Climate Catastrophe or Media Hype?
Subjected to a continual bombardment of catastrophism from climate activists, the public can be forgiven for assuming that recent extreme weather events, especially heat waves in North America, are unusual. Citizens would have little reason to suspect that most records for these phenomena were set many years ago.
But they were.
A quick check of the record books shows that the hottest period of the 20th century was during the “dirty thirties.” The 1930s Dust Bowl years were miserable for farmers on the American and Canadian prairies, far worse than anything we are seeing today.
Well-known American climatologist Stanley Changnon has documented how the 1920s and 1930s also witnessed significantly higher numbers of thunderstorms and associated violent weather than today. University of Alberta Emeritus Professor Keith Hage’s research showed that severe and destructive windstorms over Alberta and Saskatchewan peaked during the 1920s and 1930s and have lessened since.
The Prairies also witnessed unusually cold winter conditions during the 1910s and 1920s. Meteorologists still do not understand why the climate of North America was so anomalous during this period.
This year’s heat wave in North America is certainly severe, but the U.S. Midwest suffered a long and protracted heat wave during summer of 1980 as well. The summers of 1952-54 were similarly very hot in many regions of the mainland U.S. The graph below was presented on August 1, 2012, to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John R. Christy. Note that almost all state extreme temperature records were set decades ago.
The 1920s and 1930s also had more frequent, more severe, and longer lasting droughts in the American Midwest than in recent times. Many years in those decades had almost no rain at all for the entire year and there were no historic floods in the U.S. Yet climate activists blame global warming for this year’s droughts across the Mississippi River watershed resulting in very low river levels, forgetting about events 80 years ago when no one even thought about human-induced climate change.
They also forget that it was only nine years ago (2003) that historic highs were recorded along Old Man River and we saw the most devastating floods along the Upper Mississippi River Basin in modern times. Five years later, another historic flood occurred when the Cedar River (Cedar City, Iowa) rose to more than 11 feet above the previous record. Extensive flooding was also reported in 2008 in Illinois, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Why did such floods occur if human-caused global warming is supposed to be causing this summer’s droughts?
Regardless, severe floods are not merely recent events either. The deadliest flood in Canadian history was due to Hurricane Hazel, which killed over 75 people in Toronto in 1954. In 1969, the exceptionally powerful Hurricane Camille slammed the Mississippi state coastal areas killing 256 people. In total, 12 tropical cyclones in the north Atlantic reached hurricane intensity in 1969, far above normal. A year later a tropical cyclone in the Bay of Bengal killed about 250,000 people, the greatest number ever in a single weather-related disaster. But no one blamed global warming or climate change for such events. After all, the earth’s climate was generally cooling between 1945 and 1977.
Historical data show that weather has usually been more extreme during colder periods. This was especially the case during the centuries-long Little Ice Age that ended about 1850. For example, Chinese scientists report that “typhoon frequency seemed to have increased at least regionally during the coldest phases of the Little Ice Age.” Global warming apparently reduces tropical cyclone activity over all time frames. Perhaps this is why, in 2012, we are near a 30-year low in worldwide “Accumulated Cyclone Energy,” as can be seen here.
Oblivious to the historical record, climate campaigners continue to assert that the incidence and severity of extreme weather events will soon rise due to global warming. We are entering into what Al Gore calls a “new normal”; abnormal weather will become the norm as the planet warms due to our release of “carbon pollution,” he asserts.
This is nonsense.
First, carbon dioxide (CO2) is not pollution. It is an odorless, colorless trace gas responsible for plant photosynthesis and so all life on the planet. Higher concentrations of CO2 have helped world-wide forestry and agriculture.
The link between atmospheric CO2 levels and global warming remains elusive. Despite continually rising CO2 levels, the best available satellite data indicate that 1998 was the warmest year of the past 100, with temperatures staying more or less stable since 2003.
After reviewing thousands of scientific references, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) authors concluded “…the data reveal there have not been any significant warming-induced increases in extreme weather events.” They showed that this was the case whether the phenomenon being studied was precipitation, floods, drought, storms, hurricanes, fire, or other weather-related events.
This is not surprising. With further warming, the difference between arctic and tropical temperatures would drop, leading to less intense mid-latitude cyclones and so less extremes in weather, not more.
We will, of course, still have heat waves like the Russian heat wave of July 2010 which killed over 50,000 people. The NIPCC includes a study that attributed that event “to internal atmospheric dynamical processes” and concluded that “it is unlikely that the warming attributable to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations contributed significantly to the magnitude of the heat wave.”
We will also continue to have deadly cold spells like that in February 2012 when several hundred people in eastern and central Europe died as temperatures dipped below -40C. Since the new millennium, Europe has witnessed four exceptionally severe winters (2005/06, 2008/09, 2009/10 and the recent one in February), events that do not coincide well with global warming theories.
