Yesterday evening I was at a friend’s house for a Christmas Eve party. Most of the people there were Hollywood types with a sprinkling of what is known locally as “civilians,” plus a few journos. But it wasn’t a business party. Everyone was in a friendly mood, drinking champagne, eating the generous spread and singing Christmas Carols.
Still, there was casual conversation. What have you been up to, etc. etc.? I, as readers of this blog know, had just been to Copenhagen for the UN climate conference. People asked about it, but I didn’t go into my thoughts heavily because I knew I was in conventionally liberal territory and why cause dissension on Xmas Eve? Changing minds isn’t an easy thing to accomplish in any situation. Changing minds at an event like that would be nearly impossible and the attempt to do so rude. Also people tend to conflate skepticism about AGW with being pro-pollution, as if they were the same thing. Incredibly, I heard James Carville make that very accusation on television, even though the reverse may be true. (Focusing on a bogus or inflated CO2 correlation with global warming takes attention away from legitimate problems like clean water.) I didn’t want to have to explain myself on that score.
Nevertheless… ill-mannered fellow that I am… I did get into it with one gentleman – a man from a background encompassing Hollywood, high lit and politics – who insisted that anthropogenic global warming is a problem because “NASA says it is.” Until the respected NASA tells him otherwise, AGW is a major, perhaps catastrophic concern. Well, I love NASA too, but that doesn’t mean it’s always right or that all its many divisions are of equal merit. NASA has “interests” too, as we all do. Anyway, this post is for the man at that party, not that I ever really expect him to read it or consider the information in the following video. People believe what they want to believe. (The speaker in the video is Rep. Ted Poe, R-TX.)
RS concluded, “People believe what they want to believe.”
Ya think so? And don’t believe what they don’t want to believe…and there you have it.
What’s the difference between this time this year and this time last year?
It was unusually dry last year, and it is unusually wet this year.
What else is different?
Last year was a La Nina year, this year is a El Niño year. La Nina years tend to be dry years. El Niño years tend to be wet ones, in North America. This year is following the El Niño pattern with a vengeance. Warming or cooling we would be seeing a El Niño pattern in this, an El Niño year. in short, the recent spate of winter storms tells us nothing of the validity of global warming.
Well some people will never change their minds on this. A glacier could be descending on Hollywood and they would still believe…but I do think that public opinion is changing. I saw an interesting post at powerline on this and they linked to a good summary about the debate. It is worth a read. From that link:
For example, some argue that the Arctic is melting, with the warmest-ever temperatures. One should ask, “How long is ever?” The answer is since 1979. And then ask, “Is it still warming?” The answer is unequivocally “No.” Earth temperatures are cooling. Similarly, the word “unprecedented” cannot be legitimately used to describe any climate change in the last 8,000 years.
Roger, next time someone brings up the “NASA loves AGW” argument, tell them James Hansen’s former Climatology boss at NASA is an AGW skeptic.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/01/28/james-hansen-s-former-boss-on-james-hansen.aspx
Here’s something nobody seems to have asked; Why is the National AERONAUTICAL and SPACE Administration wasting taxpayer dollars on this in the first place?
What does it have to do with exploring SPACE? It’s not like we don’t have NOAA and umpteen zillion private scientists exploring climate.
What really ticks me off is the arrogant jerkwads that loudly claim that finding so-called anthropogenic global warming to be a load of self indulgent Earth worship must be exactly the same thing as denying the Holocaust. How’s about rounding up these jerkwads into concentration camps, then denying that this is happening? How would they like them apples?
Sure. NASA never screws anything up. Well, except for, you know, a few really huge and well-publicized catastrophic failures, the subsequent investigations of which invariably revealed a very dangerous groupthink and failure/refusal to be the turd in the punch bowl, speak up, and throw a damned fit when it was absolutely necessary.
That would be the same NASA that fried a billion dollar space probe because one contractor did its work in American measurements and another contractor worked in metric. The same NASA that killed two space shuttles full of Astronauts by bad design and management decisions.
That NASA?
Why is it better run than any other part of our dysfunctional government?
I seem to recall that the leftish enviro types tend to be against space exploration. ‘We have so many more important issues here at home’. Why would someone so skeptical of NASA’s main mission be so trusting of this sideline of theirs? Doesn’t it strike you as rather self-serving and compartmentalized?
