Unseasonably cold weather in the UK has spurred speculation the earth may be entering a new Ice Age. This flies completely in the face of last decade’s strident warnings about Global Warming. “Piers Corbyn believes that the last three winters could be the harbinger of a mini ice age that could be upon us by 2035, and that it could start to be colder than at any time in the last 200 years. He goes on to speculate that a genuine ice age might then settle in, since an ice age is now cyclically overdue. Is he barmy?”
Piers Corbyn is about as “barmy” as Time Magazine when it predicted in 1974 that another Ice Age was right around the corner.
Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.
The same tone of impending doom; the same portentous omens; the same catastrophic language was used not long ago — but to warn about a new Ice Age. Today the same tenor is being used to caution against Global Warming. How did the “science” turn 180 degrees around in that time? How could the data have suddenly done an about-face? Who knows?
What is common across the decades was the assertion that weather is generating a political crisis which forces governments to act. Back in 1974, the scientists who looked at Global Cooling believed it would cause the world to starve from freezing crops unless of course, something was done. Today their scientific descendants are claiming the world will starve to death from wilting crops unless something is done. What exactly the crisis happens to be seems less important than acting. Just don’t stand there. Do something.
University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: “I don’t believe that the world’s present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row.”
And the direction of that required action always flowed one way. America had to change. Strange as it may seem to people who’ve watched television for the last ten years, a major concern of the 1980s was that burning vast amounts of carbon from nuclear fireballs would cause a “nuclear winter”. “In 1982, a special issue of Ambio devoted to the possible environmental consequences of nuclear war included a paper by Crutzen and Birks anticipating the nuclear winter scenario.”
Crutzen and Birks showed that smoke injected into the atmosphere by fires in cities, forests and petroleum reserves could prevent up to 99% of sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface, with major climatic consequences … Around this time, interest in nuclear war environmental effects also arose in the USSR. … Russian atmospheric scientist Georgy Golitsyn applied his research on dust-storms to the situation following a nuclear catastrophe. … In 1984 the WMO commissioned Georgy Golitsyn and N. A. Phillips to review the state of the science.”
They found that a nuclear war destroying half the world’s cities would create “large quantities of carbonaceous smoke – 1–2 × 10^14 grams being mostly likely, with a range of 0.2 – 6.4 × 10^14 grams (NAS; TTAPS assumed 2.25 × 10^14). The smoke resulting would be largely opaque to solar radiation but transparent to infra-red, thus cooling by blocking sunlight but not causing warming from enhancing the greenhouse effect.”
The implication was clear. If the world wanted to avoid nuclear winter, then nuclear disarmament would have to be imposed. And that meant disarming America above all. Jonathan Schell’s, The Fate of the Earth, “helped focus national attention in the early 1980s on the movement for a nuclear freeze. The Fate of the Earth painted a chilling picture of the planet in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, while The Abolition offered a proposal for full-scale nuclear disarmament.”
Just how exactly cows farting can cause “Global Warming” while exploding thousands of artificial suns on the surface of the planet freezes it is a mystery to me. But the physical process itself may be irrelevant. Whether the world is cooling or warming, or whether burning down every living tree and wooden house on the planet actually cools or heats the earth appears to depend on one political constant. It will always be America’s fault. Back when the US had the preponderance of nuclear weapons, “nuclear winter” was the great danger. When it had the preponderance of cars, Global Warming was the universal peril. The process is apparently this: light a match, any match. To the question, does it heat or cool the world, look at where the match is made or failing that, who is striking it. Is it made in the USA? There you have your answer.
To the question: is the world entering a new period of cooling, perhaps Piers Corbyn should ditch his datasets and statistical analysis programs and focus on one single variable. Can a New Ice Age be blamed on America? If it can, then it’s real. Otherwise it is false. Over the coming years and beyond my lifetime, historians may wish to apply this formula: V = American Policy multiplied by the absolute value of any variable. It’s always America’s fault.
One of the great achievements of the Enlightenment was the emergence of Reason as the primary source of authority. The most worrisome thing about the recent history of climate change “science” is its apparent arbitrariness. Perhaps the world is entering new climatic age — whether of fire or ice is uncertain — but that is not as worrisome as the mental epoch to which it seems to be returning. The Dark Ages were a time when belief — or to use another word, ideology — was the arbiter of truth and social position the determinant of legitimacy. Between Marxism and the Islam, what odds would you give Galileo?
Link to Wretchard’s novel “No Way In” print edition
Link to Wretchard’s novel “No Way In” Kindle Edition”
the last quote needs reformat. uyour usual pithy commentary is mistakenly attributed to Crutzen and birks
Of course earth’s climate has always cooled or warmed. Most geologic history of the surface has existed under tons of ice and snow…ice ages are sort of the default state. And yes, we are somewhat over due for an ice age, just as southern California is overdue for the “big one.” The governator declared an emergency in six socal counties today for extreme rain fall. Guess CARB didn’t get climate regulated soon enough.
As an aside, it is the consensus of Wikipedia that the global cooling page cannot be used to discuss any modern cooling. By policy it is only for the explanation of the 1970s cooling scare, that’s all.
To do otherwise would be to provide a place in wikipedia to discuss evidence that the globe is not, in fact, warming. And we can’t have that.
“But if the world could perish twice …”
Well it’s a crisis. There is only one reasonable course of action to prevent the obliteration of humanity.
White human beings must immediately stop creating carbon, the obvious reason for the new ice age, return to living in caves and huts, and grant total dictatorial powers to the small group of clairvoyent leaders who have been prediticting this crisis for decades.
And, of course, taxes will have to be raised.
The one thing we must not do, cannot risk doing, is to lower the lifestyles of our precious clairvoyent leaders. They need to have absolute peace of mind to save the world from the crisis. Of course, that necessarilly means a sumptious lifestyle, the best and brightest medical attention, and access to the most nubile and desirable sexual partners to relieve the constrant strain on their brains.
For simplicity, we can simply give the lifestyle that Mao pioneered in order to rescue a billions Chinese.
I love it. We don’t really understand what’s happening, but we DO know beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever it is, human activity is causing an undefinable problem and for that reason it’s all America’s fault. Something must be done. To America. Actually, doing anything is preferred over doing nothing.
The situation reminds me of the bawdy tale of the elephant and the mouse, but that’s a story only Habu might appreciate.
I thought it was supposed to be “the fire next time”.
But if it is an ice age, I blame Algore for pulling down the full forces of irony upon us.
Thanks for putting the current ‘sky is falling’ scenario in perspective. We are fortunate today to have news sources other than a handful of idealogues posturing as journalists that controlled news for decades. If we can keep our first amendment rights via the internet, we won’t go back to the dark ages.
The increasing percentage of Americans who no longer consider the MSM relevant will make it more and more difficult for a corrupt centrist government to keep a fantasy alive. The corruption of government, whether by rich special interest groups such as environmentalists or by people like Al Gore who invest in technology dependent on tax money, will be exposed before it destroys the country.
We’d not be having this discussion if we hadn’t destroyed our constitution.
I was banned from a Swampie site for suggesting the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear winter as a cure for global warming. They not only didn’t find it amusing but thought my target list was egregious. I really didn’t think they would notice that I had the academic centers of the AGW movement on my list. Oh well, serves me right for underestimating those with the IQ of a chia pet. Although anyone that thinks Humans control weather/climate leans more toward the ‘box of rocks’ end of the IQ range then a chia pet.
Total and absolute Rule by the Wise is an old and lonely concept that has been searching for its mate, the problem to which it is the answer, for a very long time. It is a solution in desperate need of a question unto which it fits. In its forlorn state it keeps looking for love in all the wrong places, like fraudulent studies about AGW.
How interesting it is. The self-proclaimed Wise have been pushing the notion that CO2 warms the planet. But if we are going into an Ice Age, mini or not, doesn’t that mean that we should be burning as much carbon as we can to fend it off? Wind and solar power? How crass and stupid–neither system throws off CO2 which is needed to save the planet from the Ice Age. Down with them.
Ah what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
“Global Warming” became “Climate Change” quite a while ago, and, at least for this American administration, has morphed into “Climate Disruption.”
The whole point is blatantly obvious: whatever is (or is not) going on, the left must be “in charge” of “it.”
Imagine how prosperous our nation would be if this “resourcefulness” were channeled into creating useful products and services!
