need quite a bit of convincing that this is true at all. Suppose the earth is heating up. Is that a threat? I am not sure it is. Suppose it is cooling and heading towards a new ice age. Is that a threat? Or are the changes in climate a natural occurrence that humans will adapt to the same way we adapted to the last mini-ice age? Is the rising of the oceans (if they were to even rise as the fearmongers tell us they will) really a threat or merely another instance where mankind should understand we cannot stop mother nature and adapt or die?
NOAA recently reported that the decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest on record worldwide; the previous warmest decade was the 1990s. Many atmospheric scientists believe that global warming is largely due to human actions, adding gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.
Researchers and leaders from around the world met last month in Denmark to discuss ways to reduce climate-warming emissions, and a follow-up session is planned for later this year in Mexico. But a U.N. report that preceded the conference in Copenhagen has been widely disputed after much of the data in it was found to have been gathered unscientifically.
The data wasn’t found “unscientifically”. It was falsified, knowingly, by a group of people who wanted to push forth an agenda. I am interested in some facts around the claims about 2000-2009 being the hottest decade in history. Is that even close to true? Even if we go with just recorded history, I have seen folks like PeterB state that we have been in a cooling period for the last several years. So which is true? The 90’s were the hottest recorded decade or the last ten years were the hottest decade. I can find sites claiming both. Does anyone have some hard evidence one way or the other?
“More and more people are asking for more and more information about climate and how it’s going to affect them,” Lubchenco explained. So officials decided to combine climate operations into a single unit.
I think it is more accurate to say that more and more people are beginning to see through the falsehoods put forth by folks like her and they are done listening. If you want to be chicken little, knock yourself out. But stay out of my pocket.
Lubchenco also announced a new NOAA climate portal on the Internet to collect a vast array of climatic data from NOAA and other sources. It will be “one-stop shopping into a world of climate information,” she said.
I am not AT ALL interested in a “one stop shopping” approach to something as critical to legislative finnagling as global climate change. I would prefer that there as many diverse entities collecting data as possible, and as many entities deciphering that data as possible. The thing that I fear the most is that this new “agency” will become the thing that everyone points to as the undisputed “experts” on climate change. Because this agency exists, and will have access to fairly unlimited funding from the treasury coffers, they will be able to drown out any dissention to their conclusions, regardless of merit. Anytime “government agencies” get involved with science, it seems that before long, no one is interested in hearing data from someone else. People think that it being run by the government means it is legitimate.
So there is my quick critique of the article, but let’s discuss this. Is this something that the government should be doing? Let’s be honest about this situation. We relied on the private sector to provide us with accurate and honest information. What we got was the CRU at East Anglia and Penn State manipulating data and applying tricks and basically feeding the world a load of agenda driven BS. I guess we are surprised because we expected the private sector to provide honest analysis. It was a major university after all. On the reverse, we almost expect the government to lie to us these days in order to justify whatever action they want to take. But the bottom line is that we have allowed the private sector to handle it to this point, and what we have gotten is less answers and more confusion about what is real and what is not. Am I wrong on this? If I am not, should we allow the government, who many of us don’t trust in the first place, take the lead?
And what is the scope of this new agency being created? We have seen the ways that agencies are used to circumvent the Constitution. For example, Congress wasn’t able to fool enough people to get Cap and Trade through so instead the EPA steps in and says they have the right to regulate CO2 without worrying about that nasty business of passing it through one of the three branches of government. Over and over we see agencies simply doing whatever they like, creating regulations, imposing penalties, writing “rules” (not laws, but just as effective). Will this new agency end up with the power to accomplish all those things that the Congress cannot?
More important, is that the intent from the beginning? We have seen that the progressive movement is generally content in taking baby steps towards their ultimate goals. I have read the articles from their champions discussing how passing any health care is just a first step. They can then go in and change what they need to later to move it further towards where they want to go. Income tax started as 1% on the top 1%, and once that was in the books they were able to incrementally increase and expand it to the monstrosity that we see today. What started out as a “moral protection of America’s precious natural areas” has morphed into a vast ability to control just about whatever they like in terms of waterways and access roads and everything else.
These are just a few of the examples of how a small thing is passed with the intent to later expand it, change it, morph it into what they originally wanted it to be but knew the public wouldn’t stand for all at once. Has the collapse of the AGW conspiracy forced them to move away from the fast and hard approach they were attempting and move back to the slow and steady approach they have used so effectively in public education, environmental issues, or income taxes? That is what I fear. I am sure that some will tell me that it is an irrational fear. But I submit that given the history of the federal government, it is irrational to think that is NOT the reality. Just in the last 6 months or so we have seen the creation of a consumer protection agency and a new agency to oversee terrorist operations and a new labor management council and a Federal Energy research agency and has proposed several others. These include things such as a Social Entrepreneurship Agency and a new Cyber Security Agency. I have no idea how many agencies Bush created, but I don’t recall there being nearly this many, and certainly not within a six month period.
So let’s discuss the premise of a new Climate Change Agency. What is acceptable and what is not in terms of what this agency should or shouldn’t be able to do? I don’t see a valid purpose. Is there one that I am completely missing? Is it time to put some government teeth behind this because the private sector has led us astray (you already know my feelings on that one, but go ahead and change my mind)? Or are the feelings of private futility simply overblown because of the massiveness of the East Anglia mess? So please let’s discuss this, but let’s not waste our time bloviating about our distaste for the message while ignoring the discussion points.
Black Flag®
commonman55
d13thecolonel
gman
Just A Citizen
Life of Illusion
Jon Smith
USWeapon
Stand Up For America 
Morning 🙂
In short, I think it’s a waist of money and time, and could negatively impact businesses such as the fishing business by making incorrect climate predictions. Our local weather people can’t even get a snow fall prediction correct 6 hours in advance. But yet we still have whackballs that think they can predict the climate in the next century. I just shake my head and wonder. 🙄
Peace and Live Free!
G!
late, will pick up any stray comments
Simply another expansion of government…just what we need…
If the agency is created to deal with climate change, they have a stake in global warming. A friend of mine asked me if I really believe there is a huge conspiracy to create global warming. To be honest, there doesn’t have to be. If a scientist believes something is true, he will search his data to find it. If it is not there, he will reason out how to make it show up. I don’t think it is a conspiracy, just scientists doing what they think is accurate. From what I’ve seen, it is not accurate, but I haven’t really seen the data. All we get is the graphs after all is said and done. Hard to form an opinion one way or the other.
Why would the government agency do any different? Especially if their livelihood depends on it?
JB,
While I somewhat agree, I do believe it isn’t completely fair to say all scientists operate in this way. Good scientists do not attempt to get the data to match their assumptions. Good scientists gather the data and then allow that data to tell them the answers. There are a lot of good sicentists out there. The problem around global warming has been that a relative few have had access to the raw data. We were only provided the conclusions. Moral of the story: don’t trust a scientist that isn’t willing to share the raw data.
USW
I agree wholeheartedly! I am an aspiring high energy physicist, so I do not attempt to say all scientists doctor their data (I certainly don’t). I can, however, say that most scientists try to find what they expect.
A good example is the elusive Higgs boson. This particle was expected to be found many years ago and certain energies. When it wasn’t found, physicists scrambled. No, no, it should be at this higher energy, we were wrong before, we didn’t take something into account. Thus it continued for several decades. Now we think it will be found at the LHC. If it is not found, we will hypothesize yet another energy and so on it goes.
While no one has doctored the data to make the Higgs appear, you can see my point.
Also note, I never said they doctored the data. I said I didn’t think their manipulations of data were accurate, but I haven’t seen the data so I can’t say for sure.
USW,
You have that ALMOST right. The way scientists are supposed to work is actually as follows:
1:) Scientist observes something that he thinks he can explain with a particular theory, so an hypothesis is formed.
2:) Scientist creates an experiment from which data can be collected, and these data will hopefully support the hypothesis.
3:) Scientist runs the experiment and collects the data.
4:) Scientist analyzes the data and determines whether the hypothesis is supported or not.
5:) If hypothesis is supported, scientist shares his data and the design of the experiment with other scientists, in the hope that they can duplicate both the experiment and results, thus lending further support to the hypothesis. If other scientits can do this, then the hypothesis is kept as a candidate to explain the observed phenomena. If other scientits can NOT do this, then the hypothesis is rejected and the scientist goes back to the drawing board and restarts the process.
6:) If the scientist does not get data from the original experiment which supports the hypothesis, the scientist immediately goes back to the drawing board and either comes up with a new hypothesis or redesigns the experiment.
“Climate scientists” did not properly do quite a few of these steps, and the ones that they did do were usually not in the right order. That is why their “science” is completely invalid. They did not properly follow the “scientific method” in almost all cases that have been closely examined so far!
I don’t know very much about government grants for scientific study so would I be mistaken in assuming that the government paid for most of the studies on climate warming in the first place-I seem to remember reading that the government kept increasing the amount given-could this not be a huge part of the reason that this issue became an agenda demanding a specific outcome. I know I am talking a lot of assumptions here, so please, anyone who knows, educate me but if my assumptions are correct has the public really handled the climate change studies or has the government money handled the climate change studies?
The short answer to your question is that government and industry have committed over 23 BILLION dollars towards global warming research in the past 20 years or so, whereas “evil oil, coal, and energy companies” have contributed about 77 MILLION to anti-AGW research over the same period.
If you were a “climate scientist”, which side would you do your science for if you wanted maximum grant money for your “institution of higher education”???
The people that say that skeptics are far better funded than pro-AGW “researchers” are simply making stuff up out of thin air… but then again, that is what they are good at!
Climate Change is real and happening now. Yesterday it was in the mid-20’s, today it will be in the mid 30’s. Last month it was in the mid teens. In July it will vary between mid 70’s, mid 80’s and mid 90’s. I seem to remember that my father, born in 1917 told me he had climate change like this also. For some strange reason, it gets colder in December, January and February. Some, I think, would have us believe that this never happened before.
Let’s all get real here! the hubris of thinking that man can affect the climate in more than a miniscule way (if that) is absurd if you think about it. On the other hand if you are looking for a new religion or its equivilent, well then I guess you can catch that train.
When I was a “little” boy, maybe age 8 or 9 I read my first big book. It was a history of the Roeblings and the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. To this day I have not forgotten how traffic across the East River had to stop when the ice started to form and the ferries couldn’t run. Traffic resumed when the river FROZE over. Little ice age anybody?
After Katrina, we were informed that this would be a new seasonal event, watching the Gulf coast reduced to rubble yearly thanks to climate change. Still waiting. Last week I was told I would have six to 12 inches of snow and had none. These guys cannot accurately predict the weather in 48 hours. Are you going to bankrupt yourself (and me) because of their predictions for 50 years down the road?
We should stop polluting because frankly, we should stop polluting!. As an old guy I can tell you all that the air in NYC is one whole lot cleaner than it was in the 1950’s. I used to be responsible for keeping the beige ’51 Plymouth cleaned for the old man. No sooner did I finish the Simonizing of the trunk than you could start wiping away the major soot accumulations on the hood. It is nowhere near that bad today.
If you follow the global warming crowd to the logical extreme it has to result eventually in severe population control. Read between the lines. They have zero tolerence for pollution. Zero tolerence has to, no must, result not only in the stabilization of the population but in the reduction of the population to some “standard” yet to be defined which will not harm the planet or annoy the earth gods. Think maybe 80% reduction to be determined by some UN yahoos.
G-man, the wife actually calls them wackadoodles, I have sort of become accustomed to the name.
While I agree that we should not pollute, one must remember that CO2 is not a pollutant, it is plant food. Plants convert CO2 into sugars, cellulose, etc. As a waste product, the plants emit oxygen, which we then inhale since it is necessary for OUR existence, and then we exhale CO2 as a waste product.
Calling CO2 a pollutant is equivalent to calling O2 a pollutant.
I must agree Peter. To take it a step further, an increase in population necessitates an increase in the food supply. A little more Greenhouse Effect would definitely help produce more crops to feed all those people.
We need more crops, especially if we’re going to use corn to produce methanol. Another misguided policy that I believe is the beginning of a single world government and international welfare.
And watch out for that Dihydrogen Monoxide. It makes cars rust and causes beach erosion.
Agreed, I’m not referring to CO 2. That is BS. I’m more interested in getting particulate emissions down as low as possible at a reasonable price.
These turkeys have never heard of a cost/benefit ratio. To them no price is too high and no amount of pollution, no matter how negligible is acceptable.
Cyndi, God bless you, you have figured out the end game. It is self-hating people who not only do not reproduce but want the rest of us to vanish.
Thanks, SK. Its rare that I get a God Bless you for my insight. Usually it along the lines of a loathesome ‘God damn you’, or a pity filled ‘God help you because you’re insane’. Very few people bother to think through to the logical end of AGW.
SK,
Our Green Betters have already determined that earth’s human capacity is 500 Million individuals. They are already working on ways to dispose of the other 6+ BILLION humans. It has already been suggested that a cull of Americans and Australians would be better than a cull of Bangladeshis. Now, don’t you feel better knowing that the AGW folks have the full faith and backing of the US Government? Couple that with this video of Larry Grathwohl talking about the SDS (friends of Obama) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWMIwziGrAQ, (Many of whom, like Marilyn Katz & Andy Stern, are wandering the halls of the White House today.) Read the whole article from LAST August. http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/what_is_going_on_here.htm
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/the_real_climate_agenda.html
I remember when our dear science advisor, John Holdren, during the seventies was predicting an ice age due to CO2. One of his musings was “what are we going to do with all the people in the equatorial areas”. I assume that he meant instead us folks up here in the northern latitudes dying due to starvation and inhospitable living conditions, we’d just have to move towards the southern regions of this world and eliminate those that already live there. Does anyone who was stationed in the Chesapeake Bay area in 1977 remember the extreme cold and having the Bay and the James freeze. Basically stopping the flow of heating oil into Virginia and the western parts of the state. All non essential government operations were shut down. They actually moved personnel and families from base housing and were moving them into the homes of us that lived off base.