Some of the billions of dollars being wasted vainly trying to stop extreme weather should be diverted to reducing real environmental degradation due to air, land, and water pollution. It may also be better spent helping provide modern wells in developing nations where millions of people die of diseases caused by contaminated drinking water.
We must also better secure our base load energy supplies, especially hydrocarbon energy (coal, oil, and natural gas), the cheapest form available. Then we should use this energy to harden our societies to inevitable extreme weather by burying electrical cables underground, reinforcing buildings and other infrastructure, and ensuring that we have the ability to heat and cool our dwellings as needed. Finally, we need to develop better “early warning systems” by improving seasonal/short-term climate forecasting so as to minimize adverse impacts from extreme weather.
This sort of approach gives governments a way out of the global warming dilemma. When cancelling funding to the impossible task of “stopping climate change,” they need simply say, “We have concluded that public money is better spent helping people prepare for and adapt to weather extremes, whatever the cause. This is far more important than trying to stop what might, or might not, happen decades in the future.”
Now, now, don’t bother the alarmist community wioth those nasty old facts. They can’t handle the truth!
Look folks, nobody with any scientific education really believes the crap, or they would have their global meetings via the Internet. Al Gore wouldn’t have houses that use the energy of your average small town, and movie stars wouldn’t fly around in renovated Boeing 707′s.
This has all been about the transfer of wealth and always has been.
Maybe nobody with a scientific education believes it, but there are plenty of those with a scienific education that will claim they do. After all, its good for business.
NBC Ginned up the news that this was the hottest month on record, whereas CBS merely reported the facts.
There are plenty of peple with scientific education – indeed, people with doctorates in climate science and related fields – who believe in human caused
global warming – including some who are conservative politically. They may be wrong or misguided but most of them are sincerely motivated and not concerned with ransfer of wealth.
If you keep repeating it enough, people will look the other way when you pay out billions for solar energy.
I suppose you intend to ignore the terrible hurricane season the Gulf States have been experiencing this year!
BTW: I understand that water vapor is a greater contributor to the greenhouse effect than CO2. But that it isn’t mentioned because we are unable to rigorously factor its effects on a planetary scale.
Keep Rocking!
Of course – since it hasn’t been a terrible year for the Gulf states. Most of the hurracanes have hit the Atlantic states.
Yet another factor more important that carbon dioxide is ammonia. Also turns out that the contribution from ammonia is a function of activities in the upper atmosphere which are controlled by what goes on at the surface of the sun, not man.
How can CO2 be ammonia? CO2 is carbon and oxygen – ammonia is nitrogen and hydrogen.
I guess you intend to ignore the empirical data that hurricane seasons are cyclical. I guess that would be inconvenient, eh? Katrina is 10th on the list of strongest Atlantic hurricanes since 1924 and that doesn’t take into account a few others like Galveston 1900 and the deadliest hurricane ever, simply known as the Great Hurricane of 1780.
There is no evidence of any increased Hurricane activity outside of normal cycles. 2008 – 2009 represented a 30 year low. Funny how Al Gore’s prognostication that Katrina was just the beginning turned out to be 5 years of relatively no hurricane activity.
Well, we can’t rigorously factor the effects of CO2 on a planetary scale, either, but that hasn’t stopped the AGW crowd, has it?
How many tornadoes were their on the Great Plains in each year between 1760 and 1810? Or how about the annual number and severity of hurricanes in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico between 1360 and 1410? Blizzards in New England between 1460 and 1510? Droughts in the Great Lakes from 1550 and 1610? How about the annual average mean temperature across the Colorado Plateau for each year between 1650 and 1710? Yeah that’s right. We don’t bloody know for sure.
Mountain Girl,
You don’t have to go back that far before the tornado data comparison becomes moot. 30 years ago the only tornadoes reported were those actually seen by spotters or where the ground damage evidence was present. Now the weather service includes Doppler tornadoes in their data where they are indicated by radar, that may or may not, have supporting eyewitness or damage evidence.
Yet many use this raw tornado data to purport a significant increase in tornadic activity corresponding with global warming. I think think the NWS tries to shy away from comparing pre- and post- Doppler radar data. But it doesn’t stop many of the warming alarmists from using this as evidence, knowing most people don’t know about confounding factors created by changing tornado detection and rating methods in the last 30 years.
Apparently 52% believe in man made global warming. Isn’t that close to the number of people that work for the government in one capacity or another?
I don’t think it’s that high even in Europe and the people of the US are even more sceptical.
I have engineered a score of nukes and two score fossil fueled generating plants. They are complex systems. In predicting their future behavior, it was drilled into me, by experts, that you must never measure witness parameters, only direct phenomena, e.g. temperature, pressure, voltage, etc. While I respect climate scientists, I note that they should shout that they only have access to witness phenomena, e.g. correlating climate to tree rings. If they have global data, massive data, with strong correlation factors, they have some basis for a finding. But with finite data bases, they may only be detecting where a bear fell dead, or a temporary spring began, millennia ago. I note the continuing discovery of other results, from other forests, with other characteristics, as some thing to be expected, for an immature science.