Wretchard,
You are identifying the left’s earnest application of the same principal expressed by a puritan in the 80s TV commedy Blackadder ii, (“Beer”)
“Cold! Cold is G-d’s way of telling us to burn more Catholics!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMl2kRW-xlA (it’s at about 3 minutes 10).
You pick up on the several other strands, besides it all being, like all other bad things in this World, the fault of the great (aggressive and white and everything else bad) Satan.
The Hobbesians and the Marxists really hate the success of the Lockeian US. However the US is made to fail, that failure will be blamed on individualism and free enterprise.
The Malthusians are still desperate for their pet theory to be made to be correct (they seem to want people to starve for the satisfaction of saying “Told you!”).
The climate scares keep comming.
According to my Grandfather, who retained an unpleasantly sharp mind into his mid 90s, there were at least 4 scares about man made climate change, during the 20th century.
The first was around the 1920s and was attributed to “wireless”
The exceptionally cold winters of the 1940s, culminating in the Winter of 1947 in Britain, was attributed to “High Flying aeroplanes” The worst of the 1947 snowfall was in May.
The Ice age is coming scare of the 70s (listen to the Clash song; “London Calling”)
and
The dangerous AGW/ Climate change/Climate Disruption
Scares, we are all well aware of.
I’m guessing that the only folks who believe the BS about 2010 being one of the top 3 hottest years in the instrumental record, are the ones who are paid with our taxes to say they believe it.
The dangerous AGW crowd go strangely quiet when I point to red fossil clay soil horizons in East Anglia (the bit of eastern England that bulges out, above London) from the Ipswichian Interglacial.
In the present interglacial, you have to go as far south as the Mediteranian before you get climates warm enough that you begin to find rubified clay soils.
Fossil bones from the Ipswichian interglacial show England had an African fauna, lion, hyena, elephant, hippopotamus… to go with the hot climate.
We are well past the temperature optimum of this Interglacial. That was about 8,000 years ago, but we are many thousands of years away from the next downturn into a glacial.
Knottedpropblog has a couple of recent posts linking to the Carboniferous glaciations and the Little Ice Age. The normal state of the Earth through the last 600M years is for no all year round polar ice caps!
(Those who take Archbishop Usher’s estimate for the age of the Earth, I’ll be waiting around the back if you want to fight about it
)
Surely “1014″ means ten to the fourteenth power. Can’t Wretchard find a font that is capable of exponents?
Does anyone know when the “warming trend” that signaled global-climate-warming-change is supposed to have started?
The most prevalent one I remember pegs it at starting around the year 1850, but even that is not a solid or even a standard benchmark.
Anybody hear other “theories?”
Wretchard said:
“The most worrisome thing about the recent history of climate change “science” is its apparent arbitrariness.”
This brings up the issue of “Climategate”. Prior to Climategate, many of the people who do climate modelling for a living were saying that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) was a proven fact and no further debate was necessary. This was an amazing claim given that climate modelling is a black art and based upon highly tweekable computer models. Then Climategate came alone. An anonymous hacker broke into the computers of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and posted their data on the Internet. I took a look at the posted data and IMHO it was damning. The people at the CRU appeared to have been in close cooperation with prominent journalists and politicians promoting AGW. The people at CRU also appeared to be modifying raw data to advance specific scientific theories and were subverting the scientific peer review process to exclude publication of rival scientific explanations. This is what I saw after reading the data posted on the Internet. Later on there were three independent review committees that exonerated the CRU. This seems contrary to what I personally observed. I’m not alone in thinking this:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704075604575356611173414140.html
However if you go to the Wikipedia article on Climategate, you’ll find a locked article claiming that the CRU scientific process was valid and they were fully exonerated by independent review.
So what’s the truth? I have no clue. However one thing I do know is that socialists typically lie about their politics. I also know that socialists were using AGW as a justification for extending their control over the political process.
I fixed the font by using the exponential sign.
With regard to the general discussion the climate is one of the things we are still trying to understand. Maybe AGW exists, maybe not. But nobody is doing anyone a favor by saying, “well we already have the answer” when we don’t.
If we are ignorant then engaging in wholesale climate engineering is as at least as dangerous as doing nothing. As Michael Crichton pointed out the Park Service can’t even manage Yellowstone Park, so how the heck can the UN, of all agencies, run the world’s climate?
I think it can’t. And if it tried it would make a hash of it, even if it knew what it was doing, which is doubtful. How many of us would entrust the removal of an appendix to people who have only the vaguest understanding of where it is located, or what it does? If this is the state of the art, it may be better to let nature take its course than submitting to the leechcraft of Phil Jones, Michael Mann and Al Gore.
If I remember correctly,
The hockey stick graphs all started about 1872.
If you move the starting point a couple of years either side of that, the trend isn’t there.
It really is more a work of impressionist art than anything scientific. Steve McIntyre who is used to doing mining reserve audits, to the standards required by stock exchanges is quite clear about it, if the mishmash of different cherry picked data types were presented to a stock market, the people who’d signed off on it, would be facing long jail sentences.
I must get Montford’s book read, I’ve had it over a year now! apparently he covers all of Mann’s fudges with cherry picked data and insignificant r^2 values.
The epicycles though had the virtue of actually being Fourier coefficients for elliptical motion.
Somebody used real data for those.
I, Nostradamus, sage, scholar, clairvoyant, renowned for a magical ability to predict everything, up to, but not including, six furlongs, see many things, though dimly and fleetingly, as through a shot glass darkly. I see much confusion as people wonder who they can believe, climate scientists who cook the books or their own lying eyes. I see both camps as being correct; the coming Ice Age will cover the United States, but no one else, with several miles of ice and snow, only to be rescued just in the nick of time by Al Gore as Global Warming quickly melts the ice and snow causing the seas to rise and flood the United States but no one else. All to no avail, for the Maya have it right also, and no sooner will the ice and snow melt and the seas rise than it will all come to a screeching halt, but only in the United States. My final prediction is the market in green bananas is headed for the toilet.
The Power sees that all will die
Embracing full the warming lie
Until they reckon ice and snow
An Ice Age is the way we’ll go
Fierce run winds and snow and ice
In a geologic trice
For just eleven thousand years
Fomenting global cooling fears
The people write it down in stone
And keep it for themselves alone
They know men will no longer delve
For it will end in 2012
#11 Don Rodrigo The whole point is blatantly obvious: whatever is (or is not) going on, the left must be “in charge” of “it.”
That’s it in a nutshell. You nailed it.
The other thing that tortures lefties is that the dear old Earth is actually “Planet Plenty” but they desperately want it to be “Planet Doom”. Oil, electricity, timber, minerals, the human genome and all the other magnificent gifts of nature are, to a lefty, curses upon mankind.
You have to admit that it’s funny watching lefties’ eyes water when mother nature flicks her petticoat in their eye.
When challenged, the warmerists produce the whole gammut of rhetorical fallacies, rather than producing the data and source code for their models.
I think that tells us all we need to know.
For anyone who’s interested in a refresher, there is a very good listing of fallacies, from “ad hominem” onwards here:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/index.html#index
rhhardin,
The Milankovich cycles (orbital forcing of climate) are pretty well borne out by the oxygen isotope variations in sediment cores from seamounts.
These cores give a temperature proxy from condensed sediment sequences which (it is hoped) provide a continuous record through the Quaternary Period.
The references to the early work were Shackleton (a descendent of the Antarctic explorer who never lost an expedition member, and who retired to run a pub in Athy, County Kildare). They showed about 20 cycles of ice advance and retreat. There is only evidence surviving on land for about 4 or 5 advances.
rhhardin @ 18 said:
“The epicycles though had the virtue of actually being Fourier coefficients for elliptical motion. Somebody used real data for those.”
We still use geocentric models (and epicycles) for modelling planetary motion. For example, the equation describing the perturbation on the planet Mercury’s ascending node is:
mercury->d_asc =
2.04e-3 * cos(5.0 * venus->mm – 2.0 * mercury->mm + 2.1328e-1)
+ 1.03e-3 * cos(2.0 * venus->mm – mercury->mm – 2.8046)
+ 9.1e-4 * cos(2.0 * jupiter->mm – mercury->mm – 6.4582e-1)
+ 7.8e-4 * cos(5.0 * venus->mm – 3.0 * mercury->mm + 1.7692e-1) ;
The above equation shows four trigonometric functions (cosine) with mean anomoly of Mercury, Venus and Jupiter as independent parameters. These are essentially epicycles. The reason why Copernicus’ heliocentric model was “correct” was because it was simpler and enabled Kepler to come up with his laws of planetary motion. In turn, Kepler’s laws served as the basis for validating Newton’s work on planetary motion. None of the this was possible under the earlier Ptolemaic geocentric model because it was too complicated and effectively a dead-end.