I was a 9th grader in ’77. I don’t remember anything but predictions of a new ice age. I asked my mom if it was really true and she said it was a bunch of BS. End of issue for me until Big Green came into existance. Its still BS but the power these people have and their plans for us are scary. Almost every person I’ve asked thinks global population control is a very good thing to do. I’m guessing they don’t know that only 500 million humans will be allowed to live. They probably haven’t thought about how the population will be reduced. Most folks assume it will be through birth control. Who is gonna tell the muslim man with four wives he can’t have any children, or one between the five of them? What happens when the birth rate doesn’t fall ‘fast enough’? Have they thought what will happen to the ‘old’, disabled and chronically ill? Have they considered the term ‘useless eaters’?
The UAH global satellite temperature had a record anomoly of +0.72 C. However, one must remember that the UAH satellite temperature is the temperature of the lower troposhphere, not the surface.
Further analysis of the data shows that the northern hemisphere populated land masses were generally cold, with the exception of parts of Canada and parts of the Arctic. However, the air out over most of the oceans was quite warm.
This is pretty typical for a winter with a fairly decent El Nino event. They do not really know exactly how this compares with the winters of the 1960’s and 1970’s, because there was no UAH satellite data until at least 1979.
What I would find hillariously funny (if it were not so scary) is that there are 2 dates used as the “baseline” to show extreme warming. The first of these dates is 1850. Ok, what is the problem with using 1850? 1850 is widely recognized to be the end of the LIA (Little Ice Age) so it would obviously be COLDER THAN NORMAL. Using it as a baseline to show warming is SILLY. OF COURSE it is going to warm up after a Little Ice Age!!! If it hadn’t warmed up since then, we would all be VERY unhappy campers!
The second “baseline” date used is 1979, when satellite data started to be available. What is the problem with this? Well, if you all remember, the 1970s were the decade of “The Ice Age is Coming, The Ice Age is Coming!”. The 1970s had atypically cold winters. Using 1979 as a baseline to show warming is again silly. The abnormally cold weather lasted until about 1982. If we were still having winters like the mid-1960’s to 1982 period, we would again be really unhappy campers! Oh wait.. for most of us, this year is eerily reminiscent of the winter of 1978…. most of us are not very thrilled at the moment….
USW…..I know you have seen it and I have seen it many times. About six years ago, sitting on a rocky shore in Greece ( Actually the Isle of Rhodes off the Turkey Coast)….having not a good nights sleep and very tired but had the day off(no missions)… I decided to spend it lying in the sun on the coast and watch the breakers come in….(15 Km South of Gennadi)…. Now, Rhodes is becoming a vast tourist attraction in the Islands but what struck me as very generic…was sitting there with my cooler of drinks…enough food for the day…a great book and umbrella…all the conveniences… and I spied a fisherman that was getting his boat ready to fish. He looked to be about 60ish at that time but given the tough life of a fisherman in the Greek Islands, he was probably 40 and weathered. I did not see him arrive and I did not hear a car or vehicle of any type. Ok, ok….shorten the story and tie it to Global Warming….
The time was 0530 ish…very early….but the sunrises are beautiful there and I could not sleep…anyway..I watched with some interest at his routine. Untying his sails, he brought his oars with him, and putting his food for the day in the boat. Why the set up? This fisherman got everything ready and walked to the waters edge, takes off his shirt and wades out to about waist deep (braver than I because the sharks on that side of the Island are prolific and dangerous). He was watching the horizon and would watch the streamer on the sail of his one man boat. (Reminded me of the Old Man and the Sea). He had an old glass bottle with him and fills it half full and looks at it through the light..empties it. He repeats this about 10 or 12 times over the next hour. I was wondering why. Finally he gets in his boat and heads out to sea….raises his sail and off he goes. Later in the day, I was joined by several team members and we had a crab boil (bought from the locals) and we were drinking a beer called Amstel. Some were drinking a Greek Coffee that would take the rust off a boat, and we were drinking Ouzo and tsipouro. (Long story to the fact we were there all day and into the evening…beach fire and all.) About 8PM….I saw the the same fisherman come in (probably pissed because we had a fire going and he could not see his normal night landmarks). I watched with some fascination as his family was there (somehow, I did not see them coming nor waiting – some testimony to us famous night time fighters)…and they came and helped him unload the boat and clean the fish, salt them (no ice) and put them in a little moped like cart and off they went. The fisherman riding his bicycle and the rest of his family piled in that little moped with his salted fish to apparently sell in the market, I am assuming. He had reefed his sails, took his oars, and was gone.
Ok, I know this sounds like Ernest Hemmingway…but here is the tie. I inquired around a couple of days later and relayed what I saw. I asked a local market vendor that was selling fresh fish why the water in the bottle and why did this fisherman waste at least an hour before heading out. Three answers….the tide changed that aided his departure (I should have guessed that one), the distillate in the water (cooler water less distillate), and the density of the water (found out later that was tied to temperature and not distillate). I was told that the fishermen, such as the grizzled Old Man and the Sea prototype, test the water daily to determine where the fish will be. Not relying on radar or fish finders, etc. These guys have been testing the water like this for centuries (by hand and eye) and going out to get their catch and come home and do it all over again. So thinking that this man’s shirtless body waist deep in the water was some local phenomenon of testing water and air temperature, I asked about that…the answer…he was probably bathing. Ok..so nothing there but being told of the reality of life on Rhodes.
The point being, these families have been fishing for centuries in the same area for the same fish. So, I decided, since remembering this mindful picture, to check the sea temperatures around the Isle of Rhodes this morning. I went to the NOAA and pulled the numbers. Cyclical averages are between 57 and 61 degrees F. and have been since they have been recorded by the NOAA. I then went to the Navy charts this morning and found that they have been measuring water temps since 1939, in this area, and their averages are….60 F. I then checked online with the Greek travel agency this morning….61 F. I was told by the merchant that the water temperature changes very little there throughout the year, depending on the season cycles, and the local fishermen look at the density and can tell how far out to go and which direction. These are time tested customs and done without technology. The other point in this….it seems to me that the water temps would change with the climate change philosophy that would affect fishing in and around the local areas of the Greek Islands. Nothing has changed since they have been recording temperatures and the locals still go out in their boats…to the same fishing grounds…make their catch and come home…day after day…week after week…and year after year. The irony of it all is that all the Naval technology and the NOAA technology has indicated that the temps are the same….no changes. The fact that the fish have not moved and are still supporting local merchants indicates nothing major is happening to the economy because of the weather patterns, tides, or water temps. Nothing has changed…..including the man and his sail boat going out day after day.
So….I am sure that some will say this is a nice story and proves nothing. But…I say it does prove something. It proves to me nothing has changed. That is my feeling and belief. This climatology is crap and a scam. It cannot be proven except that the climate frigging changes… every year…every century…and will continue to do so no matter how much CO2 we put in the friggin’ air. The next thing we are going to hear is because of all the billions of people in China, the weight will shift the Earth’s Axis and we will all go spinning out into space. OMG…another conspiracy in the making.
D13 has filed his report from the Isle of Rhodes 15Km south of the fishing village Gennadi.
(side note: Brought into perspective of the normalcy of the fisherman, while 10 Km away, our Special OPs base was there with Radar, weapons, choppers, satellite commo, cell phones, and interception equipment..etc.etc…..and this simple fisherman going about his daily routine.)
Another side note: Some climatologist has now read this and probably has reported that the fisherman, being out in the boat all day, would have to relieve himself. I am sure over the side of his boat, since it did not have a “head” on it. Within two days, there will be a lawyer and a report filed how this fisherman is polluting the ocean with his waste, and will shut him down for the greater good. I am sure that someone will count the number of fishermen and then apply some exponential factor to it to come up with some magical number and the amount of expended CO2 and methane gas put into the atmosphere and the Med. Sigh!
Interesting story D13, and a relevant one. I do so love the Greek islands. One of my favorite places in the world.
USW
Sure! What do you want to see? Warming or Cooling?
I can provide both upon demand, using real numbers, real data and real statistics – because…. it all depends where you start your graph.
If you start it in the 70’s we have warming.
If you start it in the 90’s we have cooling.
If you start it in the 30’s we have cooling.
If you start it in the 1880’s we have warming.
If you start it 10,000 years ago we have warming.
If you start it 1 million years ago we have cooling.
It’s called Chartmanship – Providing the graph to suit your opinion.
However, we use the same starting point consistently, we remove a lot of ‘start/end’ bias.
So, we use the same starting point to describe the 1990’s as the ‘hottest’ – then the 2000-2009 are cooling – as they must be!
Think about it – if series “A” is the highest, and series “B” follows (and since A is the highest, B cannot be) … if B follows A, there must be a drop.
On my blog I posted two short videos from Lord Moncton who goes over this issue.
—–
Next point: NOAA
The big scandal is the drop of weather stations. In the 1970’s there was 6,000 stations that made up the NOAA stats – then it was dropped to 3,000.
The problem – they dropped mostly the cold reading stations and kept the warm reading stations.
So in the Arctic, where there was 15 stations in 1970 that made up NOAA’s stats – there is 1. And it isn’t even above the Arctic circle.
But here is the problem. They averaged all the 6,000 to make a number “X”. Then the averaged all the 3,000 to make number “Y”. Then they said the trend from X to Y is valid.
What that does is now the one station in the North carries a 15 time multiplier.
If I take, say ten stations and create an average:
1
4
2
7
5
3
1
9
6
2
….4.1
I drop all but #9 = “6”. I create an average…well, it’s 6!
If I compare the two — 6 to 4.1 —- the six carries the same weight, singly, as the 10 making up 4.1. To get and average of 6 from 1 station to equal an average from 10:
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
…. = 6
Now I can claim the Arctic is statistically warming!
The PROPER statistical measure would be to extract all the stations no longer used from THE ENTIRE DATA SET – including historical.
Then it is a true station-to-station comparison.
Bloggers on the Internet have done this, and with no surprise to anyone here, the trend is actually slightly downward – there is, and never has been, any upward trend in temperature.
Dr. Hanson of NASA, whose data set is used everywhere, it the chief designer of this flawed methodology. He is panicking in trying to debunk the bloggers – with rhetoric instead of data.
But all of this makes no difference to the politics. AGW has always been merely an excuse for more government control – the science doesn’t and never did matter.
Black Flag…..how many times do I have to tell you to quit being logical and factual? You will upset the balance of blogging and the climatologists? How do you expect them to continue their deceitful ways and making scam money? You may soon be contributing to unemployment by debunking this crud….and then where will we be?
Oh yeah back on Rhodes without technology, eating crab, drinking local wines, and watching fishermen test the water and catch their fish.
Colonel, is there a view for enlisted men there?
Yes, of course…in the forces, the enlisted are no different. A a nice view it was also. The only thing that would have been different is that the Greek women on that island….in that village…looked like the men. Hard life. No bikinis….but they could fish and lift a boat.
Actually sir, I was setting you up a bit, old grunt humor from WWII. From perhaps my favorite cartoonist. Enjoy.
I know….I was playing along…everyone, including colonels, know that the NCO’s are the backbone. Never leave you guys out.
BF/Peter
I would like an answer to the specific question regarding 2000 to 2009.
Many scientists have claimed this period has cooled.
The govt claims it was the hottest decade on record.
Please show us here how we get two separate and divergent answers.
Thanks
JAC
JAC,
The answer to this is actually quite simple. According to most data, 1998 was the hottest year since 1934. The period of 1999-2006 was essentially stable near the 1998 peak temperature. 2007-2009 has cooled a bit since 2006. Therefore, overall, 2000-2009 was the hottest decade on record, but then trend for the entire decade was essentially stable from 2000-2006 with cooling from 2007-2009. In other words, it was comparatively hot to any other decade since 1850 overall, but the trend was a stable plateau followed by some cooling.
How much of this is accurate data and how much is due to “the march of the thermometers” is somewhat debateable. Many higher altitude stations and rural stations have been dropped entirely from the databases over the past few years, leaving a higher percentage of stations in more urban, more southern, generally warmer locations. It is likely that if this data were adjusted for this freshly introduced bias, the temperatures throughout the 2000-2009 decade would be AT LEAST 1C lower on average, if not more.
JAC, it appears NASA has changed their data posts, which is not newsworthy.
Did Media Or NASA Withhold Climate History Data Changes From The Public?
By Noel Sheppard
A change in climate history data at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently occurred which dramatically alters the debate over global warming. Yet, this transpired with no official announcement from GISS head James Hansen, and went unreported until Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit discovered it Wednesday.
For some background, one of the key tenets of the global warming myth being advanced by Hansen and soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore is that nine of the ten warmest years in history have occurred since 1995.
McIntyre has been crunching the numbers used to determine such things as published by GISS, and has identified that the data have recently changed such that four of the top ten warmest years in American history occurred in the 1930s, with the warmest now in 1934 instead of the much-publicized 1998.
As McIntyre wrote Wednesday (emphasis added, h/t NBer dscott):
There has been some turmoil yesterday on the leaderboard of the U.S. (Temperature) Open and there is a new leader.
[…]
Four of the top 10 are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900.
Most importantly, according to the GISS, 1998 is no longer the warmest year in American history. That honor once again belongs to 1934.
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/08/09/did-media-or-nasa-withhold-climate-history-data-changes-public#ixzz0f3c6ihuG
LOI,
Just another example of how the data changes all the time. If data changes constantly, how can any of it be said to be reliable at all?