Actual thermometers don’t play their game:
http://i49.tinypic.com/rc93fa.jpg
With regards to your comment on C02 hysteria diverting attention from serious environmental problems: Thank you thank you THANK YOU. I’d considered myself an environmentalist for most of my life, but the Warmers hijacked the cause and twisted it into something unrecognizable.
Anybody else remember the old days when we used to worry about deforestation, toxic waste, and carcinogens? I can’t be the only one, I’m eighteen years old. I still remember the Captain Planet show, and I reckon that these days he’d be condemned for giving inadequate attention to the gaseous demon that is carbon dioxide. Yuck.
The acronym, NASA, in other parts of the government, is translated as Never A Straight Answer.
Always excellent blog, Roger. Merry Christmas to you and your readers.
My Wishes for 2010 are that we remove as many arrogant politicians as possible from their sincecures in the Federal Congress and that the American People continue to educate and enlighten themselves on phoney science and phoney people in politics.
I do believe that we may be entering a new age of enlightenment and knowledge that owes much to internet bloggers like Roger, our stalwart Conservative Radio and TV Commentators and our awakening citizenry such as the wonderful Tea Partiers all across the Nation.
God Bless America!
The “NASA-Goddard Institute” which makes the AGW predictions is actually independent of NASA and has more to do with Columbia University, and may be accountable to no one.
The common link is James Hansen. Once upon a time, Hansen did work for NASA on the atmosphere of Venus — which is 96.5% CO2. The Man Fell to Earth years ago. If someone checked, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hansen gets little or no funding from NASA to do work on climate change on Earth — and these days may get little or no NASA funding at all.
It looks like Hansen is hung up on CO2 because of his Venus experience, even though CO2 on Earth is a trace gas — less than 400 parts per billion, instead of 965,000,000 parts per billion. There are several basic differences between Earth and Venus which can readily explain why its atmosphere is so different than ours — and thus probably irrelevant to ours — including that its day is longer than its year and that it lacks a magnetic field — gases lighter than CO2 tend to float away because of this.
“NASA-Goddard” is based at 112th Street and Broadway, literally above the Seinfeld Diner. You can’t make this up.
“If you watched the TV program Seinfeld, you may recognize our corner from the exterior shots of the diner where Jerry and friends hang out. The restaurant is Tom’s Restaurant, and GISS occupies five of the building’s seven floors.” See here: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/about/
Like “Get Smart” you enter through the telephone booth at the back of the diner. The back entrance is through Del Floria’s Tailor Shop around the corner.
“NASA-Goddard” sounds just a little less authoritative now, doesn’t it?
Fat Man asked – “That NASA?”
No – not that NASA. The NASA you’re talking about is certainly “real”, but the incidents you mention are the result of normal bureaucratic inefficiencies and politics – and the end result of engineering errors and uncertainties that sometimes all add up in the same (wrong) direction. That’s the NASA that’s successfully launched hundreds of spacecraft, both manned and umanned, over the last 50 years and provide a large part of the technology that you now enjoy. And a lot of the science that provides the basis for questioning AGW.
The NASA you’re looking for is the offshoot that lives in NYC (GISS) and poisons the science it’s supposed to be supporting. GISS has been problematic for the last 20-25 years. How do I know? Because I worked as a NASA contractor for 42 years on a broad range of spacecraft programs. And I know that there’s more than one NASA – and that they’re not all blatant political tools of the AGW proponents.
That is my experience out in the bay area, you present healthy skepticism about AGW and you are labeled “Pro-pollution”. Whatever. If the science was so settled, so overwhelming folks wouldn’t have to launch hysterical personal attacks. There are a lot of good people who have convinced themselves AGW is real an no amount of counter evidence will be allowed for the time being. That’s fine, I can wait.
C02 is minimal or insignificant in the enery transfer dynamics of the sun-earth-atmosphere system. Proof is readily available from a complete infra red absorption and emission spectrum (including the far infra red radiation band) for Water (as a gas) C02, Oxygen and Nitrogen. Nitrogen, Oxygen and water (gas and liqid) are the major heat moderating factors in the atmosphere.