W: “One of the great achievements of the Enlightenment was the emergence of Reason as the primary source of authority. The most worrisome thing about the recent history of climate change “science” is its apparent arbitrariness. Perhaps the world is entering new climatic age — whether of fire or ice is uncertain — but that is not as worrisome as the mental epoch to which it seems to be returning. The Dark Ages were a time when belief — or to use another word, ideology — was the arbiter of truth and social position the determinant of legitimacy. Between Marxism and the Islam, what odds would you give Galileo?”
Exactly. And, to answer your question: very long odds indeed.
To all: presumably you are already familiar with Anthony Watts’ site, Watts Up With That, which discusses climate, weather and related stuff (e.g. solar activity) from the skeptics’ POV. I have learned a great deal there. Nothing that I’ve learned suggests we are NOT facing some cold times to come.
Getting back to my post at #15, I linked an article by Patrick J. Michaels. The Wikipedia article by Michaels can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Michaels
Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral point of view (NPOV) which of course it isn’t. In the above article about Patrick Michaels we find the ad hominem comment:
“Michaels is another of the handful of U.S. climate-change contrarians … He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science.”
In the same article we can find the following:
“His writing has been published in major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science, as well as in popular serials such as the Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, and Journal of Commerce. He was an author of the climate “paper of the year” awarded by the Association of American Geographers in 2004.”
We are lead to conclude that the author of the climate “paper of the year” awarded by the Association of American Geographers in 2004 has also published little if anything of distinction. This sort of nonsense is precisely why it’s nearly impossible to discern the truth about AGW.
It’s the sun, silly! Hairless Apes have nothing to do with it.
I’m waiting for Ford to produce a big block Mustang. Then I will buy one and pump my fair share of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere.
stoicheion @ 26 said:
“I’m waiting for Ford to produce a big block Mustang. Then I will buy one and pump my fair share of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere.”
Hopefully your car’s piston rings won’t be leaking and you’ll only be pumping out CO2, H2O and a little bit of NOx. My 64 Rambler pumps out plenty of hydrocarbons and its embarrassing (I really need to rebuild its engine).
24. oMan
W: “One of the great achievements of the Enlightenment was the emergence of Reason as the primary source of authority.
…………
The change heralded by the “Enlightenment” was also emergence of the State as the Primary source of authority.(As opposed to the church.)
Remember the big European event of the previous century was the 30 years war between the catholic and protestant kings of europe. The war was started over the fate of catholic properties mostly in Germany –especially those in protestant lands–especially those that were expropriated by protestant kings. (A very pale shadow of these kinds of disputes takes place today among episcopal churches in the USA.)
The 30 years war resulted in the expulsion of protestants–especially calvinists–who came to the new world and a century later formed the USA.
In Europe the 30 years war broke the power of the catholic church.
Last I heard, Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” which (sort of) started the rebuttal wave, was on record supporting the global warming trend, without the anthropogenic part.
From the 1974 Time article on global cooling:
University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: “I don’t believe that the world’s present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row.”
This was from an article about global cooling.So, 1972 was cold, cold, cold, in addition to being dry, dry, dry. I recall that in New England, while the winter of 1971-72 had plenty of snow, it didn’t stay on the ground long,with multiple incidents of rain melting snow. It was the warmest winter I could recall up to then. Yet it was in the “global cooling” scare cycle.
Well, America isn’t the only problem now. Here are the folks at Cancun, “trying to save the world” from CANADA (which has apparently descended into a conspiracy with America).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdC0pvkevEU
“All the blame, all the shame”.
The hockey stick graphs all started about 1872.
But doesn’t the infamous Hockey Stick go back to the Roman Empire?
My incompleted point at #14 was that the ranges of years from which warming trends have been calculated are all over the map, and there doesn’t appear to be any set model or consensus of when a genuine, identifiable warming “trend” that is still “continuing” even started. So much for “consensus,” huh?
As for the mid-19th century “models” for the beginning of a trend, they have to be utterly bogus from the AGW standpoint, although not necessarily from the standpoint of a natural warming trend (after all, we could be said to be slowly crawling out of the Little Ice Age by fits and starts).
The reason why AGW a century-and-a-half ago is ludicrous is because of the historical realities of the industrial revolution. At that time the industrial revolution was almost entirely confined to one quadrant of the northern hemisphere straddling the N. Atlantic. It was simply not physically possible for man-made CO2 levels to overwhelm nature’s means of absorbing that gas at that time, and that’s assuming that CO2 is as potent a greenhouse gas as propagandists make it out to be. “Gradual warming” due to gradual increases in CO2 is also bogus, because it doesn’t work that way. What has to happen is a reaching of “critical mass” where natural means of carbon absorbtion are saturated. The earliest this could have happened, if this is even true of the dynamics of CO2 would be the late 1980′s because of China and the “Asian Tigers” being added to the industrial mix. If a genuine warming trend has been identified that started much earlier, it ain’t man’s fault. Of course, if you get AGW’ers to concede that last point, they’ll still insist that “well, humans are making it worse!”
AGW alarmists have a real problem with the inconvenient truths of history, whether we’re talking about the Medieval Warming Period (which Michael Mann finally acknowledged) or the Little Ice Age, or the fairly long-term cooling trends around WWII and earlier.
They also ignore the Bronze Age, which historians have known for decades was warmer than the subsequent Iron Age whose “climate” we still live in, and with no catastrophic results because of the warmer weather. But then, why would there be “catastrophes” because of milder weather?
@ Eggplant #15, #25: quotes Wikipedia article:
“Michaels is another of the handful of U.S. climate-change contrarians … He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature…He was an author of the climate ‘paper of the year’ awarded by the Association of American Geographers in 2004.”
Good find.
Which shows why Wikipedia has the reputation for being OK for uncontroversial subjects, as long as you check its sources, but hijacked by biased posters for controversial subjects.
In some cases, it is easier to find good source articles using Wikipedia than Google. But anyone who directly quotes Wikipedia to prove a point other than Wikipedia bias, is a fool.
The worst part of the AGW versus the New Ice Age argument is not simply that one or the other is designed to line one or another group’s pockets but that the correct response to one is the exact opposite of that for the other.
If an Ice Age is coming we need more fuel supplies, a larger military, growing and storing more food rather than converting it into very expensive fuel or subsidizing the non-creation of it, more advanced technology, more engineers and scientists and technicians, – in short cranking up our civilization to handle the tough times ahead. If it the truth is AGW the answer presented is to shut things down and learn to do less with less.
Indeed, if the true situation is simply GW without the man-caused aspects the answer is to crank things up as well.
Solar panels and windmills and everybody-bike-to-work initiatives are not going to do well against either the coming cold or the approaching heat. They are soft solutions to hard problems. A Smith and Wesson beats 4 aces. Real climate change beats your Earth Day and Cash For Clunkers program.
Wretchard, I really enjoy your commentary, but I always get bummed when people simplify the whole Enlightenment/Dark Ages comparison. I think that one of our core problems is a naive belief (ahem) in the human exercise of Reason. The Enlightenment’s children always seem to end up divorced from reality and exploited by hucksters or tyrants. It reminds me of CS Lewis’ “Abolition of Man” where he writes about ‘Men without Chests’. It’s a very worthwhile read. Merry Christmas!
Extrapolating from the 1 day moving average should earn a red F in a freshman class laboratory report in something, maybe even in a High School Geology class. The sense of always living in the moment and getting breathlessly excited about whatever change is sensed is considered charming in a dog. For human beings, less so.
The Left is not happy…unless they are not happy.
I swear that is their desired state of being. And no matter what the question, the answer always involves them overseeing the redistribution of wealth so we can all achieve that sad, hopeless state of egalitarian mediocrity they consider to be a state of grace (their own graft operations naturally notwithstanding).
An ESSENTIAL trait of the Leftist bishopric ( range bound by a synthetic thesis ) is its ability to sate Maslov’s urges.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
Leftism tops out at ESTEEM.
The ‘activist’ is normally filing in BELONGING.
It must be apparent that SELF-ACTUALIZATION is impossible for Leftists since such empowerment would entail acceptance of facts, morality and lack of bigotry.