I took a survey yesterday and asked 100 people how many of them thought that the sky was green. Only one of them said yes, the sky is green.
Tomorrow I will tell you that I took a survey two days ago, and asked 100 people how many of them thought that the sky was green, and I will report to you that 15 of them said that the sky was green.
Even though it was the same survey, and my data changed completely, TRUST ME, I AM A SCIENTIST, I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT! 🙂
Peter, “TRUST ME, I AM A SCIENTIST, I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT!” Isn’t James Hansen a “scientist also?” LOL I know, cheap shot.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/
2009: Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest Decade
Jan. 21, 2010
2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880.
10-year average global temperature index
This map shows the 10-year average (2000-2009) temperature anomaly relative to the 1951-1980 mean. The largest temperature increases are in the Arctic and the Antarctic Peninsula.
Except for a leveling off between the 1940s and 1970s, Earth’s surface temperatures have increased since 1880. The last decade has brought the temperatures to the highest levels ever recorded. The graph shows global annual surface temperatures relative to 1951-1980 mean temperatures. As shown by the red line, long-term trends are more apparent when temperatures are averaged over a five year period.
graph comparing hemispheric temperatures
Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade, due to strong cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to near-record global temperatures. The past year was only a fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest year on record, and tied with a cluster of other years — 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007 1998 and 2007 — as the second warmest year since recordkeeping began.
“There’s always an interest in the annual temperature numbers and on a given year’s ranking, but usually that misses the point,” said James Hansen, the director of GISS.
Again, I feel the need to point out that “the warmest year on record” is completely meaningless due to when the records started. In one case, the “record” started in about 1850 (abnormally cold), and in the other case, the “record” started in 1979 (again, abnormally cold).
Of course, if you pick “DAMN IT’S COLD!” as your starting point, one would HOPE the trend from that point is warmer!!!! 🙂
Oh, and there was no offense taken at all, the point of my whole story above is that Hansen’s claim “TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I AM TALING ABOUT, I AM A SCIENTIST” is self-evidently false BECAUSE the data keeps changing.
My information shows it had to be in either 1,000 or 500 B.C. Having a little trouble getting an exact year.
BF,
I would be a bit more careful how you word things. Saying that there never has been an upward trend in temperature is not actually true. Everyone knows we have had ice ages and we have had warm periods, and certainly from an ice age to a warm period, the general trend in temperature is up, with a lot of variation (such as the medieval climate optimum during which it was warmer than now, and the little ice age, during which it was cooler than now).
Most geological data show that glacials tend to last on the order of 100,000 years or so, and interglacials (warm periods) last on the order of 10,000-12,000 years, with a few lasting as long as 20,000 years. So in reality, climate is a bizzare sine function, with the troughs of the function being of much longer duration than the apex, and the whole function is very saw-toothed and jagged looking.
We are certainly in an interglacial now, so it is indeed “warm”, but the exact amount of “warm” has been muddied terribly by all of the bad “science” going on.
Most people need to realize that if the global average temperature were only about 2C lower than it is now, we might well be seeing glaciation going on in the upper-midwest/great lakes region. I don’t think that would be highly desireable 🙂
Peter,
I was referring to the 1990-2009 range – but you are correct – I was unclear in defining my edges.
BF,
That clarifies it, yes. I believe that there is data that shows it did indeed warm from 1990 to 1998, but I am not sure exactly how reliable that data is, so if that data is in fact completely unreliable, there may have indeed been no warming during that period.
Well I am a treat the Earth well type of person. I dont know if global warming is happening or not. I dont know if anyone else does either. I believe in taking care of the Earth. For example:
If you tear down a tree, you plant one in exchange.
We dont need to throwing trash anywhere we please. etc
I am in the process of working on my degree right now, and one of my required classes was science, so I am taking Natural Science as we speak. I asked my instructor who has her degree’s in Paleontology what she thinks of the whole situation of global warming. She said she is very angry at the sciencist over this. They are violating the rules of science. She said these are the rules all sciencist are suppose to follow
1) You make your theory
2) You do research for that theory.
3) You keep all data that you collected during your research
4) You publish all the data that you found with your theory when complete
5) Whether your theory is proven right or wrong, you publish what you found with all of the science community.
She said you never get involved with politics period. YOu stand by your data and research. She said that these sciencist who are doing this to gain politically or gain more grants are giving real sciencist who are doing their job right a very large black eye. They are not real sciencist because they are breaking the protocall that all are suppose to follow.
I thought that was a interesting view from someone in that science community.
Ellen
Ellen…..there you Go…being logical. What is this world coming to?
But, as to the normal polluting…yes, do not throw trash on the ground, nor your plastic bottles out of the car….we clear cut on our ranch but we plant grass and alfalfa fields. we leave plenty of wooded areas for the environment and local genre of animal life, we game manage, and we provide steaks for you to eat. We rotate our pastures and do not over graze. We use organic fertilizers (cow poop) and we do not allow our septic to contaminate water tables nor stream beds. We use organic life (bugs) to eat solid waste and we recycle everything we use.
I would be willing to bet that most people who live in the country do this. The cities? Well, it can be done as well….it is just that no one wants to do it and it is costly. But is that not the price of living in the city?
You can send some ribeyes and porterhouses my way please 🙂
Only if you promise not to eat them rare and drown them in steak sauce.
Charcoal grill – not gas..garlic salt, onion salt..medium well..baked potato-butter & pepper only..salad and garlic bread..grilled at the lake! What more can you ask for?
Promise NOT to eat them rare!?? Heaven forbid! That’s the only way to eat a steak!
Now you got me hungry…and such a long way til lunch…
THe world must be coming to an end, I agree with Buck on something. If the steak is anything more than slightly warm in the middle, it is overcooked.
My point exactly!
Had to be something to agree on in this world. 🙂
Oh no…a rookie staek eater. Sigh…….medium is the best for the juices and the marble in the steak that brings out the flavor….unless, of course, you like the strong flavor of blood. ( I gave up the strong flavor of blood immediately after my baptism of my first deer kill ). However, since our steaks are range fed on alfalfa and limestone based coastal bermuda and topped off with grain prior to selling, it is tender and juicy if cooked correctly. However, it is a semi free country still and you can cook your steak however. But…there is no over kill….do not burn it and anything over medium is burned. AND….it is sacrereligious to put anything other than a fork on it. We will shoot you immediately if there is steak sauce anywhere close by. That is like eating ketchup on fries…god forbid. We raise Brangus.. a very tasty cross breed. And to those of you whom support PETA…..get over it.
Vegetarian= The village idiot that does not know how to hunt or fish.
I like them about medium-rare myself… good meat doesn’t need to be over-cooked. If it isn’t particularly good meat, maybe cooking the hell out of it would improve it, but a good steak certainly doesn’t need that sort of treatment 🙂
MOOOOOOOOOOO! Pink in the center no blood running 🙂
D13 Said:….we clear cut on our ranch but we plant grass and alfalfa fields. we leave plenty of wooded areas for the environment and local genre of animal life, we game manage, and we provide steaks for you to eat.
——-
Is the “Raptomese” part of the local genre of animal life?
No, D13 only breeds them there. When they are ready to be placed in a “habitat” he sends them to North Carolina. We allow them to eat Duke Fans.
USW
Ellen,
Most scientists that actually value the scientific method feel exactly the same way. Science needs to be falsifiable, which means other scientists MUST have access to all of the raw data, and all of the models/programs used to manipulate the raw data. In this way, other scientists can attempt to falsify the experiment. If the experiment is repeatable and reproducible, then it is LIKELY (though not certain) that the result has validity. If the experiment is not repeatable/reproducible, then it must be assumed that the hypothesis has NOT been verified, and the experiment must be redesigned to yield verifiable and reproducible results. That is how science is supposed to work. The “scientists” participating in the AGW scam have basically hidden their raw data (or conveniently lost it entirely), and have refused to share the models/programs used to manipulate the data, which means that other scientists have been largely unable to even attempt to replicate the experiments and the results, meaning all of the hypotheses must be assumed to be incorrect at this point, since they are not falsifiable. People who practice “good science” should righfully be outraged at this sort of conduct, which reflects badly on science as a whole.
Science is supposed to further our knowledge and understanding of the universe, and the general populace tends to trust science as producing data and results that can be relied upon. Climate “science” is not the only case where the process has failed due to human interference, but it is the most glaring example currently.
Another great example is coffee, eggs, and chocolate. Check out the varying “studies” about coffee, eggs, and chocolate over the past 30 years or so, and tell me how many times each of these has gone from being ok, to being “good for you”, to being “bad for you” and back to being “ok” or whatever. The truth is exactly what your grandmother knew 60 or 70 years ago… pretty much everything has at least some benefits in moderation, and it is probably unwise to overdo any particular thing.
Don’t forget tuna fish and apple juice!
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html
NOAA stands accused by the two researchers of strategically deleting cherry-picked, cooler-reporting weather observation stations from the temperature data it provides the world through its National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). D’Aleo explained to show host and Weather Channel founder John Coleman that while the Hadley Center in the U.K. has been the subject of recent scrutiny, “[w]e think NOAA is complicit, if not the real ground zero for the issue.”
And their primary accomplices are the scientists at GISS, who put the altered data through an even more biased regimen of alterations, including intentionally replacing the dropped NOAA readings with those of stations located in much warmer locales.
As you’ll soon see, the ultimate effects of these statistical transgressions on the reports which influence climate alarm and subsequently world energy policy are nothing short of staggering.
NOAA – Data In / Garbage Out
Although satellite temperature measurements have been available since 1978, most global temperature analyses still rely on data captured from land-based thermometers, scattered more or less about the planet. It is that data which NOAA receives and disseminates – although not before performing some sleight-of-hand on it.
Smith has done much of the heavy lifting involved in analyzing the NOAA/GISS data and software, and he chronicles his often frustrating experiences at his fascinating website. There, detail-seekers will find plenty to satisfy, divided into easily-navigated sections — some designed specifically for us “geeks,” but most readily approachable to readers of all technical strata.
Perhaps the key point discovered by Smith was that by 1990, NOAA had deleted from its datasets all but 1,500 of the 6,000 thermometers in service around the globe.
Now, 75% represents quite a drop in sampling population, particularly considering that these stations provide the readings used to compile both the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) datasets. These are the same datasets, incidentally, which serve as primary sources of temperature data not only for climate researchers and universities worldwide, but also for the many international agencies using the data to create analytical temperature anomaly maps and charts.
Yet as disturbing as the number of dropped stations was, it is the nature of NOAA’s “selection bias” that Smith found infinitely more troubling.
It seems that stations placed in historically cooler, rural areas of higher latitude and elevation were scrapped from the data series in favor of more urban locales at lower latitudes and elevations. Consequently, post-1990 readings have been biased to the warm side not only by selective geographic location, but also by the anthropogenic heating influence of a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI).
For example, Canada’s reporting stations dropped from 496 in 1989 to 44 in 1991, with the percentage of stations at lower elevations tripling while the numbers of those at higher elevations dropped to one. That’s right: As Smith wrote in his blog, they left “one thermometer for everything north of LAT 65.” And that one resides in a place called Eureka, which has been described as “The Garden Spot of the Arctic” due to its unusually moderate summers.
Smith also discovered that in California, only four stations remain – one in San Francisco and three in Southern L.A. near the beach – and he rightly observed that
It is certainly impossible to compare it with the past record that had thermometers in the snowy mountains. So we can have no idea if California is warming or cooling by looking at the USHCN data set or the GHCN data set.
I think he’s talking about you, USW.
On MSNBC’s Feb. 8 “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” Ratigan criticized those who would dare express misgivings about climate change based on the so-called “snowpocalypse.”
“Here’s the problem – these ‘snowpocalypses’ that have been going through D.C. and other extreme weather events are precisely what climate scientists have been predicting, fearing and anticipating because of global warming,” Ratigan said.
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In fact, Ratigan told viewers during the “Busted” segment of his program, that the heavy snowfall totals were evidence of global warming.
“Why is that? The thinking that warmer air temperatures on the earth, a higher air temperature, has a greater capacity to hold moisture at any temperature,” Ratigan said. “And then as winter comes in, that warm air cools full of water, and you get heavier precipitation on a more regular basis. In fact, you could argue these storms are not evidence of a lack of global warming, but are evidence of global warming – thus the 26 inches of snowfall in the DC area and the second giant storm this year.”
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeff-poor/2010/02/09/msnbcs-ratigan-blames-snowpocalypse-global-warming#ixzz0f3a4VwpP
However, there were plenty of articles here in the US and in the UK just a few years ago that said snow in the DC/Baltimore/Virginia area and snow in London were “a thing of the past” due to global warming.
Just another fine example of the “warmists” trying to have their cake and eat it too. Some warmists predicted snow in these areas was “a thing of the past”, and some warmists predicted that monster snowstorms in winter would result in global warming. Since ONE of these TWO has been right (at least for this winter), then the warming theory MUST be right!!!
Now, if next winter is warm and rainy in London and in the DC/Virginia/Baltimore area, the warmists will point to that and say, “see, we told you global warming would make snow a thing of the past in these regions in winter!!!”
That way they are right no matter what happens. Heads they win, Tails we lose!
Peter,
It still amazes me that people will listen to such drivel day after day, and treat them as a credible source of information. But then, at the rate the liberal media is loosing viewers, they may all be out of a job soon anyway.
I wonder if there will be a media bail-out?
Gotta love the AGW’ers.
Whether it is hot or cold, wet or dry, snowy or not, blowing or calm, cloudy or clear, day or night –
it’s caused by man.
Yes, they are entertaining to watch!
