Severian

I think so, I recall the winters in 77 and 78 to both be pretty brutal. The power demands for heating were bringing black and brown outs, the college turned off all lights except for classrooms in use, no hall lights, or outside lights. The whole winter had a really surreal feel to it, you could imagine yourself in some kind of scifi novel or movie where the impending ice age was looming, power was cut, martial law just around the corner. Then of course it warmed back up and spring came as usual, followed by a traditional brutal Florida summer. I really enjoyed working with that professor, I had and continue to have a great deal of respect for him and his opinions. Despite the backbreaking work, as he always said "It's good for you, builds character and discipline." Yeah, the AGW proponents, particularly the lay ones who don't understand the science, and don't take the time to, approach this as some kind of demented Gaian religion, where man is guilty of original sin by destroying the Garden of Eden and must atone, well, everyone except the high priests, who get a pass. This whole thing, how science became so manipulated and corrupt, and how society and politics and the media responded, would make a heck of a sociological study for some aspiring grad student, it's fascinating, but also like watching a slow motion train wreck. After looking over the recent predictions for falling solar output, I'm betting that another impending ice age scare and "we've got to do something NOW" cult will be operating in full force in another decade or so. What goes around comes around apparently.

My my, lookie here! Watts has been overseeing a comprehensive site survey of the temperature measurement stations used to gather data in the US, you know, the data that just had to be adjusted to correct Hansen's Y2K error. Take a gander. The take away quote is: _________________________________________ Note that of the 33% surveyed, only 13% meet the CRN site criteria (Rating of 1 and 2)for an acceptable location to accurately measure long term climate change free of localized influences. Climate Reference Network Rating Guide - Class 1 and 2 are considered best, 5 is the worst. Class 1 - Flat and horizontal ground surrounded by a clear surface with a slope below 1/3 (<19deg). Grass/low vegetation ground cover <10 centimeters high. Sensors located at least 100 meters from artificial heating or reflecting surfaces, such as buildings, concrete surfaces, and parking lots. Far from large bodies of water, except if it is representative of the area, and then located at least 100 meters away. No shading when the sun elevation >3 degrees. Class 2 - Same as Class 1 with the following differences. Surrounding Vegetation <25 centimeters. No artificial heating sources within 30m. No shading for a sun elevation >5deg. Class 3 (error 1C) - Same as Class 2, except no artificial heating sources within 10 meters. Class 4 (error >= 2C) - Artificial heating sources <10 meters. Class 5 (error >= 5C) - Temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface.” ____________________________________ only 13% meet the criteria to be considered accurate enough to measure long term climate change! But don't worry, Hansen will step forward any day now to tell us all not to fret, he's "adjusted" the data to make up for this. Sheesh. http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2048#more-2048 Oy!

I think he's obviously the result of too much "don't grade them accurately it'll discourage them" modern education. He has the mistaken impression that his drivel actually has some kind of merit.

Well, that's certainly easier than thinking and addressing the science and point of this whole thread! You haven't said squat that's relevant to the debate or articles and data posted. Typical. "Wah, he was mean to me! sniff whine" Hysterical, another caricature posing as a person.

Interesting, that's when I got a taste of this as well. I was down doing my undergraduate work in Florida, and freezing my buns off. It snowed in Miami back then for heaven's sake! I was doing the traditional grunt work/slave labor expected of physics undergrads, manning a telescope, developing film, and counting sunspots. One particularly cold winter day I was in the lab with my professor going blind and getting crippled up bent over a magnifying glass counting sunspots on film negatives, and the conversation turned to the impending ice age everyone was predicting. My prof scoffed at this, saying "take a look at the sunspot history, in a few years they'll be telling us we're all going to burn up." Remarkably prescient of him eh? Later, in the late 80's I was developing an optical model of the atmosphere to predict and analyze atmospheric effects on lasers fired through the atmosphere. We were doing work on optical phase conjugation, and many of the wavelengths of interest lay right in CO2 and waters absorption ranges, so I got intimately familiar with CO2, and waters, absorption curves and effects. More familiar I think than many alleged climate scientists. When people started crowing about CO2 and it's increasing effects, none of it made any sense from what I knew for a fact about CO2 and its characteristic absorption effects. I could take that same model, run it today without changing the CO2 effect to account for increasing CO2, and not be able to see any change in the results outside of the last few decimal places. So, based on my own work I knew that the hyperbole and panic over CO2 was bogus. And after freezing my nads off in the 70's, my response was also "bring on the warming." I hope you're not holding your breath, both of these guys are the typical "show me and I'll believe it" while simultaneously ignoring or finding fault with everything shown to them types. They will never, ever take the time to read and try and understand, if they did they'd be coming back with reasonable questions on the parts they didn't understand, not whining that this guy or that was incompetent, not credentialed, or a tool of Big Oil. They don't want their religious beliefs challenged.