I’ve yet to meet a practicing Leftist not loaded to the gills with condescending opinions regarding todays ‘out groups.’
——–
So what we see are masses of not-so-deep thinkers swallowing a ‘party line’ so as to maintain a holier than thou self-image and pride of conformity.
Winston was charged with the official delete/redo key…
For what I see — his task is unnecessary: most citizens are fitted with an Etch-A-Sketch memory. Every night they forget history by merely rolling over in bed.
This lack of collective memory is enhanced by low IQ — YOUNG — media ‘scripters’ who can’t hold two, nay, one idea in their heads. Any one of the feminine talking heads of any financial channel are perfect cases in point. Not yet thirty, they have no personal knowledge of what the markets were like even a decade ago. A young adult the age of 35 is considered ‘seasoned’ and is just about the upper limit for maturity.
——-
THE scariest: K-6 teachers. For them all history started when they were undergrads. Virtually NO K-6 teacher boned up on history. Overwhelmingly female, this collective has always prioritized on embossing ‘collectively correct’ indoctrination on the tykes.
Thusly we have a 1st grade teacher wasting a year of my nephew’s education by splitting the instruction into alternating days of English and Mexican. ( None of the kids spoke Mexican at home — this is an upper income neighborhood. ) This teacher-politician just decided that it’d be a great way to showcase her advanced language instruction — reason enough to demand ( not earn ) a higher wage.
Unions + Politics = Credentialism run amok.
Like any proper soviet — client/market feed-back is non-existent.
Yeah, my nephew is repeating 1st grade. A sad tale for an extremely bright kid. He never understood the politics of Mexican-speak and just goofed off every other day. VERY politically incorrect. The teacher-politician gave him F’s on indoctrination and party solidarity.
vc/37, that’s exactly right –the lefties are unhappy ’til everyone is unhappy. THEN they’re happy.
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b/38; looks like they found a way to tax the six year olds –in the only coin they have to spend: their time & energy.
“Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it, cannot be conquered by it. Leave them alone.”
Karen @ 31 – I have to say that I find that video astounding. Are these people adults? Yes, we all like to have fun, but that’s pathetic. I recommend the CFact site and organization to anyone interested in pursuing this topic further.
http://www.cfact.org/
About the current dark age, it’s occurred to me to wonder if part of our current problem with ignorant teachers is caused by “universal education.” It’s not really possible to educate everyone, due to the limits of individual intelligence, but we pretend that we do. . .and it seems that the least academically talented are frequently encouraged to seek an “education” degree. It’s both ironic and another way to overload the system (viz. Cloward and Piven). Meanwhile, the more clever but ideologically corrupt have overwhelmed many of the higher academies.
Calling Hercules!
YBR @ 29: “Last I heard, Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” which (sort of) started the rebuttal wave, was on record supporting the global warming trend, without the anthropogenic part.”
That’s what the headlines said — but it was simply more proof that news media types are (1) biased, and (2) uninformed.
Lomborg made it very plain years ago in “The Skeptical Environmentalist” that he stipulated to Anthropogenic Global Warming. He then demonstrated that it made no economic sense to try to stop (Alleged) Anthropogenic Global Warming. The resources spent on that effort would do more good for more people if redeployed into other efforts, such as providing clean water.
When he said the same things recently, the media reported it as ‘Lomborg now believes in Anthropogenic Global Warming’. But Lomborg’s position had not changed. Just the media types had got a little more desperate trying to shore up the lie. Lomborg still does not advocate putting our limited resources into trying to stop (Alleged) Anthropogenic Global Warming.
It is perhaps ironic that AGW is as feasible in a dawning ice-age as it is impossible in an already warm period. But the Chicken Little’s are only interested in drama and relevance.
As the late, great Louis Rukeyser remarked, “The Stock Market has predicted 12 out of the last 3 recessions.” I think our politically minded pseudo-scientific authorities have a worse record.
C. Dickens
David Byrne
To quote my favorite Marx, “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.” —Groucho Marx
Plus ca change….
Barmy the dinosaur.
The imminent ice age proves Al Gore’s global warming is absolutely men made, especially by American men. American men are experiencing mencession, the greatest since the Great Depression. American men produce less plant food, I mean carbon dioxide, the menacing green house global warming gas, ergo less warming…
I have been thinking the same thing recently about an apparent paradigm shift in epistemology: out with Enlightenment insistence on evidence and reason and in with firm belief in the decrees of the “right” authorities and profession of the right creed. The creed is not so much propositional as a commitment to that which is Cool, which changes over time; conveniently for the authorities. I guess this shouldn’t be surprising given that pop culture for half a century now has maintained the drumbeat that one’s feelings trump all. About a decade ago, PBS’s Frontline did a documentary called The Merchants of Cool, which showed how tailoring pop culture to encourage young people to make decisions on the basis of feelings made it easier to sell them consumer goods and consumerist attitudes (although the story declined to add, irrational ideology too.) People seem to be ignoring this trend by calling themselves “reality-based” or “aware” or using vocabulary that ascribes irrationality, ignorance, etc. to those they disagree with.
I think this whole global warming thing may help to return some reason to the public sphere.
Most who post here are skeptical of the news media. Most can see that they distort things, make assertions that cannot be true, do
sloppy investigations, and refuse to run stories that may be in conflict with the perceived wisdom. The average person isn’t paying that much attention, and while they may have a faint mistrust in media, they still believe them to some extent, and if things are repeated endlessly on the news, and shows like Oprah and the view, it’ll sink into their conciousness that these things are “correct”.
The media has pulled out all of the stops in the last couple of years, and has gone full bore pushing Obama, trashing Palin, pushing AGW, and a host of other issues. I sense a change, in that they don’t even make a pretense of presenting both sides any more. Obama is the smartest most Godlike man evah, Palin is stupid Trailer Trash who can’t read, and AGW is a proven fact, and anyone who isn’t on board is both evil and stupid. All of this while simultaneously seeing their “gatekeeper” role diminishing in an alarming fashion.
I think the media is in the process of taking an incredible hit to their credibility in the eyes of those who aren’t paying a lot of attention. My theory is this: if you have basic trust in something, whether an institution or another person, and that something betrays you, you will react much more vehemently than if it was a something you didn’t trust in the first place.
The media have been pushing things that are coming back to bite them on the a**, and people are noticing. They can’t walk back their previous positions the way they used to, because they can no longer air brush those positions out of the picture. They are losing their ability to intimidate or marginalize their opponents. Just about everyone in the opposition has been called a racist and/or a Nazi, and that’s not working so well anymore. In fact, it’s having a boomerang effect.
Besides, they’ve been so blatant that most everyone, even those least interested, knows and remembers what they’ve been pushing. At the same time, things aren’t working out so well, and eventually they have to take notice of that and start reporting it, even if only to protect their own fantasies that they still have some integrity.
A couple of years ago I was at a Minor League ballgame, and it was unseasonably cold for June, so I went to the concession stand for a cup of coffee. While there I jokingly said something along the lines of “where’s this global warming when we need it” to a woman in line, and was immediately treated to a very serious dissertation on the enormity of the problem, and our obligation to fix it, whatever it takes. She knew that was true because she saw it on the news, and the “science is settled”. That is the kind of person who will react very strongly once they realize they’ve been lied to.
We have, in the media and many of our other institutions, a serious lack of credibility and competence. The world is changing in ways that no one can predict, but one prediction I will make is that the days of the incredible and the incompetent are coming to an end. We can no longer afford them. The days of people “taking responsibility” for a problem, but paying no price for their screw ups, are coming to an end. The words responsibility and integrity will again come into fashion, and mean what they should.
If this happens, I think we’ll make it to the other side of this in a much better place, and that’s why I’m optimistic in the long term, even if I see a lot of short term pain ahead.
This is still the USA, and we as a people have a pretty low tolerance for BS, once we realize that it’s being shoveled at us. More are realizing it all the time, and once this reaches a critical mass things will change for the better. That’s my hope, anyway.
I particularly appreciate the commenters who relate this to the once contiguous information stream and its control by the left since WWII.
The rise of FOX, conservative talk radio, and the internet have destroyed the hegemony that the Dems in general and their far left fringe in particular have enjoyed and end employed throughout much of the past 60-70 years. Do not forget that it was only about 40 years ago that Walter Cronkite could get on TV and declare:
1. that Tet a horrible defeat and
2. the war was unwinnable
and there was literally no means to get the truth (that we had scored a crushing defeat against the communists and they were broken and ready to sue for peace and surrender) out to counter Cronkite’s disinformation. Yes, some (perhaps many) people nowadays would stick to the “official” left of center propaganda coming from ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/PBS/NPR to the bitter end, but there is enough of an alternate means of getting the truth now that Cronkite’s lying could never be brought off again.