Md. polar bear plunge canceled due to extreme cold
The Associated Press
Sunday, January 31, 2010; 12:13 PM
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — It was too cold even for some polar bears on Saturday.
The second of two scheduled dips in the water at the 14th annual Polar Bear Plunge in Annapolis, Md. was canceled on doctors’ orders.
The air temperature was 23 degrees and the Chesapeake Bay was 36 degrees when crowds took a dip in the water around 1 p.m. Among the participants was Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco. He says the frigid water “took my breath away.”
Organizers estimated that as many as 15,000 people got in the water in the event, which raises money for the Maryland Special Olympics.
Several people had to be treated for hypothermia after the first plunge and doctors monitoring the event advised organizers to cancel the second plunge.
from American Thinker,
February 09, 2010
India walks away from IPCC and its report
William D. Zeranski
As of one the world’s big economic players, India has walked away from the IPCC, stating that the panel is unreliable, putting economist Dr R.K Pachauri, who chairs the UN”s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is in direct conflict with his own government in India.
…false claims have heightened tensions between Dr Pachauri and the government, which had earlier questioned his glacial melting claims. In Autumn, its environment minister Mr Jairam Ramesh said while glacial melting in the Himalayas was a real concern, there was evidence that some were actually advancing despite global warming.
Dr Pachauri had dismissed challenges like these as based on “voodoo science”, but last night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalized the IPC chairman even further.
He announced the Indian government will established a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s ‘third ice cap’, and an ‘Indian IPCC’ to use ‘climate science’ to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.
“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. I think people misused [the] IPCC report, [the] IPCC doesn’t do the original research which is one of the weaknesses… they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks.
Didn’t the Russians get quite upset by the way the IPCC cherry picked the data that they supplied to the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen. Throwing out the data that did not support the hypothesis of global warming.
Hello Everyone
I’m not sure yet if I believe in global warming, I mean if it really does exist, then how do you explain such a harsh winter back east, such as all the snow that G is getting?
Here we have some crazy weather that goes on. Some years, we can have a very mild winter, to a very wet, snowy, cold one. Sure, we have had some snow here, but not like we did a few years ago. As I look out the window now, we are having a few flakes fall, but nothing to significant.
It’s the same with summer. It can be a very mild summer, with temps not even getting out of the 90’s or it can get up into the 100’s. The hottest I’ve seen it get here in all the 20 years of living here, was a few years ago, when the temp reached to 110. So, I’m not sure what to believe.
If global warming really does exist, then who or what really caused it? Isn’t just the constant changes in the weather patterns? I really don’t understand how anyone can predict if whether or not, say next year is going to be colder or hotter. I am not into all that scientific stuff, so I don’t know.
So, what do we call these new climate people that O has coming in, climate czars?
Have a good day today.
Judy
Don’t wory Judy,
If BF and I cannot put the “science” in a way that you and everyone else can understand pretty easily, just let us know. We will do our best to make the science (and in many cases the lack thereof) understandable to everyone.
Judy,
This is why they are slowllleeeyyy switching the name to climate change.
Did you catch that movie a few years ago “The day After Tomorrow”? They explained it clearly, how global warming causes global cooling. It is a win-win situation for these guys. All eventualities are covered.
My Air Force son is going for his masters in Environmental Science. He is a pragmatist grounded in the Scientific Method. Six years in the AF did not hurt. In one week of classes he has learned already not to open his mouth on the topic. He is sticking to remediation of toxic sites.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I did see that movie. But, in all honesty, I don’t really understand the whole concept of global warming or cooling. I know what “they” say, but it just goes right over my head. When it comes to scientific things like this, I’m lost.
Judy,
All you really need to know about climate:
Earth has ice ages. These generally last around 100,000 years. Earth has warm inter-glacials. These generally last 10,000 to 12,000 years, with a few seeming to last close to 20,000 years.
Within each 100,000 year ice-age, there are a lot of variations in climate and temperature, but it is generally cold.
Within each warm inter-glacial, there are a lot of variations in climate and temperature, but it is generally warm and liveable.
During even moderately cold periods (such as the little ice age), you tend to get crop devastations, increases in the number of diseases and how far and easily they spread, and general misery.
During exceptionally warm periods (the medieval climate optimum for example) you generally get very robust crops providing abundant food, very temperate climate which encourages the development and expansion of civilizations, reduced disease, and a host of other factors that make people generally much more happy, healthy, successful, and prosperous.
People bitch when it is over 90 during the summer, but it USUALLY doesn’t kill them as long as they take precautions to stay out of too much heat/direct sun, and they stay hydrated.
People also bitch when it is well below freezing for weeks on end during the winter, but in addition to bitching, they have tended in the past to also starve, get sick, and die. Modern technology has alleviated this SOMEWHAT.
However, history repeatedly shows that prolonged cold is FAR more detrimental to populations of any living creatures as opposed to prolonged warmth. There is a reason that the very warm Medieval Climate Optimum was called an Optimum…. probably because the conditions for life were…. well… Optimum??? 🙂
Thanks Peter, you did help me out a little to understand better, but now my question is, the earth going to get warmer, or colder, say in the next 10,000 years or so? Or, is there really any way to be able to predict that?
See, this is the part I don’t understand. How do they really know what’s going to happen? Does it have to do with the way the weather is now, and is that going to predict the way it’s going to be then? Guess, I’m still somewhat confused on it.
Judy,
The unfortunate answer is that within about 48 hours, they can give you a REASONABLE IDEA of what the weather will probably be like in any particular area.
Beyond that, there are simply too many variables involved in the earth’s climactic system for much more than educated guesses. 0-3 months the educated guesses are usually somewhat close. 3-6 months the educated guesses are a coin toss (50-50 at best). 6-12 months it is a crapshoot (we don’t really know what the odds of them being right are at that point), and beyond 12 months it is a horoscope (totally wild guess).
This simply has to do with the fact that we don’t even know what all of the variables are that are involved in determining climate, and we don’t know how all of the known (and especially unknown) variables interact with each other.
This is why climate models are frankly so darned aweful. They assume certain variables to be constant (we know that NOTHING in climate is constant), and they assume certain interactions (currently water-vapor/CO2 feedback is ASSUMED to be positive, but several recent papers indicate that it may actually BE NEGATIVE), and some variables are simply not even included in the models (because we don’t even know what all of the variables are yet).
So, all we can really say is that sometime within the next 1 to 8000 years we are probably due for another major glacial period, but until that happens it is generally going to be habitably warm, although sometimes “habitably warm” might be pretty uncomfortable on the warm side, and sometimes “habitably warm” might be pretty uncomfortable on the cold side.
So, unfortuantely, the reality of the situation is, the farther in time we get from “right now”, the less accurate our ability to accurately predict a darn thing 🙂
Does that make more sense?
Yes, it does, and my ventured guess would be, they can’t predict that far into the future.RIGHT?
Exactly.
Our hope is that they begin to understand more and more of the variables which have input into the climate system, and they begin to have better and better understanding of how the variables interact with each other, which will make climate models more accurate for longer periods of time.
The model would only be perfect if all of the variables were well understood AND WE HAD EXACT VALUES FOR ALL OF THEM, and we knew exactly how ALL of the variables interact with each other.
We are probably never going to KNOW all of that, but at least we hope our understanding continually improves and the models get closer and closer to reality.
The travesty of the whole AGW situation, is that the “scientists” fudged the data, and manipulated the interactions within the models to get the answers that they wanted to get, which means if there is any correlation with “reality” it is PURELY ACCIDENTAL and NOT SCIENTIFIC AT ALL.
And just who knows, that in the future, they may come up with something that will predict exactly what they’re looking for.
Judy,
But we do know a lot over 100,000 years cycles.
The Earth, when Pangaea existed (a single large land mass near the equator) the Earth was a sauna – during the age of large reptiles – cold blooded creatures – dominated.
The big massive climatic change was land mass moving toward the poles.
If the Pacific was at the pole, there would be no ice. The heat storage of water is massive, and it releases it slowly. The slow tilt and sway of the earth would do nothing to create permanent ice caps.
Land mass is different, it heats fast, stores little and releases it quickly. Accumulation of snow creats a potential of a permanent cap.
Once snow gets established, its very high albedo (reflects light) prevents melting.
Once the land masses accumulated around each pole, the earth permanent changed from a sauna to an ice cube.
The Earth’s natural state is an ice age. Massive sheets of ice covering most of the Northern Hemisphere Land mass – because that is where ice and snow can accumulate.
However, there are sudden periods of interglacial time, where the ice disappears. Whereas ice ages are measured in 100,000 of years or longer, interglacial times are measured in 10,000 years.
But it appears regular over geological eras.
The space ships Voyager 1 and 2 have offered an answer to why.
Our solar system orbits around the center of the galaxy. Cosmic rays from the center of the galaxy’s super duper huge black hole bombard our earth, creating high cloud, which reflects solar energy, which cools the earth, creates ice age.
But in the depths of inter-stellar space, there is a remnant of a chain of multiple gas clouds and debris from what appears was a chain reaction of super nova near our solar system. It is from this debris you are made, along with the Earth, Sun and the rest of the planets.
It lies as a strip in interstellar space, and right now we are passing through it. The temperature of the gas cloud exceeds 6000 C – and what they have found, it blocks a large percentage of the cosmic rays from the center of the galaxy.
It takes about 10,000 to pass through these filaments of debris, then we enter raw empty space and are bathed in cosmic rays. Every 100,000 years or so, we cross back into a filament, and the ice age ends.
Mini-ice ages in the mean time seem to be dependent on the solar wind from the sun deflecting the remaining cosmic rays (or not). We are currently in the quietest sun on record since the mini-ice age of the 18th century. (We can tell these things because cosmic rays create radioisotopes on earth that get trapped in permanent ice. We can see the buildup and depletion of isotopes through the ages all dependent on cosmic rays increasing and decreasing.)
So, I can assure you, within the next few thousands years or so, we will leave the protection of interstellar gas cloud, and the ice age will come back. Recent studies have suggested that the onset of the ice age will be as quick as one winter season – that is, the summer will not melt the winter snow. And from then on, its a losing battle – that within 5 years an ice cap measured in thousands of feet thick will overcome North America. They completely repudiated the slow transition theory – in geological time, the onset is nearly instant.
So, what I’m getting is, is that every few thousand years, we go through a warming and cooling cycle. Right?
Judy, yes but worse.
Every few thousands years we get lucky and it warms up.
Then it ends and cooling happens — in terms of human understanding – for forever.
An ice age lasts longer than the time homo sapien has been wandering the Earth.
That is, it lasts long enough to witness evolutionary change in living things. That is known as “one helleva long time”
But, I’m still not sure if we’re in a warming rend, or a cooling one. STill, a lot of questions out there, and who really has the answers. ?
Judy,
I guarantee we are in a cooling trend that will culminate in ice miles thick over most of the North Hemisphere.
When… about 2,000 to 4,000 years – possibly sooner.
Climate today – follow El Nina/Nino.
It’s called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
Most of North American weather is affected by the warming and cooling of the Pacific and its motion North to South of a huge body of warm Pacific water that goes in a large, loopy, 10 year cycle.
Then, if we’re in a cooling trend, then why are they calling it a warming trend. That’s where a lot of my confusion comes into play.
That works for me Peter B. Could you please present that simple argument to those East Anglia (or however you spell that clown school) guys and get this over with once and for all?
Question:
Why is the Northern Hemisphere generally more prosperous and technologically advanced than the Southern Hemisphere?
Answer:
The populated areas of the Southern Hemisphere are generally nice and warm, with short winters, long growing seasons, and usually very liveable temperatures. Basically, they don’t need a whole lot of “advanced technology” in order to survive. The Northern Hemisphere is generally much colder, has longer winters, shorter growing seasons, and wild temperature variations (can anyone say -50 F in Chicago in the winter and +100 F in Chicago is the summer??) on the Farenheit scale, that is a swing from minimum to maximum of 150 degrees!!! The Northern Hemisphere also has larger land-mass overall, and is consequently much more densely populated. As a result, it takes a lot of advanced technology to keep all of the people in the Northern Hemisphere happy, healthy, comfortable, and well-fed.
happy, healthy, comfortable and well-fed. Hmmmm…i don’t need any clowns help for any of that 🙂
OOOOH, OOOOH, I have another question.
How is it then, places like Death Valley which has gotten up to 135 in the summer, and the same for Iraq, which I understand has gotten up to 149, for what my son said when he was there in 2004, and yet I don’t recall seeing any other places get that hot. My question is. HOW?,But yet other places don’t?
And, how is it places like Africa, hardly gets any rainfall, and other places gets tons of it?
Africa no rain, South American Rain Forest – same latitude – why?
Because of WIND!!
Wind blows West to East.
So the wind that blows over Africa comes from Middle East and Asia – lots of land no water – very dry, no rain.
Once it leaves Africa, it blows over the Atlantic – lots of water, no land – very wet and hits South America – where it rains.
Death Valley is a desert because of its location so close to high mountains, while it is the lowest point on the continent.
Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 ft (85.5 m ) below sea level. This point is only 76 miles (123 km) east of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States with an elevation of 14,505 feet (4,421 m).
This combination creates the desert.
High mountains force the air high into the colder regions – causing high rain on the Eastern side of the mountains.
The dried moisture empty air – free of water, but fully heat laden – then plummets to the lowest point on the continent.
Thus it is also the direst place on the continent.
Ergo, desert~!
Okay, then why, why is there places that can get a ton of snow in the higher elevations, then at the same time, nothing on the valley floors?
Here and up in Tahoe, we can get a tomn of snow here, but nothing up there, but at the same time, it can be warmer in Tahoe, then down here in Reno.