The certainty required for a nuclear power plant is infinitely more rigorous than a computer program predicting climate change centuries from now. Both professionals are expected to know, not guess.
I have empathy for climate scientists in that the number of independent variables, in their chaotic system is complex, as difficult as sub atomic physics. The problem is beyond my knowledge, and the bulk of the earth’s population. Thus I take this article and others with a huge grain of salt.
But I would never abandon America’s bed rock energy technology, based on today’s climate science. I prefer risking the odd chance of future death than certainty.
Global warming is, and always was, about making money. Al Gore made tens of millions on his carbon offset scam. So-called “climate scientsts” have raked in millions in government grant money. Cronies of politicians have made millions on their “green energy” investments via the taxpayer. Global warming has been the biggest con game in the history of mankind, and we should be appalled that there are so many people willing to be duped.
No, it’s not.
It’s not about money. It’s not that trivial. It’s about something far more valuable.
It’s about power. This is being done in service to an ideology.
The money is merely icing on the cake.
Green is the new Red!
Let’s see warming in the 30′s, in the 50′s, in the 70′s, in the 90′s, and now in 2010′s. Anyone see a pattern here? It’s tied to the solar cycle, and always has been tied to the solar cycle. Experienced meteorologists know this, and they are being censored. The only scientists who predict global warming are modelers, i.e. not real scientists. However, since real science never made it into the 21st century, most people can’t tell the difference.
People often forget the problems in the 70′s which economically pretty much killed the small town on the plains. This was before global warming.
Another fact, hurricanes in the Atlantic are directly tied to the El Nino/La NIna cycle in the Pacific. In El Nino years (warm water) there are fewer hurricanes; in La Nina years (cool water) there are more. More hurricanes is actually tied to global cooling.
Obviously this poster is a “flat-earther” and “anti-science” Neaderthal.
We science-based warmers are certain that our human-constructed computer models are far more scientific than the mere data you guys use.
Hell, we are not even shy about scrapping the data if it conflicts with the results our computer models are written to provide.
Next thing you know, you’ll want to incorporate cosmic ray data!
Let’s Keep This Simple!
We science-based warmers are certain that our human-manipulated computer models are far more scientific than the mere data you guys use.
Fixed it for you.
‘..scrapping the data if it conflicts..’ – that’s a GOOD one, CraigZ.
I see NASA’s #1 ‘science’ AGW ideologue & scare-monger James Hansen is still getting arrested for his idiotic sit-ins, protests.
Remember Hansen’s ’88 chicken little hearing using his ahem, ‘climatological forecasts’?
The U.S., heck the WORLD didn’t heed his words and.. the planet had cooled!
CraigZ, I look forward to the IPCC’s 4th, or is it 5th revision now I lost count – regarding ‘the NWO ‘science community’ saving ourselves from ourselves’ ‘information’/ marching orders.
When I was younger, most scientists thought that the sun activity was at least partially responsible for weather and ESPECIALLY climate change. Now you don’t hear boo about the sun from climatologists. It’s like the sun ceased to exist in climate science. Obviously, they don’t want any conflicting players in their man-made CO2 scenario.
And why throw the sun out of the equation? Because you can’t tax sunlight (yet!) and man has no impact on the sun’s activity, the two requirements to promote the AWG hoax.
Climate Alarmists and Leftists share a common philosophy: Empirical reality is irrelevant. When it’s really frigid and cold, the Alarmists call it, weather; when it’s hot, it’s global warming. As a practical matter, Alarmists cherry-pick their data. See, for example, Anthony Watt’s take on James Hansen’s latest screed about global warming: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/06/nasas-james-hansens-big-cherry-pick/
Anthony also has a paper which appears to show that surface temperature data in the continental US has an upward bias.
As a practical matter, surface temperature has been used as a proxy for warming or cooling. What matters, though, is the total heat budget of the earth. That is not easily measurable, so surface temperatures are, as I said, the proxy. Surface temperatures, however, can be affected by many things that do not include global warming. Currently, what is driving the hot surface temperatures this summer in the continental US is the El Nino effect; but that effect has another effect. It is preventing cooler air from getting to the continental US. As a result, Alaska has been having a colder than usual summer.
Bottom line: It occassionally gets hot, but there is nothing to be alarmed about except in the addled brains of alarmists.
It seems more than myopic to study climatologic or geologic time in less than 10,000 year increments. Now we are imposed upon with computer model prediction time lines that at best are an infant science.
My science background says that whenever one changes the measurement instruments, the experiment is invalid. Over the past few decades the instruments have been changed expodentially from mere thermometers to a few satellites to multi advanced deep ocean and atmospheric systems. Tree rings and pollen in the Artic and what ever are then added into a rapidly diverse and accumulating data base. The rate of evolution of technology now far exceeds any rate of evolution of mankind. It seems that the old shaman huckster is still selling protection against the boogiemen of the elements.