DTmack, will the AGW “true believers” ever come around and be angry as you describe? I’m not sure. For example, there is ample, easily available evidence that outcome egalitarian, collectivist, centrally planned economies can never be made to work as well as the society that was envisioned by the Founders, no matter what version of socialism/communism/fascism/”social democracy” is attempted, yet we still have a large chunk of the general population and an even higher piece of the ruling elite who believe that it’s never worked well only because the “right” people were never in charge. No amount of factual evidence will sway them. This could be the dynamic of the AGW crowd, as well.
The BBC World Service is still proselytising full-throttle on the “glerbal warmening” track. What will it take to stop them?
blogstrop @ 52: “The BBC World Service is still proselytising full-throttle on the “glerbal warmening” track. What will it take to stop them?”
A glacier crushing Portland Place.
It’s amazing, but the warmists were too close to total victory to quit now. There are still believers, and, as long as there are, they won’t stop.
“Hopefully your car’s piston rings won’t be leaking and you’ll only be pumping out CO2, H2O and a little bit of NOx.”
Not a gear head are we? You want the rings loose. That is so when you hit the NOx button at 8,000 RPM, things don’t break. .003 over is about right.
I’m doing my part to fight Global Cooling. During the Christmas/New Year period, I always keep a roaring fire going in my fireplace. This year, I may keep it going a few weeks longer.
Speaking of the Holidays, to Wretchard and all of the BC commentors, I wish you all a Hearty and Merry Christmas, a Prosperous and Peaceful New Year, and and the Wisdom and Endurance to make it through this next year of “interesting times”.
I loved this part:
“To the question: is the world entering a new period of cooling, perhaps Piers Corbyn should ditch his datasets and statistical analysis programs and focus on one single variable. Can a New Ice Age be blamed on America? If it can, then it’s real. Otherwise it is false. “
On the one hand we have the CNBC info babes – Becky, Mandy, Maria, Melissa, Michelle, Mary, Trish, Erin, and Bertha.
On the other hand we have Mark Haynes and Larry Kudlow.
That’s just cold.
stoicheion @ 26
eggplant @ 27,
re: mobile hydrocarbon distribution
LOL… tales of your Rambler make me long for my old Dodge D150 4×4. “Smokus the Mighty” did her part and more in the battle against the forces of global cooling.
So long as it doesn’t cost us any money, let the damn hippies twist in the wind. Whenever we see them coalesce thick enough around a meme that it appears they might get legislative traction, well, that’s a good target for another of those “fact bombs”. Just like the data scandal… the release of that rocked them back on their heels. The fact that they’re trying to put that vehicle back together now with the equivalent of spit and bubble gum shows how desperate they are. Clownish damage control efforts like these will further marginalize the fence sitters and make the true believers look all the more ludicrous.
Enthalpy or Entropy . . . humbly I submit we have all been given Stux-py . . . it is a virus that prevents us from thinking any rational thought and even when we do think rational thoughts our baseline facts are all screwed up!!! Help me, Help me . . . I have a virus!!!
“That snow outside is what global warming looks like. Unusually cold winters may make you think scientists have got it all wrong. But the data reveal a chilling truth.”
- George Monbiot
“When everything is evidence of the thing you want to believe, it might be time to stop pretending you’re all about SCIENCE.”
-Ann Althouse
–the other night i dreamed a Mastodon had thawed out of a glacier and climbed in bed with me. When i woke up it was just my old dog Fatso, she had got cold and decided to snuggle up. She never did that before so somethings up for sure. But it could just be her arthrity acting up
I look at it as a test to see if anybody is paying attention.
I think 2008 woke up a lot of folks.
For those still cruising along on snooze control, there’s always 2012/2013.
Very tough times for the immediate future when energy trends intersect with financial/market issues as Washington withers in paralysis. At least a decade, probably two. Hardest hit will be those in their fifties.
And don’t get me started on the FOX lineup.
The Answer is No.
Given the fact that we have no reliable temperature data prior to the first half of the 19th century and precious little after that, I cannot for the life of me figure out howinthehell an adult can say anything with any certainty what the average temperature of the earth is,or ought to be.
The mathematical ignorance of the culture has led to the acceptance of a prediction of a 0.7C degree temperature rise as the reasonable outcome of an analysis based on assumption, conjecture, estimation, inference, hope and $0.79 change from a quarter.
I really doubt that this whole AGW theory penetrated much further than those who have an interest in its advancement: “climate scientists”, politicians wanting more control over their populations, and the Progressive Class who are Credentialed to Rule.
This was predicted in a fiction book:
http://www.amazon.com/Fallen-Angels-Larry-Niven/dp/0743471814/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1293120889&sr=8-9
In the book the Greens run the US, hate the sci-fi fans and folks living in the space station, and there is a giant glacier descending on North America. The background is the climate was getting colder, but those nasty emissions from industry and technology were preventing it from getting seriously cold. When the greens took over to save us from global warming they got rid of all the “unapproved” science and industry and it got really cold – as in ice sheet covering the northern US cold. So the greens blamed that on technology too, and on the nasty spacemen stealing nitrogen from the atmosphere.
PS “fallen angels” can be read online –
http://www.baen.com/library/067172052x/067172052x.htm
It’s a worthy idea to have books (of chapters thereof) available to promote the author.
What I respect about people like Joe Petrowski is the kind of thinking that leads to statements like this (paraphrased from the interview link): Regardless of whether or not you believe in AGW (or GW), the mitigation proposals should make sense, which the current ones do not, economic sense or ethical sense. (Very similar to RWE’s statement above.)
Another statement of note was his assertion regarding the ethics of the human impact from various green mitigation strategies not given proper weighting in current array of policy proposals, which are limited in scope.
AGW Progress Report.
Att: socialist Liberals IggyRaeMcGuinty.
Thor’s hammer falls on O’s red-green fraud.
“The company blames the unusually cold winter in Europe:”.
The thunder echos …….
…-
“Taxpayer-subsidized solar cell maker shuts down”
“Thomas Lifson
So much for green jobs being the wave of the future, as promised by President Obama. Taxpayer-subsidized solar cell maker Spectra-Watt has announced it is shuttering its plant. The Poughkeepsie Journal reports:
In a stunning reversal, the frequently lauded and taxpayer-funded SpectraWatt Inc. has told the state it will close its solar cell plant starting in March and lay off 117 workers.
The announcement was startling because in the past two months, the company, which had been promised about $8 million in tax dollars, planned to train more workers and changed its work shifts to enable a 24-hour operation.
The company blames the unusually cold winter in Europe:
“This action is undertaken in response to deteriorating market conditions resulting from a harsher-than-usual European winter causing a large drop-off in demand for solar cells.
Wait a minute! Aren’t we subsidizing solar cells instead of building coal fired plants because we’re supposed to be worried about global warming?
It is time to junk all these green power schemes before we waste any more money borrowed from China.
Hat tip: Bryan Demko”
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/12/taxpayersubsidized_solar_cell.html
http://newsbeat1.com/
Aw, that’s easy –just have some kinda accident at whatever utility facility heats Poughkeepsie, then shut it down indefinitely. That oughtta create some demand for Spectra-Watt –
Carol Browner must be on vacation.
Speaking of FOX babes: Megan Kendall! Will you marry me?
Meanwhile, this is what happens to people in their fifties in Pension, AL.
But it can’t happen here.
Since it’s a slow holiday news day … Humewrecker.
Speaking of Christmas coming….
Seriously, where is the Tip Jar button?
I know I need a bigger monitor, but I don’t see it anywhere.
By the way Megan is married.
And pregnant.
She’s too good looking to be on TV anyway.
The onset of new Ice Age is highly improbable, because all previous Pleistocene glaciations were due to Milankovich cycles and this mechanism requires high Earth orbit excentricity. But now this parameter is very small and becomes even smaller. What is more probable is Small Ice Age, like it was during period of weak solar activity (Maunder minimum, 1645 to 1715). It is not a catastrophe, we survived it then and are much better equipped to deal with it now. But even more probable is just moderate cooling like 1970s due to decadal ocean current cycles. As for latest severe winters, they have nothing to do with climate at all and are caused by Arctic Oscillation, a weather pattern anomaly with no impact on average surface temperature.
ybr/73; re ‘Humewrecker’ –haw –bet it’ll never dawn on the guy that his assassin campaign is making Hume look like a genius for having fired him –
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rwe, too good looking for tv, and too smart for anyone who tries to debate her –the poor schlubz
***
sergey, and the deep ocean saline exchange, and sunspots, and the amount of precip that falls on the soluble carbon mass of the Himalayas, and the flora, all systems that utterly dwarf –by the numbers –what us fauna are doing.