That’s where I can get confused. How can the lower elevations be colder than the higher elevations at times? Does that also have to do with winds as well?
Sorry for the typo’s, don’t like the squishy spots.
Hot air rises, cold air falls.
But, darn it, to complicate a relatively easy scenario of up/down – we have Earth spin.
The air goes up and by the time it cools and comes down…the Earth has spun a different piece of land underneath it.
But the “hole” in the sky where the air went up is …–>> over here and needs to be filled – so it moves over there … wind.
But, darn it, to complex it some more – there is land in the way of its little walk to the ‘hole’ it left, hills, mountains, lakes, rivers, cities, trees, other cold air falling, other warm air rising – water, making it heavier, dry land, making it lighter….
Pretty soon, its all big jumble mess we call weather.
You’re just as knowledgeable in this as Peter is in this, and I must say, I am learning a lot from both of you.
Judy
The Truckee Meadows, where Reno and Sparks sit is a closed basin. You are describing the infamous inversions that plague the area.
In the winter during high pressure events, cold calm air, the cold and fog and light clouds settles in the valley. Day after day. Pretty soon the valley is much colder than Tahoe, which while a basin sits at higher elevation where the sun shines.
On sunny days in Reno the air will warm and lift, being replaced by the cold air trapped against the mountains. Very cold wind south of town. When the sun sets the cold air then rushes back to the valley, very damn cold wind all over town.
The things you describe are not climate. They are not even macro climate events, ie regional. They are local weather events.
Snow in Reno and none in Tahoe can be due to temp differences but is usually due to the location of the warm front that hits the cold air. Occassionaly Reno is hit with the edge of the front, this includes Dog Valley and areas north, but Tahoe and Carson City south is spared.
For the most part, however, the snow and moisture hits Tahoe and the areas south of Reno much heavier.
Think of this. There are no major rivers in the State that start north of Tahoe, until you get to the northeast corner, up by Jarbidge and Jackpot and Elko.
BF’s description is excellent but does not account for the unique micro climate of the Reno/Carson area. When I was young you couldn’t breath the air in the winter without burning your nose. It would stagnate for a couple of months.
Best to you and yours
JAC
Hi JAc
I was just asking questions that came to mind, but dince you livved here before, you know what you’re talking about. and I do appreciate your answer.
Hope you and yours are doing well, also.
Peter,
I call that my “Banana Theory”.
In the tropics, if you’re hungry, you find a banana and eat it – all year round.
So it is wasteful to pick more than you eat – and indeed, those cultures have created a social prohibition to the concept of ‘saving’ as it is an act of waste.
As you point out, the opposite is true in the North.
Winter kills.
Unless you till, plant, tend, harvest and store, you’re dead.
We built up social norms that promote saving and hard work.
Further, study into the seasons meant success or failure of crops which success or failure meant life or death. Small wonder that those that could read the stars, sun and moon were the wealthiest in the society – life and death depended on their ability to understand nature.
Today, “Banana Theory” cultures suffer from their cultural ‘affliction’ of savings and work ethic. But they live happy lives pretty stress free.
Our culture is successful in the high effort, long term planned society – but we die from stress.
(Shrug) Win some, lose some, no matter what side of the coin.
Hi BF,
I can vouch for the accuracy of the Banana Theory. Traveling around these islands confirms it. Its very plain to see.
Who caused global warming?
Aliens
http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html
Obama couldn’t have caused GW. He was too young! 🙂
I COULD point out that all you have to do is look at Lubchenco political associations and affiliations, and you probably have a pretty good idea of what her beliefs on the issue are going to be.
There is a lot about this topic over at wattsupwiththat.com today, so if you want to do even more research on this topic, I would recommend heading over there and checking some of Anthony’s articles out.
USW,
There is a HUGE HUGE HUGE ENORMOUS error in your article, and I just caught it re-reading it. You SAY that we relied on the private sector to get climate data, and in spite of that, it came out all flawed and agenda-driven.
That is patently incorrect.
Where does University of East Anglia and the CRU get > 90% of their funding for climate research??? (HINT, IT IS THE GOVERNMENT). Likewise, where does Penn State and Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann get > 90% of their funding (HINT, IT IS THE GOVERNMENT).
So your claim that we relied on the private sector and the private sector produced all of this dodgy, agenda-driven crap masquerading as data is actually wrong.
Further, I find it necessary to point out that East Anglia is a State University in the UK, meaning that it is primarily reliant upon the government for its very existence, and Penn STATE is a State University here in the US, meaning that it is primarily reliant upon the government for its very existence.
To say that either of these universities is a “private sector” institution is just plain incorrect.
I think this is a big source of your confusion on the issue USW, you mis-defined these as being “private sector” when the private sector had very little, if anything, to do with it whatsoever.
That is a great point Peter. I agree that East Anglia and PSU are relying heavily on government grants. And that is going to be the case no matter who we are looking at. But there is a big difference between receiving government funding and being government run. They were government funded but not government run. I want to avoid government run as that tends to increase the amount of idiocy.
USW,
The key thing for both East Anglia and Penn State is the fact that a large portion of their funding (not just grant money, but actual money used to ensure their continued existence) comes from government sources.
State-run Universities know which side their toast is buttered on. If they think the government might cut their funding if they give “the wrong answer”, you had better believe they are darn likely to come up with whatever answer they think the government wants to hear.
USW
If the new Climate Service works out as well as the Department of Energy we have no worries.
The Department of Energy was formed by Pres. Carter after the oil crisis in 1977. We were told that this new department was vital to this country’s prosperity and that it was a small investment to make to end our dependence on foreign oil. The program was such a success that through the years we have added more programs to be managed by the DOE.
Here are just a few:
Energy Information Administration
National Nuclear Security Administration
Office of Secure Transportation
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
Office of Environmental Management
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Office of River Protection
Office of Nuclear Energy
Office of Transportation Technology
With all this new stuff to manage it is not surprising that 80% of DOE budget is spent on activities other than energy resources. We get all this for a bargain. The requested 2010 budget is $26.4 billion plus $19.15 billion added on from the economic stimulus package from 2009.
Let me list a couple of the DOE success stories:
Foreign oil dependence, need I say more.
Yucca Mountain spent fuel storage site. Began in 1987 and terminated by Pres. Obama in 2009, total spent on the project just over $10 billion. BTW beginning in 1982 all nuclear electric utilities had to begin paying into a fund based on their kilowatt hours generated. By 2008 that fund had accumulated a balance of $22 billion dollars. But this fund is just an accounting entry as the utility charges have actually gone to the US Treasury and has been spent.
The Clinch River Breeder Reactor was an experimental nuclear fission power plant project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee that cost taxpayers $1.7 billion and produced nothing.
In 1993, Congress approved the construction of the National Ignition Facility, which is designed to research nuclear fusion. It is at least seven years behind schedule, and the estimated total cost has ballooned from about $2.1 billion to at least $4.2 billion. The project started running tests in 2009, but the facility may not be fully operational until 2020. (Want to bet that 4.2 becomes 8.4 before completion)
Superconducting Super Collider project was launched in 1987, Congress killed the SSC in late 1993, after spending about $2 billion and it produced nothing.
Who says government can’t run successful programs.
One thing we can all be thankful for. The weekend storm and the storm which will be happening today/tomorrow will basically have the effect of shutting DC down for the entire week (maybe more if we are lucky).
Any week in which they accomplish ABSOLUTELY NOTHING is a HUGE PLUS for the rest of us!
🙂
Interesting..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020403698.html
I’d love to see the opposite article: How many [NOT ALL] conservatives are proudly anti-intellectual and condescend to liberals.
I think they’d tell two halves of the same story: everyone in authority is an insufferably arrogant know-it-all who knows that they are right and the other side is wrong.
Ah, hubris.. may favorite of the deadly sins..
Mathius,
I would not say I am a conservative, (although I CERTAINLY don’t fit the current US version of the definition of liberal :)), and I would also say that I am most certainly not anti-intellectual.
What people have to realize is that the root cause of this problem is really as follows:
1:) Has it been warming since 1850?
Probably
2:) Has man had any influence on the amount and/or rate of warming?
Possibly, but the fact that all of the data looks dodgy and fudged, and the fact that the experiments do not appear to have adhered to the scientific method means that there has most certainly been no conclusive proof of this hypothesis whatsoever.
That is the TRUE skeptic position on AGW. Sure, there are indeed “skeptics” out there that claim that there is absolutely no warming whatsoever (which is possible as much as the data has been messed with), and they further claim that the dodgy science completely disproves AGW (It doesn’t necessarily, it just means they need to do real science and show us falsifiable data, experiments, and results that actually support that position before we bother believing them at all).
So, my position, as a scientist, is that there most likely has been warming since 1850, which is widely recognized as the end of the little ice age, and the vast majority of this warming is most likely perfectly natural and within the bounds of statistically “normal”, and I will continue to believe that until someone can show me some actual science to the contrary.
Not really what I was getting at.. I was thinking in a broader sense than this one issue.
I am, as I have stated, an elitist. I am well above average in brain power and education. I learn hard to the left. I view many (though certainly not all, and no one here) on the other side of the spectrum as this article says I do. I look down on them intellectually and I do, in fact, condescend. (Though to be fair, I condescend to most people, whether they deserve it or not, and regardless of their political ideology). Perhaps because, to me, it is the most repugnant standpoint, but I see anti-intellectualism standing out a major theme in the conservative movement.
I do see the Southern Strategy as alive and well in some places and every bit as sinister as the article says. I do see lots of propaganda and corporate interests. Etc etc.
Yes, it goes too far and turns me into a caricature, but take that away, moderate the article a bit and it has some good solid grounding.
So when I read an article like this one, I have to ask myself: Is it true? And the answer is, for the most part, yes. It describes me pretty well. Though it has an obvious bias and condescension of its own, it is largely accurate in its description of myself and people like myself.
But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. The shortfall of this is that is says “they think this” therefore “they dismiss us and our views.” But what it should say is “they think this” therefore “they condescend to us, but still use (mostly) logic against the views.” See the difference? I can look down on a person and still reject their views on logical, reasoned grounds. The writer does not give us credit for that. Unfairly, I think.
But what about the flip side of the coin? Are some of our views about the conservatives (even if over-simplified, and not applicable to the whole) viable?
-Does race-bating play a role?
-Do corporate interests manipulate the masses (to a greater extent than in the liberal camp)?
-Do conservatives get so blinded by “guns, God, and gays” that nothing else matters?
-Are many conservatives proudly anti-intellectual?
And
Do conservatives condescend to the bleeding heart liberals, too?
I can own up to the failings of my side. But what about your side?
As I said, I am not certain that I have a “side” when it comes to liberal/conservative under the current definitions, as I don’t fall into either category.
There are other problems with the question as well. The “leadership” of the liberal side is elitist, tends to be well educated, firmly believes in its own positions, etc. However, the portion of the general populace which VOTES liberal has a large proportion that are poor, under-educated, and simply believe what they are told.
On the conservative side, the “leadership” is elitist, tends to be well educated, firmly believes in its own positions, etc. However, the portion of the general populace that VOTES conservative has a fairly large proportion that are poor (although perhaps not AS poor as those who vote liberal), under-educated, and simply believe what they are told.
This would tend to support the theory that the masses are ignorant, regardless of which way they vote. So, what is really important is to actually educate the masses as much and as well as possible, and provide them with accurate and unbiased information as much as possible since they tend to believe what they are told until overwhelming contradictory evidence is presented to them.
Not sure if that really answered your question at all or not….
works for me..
what I read is Mathius’ First Law: People. Are. Dumb.
and then, because they don’t sufficiently educate themselves, Mathius’ Second Law: People. Are. Lazy.
and because they blindly believe their leaders, Mathius’ Fourth Law: People. Are. Lemmings.
and they follow these leaders because they promise red meat, so Mathius’ Third Law: People. Are. Greedy.
That said, though you take yourself out of the equation, fairly enough, how do you feel about my questions:
Does race-baiting play a role?
Probably, especially in the South. The Dixiecrats either abandoned it to the Republicans or became Republicans, and race baiting has been used to influence this voting block, which tends to be white, poor, and under-educated. I don’t think that this happens AS MUCH now as it did in the past, but it certainly still happens.
Do corporate interests manipulate the masses more so than in the liberal camp?
In the past, yes. Currently it is about 50-50. Corporations have discovered that it is more to their benefit to be “on the winning side” regardless of which side that is. In 2008, large corporations donated more to Obama than they did to McCain, because they thought that Obama was going to win. Turns out that they were right. In 2000, large corporations donated SLIGHTLY more to Bush than they did to Gore, but it wasn’t by much. In 2004, Bush got 5-10% more in corporate donations than Kerry, because the corporations thought that Bush would win. I think the days where corporations donate noticeably more to “conservatives” than to “liberals” are pretty much over. They are going to donate HUGE amounts to both sides, and will tend to donate more to whichever side they think will win.
Do conservatives get so blinded by god, guns, and gays that nothing else matters?
I am sure that a certain percentage of them do. I think there is a trend now where more traditional conservatives are having a hard look at small l libertarianism, where as long as what you are doing is not hurting me, I don’t really give a crap. I have seen this transition starting, but I don’t think it is super far-along yet. As a result, I am sure that god, guns, and gays are still very important issues to a lot of conservatives, even to the exclusion of other issues.
Are many conservatives proudly anti-intellectual?
No. They see themselves as having a lot more sense than those edumacated people in their ivory towers, and they tend to place more value on “sense” than they do on “edumacation”. I guess that you could say that this makes them anti-intellectual, but if they meet a smart person that also exhibits what they consider to be “sense”, then I think they are ok with that.
Do conservatives condescend to bleeding heart liberals?