Bwahaha, “the new norm” !?! Really? Um, no Al Gore, mother nature is a bipolar bitch. She always has been and always will be. Or tell me about this mythical time when everything was always perfect. Hmm, the temperature was a continuous 72 degrees farenheight, always a nice breeze rustling the leaves, just a few rain drops in the distance to keep the perpetual rainbow arching over the grassy mountain as the unicorn drinks from the perfect little meandering stream below. Ahhhh.
Hmm, sounds a lot like when I lived in Hawaii.
It would be wonderful if the whole world was like that all the time. Reality is bitch.
* a bitch
Sounds a lot like when I used to take ACID, under the clinical supervision of a Doctor of course.
The answer is no. There are not more catastrophic climate events than there once were. Sheesh. How in the world would you be able to answer that one with a straight face? A definition of what is catastrophic would have to be placed on every weather event that has ever occurred before you could even try to answer it. Good luck with that, Bozos. Next question. Environmentalism is the religion of the Communist Party and our President has been a member of the Communist Party, at least that’s what I have heard from a reliable source, eh?. ABO2012
We’ve become ingrained with the idea that something bad and unusual is a crisis, and that crises require swift action. In other words, telegenic drama begets legislative action to solve a perceived emergency. Less telegenic, of course, are musty things like old weather records and examples of scientific fraud through deceitful selection of data points. Nowadays, the gubmint is able to control the results of “scientific” studies through the careful giving of federal “research” grants.
To take one example of the appetite to accept fake science can be found in the Cap & Trade legislation the grate [no sic] RINO Mitt signed into law as govenor of Massachusetts. Save the world and all that.
Also, any nation that accepts that the world is teetering on the brink of weather ruination, without even so much as a single scientific proof no less, must also accept the need to disassemble sovereign nationalism in favor globalization, cuz weather crosses all borders.
I’m sure this is mere coincidence.
I am always amazed at how sheep-like and gullible news reporters are. And provincial. Not to speak of college professors outside their own field. Doesn’t anyone realize that North America is a very small corner of the world, and they might want to check the rest of the world – even the rest of the continent – before proclaiming global Chicken Little? This year, unlike last year and the year before that, part of North America has experienced heat and drought. Local warming. And we had a very mild winter, but Europe had a very cold winter. Everbody talks about the weather, but people didn’t used to take themselves so seriously.
Global warming is a fact. It is simple to prove, you take a thermometer and you measure the temperatures, you right them down, and you compare it from year to year. So now that we’ve established that global warming is a fact, then you look at what could be causing it. 98% of the scientific community that studies weather believes that man is having an effect on global warming.
Obviously another young recent college graduate exercising its right to write.
So how exactly does writing down the temperature daily and comparing it from year to year prove global warming exists? You are making the assumption that it is happening.
Read the article. Look at the graph. The graph does show instances of record highs and lows. You know, what you wanted people to write down and compare. Doesn’t look like it is rising to me. The ’30′s were an anomaly, but the rest of it looks pretty cyclical to me.
And any statistic without a source is just an anecdote.
Study some geology while you are in college. You apparently need to. Sheesh.
Study homophones to, then ewe wood no witch word two use when ewe our righting.
That hurt my eyeballs.
Global warming is a fact. It is simple to prove…
Global temperature is a wavelength that’s been either going up or down for millenia now. That’s simple to prove, it’s right there in the geologic record, which nobody disputes.
What’s hard to prove, and nobody has, is whether global warming is in a straight line trend now that will ruin civilization. The other thing that’s hard to prove, and nobody has, is that this putative straight line trend is caused by man (anthropogenic).
So you’re wrong that straight line impending climatological disaster caused by man is impending. This is why not one scientific proof has been established to back that contention.
What has been recently established is that we’ve just entered a global cooling period, probably about 3 years ago. The temperatures are dropping. There is a growing body of evidence that the temperature wave runs about 30 years in its shortest cycle, with longer cycles running longer. Scientists (real ones) call the long cycle part of this wave phenomenon the Little Ice Ages.
Two things:
1) It is the stupidest naivete to buy into the chicken little hype sold over the last 30 years, the kind that involves buying into false premises in the first place and then accepting as scientific proofs various computer models depending on arbitrary values as key variables, usually to get cash grants.
2) Chicken Little himself, ex-VP Al Gore, the scientist who invented the Internet, has banked his $100 million in cash, divorced his wife, and was last heard of accosting a masseuse while nude in a hotel room. But Al appears to be moving on now, in his gas guzzling private jet.
@ Pointy View:
you measure the temperatures, you right (sic) them down, and you compare it (sic) from year to year.
Dang ! You put your finger on the cause of the Global Warming problem.