The whole debate would be too silly for words if we didn’t have to accomodate a polyglot boxful of pirates squatting on Turtle Bay.
bl: Interesting concept for a reality TV show, no? I think though that was about the same time that Brett Baer assumed anchor of FOX Nightly News from Hume, a transition that struck me as problematic for Hume, but that’s just speculation from someone who should try to do something productive with the day.
There is no such thing as climate science yet. Sure, there are lots of climate studies, but the field in general is in its infancy. Climate is shaped by mighty forces beyond human control and for a good part beyond human understanding. Physics of ocean and atmosphere interaction is improbably complex and poorly understood. Leading Russian planetologists are very sceptical about possible human impact, and even more sceptical about our ability to prevent or mitigate any natural variability.
There was a recent review in English of a Chinese book which claimed that Chinese scientists weren’t convinced about AGW, it went on to suggest that the west was using AGW to attempt to prevent China from developing (although the reviewer thought this last bit was just the Chinese being a bit paranoid).
It seems that Chinese scientists are freer to publish their real views about AGW than the western ones are!
The review was posted by “Locusts and Honey ” as “the dragons dissent” at Liberty Gibbet blog.
You might find a cached copy, recurrent misbehaviour by one of the commentators has lead to the blog being restricted to members only. Shame, it was good.
LI@79: it went on to suggest that the west was using AGW to attempt to prevent China from developing (although the reviewer thought this last bit was just the Chinese being a bit paranoid).
To my knowledge, USA has yet to become signatory to Kyoto Protocol, which suggests that China is leveraging the Greens for political gain. If China wants to make that argument credible, they should blame Europe, Australia and Canada (ref the wikipedia maps under Kyoto Protocol.)
Since I live in northern Minnesota I’ve been hoping for global warming. Now, I suppose I should start to worry about cooling.
Whatever we get the lefties will use it to explain why we need more government control and higher taxes. That’s the point of it all. Those on the leading edge have already altered the story to Global Climate Change. They realize their error in using the term “warming”. The woman mentioned in #50 will never realize she’s been lied to as the term “warming” is abandoned and “change” is substituted. And there will always be severe weather somewhere.
“Change” is a no-lose term: If you don’t like the weather, just wait awhile.
Those on the leading edge have already altered the story to Global Climate Change. They realize their error in using the term “warming”.
Actually, “climate change” has now beeen replaced by “climate diruption” to better reflect the recent spate of “extreme” weather.
If there is any naturally-caused long-term warming trend, a more accurate term for it would be “Global Milding,” because the result is generally what has been termed for ages as “mild” weather. The underlying alarmist notion that a warming trend constitutes impending doom is the height of idiocy and infantilism.
DR@82: Actually, “climate change” has now beeen replaced by “climate diruption” to better reflect the recent spate of “extreme” weather.
I can’t locate the original reference article, which I believe came out of NOAA or NWS, but weather (not climate) variability is a statistical metric with a weather-specific definition that has indeed increased in recent times. It is similar to the VIX index for quantifying market volatility – a signal-noise differentiator.
Discussion of Alleged Anthropogenic Global Warming eventually gets back to the prostitution of science — yet another once-respected part of society that the usual suspects have turned to dust.
This is a good time to remember President Eisenhower’s 1961 speech. Immediately after warning about the rise of the Military-Industrial Complex, Ike went on to warn about the baleful impact of politicians on science:
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.”
Read the whole thing —
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
Michael Chrichton in an Appendix to his climate-scam novel “State of Fear” proposed we should adopt a formal adversarial procedure for science-based policies, analogous to the adversarial trial process in criminal justice.
Or we could simply start demanding value for money from our corrupted educational system.
“Or we could simply start demanding value for money from our corrupted educational system.” (85. Kinuachdrach)
I’ve just had a cup of tea with a teacher friend and a neighbour who is that rarest of things in Ireland, a home schooler.
Teacher friend is totally p1ssed that teaching is not valued at that school, union membership and bullshit are rewarded, the expectation is that extra marks will be awarded to those who don’t study to ensure that all “achieve” friend and several others refuse to do this and friend is ready to quit over it.
Both agreed; we need VOUCHERS
ps, Sub zero all day it snowed a little bit again today.
Ireland has been running short of road salt, so much so that it was the lead story on the national news that a ship carrying rock salt had arrived in Dublin.
One texter to the station (newstalk) suggested the following:
“Road salt should be made illegal, like drugs. The country would be awash with the stuff then”.
Well, here’s a nice pair of holiday articles, by a couple fellas with sterling credibility, that meshed give us a picture of what we’re up against. The takeaway from Dr. Siegel is that at a point in time, the banks we were soon bailing out all –inexplicably –began ‘holding’ their known junk instead of flipping it as usual into a market then at its hungriest.
The second article, by Cliff Kincaid, tells who and why –and, echoing Dr Tatyana Koryagina’s 2001 interview (here rebroadcast in 2008, don’t get put off by the intro, the Qs are spot on), why there’s going to be another Dollar crash attempt, this third wave thru the oil market (BP Macondo hopefully may have been it, which does not mean there won’t be a fourth, but would offer a clue these people are now ‘beat’ for awhile at least).
Bear in mind that the hedge fund ‘dark pool’ structure fell out of the Sarbox phoenix arising from Enron, and that the vast money flowing into the dark pools fell out of the dot com and 9/11 busts by giving the Fed reason to hold rates low enough long enough that capital unhappy with low to negative real returns learned to ‘hedge’ –and as this demand developed, why, lookee there, there they were, the funds that’d do it.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2148
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/whos-behind-the-financial-crisis/
***
i know –all pretty dull/dry –but someone may want to save it, and someone else may thereby get the skinny, and from little acorns mighty oaks grow.
***
PS, if you don’t audit the interview, and don’t read the Wharton link, at least do scan the aim.org link –it’s a ‘sender’.
ybr/84, re “…weather (not climate) variability is a statistical metric with a weather-specific definition that has indeed increased in recent times.”
Has it increased, or has the reporting increased, and would not the reporting increase, as people –due to greater global-trade wealth and mobility –spread out over the globe in conjunction with developing the huge increase in sheer volumes per se of reportage needed to fill the myriad new channels opening?
What ticks me off most of all about the AGW scam, is the enormous opportunity costs here. How many billions have been spent chasing this chimera? Meanwhile, we have actual, real environmental problems that are starved for support. White nose syndrome is wiping out bat populations. How much, I wonder, has been spent on that? Something that could actually be stopped or slowed if we found the right solution. Something that, if unchecked, will cause way more damage than any global warming ever would.
What about the havoc we — and by “we” I mean everyone, not just America — are wreaking on the oceans? How much could we have done with the billions pissed away on AGW?
What about potential issues with mono-cultures of crops?
The list of real, concrete environmental issues is endless. Yet we waste and waste and waste on stupidity like AGW.
90. peterike:
I think these are excellent points, and the kinds of points that can be used to drive a wedge between different factions of environmentalism. It would be akin to The Surge in Iraq that turned home-grown “insurgents” into allies against Al Qaeda.
Re. #38. blert
“Yeah, my nephew is repeating 1st grade. A sad tale for an extremely bright kid. He never understood the politics of Mexican-speak and just goofed off every other day. VERY politically incorrect. The teacher-politician gave him F’s on indoctrination and party solidarity.”
Why didn’t you raise hell or pull kid out?
That’s alos a reason I hate primary education: everyone is enterprising irrespective of their real qualifications.
Michael Chrichton in an Appendix to his climate-scam novel “State of Fear” proposed we should adopt a formal adversarial procedure for science-based policies, analogous to the adversarial trial process in criminal justice.