I think that most conservatives think that bleeding heart liberals put emotion ahead of sense, and so they tend to not value their opinions, because if emotion and sense do not agree with each other, then no matter how intellectual it sounds, it isn’t valid.
Just my opinions 🙂
Well said. Thanks.
+3 points.
“Probably, especially in the South, —- which tends to be white, poor, and under-educated.”
That so hurts, don’t fall for the elitist view of the south. Sure there are some redneck good old boys and girls around but there are some very well educated people here as well. All six of my children have a college education. True southerners would live nowhere else.
Didn’t mean to be hurtful, and I was definitely over-generalizing. I apologize for that. The education level in the South has certainly improved vastly over the past 50 years or so, although that might not be completely a good thing since even the colleges and universities down there CAN be liberal indoctrination centers.
Luckily most Southerners still value “sense” over most other things, so that does give them more resistance to the indoctrinations 🙂
If someone ever tells you, “You sure are book-smart but you have no idea how to deal with people!” you have just been called a liberal by a Southerner 🙂
True southerners would live nowhere else — that’s very elitist of you 😛
Why? Is the rest of the country not good enough for you?
No just happy where we are.
Media Liberals Paint Conservatives as ‘Birthers’, But First Birthers Were Dems
by Lachlan Markay
Here’s something you won’t hear from the liberal media: that whole “birther” conspiracy movement? Yeah, that was started by a couple of Democrats, and neither is named Orly Taitz.
Their names, in fact, are Linda Starr and Philip Berg, according to John Avalon, author of the new book “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America” (just to clarify, he singles out “wingnuts” on both sides of the aisle). Both were die-hard supporters of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 campaign.
Starr was cited as a source of the false documents that got disgraced CBS correspondent Dan Rather fired. Berg is an aggressive Pennsylvania attorney (and former Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General) who filed a lawsuit against former President George W. Bush in 2004 alleging he was complicit in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Despite these revelations, it probably goes without saying that the next time David Shuster claims that “most Republicans” are birthers, the theory’s history will go unmentioned.
But perhaps rather than roundly placing the blame on Rush Limbaugh for the birther movement, the New York Times might look into the movement’s actual origins.
And the next time the folks at National Public Radio see fit to suggest that all Tea Party protesters are birthers, maybe they should note that the first birthers were in fact Democrats.
According to Avalon, the movement started just after Clinton conceded defeat in race for the Democratic nomination:
…Starr turned her attention to Obama. “I determined that I was going to start digging up every bit of dirt that I could find on him,” she told me after I hunted her down in late 2009, “and that hopefully that I would find something against him that would convince the Democratic Party to dump him and make Hillary the nominee.”
In the first week of August 2008, as the Democrats were getting ready for their convention in Denver, Starr called Philadelphia attorney Philip Berg and offered a challenge. Berg recalled the conversation for me: “She called me up and said, ‘Have you heard about Obama not being national born?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘Well, now it’s for real, and you’re the only attorney in the country with brass balls enough to sue Obama.’ “…
On August 21, 2008, Berg filed the first Birther lawsuit, requesting an injunction to stop the Democratic Convention from going forward and alleging that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii. He faxed notices to the DNC and Obama campaign headquarters, and the next day, he launched the Web site Obamacrimes.com with Starr’s assistance. The lawsuit went nowhere…
Of course, the rush to delegitimize Obama once he was elected president fell to wingnut conservatives, who continue to confuse losing an election with living under tyranny. But this new evidence of the conspiracy theory’s roots on the far left is a reminder that wingnuts exist in both parties.
Not when you’re a member of the liberal media. For those stalwarts of journalistic integrity, “wingnut” is a term exclusive to the right.
Conservatives have been criticized as birthers, and treated as a monolithic movement of conspiracy theorists, all despite the fact that comparable numbers of Democrats believed that the Bush Administration was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
One of those Democratic crazies, Avalon reminds us, is partially responsible for the genesis of the birther movement, but this too will almost surely go unreported as liberals in the mainstream media continue (and it’s certainly nothing new) to paint the right as not just wrong, but thoroughly crazy.
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/lachlan-markay/2010/02/09/media-liberals-paint-conservatives-birthers-first-birthers-were-dems#ixzz0f4GiR8oy
Mathius,
Thanks for this. I will include my answers in tonight’s open mic.
USW
My pleasure. I look forward to it.
3. I think there are more questions-Even if global warming is man caused would cap “n” trade be the proper way the handle the problem?
4. What has it cost the world because of “the boy crying wolf” over climate change /economically?
5. If global warming is man made -what will the cost of” the boy crying wolf be”-if the world has become understandably skeptical and won’t believe?
Your questions (other than #3) already presuppose that man-made climate change is nonexistent.
For #3 — CNT is not the best way to handle the problem, in my opinion. However, it is a step in the right direction as opposed to what we currently have.
For the others — ASSUMING it turns out that man-made climate change is not an actuality, than by reducing emissions and pollutants, etc. etc. etc, we transition into a green economy, create jobs, live in a more ‘clean’ world and become a global leader in this regard. Not a bad thing in my opinion.
As for all these other issues brought up by Mathius – very interesting and I wish I had time today to get into it with everyone. Unfortunately I’m relatively swamped and am trying to read along…
There is a problem with your theory Buck:
If man is actually influencing the climate, and that interaction is actually causing a warmer climate, naturally man SHOULD BE most interested in determining what the effects of that change are ACTUALLY going to be.
If it turns out that that change is going to mean longer growing seasons, healthier crops, not all that much sea-level rise, shorter winters, less disease, more food supply, and stuff like that, then man might well determine that doing nothing is perfectly ok. We might have just accidentally made things better/easier for ourselves!!
If it turns out that we are going to cause massive sea-level rise, an increase in strong storms, increases in other catastrophic events, and that sort of thing, then yes, we might well decide to find a way to slam on the brakes immediately and make major changes to our lifestyles.
The problem is, we need RELIABLE science and data, so that we have some REASONABLE idea of the following:
1:) Is the climate changing?
Yes, this happens constantly.
2:) Do we have anything to do with it?
Don’t know, the “science” hasn’t been conducted properly, so we cannot trust it.
3:) If we do have something to do with it, what percentage of the changes are natural, and what percentage is due to our involvement?
Don’t know yet.
4:) What will the results of this be: Improvement in living conditions or massive catastrophes?
Don’t know yet.
5:) What can we do about it?
If we try to create “green jobs” and say, “well hey, even if we aren’t causing anything, this still is a good idea!” what we have done is skipped right to #5.
Skipping to #5 does not allow for people to develop the best possible technology to deal with the most likely scenario over time. Skipping to #5 forces what is likely the adoption of inefficient and inferior technology to address a situation which may or may not exist.
That does nothing to create jobs. It is highly inefficient. Inefficiency usually destroys more jobs than it creates, at least in the long run. Sure, it might create some jobs in the short run, until people go, “well gee, that was dumb, why the hell did we do that?”, and then those jobs go instantly down the toilet.
The only way that skipping to #5 actually works is if you accidentaly happen to come up with the right answer, even though you skipped most of the important parts of the question. There is a slight percentage chance that this approach might work, but do you want to make a huge investment on that basis?
Buck,
“As we transition into a green economy, create jobs, live in a more ‘clean’ world and become a global leader in this regard.”
Has ANYONE had success in establishing a green economy? If it is not economically viable, do we still mandate it, and completely destroy our economy? I think several nations have attempted this move, and failed at great expense. Would it not be worth learning from their mistakes, rather than just repeating them on a larger scale?
Buck,
Anyone can create jobs – that is incredibily easy.
See ground, dig hole. See hole, fill hole, repeat.
Job creation of jobs that are worthless is worthless.
Do not get onto the bandwagon of job creation – it interferes badly with finding real work of value.
Most “Green” jobs is merely dirt digging and filling – worthless and pointless and destruction to the economy – these people still need to eat while producing nothing of value.
When the market is ready, so will the real jobs be ready – rushing it artificially will delay the real market and the real jobs and cost you your wealth.
Let me clarify — no one is calling for a rush here. This would be a slow, gradual process. Obviously this is not something that can be done, or should be done, overnight.
It shouldn’t “be done” at all.
No stirring required.
When the market has a product that solves the consumer problem (which includes price, quality, quantity and value), the consumer will buy it.
When it is bought, it will be built. Building it needs people to do the job.
When it is ready, thy will be done.
Not ine second sooner by any manipulation of the hand of Social planning.
Buck the Wala
Did you know that virtually all the green jobs we need have already been created?
Be happy but most of all be free
JAC
Not sure where you’re getting that figure from – any cites?
Thanks!
Buck
And I forgot, most don’t require “higher” education.
Can you tell me what NEW skill set is required for a Green Job?
What does it take to make, install and run a windmill for example.
Buck
Here is a good summary of Oregon and Washington studies that gives a few examples.
After these studies came out the GREEN groups scrambled to produce their own. You see they and the University types didn’t get the answers they wanted.
The reports have now been twisted by the Politicos to conclude we need more funding for specialized University programs.
Also note, that Oregon has heavily subsidized the wind farm business. If it were not for that, the numbers would be even lower.
Buck
Sorry, I forgot the link.
http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2009/07/22/ors-green-collar-jobs-defined-and-counted
Buck
Finaly found the Oregon study.
Click to access greening.pdf
Actually, my other two questions were based on their unethical behavior and the consequences such behavior brings with it-Whether or not global warming is man made or not-their lying has cost this world a lot of additional money and trouble. If it’s true-their unethical behavior will cause there to be a lot more studies and hey even a new government agency to prove what there lying has put into even more doubt- If it’s false, I hate to think of the wasted time and money that has been spent on this stuff.
Hi V,
I have a different take on what the result of crying wolf will bring. As BF pointed out, that no matter what happens, humanity is a fault. As a result humanity must be ‘dealt with’. Once the Leftist polices bear their fruit, human misery will increase exponentially. There will be cries of ‘too many humans’, ‘over population’, etc. Of course, the little band-aids that will be applied, will not have any effect improvement-wise, so the next step is an active REDUCTIION of humans, to bring the population to a “sustainable” level. Have you noticed how ‘sustainable’ has become a buzz word? Big Green has decided that 500 Million humans is all the planet can handle. Big Green wants you dead. Big Green wants ALL OF US dead.
Ok, I am going to take a stab at something that Judy asked above, which was basically “Why do some places get literally hotter than hell, while others do not?”
There is something that climatologists like to call the global energy balance. Basically, the amount of energy coming into the earth from the sun can usually be estimated with a fair degree of accuracy, and then scientists attempt to globally balance this incoming energy and figure out where it all goes. For the purpose of this conversation, energy is essentially heat (although there is more to it than that).
There are MANY factors which influence just how hot it can get in a particular place at a particular time. Deserts have a tendency to get hotter than hell, especially during the summer season where a desert is located. Why? Deserts are DRY. There is very little rainfall, and no rivers, streams, ponds, lakes, etc. This is important, because evaporation causes cooling. In a desert, there just isn’t any water present to evaporate, so evaporative cooling isn’t a factor. Deserts where it gets PAINFULLY hot also tend to be at very low elevation, but tend to be surrounded by areas of higher elevation. This geographical feature messes with the normal mechanics of heat being able to rise, and the heat simply gets trapped in the low elevation area of the desert.
Further, deserts are usually filled with rock and sand. It takes a while for rock and sand to warm up, but once the rock and sand is good and hot, the rock and sand tend to retain heat, and release it slowly back into the environment, which further contributes to heating.
Also, deserts where it gets ridiculously hot are generally closer to the equator, but not necessarily in the tropics. The tropics have trade winds which are active most of the time, and an active wind pattern is not favorable for a build-up of a lot of heat. Just north and south of the tropics, there are areas where the wind is fairly calm a lot of the time, so any build-up of heat tends to just sit in one spot, which further magnifies heating in that area. Further north and further south of the desert areas, you enter the realm of jet-streams which move high and low pressure weather systems along rather rapidly. These rapid changes in weather and weather patterns generally do not allow for a big heat build-up over one area.
Think about this for a moment: What conditions are necessary in order to get 105 degree temperatures in Chicago? Generally, in order for that to occur, there has to be a high-pressure ridge that stalls out over the Ohio Valley, which brings a constant light southwesterly flow of air (aloft) into Chicago. This is accompanied by clear skies, and either light winds at the surface, or calm conditions. The longer that high-pressure ridge gets stalled out over the Ohio Valley, the hotter it will get in Chicago. This only happens when the jet stream bends WAY north into Canada, and weather systems in the north-central US get “stranded”. Eventually the jet stream comes back to a more normal position, and pushes the high-pressure ridge away, followed by a low pressure system which brings rain/thunderstorms, and cooler air into the area.
In deserts, the hottest ones are stuck between the tropics and the jet-stream, and high-pressure ridges tend to completely dominate the weather there. They simply get completely stuck there, and don’t allow any wet-weather systems anywhere near the area. That, coupled with the terrain of the desert and the terrain of the surrounding areas, creates a perfect natural heat-sink, where heat can simply build up over time with nowhere else to go.
That’s quite an analogy Peter, but I have just one more question for you.
Are you really a meteorologist? You seem to know a lot about this.
Judy,
I am an environmental chemist, and I study air pollution.
In order to understand how air pollution builds up in particular areas, and how it moves from one place to another, I have to understand a lot about weather, meteorology, solar radiation, atmospheric inversions, and all of that fun stuff.
Also, I just enjoy weather (especially extreme weather events) and like to study up on how and why they happen.
So, the answer is, the chemistry of air pollution is my job, which makes understanding meteorology and weather very important to me, and weather is also somewhat of a hobby 🙂
My husband works with his brother in an environmental testing lab for drinking water, well water, soils, sand/oil separators and a whole lot of other things as well, too many to mention. My brother-in-law is a chemist as well, but for the above mentioned. Been doing that for the last 40 years.