All we need to do is outlaw pens and pencils ! ! ….. No writing down, no comparing, therefore, no Global Warming.
You should get a Nobel Peas Prize for that. Or at least some Pease Porridge.
Would that be Pease (sic) Porridge Hot? Or Pease Porridge Cold?
What’s the trend on Pease Porridge, anyway?
Whirled. At least that’s what my neighbor’s bumper sticker says.
Another point of view: Global warming may be a fact, but then it’s been warming since the 1700s. But here’s another fact: Since the 1st century BCE, there’s been some cooling (it was warmer in the early Roman period than today). Also, as I pointed out in my earlier post, surface temperatures don’t tell us much about global warming: what is needed is the heat budget of the earth, and for that, there are no data. But let suppose there were data, and they showed the earth to be warming. Then we have to ask ourselves the question about whether the warming is anthropogenic or natural. Now let’s suppose it’s anthropogenic, then the next question is whether it is harmful or beneficial (and BTW, there is no corellation between heating and droughts – this year is happenstance). Now let’s suppose further, we find that after determining there is global warming, that is anthropogenic, and it is harmful in some way. Then we have to determine the costs and benefits of trying to control whatever it is we are doing to cause the warming.
The assumption of the alarmists ‘climatologists’ who are pushing this whole thing is that the earth is warming, we are doing it, it is costly, and that whatever we do to stop it, the benefits must outweigh the costs. As it turns out, most of the alarmists are bad statisticians using questionable methods to determine there is warming; and then they use questionable methods to link the finding to something we’re doing. Then it gets worse: Because not only are they bad statisticians, they are not economists. They have no clue how to go about measuring costs, or the costs and benefits of what they are proposing. Like the outlawing of DDT, which is causing millions of malaria deaths in Asia, the successive attempts to outlaw carbon use will lead to poverty and misery for most of the world.
The Alarmists are simply Leftists in the guise of scientists whose goal seems to be to destroy capitalism and sink humankind into misery and poverty.
Another point of view: One more thing: Science does not depend on a consensus ‘truth’ but on empirical truth, and so telling me that a lot of people who call themselves scientists agree there is anthropogenic global warming does not make it so. But even more importantly, the 98% figure you cite is totally fictitious. Someone went back and looked at the study that yielded the 98% figure, and found it was based on very, very few observations. It is just another part of the web of lies constructed by the alarmists.
Ah, but what happens to your graph when the people taking the measurements systematically throw out measuring stations year after year? And the measuring stations that are being eliminated from the sample are overwhelmingly rural stations? Which then skews the data toward urban measuring stations? Which are well known to produce higher temperatures due to the heat sink effects of asphalt and concrete?
And what happens when 70% of your measurement stations are not properly installed and maintained? And all of the errors tend to make for higher temperatures (things like installing the stations next to an air conditioning unit on a roof, or in the jet wash at an airport, or painting with acrylic paint instead of whitewashing, as called for in the specs)?
Both of those scenarios are well documented. They will hold up in any honest court.
So now what becomes of your “fact”?
obviously a product of the public education system in the US.
We live a short distance from a pretty big source of heat: a star called Sol, the Sun. The Sun goes through cycles of activity. In recent years we have experienced a lot of solar activity. Check it out. Now there’s the source of most of the global climate changes in this Earth. Of course if you think human activity is the culprit simply measure (1) the size of our atmosphere (2) the extent and intensity of solar activity (3) the relative “size” or volume of gases and particulates spewed by busy humankind. Then assign the blame using common sense.
Example: I am in a room where a nice fire has been burning all day in the fireplace. Uncle Bob and uncle Billy are with me. They smoke occasionally, they eat (generating heat as they digest) and exhale CO2. If I start to feel a bit too hot… do I (1) kill my uncles (2) open a window (3) put out the fire in the fire place.
I believe solutions 2 and 3 are perhaps best. Of course we cannot turn off the sun but we can adapt to the changing conditions in the only planet we can live so far: put on a sweater or take it off, etc. The other solutions are suspicious especially when lots of promoters of the scare are making millions on the back of honest taxpayers. Like the former Senator from Tennessee.
Ha! A giant ball of nuclear fusion 1.3 million times our planet’s size that can warm an entire continent by 30 degrees F in a matter of hours could play a part in Earth’s very minor temperature fluctuations? I guffaw, sir.
Might that depend, in part, on some non-temperature factors, such as the character of your uncles, and your relationship with them?
Oh, why are things so complicated?
One must be careful with articles by Madhav Khandekar. He is listed as a technical adviser for the Canadian group Friends of Science (FOS). FOS is a group that has accepted money from the petroleum industry and employs lobbyists who concurrently work for Conoco Phillips Canada and Kinder Morgan Canada. The Friends of Science had previously processed contributions through trust funds established at the University of Calgary. In 2007, the University severed ties with the Friends of Science due to their politically partisan activities. The University audit concluded: “Research funds had been used to support third-party election advertising and other political activities” and that “funded projects did not constitute legitimate research or education.” In June 2006, Ian Rutherford president of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society said of the FOS: “They never present their arguments in front of scientists and should not be listened to”.