Interesting. After Climategate I likened the AGW debacle to a circumstance that — had it been a judicial trial — would have required the declaration of a mistrial. “Tampering with evidence” works in court this way, and so it should with scientific malfeasance. The Climatology and meteorology fields should be required to start all over again on the issue of measuring/analyzing warming/cooling trends, and this time with a complete panoply of intrumentation (as in using data from all of the remote weather stations, with allowances for heat island effects, paint vs. whitewash on a station surface, etc.), multiple complex computer models done on super computers (not at all the case with East Anglia’s amateurish desktop efforts), having additional supercomputing power and manpower available to analyze satellite data, and the close scrutiny of panels of experts that must include credentialed skeptics. Such a panel should also include historians, paleoclimatologists, and archaeologists, and even media critics who know the tricks of the journalism trade when it comes to distorting scientific findings for sensational effect.
#90. peterike
The issues you talk about can’t be used as a justification for our “betters” to micro-manage our lives and have us pay them whatever they want. That is the key difference.
As I’ve said before, they already have the answer, they’re just looking for a proper question to justify it so it can be put into practice. AGW, world poverty, whatever. The search continues.
The issues you talk about can’t be used as a justification for our “betters” to micro-manage our lives and have us pay them whatever they want. That is the key difference.
I completely agree. At the power-elite level, they could care less about the environment. It’s about control. But at the street level, if you will, people will understand about bats dying.
I think the Republicans have long been fools around the environment. They come across as blustering know-nothings or totally uncaring jerks. Rush Limbaugh, for instance, makes me cringe sometimes when he gets onto environmental issues. As correct as he can be about the stupidity of a lot of enviros, he doesn’t come back with a counter-plan beyond “they’re wrong.”
Republicans would do well to have concrete ideas in place. Maybe even something as gimmicky as a Top Ten list of issues they want to deal with. It wouldn’t hurt either to say things like “in the past x years we have spent $xxx basically building computer models.” And “after having spent $xxx billion on AGW, we haven’t saved a single plant or animal as a result, though we made a lot of people rich. Meanwhile, for only $xx we could be saving millions of bats.”
Ah heck, maybe I’M the one that’s bats!
95. peterike:
You’re not “bats.”
The GOP could largely disarm the left with a comprehensive, practical program for dealing with environmental issues.
Don…
That can NEVER happen.
The Left is an internally driven mind-set of Maslovian needs.
In fact, the better society becomes, the larger that sub-set of Esteem seeking crowd gets.
In a prior age such players were tagged the nouveau riche by the existing hip clique of old money. In Maslovian terms, old monied toffs were slotted at Esteem and Self-Actualization.
Any actual resolution/solution or meaningful contribution on the part of these players is quite impossible. For them it is the process/group theatre that counts — and a crusade that absorbs the balance of their free time is valued above all other causes.
Solving things just ruins this dynamic. Endless emotional and mental masturbation is a feature — not a bug. Group theatre is double-plus good.
Perhaps the news today is not quite as slow as you imagined…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/23/solar-geomagnetic-ap-index-hits-zero/#more-30083
Don Rodrigo @ 93 — One could do a lot worse with a chilly winter’s evening than spend it reading Crichton’s “State of Fear”.
Typical Crichton novel — fast-paced, page-turner, very visual (although this one will never get made into a movie, for obvious reasons. Not a real spoiler alert — the bad guys are the “environmentalists”; the issue in the book is – Will they get away with it? And you have to read it to find out).
However, this is the only novel I can remember with footnotes and references to the peer-reviewed literature. Graphs, too! There is probably more real science in Crichton’s novel than in many of the peer-reviewed articles coming out of the East Anglia Mutual Admiration Society & Finishing School for the Climatically Misinformed.
#95. peterike
Insofar as environmental issues are concerned we tend to have a lot of mental defectives on both sides of the political spectrum. What should be done–ALWAYS–is to conduct an objective costs/benefits analysis when it comes to the environment. I consider myself to be a practical Libertarian. Government happens. But there are some things that you need a government to do. Wisdom consists of knowing where to draw the line.
In central Texas there are towns that get most of their revenue from income produced in deer hunting season. Do you think that the people who live there don’t care about the health and population of the deer? They do. Very intensely.
On the other hand, you have situations like what I recall from many years ago. Someone wanted to build a factory that would have dumped wastes into a bay in Texas in which many shrimp spawn. The waste would have had a rather drastic impact on the shrimp. The factory was not allowed to be built. Shrimp harvesting is a multi-million dollar industry. Allowing the factory to be built would have provided about 400 jobs. The impact on the shrimp population would have resulted in the loss of many more times that in terms of jobs lost. It was the right decision to make.
Too many times in regards to environmental issues we are presented with false choices.
Keith #86:
I believe it was around St. Patrick’s Day off 2010 when a group was claiming that AGW was going to ruin Ireland.
They said that instead of raining a little all the time it was starting to rain a lot, followed by dry periods. And that was going to cause an absolute environmental horror: Trees! Forests! Oh! The Humanity!
This illustrates the Orwellian nature of the AGW crowd. More trees are a bad thing? Apparently, because on the island off the Atlantic coast where I live they recently knocked down a whole bunch of trees and put up a massive solar cell array.
So bike to work, eschew air conditioning, and buy an electric car for twice the price and ¼ the range to prevent trees from growing in Ireland.
The “Green” fad is anything but for supporting more green, except in some people’s pockets. In the first damn place, more CO2 means more and healthier plants. Second, so does warmer weather.
Don Rodrigo #93:
Michael Chrichton also wrote a piece entitled The Demon Haunted World. In which he said that the pseudo science being foisted off on us today is returning us to those thrilling days of yesteryear, before the enlightenment, when all sorts of fake experts could hustle their wares and sell people on the ideas trinkets had magical powers and could ward off demons.
Very, very well said. PC is the new Dark Age. Marxists are driving all this. To them, power is all that matters. Reason is useful only as a means to power. Muslims have been invited along because they are fellow totalitarians, though they will be discarded.
101. RWE
I don’t know whether Michael Crichton wrote a piece by the same name, but “The Demon-Haunted World” was the title of the last book Carl Sagan published before his death.
bl@89: Has it increased, or has the reporting increased…
I made up my mind on AGW several years ago, before the CRU episode. My thinking was along the lines of thought suggested by Eggplant and Sergey, but I am fully in the camp of people like Joe Petrowski who skip over the controversy with the sensible claim that mitigation measures should at least be technically effective and derived from policy supported by analyses of broad enough scope to include environmental impacts on humans, economic and ethical. I agree.
I seldom listen to the debate anymore because the sides have been chosen and because I expect that within a few short years this country will be distracted by problems of direct import that could result in serious social disturbance.
But the answer to your question is yes ::)) The news channels require content and this subject has long legs. The article that I read discussed variability in precip/snow patterns and amounts as the sole metric of interest while keeping a healthy distance from any up or down temperature trend lines. It stayed with me because I have noticed this in my lifetime. Climate patterns that used to be reliable are no longer, in my neck of the woods.
My personal belief is that we are currently in a period of increased climate variability (not weather, I got that backwards). I doubt it is man-made, but I don’t discount the possibility that some aspect of human activity may be one of multiple factors. I certainly do not support some of the extreme policy proposals that have been introduced and I firmly believe that the scientists got outplayed on this issue by allowing the early signals to be elevated from Monitor to Panic.
(What I got from Lomborg’s book and the cavalier approach to very demanding data manipulation, the simulation deficiencies, and the system complexities should have been sufficient for applying some internal brakes, but the genie is out and about so the scientists now have to massage a more palatable context to support analytics that are in a state of flux as climate studies evolve into climate science, as per Sergey’s point.)
102. Sam Parsons
Muslims have been invited along because they are fellow totalitarians, though they will be discarded.
I’ve been saying for a long time that I think both Leftists and Muslims are using each other as useful idiots. Each wants to destroy capitalism and/or Western civilization, and each thinks they can deal with the other afterwards. Should be interesting.
And I meant to make peace with Mark Haynes and Larry Kudlow. The problem is that the gals set the bar pretty high – we’re in Clive Owen/David Gandy territory.
Kevin says:
December 23, 2010 at 10:48 am
Al Gore explained it to me best. He said that man’s use of fossil fuels is causing the sun’s spin to go out of whack, which makes… I can’t remember it all, but the important thing is that we need to stop using oil. He sounded pretty confident about it.