I was just curious, and that’s why I asked you that question, because of all the info you supplied, and I very much appreciate you answering me.
Until the next ice age comes along.
LOL
India rebuffs IPCC, goes solo
Bill Bumpas – OneNewsNow – 2/9/2010 8:35:00
India is establishing its own body to monitor the effects of climate change, claiming it “cannot rely” on the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Dan Miller (Heartland Institute)One think tank does not believe India will ever pull out of the IPCC, but Dan Miller, executive vice president and publisher for The Heartland Institute, a national nonprofit research and education organization, says the country is setting up an independent climate monitoring agency, “which is a tremendous slap in the face at the U.N. IPCC and at its own native son Dr. Pachauri, who heads the U.N. IPCC.”
The Heartland Institute publisher tells OneNewsNow the revelation of corruption demonstrates the unreliability of the IPCC. “Whether you are a skeptic or alarmist on global warming, you cannot trust the data coming out of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” Miller assures. “It’s been manipulated, some data has been destroyed, [and] contrary views have been prohibited from publishing their information.”
He adds that India’s decision to create its own climate monitoring body is bad timing for the IPCC.
“We’re [currently experiencing a horrible snow storm in the Mid-Atlantic states,” the publisher reports. “Global temperatures are falling precipitously, and they have been falling for about the last 10 to 15 years, and all expectations are they’ll continue to fall for about 20 more years.”
India’s monitoring body will publish its own climate assessment in November.
I hafta say– you guys on this site are awesome. So full of knowledge and able to put it in simple terms for people like me to understand. Wish we didn’t have to even deal with it all but that’s how it goes.
Ok…my turn to shovel now. 3 on the ground up to 7 more coming…finally for us!
Let me know if you need me to lend you a shovel. I’m going to in 80 degree weather soon. And I ain’t comin’ back.*
And I’m not just full of knowledge.. I’m full of sh*t, too 🙂
*Sadly, this is not true.. alas..
I knew the full of sh*t part, figured that out aaaaallll by myself! For real though Matt, as much as I think that you talk yourself into corners sometimes- I’ll give you credit fot the knowledge you have to backpeddle.
I never back-peddle.. sometimes I just find it enjoyable to swim in reverse is all..
Mathius,
You made me laugh at myself.
The truth:
I can’t swim – I can lie on the bottom of a pool with a full lungs of air and have to walk out.
The times I’ve used flotation aids, I’ve tried to swim. I’m good with the arm paddle – but if I kick my feet – to the amazement of my wife – I move backwards instead of forwards!
So I have to forgo kicking if I want to go forward – but I have a high-power reverse gear in my feet if I need to backup without turning around!
Yes, I’m a submarines that motors backwards. Go figure.
Hmm, I have an alien heart, sinks in water, swims backwards – maybe I’m not human after all.
Oh, sorry, but that’s funny, and I can just picture that in my mind.
Hey, don’t feel bad Flag, remember I told you I can’t swim in either direction, so, don’t feel bad, at least you can go backwards.
The secret is body density. If you were in worse shape, you’d float. Fat is not dense, muscle is. I, too, sink like a stone, but can swim just fine none-the-less.
Try to relax, point your toes when you use your feet, slow, deep breaths.
Or, you know, stay away from the deep end of the pool.
Hi Matt
I think I told you before why I can’t swim. My drowning experience when I was little. I never wanted to learn after that, the fear of deep water wouldn’t let me.Yea, I know, it’s mind over matter, but my mind still said no.
I thought this was an interesting article.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/09/new-solar-observatory-unlock-suns-mysteries/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Fscitech+%2528Text+-+SciTech%2529
Hi Judy!
Thought I’d pass on a very serious AGW event that is currently occurring in the Eastern Part of the country. This is the kind of weather that AL Gore had warned us about, so check this out, it’s important:
http://www.weather.com/weather/map/interactive/44509?zoom=8&interactiveMapLayer=radar&from=today_nontropical_map
Dear Al Gore,
The above link is to demonstrate your catostrophic weather that will grip the whole world and kill millions of good people.
I so believe your words that I want to commend you on warning me of this horrible weather that we are now getting! Wait a minute, it’s February, in Northeast Ohio, and…. You idiot! It’s been doing this forever. Every winter seasone, this is the weather that defines our part of the country. Are you an idiot, or just plain stupid? Let me answer that, you, Mr Gore, are a short bus riding window licker and I doubt very much you can spell stupid without the assistance of your wife.
To keep this short Mr. Gore, you wouldn’t know sh*t if it hit you in the eye. Go hide in your palace and leave us alone, your presence is a nuisance, and just thinking of you gives me are headache.
Sincerly,
G-Man
Hey G
I like it, why don’t you send it for real and see if you get any responses to it. And, to think this idiot got the Nobel piece prize. He did didn’t he? Just want to make sure.
So, did you get bombarded today with the white stuff? We just got a light dusting here, then we got the halfh and half stuff, the combo pack of rain/snow drizzle a bit, but nothing since this morning.
Hope you’re doing well today.
About two inches so far, the heavy stuff is supposed to come after dark and throught tomorrow morning. If they get it right, it won’t be too bad, if they get it wrong, it will either be good (little snowfall) or bad (much more than they predict, like last time). They are predicting 6 to 10 inches. That’s not to bad.
Here’s a little funny, CP sent it too me.
Curtis & Leroy saw an ad in the Starkville Daily News Newspaper in Starkville, MS. And bought a mule for $100.
The farmer agreed to deliver the mule the next day…
The next morning the farmer drove up and said, “Sorry, fellows, I have some bad news, the mule died last night.”
Curtis & Leroy replied, “Well, then just give us our money back.”
The farmer said, “Can’t do that. I went and spent it already..”
They said, “OK then, just bring us the dead mule.”
The farmer asked, “What in the world ya’ll gonna do with a dead mule?”
Curtis said, “We gonna raffle him off.”
The farmer said, “You can’t raffle off a dead mule!”
Leroy said, “We shore can! Heck, we don’t hafta tell nobody he’s dead!”
A couple of weeks later, the farmer ran into Curtis &Leroy at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store and asked.
“What’d you fellers ever do with that dead mule?”
They said,”We raffled him off like we said we wuz gonna do.”
Leroy said,”Shucks, we sold 500 tickets fer two dollars apiece and made a profit of $998.”
The farmer said,”My Lord, didn’t anyone complain?”
Curtis said, “Well, the feller who won got upset. So we gave him his two dollars back.”
Curtis and Leroy now work for the government.
They’re overseeing the Bailout Program.
Limit all US politicians to two terms.
One in office,
One in prison,
Illinois already does this.
😆
G!
I think 2 terms is one too many really. If they can’t get it right the first time, what makes them think they can get it right the second time?
My opinion anyway.
Hope that snow will ease up for you back there and give you a much needed break from all that snow. You know the scary thing about all that snow, is when it starts to melt.
That’s what happened here in 1997, when all that snow melted, then it started raining, then we had that big massive flooding here. The whole damn city of Reno was under water. Even went as far as the airport, which is only 5 minutes away from us. Although we did get a little where we’re at, but nothing to be concerned about.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/09/what-noaa-isnt-saying-about-snow-and-ice/#more-16232
What NOAA Isn’t Saying About Snow and Ice
9 02 2010
By Steven Goddard
As reported on WUWT, NOAA is warning of “earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons.” But what NOAA isn’t saying is that snow is falling earlier and heavier in the Northern Hemisphere. Rutgers University Global Snow Lab has reported that January was the sixth snowiest on record, and that six out of the last eight Januaries were above normal snowfall.
January, 2008 saw the second greatest snow extent ever recorded. December was the third snowiest on record in the Northern Hemisphere and seventeen out of last twenty-one Decembers were above normal snowfall. November was above normal snowfall and fifteen out of the last nineteen Novembers have had above average snowfall. October was the sixth snowiest October on record and seven out of the last ten Octobers have had above average snowfall.
I just received this in my Email box from John McCain
My Friend,
The 2010 election offers all Americans – and especially Republicans – a critical choice. We can fight for the principles we believe in, or watch as Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress take our nation down a costly, destructive path.
I’m ready for that battle. And as one of my strongest supporters, I sincerely hope I can count on you to continue to stand with me as I work hard to win reelection in November.
President Obama and the Democrats in control of Congress have gone too far in their quest to “change” America. Their radical, far left policies are undermining America’s founding principles and greatly threaten our nation’s future economic health and national security.
It is truly disheartening that in their desire to advance their far left agenda, the Democrats are totally ignoring proven ways to create jobs and get our economy moving again. Our opponents’ determined efforts to completely overhaul America’s health care system, drive our federal deficit to historic levels, and do serious harm to Medicare – serves as a powerful lesson as to the lengths they will go to advance their radical liberal agenda.
The issues we face today call for real, positive, effective solutions. That is why I am determined to remain in the U.S. Senate.
Judy,
To help explain why one guy can say “warming” and another say “cooling” while looking at the same data – and both are not liars!
Example:
Here is our temp. record (just an example)
22 15 10 17 20 19 17 10 17 9 13
If we start from Item #3, we see a serious warming trend – Temp @ start =10, rest average 11.6 – increase of 1.6 over the ‘norm’
But if we start @ #1, we see a serious cooling trend –
Temp @ start = 22, rest average 15.4 – decrease of 7 from the norm.
So, it all depends where they start their measure and what the ‘norm’ is
But who says 1970 is the right date to start? Why not 1988, or 1992, or 2001 or 1935 or 1885 or 1776 or 10,600BC, or….
…you get the picture. Each one of these dates creates a different ‘average’ an different ‘norm’ and a different trend.
The AGW use the 1978 (the depth of a mini-ice age) to today to show a warming trend.
Some skeptics pick 1935, (the depth of a mini-warming period) to today to show a cooling trend.
Some pick 1990, others pick 2000… and ad nauseum.
So, what does it mean?
It means, over the long term future, very cold is the trend.
It also means, over that last 10,000, there has been a steady warming (thank God) due to the interglacial period. At this time, there is no known reason why this will suddenly stop for at least another 1,000 years.
In between, we’ll have warm and cold due to PDO (see above)
Oh, I’m still confused with it all really. What date they start with, what the temps were for that year, , what country, state, city, what ever. I don’t think I will really understand this global warming/cooling thing.
You’re more likely turn blue or pull your hair out, if you haven’t already, in trying to explain it to me before I think I will really ever get it. But, you guys are being patient with me in trying to help me understand it all, and for that I appreciate it. I don’t know maybe I need pictures drawn for me before I can really understand it. Or, maybe I just have a mental block and that’s what making me not understand. This is really just way over my head.
Judy,
But that’s the point I tried to make – it all depends on what date you start.
Consider you children growing up. If you made a trend, starting with them at 6 months to 18 years and guessed the trend for the next 20 years
…by the data they’d stand 100 feet tall.
But you picked their age to start the trend at 22 and measured them for the next 10 years – you’d guess by the age of 55 they’d be around 6 feet or so.
Here is the issue:
Since the beginning of time, there has been temperature. Until the end of time, there will be temperature.
The data set expands every day – and goes back a long ways. But is the data a long time ago reliable? The thermometers were not digital – they were ‘eye balled’.
How much error in the guess of the eyeball? Is it 11 degrees or 11.5 or 10.8? Makes a bit of difference if we are debating plus or minus a half a degree!!
So, everyone has a bias of start and end points – and that makes a difference on the presentation of their position.
So, here’s something you can cling to.
If merely the stop and start dates of the data – plus or minus a few decades – is enough to change the conclusion from warm to cold back to warm back to cold again…
…. really, in fact, the temperature has been pretty well static for the last 100 years (on average).
It it was significant, like the end of the ice age, there would be an undeniable warming – wouldn’t matter what reasonable start date.
If it was the beginning of an ice age, there would be an undeniable cooling – wouldn’t matter a reasonable start date.
When we have neither a significant warming or cooling – the start date matters!
Okayyyyyy!, But if different people start with different start dates and temps, wouldn’t they get all different ( All I can think of here is settings, ) for when global warming and cooling started to begin with?
How do we know what the real start date is? Do we go by the what the very first person who started went by or what?
I’m sorry BF, but I’m still not grasping it, and I might not ever be able to. Are you sure you want to continue this? By the time you’re done trying to explain all this, you just become old and gray, and won’t give a darn anymore.
Hi Judy!
I think what Flag is saying is that what ever we hear from these scientist about warming/cooling really don’t matter. It will have little effect on our lives as a whole. Stick you head out the door, feel the temp, wind direction, precipitation if any, and there you have it, weather at it’s finest.
The only reason that all this AGW stuff came to be is because of some peoples desire for power and money. It has nothing to do with the reality of whether or not the earth is warming or cooling. All the BS about what will happen in a hundred years is Super BS.
If they can scare the populas into giving them more of their money, that is their goal. This one is failing horribly, and there will be repercussions, short and long term.
The environmentalist have been exposed as frauds 🙂 smile, that’s a good thing!
G!
Now, see, that I understand, something I do everyday when I go out in the mornings to get my paper, I can feel if it’s cold or not.
Can we change the subject now,PLEASE? I’m getting a headache!
But, it’s going to have to wait until after dinner here. I made a home made pizza, and I have about 10 minutes left to go before it should be done.
Since we are talking about NOAA lets see what they are all about. From their web site.
About NOAA
Welcome to NOAA!
Dr. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA Administrator
NOAA National Weather Service
NOAA Satellites and Information
NOAA Fisheries
NOAA Ocean Service
NOAA Research
NOAA Office of Marine & Aviation Operations
NOAA Office of Program Planning and Integration
NOAA is an agency that enriches life through science. Our reach goes from the surface of the sun to the depths of the ocean floor as we work to keep citizens informed of the changing environment around them.
From daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings and climate monitoring to fisheries management, coastal restoration and supporting marine commerce, NOAA’s products and services support economic vitality and affect more than one-third of America’s gross domestic product. NOAA’s dedicated scientists use cutting-edge research and high-tech instrumentation to provide citizens, planners, emergency managers and other decision makers with reliable information they need when they need it.
NOAA’s roots date back to 1807, when the Nation’s first scientific agency, the Survey of the Coast, was established. Since then, NOAA has evolved to meet the needs of a changing country. NOAA maintains a presence in every state and has emerged as an international leader on scientific and environmental matters.
NOAA’s mission touches the lives of every American and we are proud of our role in protecting life and property and conserving and protecting natural resources. I hope you will explore NOAA and how our products and services can enrich your own life.
Dr. Jane Lubchenco
Administrator of NOAA and Undersecretary of Commerce
VISION
An informed society that uses a comprehensive understanding of the role of the oceans, coasts, and atmosphere in the global ecosystem to make the best social and economic decisions
MISSION
To understand and predict changes in Earth’s environment and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet our Nation’s economic, social, and environmental needs
NOAA CORE VALUES
People, Integrity, Excellence, Teamwork, and Ingenuity
Science, Service, and Stewardship
Now to get an even better handle on why this is being proposed, lets look at a key agency within the agency.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is a United States federal agency. A division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Commerce, NMFS is responsible for the stewardship and management of the nation’s living marine resources and their habitat within the United States’ Exclusive Economic Zone, which extends seaward 200 nautical miles from the coastline (about 370 Kilometers).
Using the tools provided by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the NMFS assesses and predicts the status of fish stocks, ensures compliance with fisheries regulations and works to end wasteful fishing practices. Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, the agency is also tasked with recovering protected marine species such as wild salmon, whales and sea turtles.
With the help of the six regional science centers, eight regional fisheries management councils,[1] the coastal states and territories, and three interstate fisheries management commissions[2], NMFS conserves and manages marine fisheries to promote sustainability and to prevent lost economic potential associated with overfishing, declining species, and degraded habitats. While the coastal states and territories generally have authority to manage fisheries within near-shore state waters, the NMFS has the primary responsibility to conserve and manage marine fisheries in the U.S. exclusive economic zone beyond state waters. The agency also attempts to balance competing public needs for the natural resources under its management.
Law Enforcement
The NMFS also serves as a federal law enforcement agency, working closely with state enforcement agencies, the U.S. Coast Guard, and foreign enforcement authorities. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Office for Law Enforcement is based in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Regulations
The NMFS regulatory program is one of the most active in the Federal government, with 100’s of regulations published annually in the Federal Register. Most regulations are published to conserve marine fisheries under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act; other regulations are published under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act.
It is the NMFS that regulates the Salmon recovery in the Columbia and all other pacific river systems. This agency’s primary role, in the old days, was to preserve fish for commercial use. To assure harvestable stocks were sustainable.
Dear Jane,
While your vision and mission sound like an excellent idea, I would like to discuss your first noted agency, The National Weather Service. Let me begin, that despite all of the current technology avilable to your agency, the NWS continues to experience regular failures in predicting what the weather will do, 6 hours from now, if that long.
An example was your snowfall prediction of Feb 5th, for Y-Town, Ohio. Your team predicted 3 to six inches until AFTER it started to snow and six inches had already fallen. In your wisdom, you changed your forecast to 6 to 10 inches at 8 pm. You then kept that forecast throughout the night. As I awoke early the next morning, a mere 19 inches had quietly built up.
Let this be a lesson on how much of an expert your organization really is! Try to keep things close to the vest and only predict what you think will happen in the next hour, because that’s all that you could possibly manage to get close to correct.
As far as your agreement about global warming, please read the above again, regroup, and try to let us know what to expect an hour from now, that should be your limit, because you SUCK at predicting the weather. That, would lead one to believe, that you certainly do not have the skills to reach out and predict what will happen a 100 years from now.
Your Biggest Fan,
G!
GMan
I especially love the conclusion: “NOAA’s mission touches the lives of every American and we are proud of our role in protecting life and property and conserving and protecting natural resources. I hope you will explore NOAA and how our products and services can enrich your own life. ”
Got that Matt and Buck. This single agency within a Dept touches the “lives of EVERY” American. Apparently NOAA is also a retail outlet as we are encouraged to try their “products and services” so that our lives may be “enriched”.
OTFLMAO
You folks out east should talk to the folks out here who used to work in the timber industry about how NOAA “enriched” their lives.
Tears dripping from my eyes and side hurts. Can’t stop laughing.
Live Free GMan
JAC
JAC!
I suppose that someone will accuse me of being “anti-intellectual”, because I applied common sense to fix a BIG problem within an agency that relies on intellectuals and apparently have thrown “common sense” out the back door!
This is becoming a serious discrimination problem! 🙂
Live Free and Happy!
G!
Common sense doesn’t work well in Washington. If it’s simple, then they don’t want anything to do with it, if it makes sense, the same.
And hogwash about you not being intelligent, I find you to be quite intelligent, so there.
USW
You asked this in your article: “And why exactly is the Commerce Secretary part of the deal.”
NOAA is an agency within the Department of Commerce. You have to go back to the original purpose of the agencies that were combined to form NOAA to understand. There mission was to help protect our coastal commerce with better weather prediction and protection of marine life critical to our economy.
See above for National Marine Fisheries Service. This agency had a dual role the Algorians hated. Save the Salmon to harvest the Salmon. Save the fish to harvest the fish. It did create an internal conflict of interest, but only if you subscribe to the theory that environmental protection is NOT related to human use of said environment.
I could not find a reference but it seems the Algorians pushed for NMFS inclusion into NOAA because they were able to load NOAA with their people. This put NMFS in a “lower” agency position and provided another layer of “supervision” to go through for those dealing with things like Salmon recovery.
It was a move similar to the combining of the Soil Conservation Service and USGS into a new agency.
All of these consolidations in the 90’s were designed to give greater emphasis and control to the environmental folks inserted into the agencies.
Hope that helps clear up the primary questions regarding why the proposal involves these particular agencies.
JAC
V Holland,
A while back you asked PeterB how to make a tongue stuck out smiley. Try this : – P all squished together. I’ll try it now 😛
😛
Thanks Anita-wish I had your memory 🙂
No you dont..Usually CRS. I was wondering myself that’s why it stuck in my head. I noticed if you put your curser on the smiley it tells you how to do it. Not always though. Seems like the font on this site changes someimes. If your names are LARGE then point to the smiley and it will tell you. Works for me 😛 🙂
And amazingly, the night becomes embroiled in how to make a smiley face stick out it’s tongue! 🙄
The diffinitive moment for a blogger is the proper use of smiley faces. It should not be ignored, as much can be said with the correct smiley face.
I will be happy when I can have a smiley face that can turn around and moon my friend Buck, just for shits and giggles 😆
G!
Let’s see if I can make this one work, I’m tired of the yellow ones
Well I see the subject has changed.
Let’s see if I can make a couple here.
🙄 😯
Hey, it worked, well whadda know.
I’ve wondered how much wordpress can handle with these things, not sure if they support all the ones I know of. I’ll try a new one and see {:) That should be a devil.
}:)
nope, it’s limited!
{:(
nope. but I’ve seen you put up devils before
😈
Cool HUH? 8)
Bet I can make one. Watch this.
👿
😈
Ta Da, But how do you make them blue or green?
Below
Show Off -P
Opps 😛
G-Man wins
Here’s what’s available at this time:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/smilies/
SWEET now you got something started G 🙂
That’s the one I have. But Matthew can make one giving the raspberry. I’ll have to ask him if he comes over.
Imagine, we’re playing with smilie faces while some worry wart whackball is panicking because the earth is going to turn into a frying pan and noone is doing anything to stop it 😳
😮
😀
Try again
YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
Better than getting drunk 💡
Sucks to be them. They’re just 😡 , and 😥 , and 😮 ❗ 🙂
Don’t have time or energy to read all but
. unintended consequences of any major plan to try to stop warming or cooling
. how about a study to see how much damage has been done to the environment because the liberals effectively shut down our nuclear energy – how much more coal and oil was used to keep us connected !!
. how much more coal (bad for environment) was used instead of oil, because we closed off exploration and Alaska oil
. Met 2 MD’s from India at SuperBowl party – they said India health care very good. I looked into a procedure that I’m having – about one eighth (1/8) the cost in India!
. I thanked the American Express customer care person for saving us. Just about everyone else in the world knows how great it is to be and have the opportunities of an American except it seems the A$$es in DC !
The list of smilies in the link is all there is 😥
OK! You can win a prize if you can say ” worry wart whackball” three times real fast. Let me know 🙂
I lose, can’t say it that fast. That’s as bad as saying she sells sea shells down by the sea shore.
Or, Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers. I don’t know how the whole things goes though
Waiting on Anita and vH ! Anita can write a sentence with smiley faces, she should be able to do this.
Can’t do it fast-and I’m still trying to figure out If your names are LARGE then point to the smiley and it will tell you. I don’t get it Anita-names are large??? 🙂
Yeah V- as soon as I figured out pointing the curser on the smiley seemed like all my names went to a smaller font and with small names pointing your curser didn’t work anymore. Now today suddenly my names are large again and pointing the curser works again. (names like Anita said or V Holland said) Hope that makes sense
I understand now just doesn’t seem to work for me- oh well-doesn’t matter because I saved the smiley face page G supplied 😎
You are 8) V That’s “cool” I hope
Right back at ya 😎
Wanna see if and what this makes :E
You trying to make a mustache?
Was supposed to be buck teeth.
Did it! Feel dumb saying it out loud with no one up
How many tries?
First time! Sorry G 🙂
No need to be sorry, see below and I’ll explain!
I think we made everybody leave.
I think most are laughing their butts off at 4 people who are suffering from cabin fever and have resorted to early elementary school forms of entertainment. With that said, say those 3 words above at your normal talking speed, bet you can do it!
I think you’re right, I think we’ve diverted back to our child hood. What’s next?
I can those words normally, but not fast. Comes our wrap ball,, or worry wert, but nor what it’s suppose to come out as.
Oh, hell I give up, now I can’t even speak right here, I’m leaving words out. I think I’m tired and about to get off for the night anyway, just a few more minutes.
You had a rough day Judy duking it out with Flag & PeterB. You did a fine job
Thanks Anita, wasn’t really duking it out, as I was just asking questions that came to mind. I think they left shaking their heads though.
That’s funny. Don’t worry. I’m sure they have shook their heads at us before ❗
Yea, but I have a tendency to ask a lot of questions too, so I know they are going to say things to make me think as well, especially Flag, ut he does have a way of explaining things so I can understand what he’s trying to say.
What’s next?? Fart jokes….. 8)
Was probably a reaction to the anti-intellectual remarks today
Ladies, After I did the Conspiracy theory article a few weeks ago, I started looking into mind control and how it is used and what makes it effective a majority of the time. When saying those 3 words together as you would normally talk, most can do it. But when reading “really fast” the brain reacts above our abilities, which causes failure.
I learned a really mean trick that cops do to people they don’t like. A cop will pull someone over whom he/she may not like, ask if they’ve been drinking. The cop will not react to “no”, he will ask you to do a field sobriety test. Which, most people will do. Now he has you hook, line and sinker. After you pass the FST, he will ask you to recite the alphabet, backwards!
Here’s the catch, if you attempt it, your going to jail, sober or not. So ask yourself, if your asked to do the impossible, while under stress, will you try? Or will you remember this post and ask the cop if he’s been doing heroin?
With that said, my phone will ring early to go to work, so i’m going to get some sleep. Night all!
G!
Night-I’m whipped too -Good night everybody -sweet dreams
Me too, getting tired, will see you here tomorrow.
Good night and sleep well.
Judy
I have talked about this with my friends and read these articles. What I found astounding is that even if the earth is changing its climate at various locations, Man seems to think they CAN do anything about it or should. The Climate has changed ever since the creation of this planet. Life has lived through all of these changes. I understand that we wish to preserve ourselves but ultimately we are at the mercy of the planet (see an angle of how there is no personal God?). A real big question is even if we could change the actual climate, what would it do to the planet as a whole?
A lot of people miss the point I made above. They also miss the point that we should debate having clean air and water, not climate change caused by Man (unless nuclear winter). I don’t think anybody would dispute that we need to have clean air and clean drinking water for life to keep existing.
If you do nothing else, please go chuckle at frozengore.com.
Yes, we impact the environment every day, and yes, good stewardship is a beautiful thing. However, the sun has more impact on our weather than carbon ever will – carbon is vital to life on our lovely planet. We can’t and should not mess with it – we could very well create a much bigger mess than the one we’re in now.
There were people blogging on MIT’s “Technology Review’s” website the other day about shooting things into the atmosphere to partially block sunlight in order to slow down AGW. WTF? These people are no better than eco-terrorists, but they’re convinced they’re RIGHT.
AGW is a myth created to fear monger and pad wallets. Stealing and lying is bad – learned that pretty early on. Anyone who wouldn’t share data within a scientific community that impacts public policy, even after they went at them with using FOIA, stinks to high heavens. This was evident years ago.
Stop the grants, stop the spending and hold these people accountable at IPCC and NASA. Stick Al Gore’s Nobel up his honker. is it really that difficult for people to admit they’ve been scammed???
Then, get on with legitimiate climate research AND, while you’re at it, develop some real alternative fuels that make sense to help our planet AND get us off the foreign crude.