While the motivations of the presenters doesn’t disqualify the information, one has to consider the possibility that Madhav Khandekar was just as capable of cooking the numbers as the chief climate scientist of NASA.
Don’t forget to check under the bed for the boogeyman.
Richard Randolph is a global warming alarmist. Tell us Richard, what compound is needed for plants and what compound is needed by humans that is produced by plants? Your five seconds are up. Don’t forget that the smartest scientist in the world, Al Gore, is predicting New York to be completely under water in just a few more years. You follow a religion which is being pushed on you by a bunch of greedy leftists, Richard. And while you pontificate about the evils of the oil companies(as if you know the first damned thing about them) the oil and gas industry is securing our nation’s energy future right before the disbelieving eyes of the Gang Green(GG). GG is known to have accepted money from almost every taxpayer in the world and what have they done for any of us? ABO2012
Mr. Randolph – perhaps you or for that matter Tom Harris, can give us more info about who funds Tom Harris’ organization?
How old do these alarmist scientists claim the earth to be? Isn’t it something like four billion years old. Thus, we have had four billion years of weather—or maybe only a billion or so if you limit it to the time earth managed to accumulate a significant atmosphere.
But, we really only have reliable temperature data for less than two hundred years. How can anyone, particularly scientists, assert that we are currently experiencing extreme weather? Two hundred years of weather compared to a billion or more years of it. Such assertions of catastrophic global warming being unprecedented amount to rank stupidity.
“How can anyone, particularly scientists, assert that we are currently experiencing extreme weather?” They’re Creationists, obviously, because they only look at temperatures from the past 12,000 years or so and completely ignore anything before that.
As alluded in previous posts anything less than 10,000 year time frame is meaningless.
We have progressed technologically as far as we have due to unusually calm and pleasant geological / climate environment the last 3,000 years. Typically there are more ice ages, droughts, severe geological events, some to the point of near human extinction as the Indonesian volcanic event 75,000 years ago that left only a few thousand humans alive when it finished.
Climatologists live in the here and now, the reality of earth’s history is violent and extreme changes in the environment that swing from ice age to volcanic events to droughts to massive flood that carve monuments from solid rock.
Worrying about a few degrees increase maybe occuring in the earths average temp is silly and waste of money, it is nothing compared to routine geological events the earth goes through. It would be far better to have disaster management in place to avoid Katrina-like response on a national scale.
Disaster on an unprecendented scale will happen, how we recover will depend on how we prepare.
Re: floods.
Why go back to 2008?
How about last year in Tennessee?
Each year in the summer I watch the daily temperature divergence. The Weather Channel reports one temperature for my zip code at, say, 3:00 PM. The local ABC weather guy has another temperature. There’s a civilian weather station that feeds the National Weather Service’s data base about a quarter mile from me, and it has yet another figure. Meanwhile, the thermometer outside my front door registers a fourth number.
At three o’clock today, the numbers were, respectively, 106, 105, 109.6, and 107.
I’m sure all of these figures were accurate for the precise locality in which they were taken. So, which one is the global warming figure?
My point is that we are accepting a lot just by agreeing that we have measured the temperatures accurately. The same actually applies to satellite data, which comprises regular — not continuous — samples. There was a report a few years ago that AGW alarmists had interpolated upward-biased figures into the interstices between the satellite observations. Even interpolations that weren’t biased upward would still be interpolations, and not actual observations.
We don’t know enough to claim with certainty that we’re having more hurricanes or tornadoes now than the earth ever has in the era of men. Meanwhile, with every kind of scientific conclusion, key tests are replicability and predictability. Climate science isn’t even close to passing those tests as regards warming theory.
Based upon my Geology courses from the 1960′s, I recall my major science professor (Dr. Jack Walper-Deceased) – You can find references to him on the WEB & in Who’s is who in Geological Society of America. He taught that within the last 2 million years on earth, there were some 60 period of “Glaciation” lasting from a few thousand years to between ten thousand to upwards of thirty thousand years.
Further that we were now in a warming cycle. This is obviously before all the CO2s and related crap of Global Warming. Dr. Walper was an early adopter of the Plate Tectonics theory
He postulated that in the future his profession along with the Physicists would find a weak but sustained relationship between Plate Tectonics, Volcanos, & the continuous processional rotation and wobble of the “Sun Earth Moon System” which he thought would eventually lead to an understanding of why we have periods of Glaciation.
I believe I have stated his position correctly in general terms. I do not believe he would believe in Global Warming, Climate Change yes, GW no.