(from CPT/98′s link, the comments –yuk yuk)
YBR/104, i hear ya –and really, why would even variability ranges stay stable? With that crazy solar pulse stuff happenin’ in the #98 link
bl: It’s like the VIX as a quantitative measure of market volatility.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
ybr/108, yep –VIX is best visualized –for me anyway –as a handsaw, the point of reference zooming up (or down) a series of sawtooths while the whole blade is tilting the other (or the same) way. Duh, i needs me a pikcher or else i caint feel the message. anyhoo, then the saw is circling earth axis @ 1000 mph while arcing thru the solar system @ 17,000 mph and lord knows where the galaxy is going
It will probably come as no surprise to anybody that I don’t see variability quite in those terms, but I think I might be a few eggnogs behind!
But I will give this much – there’s more than a whiff of the oxymoronic behind the idea of variability as a quantitative parameter for complex systems. The definition would have to be either very narrow or very broad.
All I know is that my home state used to bury us in snow drifts for a good three to four months when I was growing up. Now winter weather is a crap shoot – everything from moderate to sporadic to dry/wet snowfall. No two years alike.
Better men than I have struggled with the age-old question
… of what to do with their discretionary cash.
Under the prevailing cultural stupor the thugs and traitors
… are having their way with the levers of government.
Yesterday’s strategies evaporate. Babies now in the womb
… will grow up in a world we wouldn’t recognize.
All the financial experts talk about buying GOLD as a hedge
… against the inflation that seems almost certain.
Maybe you recall Germany printed billions of Deutsche marks
… to pay WWI reparations with devalued money.
My favorite story is the fraulein who set down her wicker basket
… full of paper money to buy a loaf of bread.
On turning around, she found the worthless bills dumped
… and her basket stolen.
Evidently a lot of folks are not aware that in 1933 FDR called in all U.S. gold currency — made it a crime to own gold unless it had proven historical/aesthetic significance other than the Gold content. The government can do what it wants.
buddy @ 88: Here’s a quote from the AIM link, speaking about what awaits:”…Iceland was ravaged and annihilated.”
This quote is absolutely typical of a lot of recent financial commentary. And it’s absurd.
Money systems end all the time. Ours is just about done, and the end is in sight. There was substantial dislocation in Richmond in 1865, in Berlin in 1924 and again in 1945, in Tokyo in 1945, etc, etc, but in all cases the clear end of the old brought forth the new in short order.
So it is with Iceland. The only thing that got “annihilated” in Iceland was banks.
Once the Fed, Goldman Sachs, BoA, and the others are wiped out, we can be up and running in six months with new (and Constitutional, besides) money. We won’t even need the services of the Red Army, or firestorms.
All we need is to stop trying to save the banks. This has happened in history many, many times. All the propaganda about “ravaging and annihilation” is designed to scare us into keeping the scammers in business.
I’m not scared.
gm/125, i think what you’re saying is, it’s high time to start thinking about the next system. That’s probably pretty sound advice –i have a feeling –a fervently hopeful feeling –we will soon be hearing more of it when the 112th congress convenes!
The value of the AIM piece is in the no-uncertain-terms identification of the Managed Funds Association as a sort of surprise attack, unlike Pearl Harbor or 9/11 invisible and until the summer of 2008 almost occultically abstruse, along a line deliberately weakened, from inside and out, for the purpose.
To call it “greed” is to stop thinking only part way into the story –and worse, to stop thinking exactly where they want you to stop thinking –that is, at the point of an indictment of our system.
There IS an indictment of our system, but it’s not the “greed” –it’s in fact the very opposite: the generosity. Our trust and generosity led us to this point. The “greed” is blaming the victim, the dynamic identified all the back to those events in the Garden of Eden.
Leading Global Warming alarmist James Hansen apparently wrote a computer program which supported global cooling alarmism in the 1970s.
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2007/09/global_warmer_h.html
well, this is way off thread, unless you hook the ice age theme to cap and trade and then to the czars in this admin’s loooong history of suspicious crises leading to green regulation$.
Anyhoo, i hate to say i told you so, but it was written in the cards that this Bromwich character, obama appointee and oil patch hater, was gonna bollix the key part, the nuts and bolts simple key part, of ascertaining the condition of the Macondo BOP as it was when it emerged from the sea in September 2010.
Now here’s your question: “Why?” A simple mechanical test on whether and how a machine did or did not malfunction is all that was required, and yet now we learn (or some learn, others knew it would happen just this way) that it’s already too late, the claims of misdeeds are new as of the last two days, but the misdeeds claimed have already happened but of course.
…according to the claims now flying back and forth, these particular misdeeds, that is to say the current, after-the-fact, tertiary misdeeds, have happened since the September retrieval of the BOP from the sea floor and its transfer to a NASA facility in New Orleans –and in the full, hot light of the intense observation of the entire engineering world.
Yes, it’s the three card monte again, don’t look at the latest REAL misdeed, that is the deliberate, it HAS to be deliberate, tainting of the case, instead look over here, at the claimed misdeeds.
i knew this was going to happen, i knew it, i knew it i knew it. The first time i noticed this trick was the Yellow Rain three card monte, which sent the destroyed Hmong into the history books as victims of a “controversial” something or other. Ohwell, shut up, too many ‘i’s in there.
Anyhoo, the investigation is ruined, utterly and completely, already, there’s no backing up from the stuff you’ll read about here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/23/AR2010122305437_2.html
The only question, really, is why has this been deliberately done? Oh yes, it will be claimed once again “I didn’t read the bill!”
(from the WaPo link)
In a Dec. 13 letter to BOEM Director Michael Bromwich that the Chemical Safety Board also distributed Thursday, Moure-Eraso alleged that Transocean was allowed to perform “hands-on, irreversible modifications to the BOP and associated equipment, outside the effective observation of other parties.”
A Transocean spokesman called the account “totally unfounded.”
“The evaluation of the BOP is being conducted under the supervision of federal authorities at a U.S. government facility and observed by a small army of lawyers for BP, the Justice Department and others,” Transocean spokesman Brian Kennedy said.
One Transocean employee who was asked for input in the examination had served as a subsea supervisor on the Deepwater Horizon, though not at the time of the explosion, Moure-Eraso alleged. The government has since directed that his involvement cease.
Det Norske Veritas requested assistance from the Transocean specialist because he “is widely regarded as the best in the business,” Kennedy said. “It’s not a specialty that many individuals or entities possess.”
In the new letter to Bromwich, the Chemical Safety Board chairman said Det Norske Veritas conducted a test Tuesday on the blowout preventer using a procedure provided by Cameron. That procedure “was substituted at the last minute” without review by other parties, Moure-Eraso wrote.
***
Classic, classic, the tyrant’s double whammy: Establish the watchdog as the scapegoat for something you have an outside party assert (the Veritas panel, hired), then thereby rid yourself of that watchdog, then proceed to do whatever you want, safely under cover of taint that you created for that watchdog-cum-scapegoat to be blamed for –any complaints come up, just point your finger at that outside party, the one you hired for that purpose.
dirty bastards
PS, did you catch that word ‘irreversible’?
How convenient!
Especially convenient, considering the necessary FANTASTICAL level of ‘i didn’t read the bill’ incompetence required to allow someone nefarious to sneak in there, switch off the surveillance, mickey finn the observers, and flashlite between teeth and wrench in hand do the precision gremlin work, cover up all traces including fresh wear marks on every nut and bolt, and still get back to his motel by morning.
And…he would have to be certain that of the thousand things that could go wrong, not a one of them would, because the stakes are simply too high –for the company whose management could go to prison, for the cat burglar himself who could –well lord knows the bad things that could happen to him. Why, he would need millions from the TARP slush fund! FBI –follow that man !
No, the whole story is ridiculous. The government’s story is a complete ridiculous fraud.
…covering for the BP inner sanctum while stripping the widows and orphans and other shareholders.
okay –enuff ranting –all apologies on this Christmas day. it’s just that this gov’t in un-manning me –it’s making me the wife in that story about this government, oops i mean this guy who comes home from work, sits down in his easy chair, turns on the tv, and asks his wife, “Quick, could you grab me a beer before it starts?”
…and she’s a little puzzled, but goes ahead and brings him a beer.
He drinks it up, and says, “Quick, bring me another, i’m afraid it’s about to start!”
She’s getting a bit miffed, but does it anyway, brings another beer.
He finishes it, and says “Quick! Another beer before it starts!”
She finally blows her top, “That’s IT! You bastard! You waltz in here, flop your fat ass down, don’t even say hello, and expect me to run around like your slave getting you beer, beer, beer –don’t you realize I cook and clean and wash around here ALL DAY LONG ?”
The guy sighs and mutters, “ah hell, it started.”