C02 at 0.048% in the atmosphere is insignificant..
C02 as a greenhouse gas is the greatest fraud of the century.
Cue sneering about how stupid this guy must be because he can’t even say ‘East Anglia’, and an ever more smug left that are ever less likely to take any of this stuff seriously.
Marginally justified—do these people not have people swarming around briefing them? The republicans need to raise their game.
For years I have WANTED to believe that AGW is all nonsense. But I feared that there might be quite a lot in the idea, if all those scientists said so. I still think that there just might be something left of the notion. But my beliefs about AGW have most definitely changed during the last few weeks.
To those who say that people think what they want to think, I say: speak for yourself. You don’t speak for me. And the opinion polls seem to tell my story rather than yours. Facts, in this case facts about fake evidence and fake consensus and bullying of anyone who tries to dissent from that fake consensus, have made a big difference to what millions of people believe.
Re: #2
from NOAA Climate Prediction
“Expected El Niño impacts during December 2009-February 2010 include enhanced precipitation over the central tropical Pacific Ocean and a continuation of drier-than-average conditions over Indonesia. Also, warming in the far eastern equatorial Pacific is likely in the coming months with the associated potential for enhanced rainfall in portions of Peru and Ecuador. For the contiguous United States, potential impacts include above-average precipitation for the southern tier of the country, with below-average precipitation in the Pacific Northwest and the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys. Below-average snowfall and above-average temperatures are most likely across the northern tier of states (excluding New England), while below-average temperatures are favored for the southeastern states.“
AGW is nothing but Marxism Through Other Means. The left wants Marxism, but they cannot openly promote it because anyone who is not already a Marxist will instantly reject it. Marxism is a failed religion that has murdered over 100 million people (so far). Even people who don’t know very much about it know that it is evil.
So what are the leftists to do? Rather than go back to the drawing board and trying to come up with something better (like I don’t know….liberal democracy maybe?), they instead work to create a wrapper for Marxism, a cover story that can be openly promoted in place of raw Marxism itself. Pseudo-environmentalism is that wrapper. This is why these guys are called Watermelon Marxists, green on the outside, red on the inside.
In addition to providing a cover story for the promotion of Marxism, this wrapper also acts as a confounding element. Their opponents are left trying to debate the merits of the wrapper instead of attacking what lies behind it. The more bizarre and irrational the wrapper can be made the better. It need have no validity of its own as long as it protects the Marxist agenda from public scrutiny.
This has a lot in common with the anti-gun agenda of the left. They talk about crime and about other things when their real motivation is the disenfranchisement of free peoples. This is why arguing about the fact that guns and crime are not correlated does no good. The left isn’t trying to stop crime, it is trying to deprive its opponents of the political power that comes from the barrel of a gun. The ability to visit violence upon one’s enemies is the only real political power there is. Everything else is symbolism. A vote cast without the power to back that vote up with violence is ultimately irrelevant. Those who do have the power to use violence to achieve their ends can and will disregard that vote. Remember that in the Soviet Union voting was compulsory.
So please don’t be fooled by these Watermelons. They are vile evil bastards and sooner or later they will get what is coming to them.
13. Nonner:
With regards to your comment on C02 hysteria diverting attention from serious environmental problems: Thank you thank you THANK YOU. I’d considered myself an environmentalist for most of my life, but the Warmers hijacked the cause and twisted it into something unrecognizable.
You have lots of company. Hijacking is an appropriate term for what the West’s left wing has done to what was once legitimate environmentalism.
Whether there’s any validity to AGW or not (and if there is, it is simply NOT possible for it to have occurred but in the last 50 years, and is absolutely NOT catastrophic in nature), the fact that there has been “evidence tampering” at East Anglia CRU and elsewhere should require the equivalent of a ‘mistrial,’ since world economies and trillions of dollars, and personal freedom are at stake.
Hit the reset button on climate research; make it transparent and take it away from the UN. If they want to do computer modeling, do it in subcomponents on supercomputers, and then analyze the results in aggregate on another set of supercomputers. Also, use complete sets of data this time, for crissake! AND please move monitoring stations away from urban heat islands!
The swine flu was going to kill us all remember ?