A brief final thought. If it is true, (as I believe) that Geologists know the “TRUE HISTORY OF PLANET EARTH” does it surprise anyone? that these men & women never actually appear either on TV or before congress to at lease discuss their findings and theories? I find it very strange.
Check “6″
Jim Baker, you miss the point. All authosr should publicly state their connections that may influence their results. An example in medicine is the JUPITER trial. In this study the author presented data on the use of a particular blood test to predict heart disease. What he didn’t mention is that he owned the patent on that test for cardiovascular work and stood to profit from its use. Madhav Khandekar should be up front about his connections to the oil industry in order for his findings to be given any credibility. Ad hominem attacks and exaggerations don’t advance your argument.
global warming alarmist = ad hominem?
is this the new mathandscience being applied?
curious how you react to the “oil industry” the way dracula does to holy water yet those ever benevolent lefty spinsters would not/could not possibly do any harm with the power gained via global warming hysteria
Don’t worry Richard, I got your point as soon as I read the inference that scientists can’t remain objective because they seem to some people to have received money from the oil and gas energy industry. I worked in that industry for 35 years, I was a geophysicist(scientist), and all we did was find new better and safer ways to find and produce oil and gas reserves. We never had a political agenda. We just wanted to produce something the world valued and make a profit by doing so. But we always took a lot of abuse from people who did not have a clue what we were doing. And while they were on the sidelines pontificating and subsidizing windmills, solar panels, and electric cars, we found enough energy reserves for more than the next 100 years. Now I watch all this faux alarm over “fracking”, as if there is suddenly some kind of conspiracy to contaminate everyone’s ground water, and I have decided that the Gang Green is now worried about losing thousands of taxpayer funded grants for studying a problem that no longer exists. Refute that before you talk about the greed of the oil and gas industry and the terrible damage they are inflicting on the CO2 levels in our atmosphere. Until then, I say you are nothing more than an alarmist who believes in a 30 year old myth. If that is an unjustified personal attack, please explain how it is any different from your assertion that my industry is basically evil. ABO2012
Thank you for doing work the work that allows my family to have a warm home and a vehicle to get to doctors appointments and the grocery store. For fueling the tractors that the farmers use to efficiently grow food. For fueling the trucks that haul the goods to the stores, so it is possible for my family to buy the goods. For fueling my lawn mower and weed whacker, keeping mosquitos and other pests at bay which could potentially sicken my family with malaria orother diseases. For providing the foundation for so many things vital to a healthy and prosperous society. Thanks.
Do let us know when such transparency will be forthcoming from the AGW movement.
Uh, hacked email accounts (which tell us the real story of their motives and methods) don’t count as transparency.
It’s about power and control and a world-wide hippie utopia run by “caring” people who have vanquished human nature.
“…… socialism, a system that would redirect the wealth of society to meeting human needs and restoring and preserving a healthy environment. Through central planning under the command of the working class, human society would be able to address and react to even some of the harshest aspects of global warming.
By sharing resources between regions, countries and even continents, the effects of droughts, floods and crop failures could be ameliorated. But this is not possible under capitalism, a system that limits governments only to actions that would based on the profit motive for the capitalist class. And the reality is, for the capitalists, polluting is profitable, and planning and constructing a sustainable economy is not.
Socialism would mean: developing our human resources through free and quality public education; strengthening workers’ organizations so that they can become partners in ecological recovery; reconstructing our health care system so that it can address the emerging public health issues that are coming out of the ecological crisis; promoting international cooperation, rather than militarization and war, which is necessary to reducing the human impact on the environment; and most importantly, including and respecting all members of our global community as brothers and sisters in this struggle.”
Source: LiberationNews.org.
Pretty much sums up the whole Global Warming / Climate Change fraud. Basically, the sky is falling and we can save you. Just agree to to implementation of the complete worldwide “progressive” agenda. Give us all your money. Become our servants. We will tell you how to live, tell you what to do, and most especially tell you what you think.
My answer has seven letters . . .
Again you miss the point. If all you want to do is to convince the convinced or to parade in front of true believers, have at it. If you want to convince others of the merits of your beliefs, present data with all the confounding variables up front and visible because to do otherwise detracts from the strength of your argument. If you want to change a minority opinion in science to a majority view, present your data to recognized authorities in the field and defend that data against all opinions to the contrary.
Richard, NOBODY misses your point. They just see it as delusional nonsense. You’ve just continued to repeat the same propaganda phrases we’ve heard ad nauseum. Like this one:
“If you want to change a minority opinion in science to a majority view, present your data to recognized authorities in the field and defend that data against all opinions to the contrary.”
Skepticism about AGW is only a “minority opinion” among promoters of the AGW/Progressive agenda. Including the self-serving grant recipients that assemble contrived climate models to support pre-conceived conclusions. Reference the CRU emails.
It has become obvious the “recognized authorities” you refer to consist solely of AGW agenda promoters and their grant-receiving hangers-on. Again, reference the CRU emails.
It is the AGW/Progressive agenda promoters who have made claims of an impending catastrophe which requires massive re-organization of human life on a world wide scale. The burden of proof lies with the ones making that claim – and they are well known for “hide the decline” and other blatant frauds. You know what to reference.
If you want anybody to agree to the scale of changes demanded by the AGW crowd, it’s you who must provide data to support your position, and you who must defend it against opinions to the contrary. We’re not going to bankrupt the world without a damn good reason.
So far, instead of solid scientific proof, all we hear is claims of superior intelligence, infallible “experts”, fraudulent “consensus”, and of course, insults. Those are not convincing. Not even close.
CFM, Anthropogenous global climate change is majority belief of the scientific community. The burden of proof is on you. Read Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions or Imre Lakatos’ Methodology of Scientific Research Programs to get an idea of how scientific paradigm change occurs.
No sir. In science the burden of proof is always on the purveyor of the theory. No proof has ever been forthcoming on AGW because, so far there is no way to prove the theory. That is why AGW is a political football whose only truth is that the theory cannot be disproved any more than it can be proven. It is a great theory to bandy about in front of politicians because politicians are only worried about being caught being wrong. That is why the pseudo-scientific community on the college campuses uses the theory to get “study grants” from the powerful politicians. The theory doesn’t even appear to stand up to the most basic scrutiny. What would be wrong with CO2 in our atmosphere anyway? Plants need it for photosynthesis, eh? You might be right that the majority of scientists are in favor of the AGW theory. They want to keep getting those politician’s “study grants”, don’t you think? Follow the real money and you will see who benefits from this so called settled science and who might actually have a reason to tell lies. ABO2012
Science is not, and has never been, an opinion poll. What work have you ever done to supply energy for everyone to use? I am sick and tired of ill informed people who make up crap and then ask the intended target of their made up crap to explain why their made up crap is made up crap. Do your own damned research, Bozo.
No attention should be paid to the Univ. East Anglia CRU since they have received millions of funding from BP and Shell, including seed money. E-mails show they continue to seek funding from oil companies. Alarmists don’t want to talk about their connection to oil companies. I have never seen anything but accusations that any funding, for skeptics, came from oil companies in the last decade.
The scientific models on which AGW alarmists base their arguments are falling apart faster than a cheap suitcase. Even the IPCC is abandoning scientific evidence in its reports in preference to conjecture from alarmists. In other words it is short-term spin instead of solid long-term evidence.
Dr. Bob Carter – a leader in the charge against AGW alarmism – in a recent essay put it best when he wrote: “The scientifically preferable null hypothesis regarding observed modern climate change – because it is the simplest consistent with the known facts – is that it has a natural causation unless and until factual evidence indicates otherwise (Carter, 2010, p.144). Literally tens of thousands of scientific papers describe facts that are consistent with this null hypothesis; in contrast, not a single credible paper yet provides factual information that substantively conflicts with it.”
Carter’s argument is further supported by the simple fact that the long standing offer of $10,000 by former Houston University professor, Dr. Michael Economedes, for the first peer reviewed scientific paper that definitively demonstrates the causality between man-made CO2 and global warming has yet to be claimed because no such paper exists. That’s right, not one.
Highest temperature ever recorded
El Aziza Libya 136 degrees Sept 13, 1922
Highest temperature ever recorded in North America
Death Valley 134 degrees July 10, 1913
Highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica
Hope Bay 59 degrees January 5, 1974
Highest temperature ever recorded in South America
Rivadavia Argentina 120 degrees December 11th, 1905
Why have these records not been broken if global warming is real?
Media (and Green Fraudsters) hype
h++p://wattsupwiththat.com/ has some nice graphs
To show just how dishonest this whole thing is, I point you to the following: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/08/an-incovenient-result-july-2012-not-a-record-breaker-according-to-the-new-noaancdc-national-climate-reference-network/#more-68886
NOAA’s own unbiased data show it has not been the hottest summer on record. But does NOAA publish the results. No way because it doesn’t fit the alarmist meme. Rather, it publishes biased results from poorly sited temperature stations because that does fit the meme. This is nothing less than the corruption of science in the name of some greater good (=bad).
Whoa, I think you should read the comments and think about Watts’ claim. His point is that the NEW way measuring temperature, an apparently a better way yields a July average that is lower than the OLD way of measuring for July 1936. But, so what? As a number of commenters point out, he is comparing apples and oranges. It does raise a question about exactly how NOAA is asserting that this July was the hottest, but the reference to new system tends to blur the issue.
Obviously, you have not read Kuhn.
Obviously, you have.
Read Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions if you want to change the way the majority of climate scientists view AGW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions
How disappointing that there isn’t a mention about the relationship between solar flare activity and earth temperatures that has been well known for 500 years. Solar flare activity this year has been very aggressive: thus the unrelenting heat scorching the earth in 2012.