How nice for you, in most places they are not, and even when the facilities exist, people still throw them in the trash. But keep on ignoring reality. You don't read very well do you? What about production, or are we supposed to ignore Al Gore's polluted zinc mine? Or the massive dead zone around the mines in Canada? And organic food is a fast growing market, that makes it right eh? By that logic, then, SUVs must make a whole lot of sense and be great things, they outsell cars in most markets. Life is not a popularity contest, though people who don't think well for themselves often make excellent trend followers. Sunsettommy has shown you plenty of science fact, there's no indication you've absorbed it at all. This is the typical, ignorant, trollish response. I've seen it before, and no matter what you link to, it's never "right" to fools like yourself. All you generally will do is frantically google to try and find some green approved web site to tell you that it's OK to not read and think for yourself, and give you some cut and paste answer. If you can't find, for yourself, this evidence, then you just aren't looking, as it's out there in droves. Try reading something other than realclimate or some other green site for a change. If you've ignored the evidence presented in this thread, and you act like all this evidence and papers are just impossible to find, then you are the usual lazy, ideologically blinded type who apparently likes to be bamboozled. Unfortunately, there are way too many people like you out there, and that makes your kind dangerous, as people who don't practice critical thinking skills make it easy for the con artists of the world to sell us all down the river. Here's a hint, take a look at climateaudit.org, there have been some particularly good discussions of Hansen's idiocy lately. Not that you care, sniff, probably funded by eeeevilll BIG OIL! Gee, what a horrible horrible loss that would be. Not that you've said anything remotely intelligent, just attacked the credibility and attempted to slime people like Monckton, rather than understand what he's saying. But others are the meanies, I get it, typical, boringly typical unfortunately. It's just fine to slime honorable scientists and commentators by inferring they are all dishonest or incompetent, but heaven forbid someone points out what a tool you are for doing it. Once again, an attempt at diversion to keep from addressing the topic at hand. But this does give you a convenient excuse to drop out rather than actually say something intelligent. Maybe I should apologize though, I actually thought you might actually be an open minded person, rather than an ideologically blinded, not too bright, lazy sheep willing, eager even, to follow the herd.

While I will agree with you whole heartedly that it's far better for people to adopt behavior that is beneficial themselves, rather than have it ramrodded down their throat by government, the changes you mention are all merely feel good BS that do not address the real issues. They are, however, the big things that uninformed people are being led to believe are good, regardless of the consequences, and again they are "good" because they allegedly reduce CO2, which since CO2 is not the boogie man the pro-AGW crowd let on, these are at best useless and at most harmful. Compact fluorescents? Nice, reduce energy use, at the cost of massive increases in mercury contamination in groundwater from throwing them in dumps. Hybrids? Marginal improvements in real world fuel economy at the massive environmental cost of production and disposal of batteries. Organic foods? Another feel good item that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. You describe the pro-AGW crowd in that last paragraph splendidly, although I suspect you are still going on about how the pro-AGW science is right and settled and it's those nefarious deniers/skeptics who are trying to muck up the works. You still are completely blind to the reality of what science truly says, that is non-agenda driven science, which the pro-AGW position can in no way be described as. Yeah, it's all those uninformed scientists who are out there publishing peer reviewed papers that undercut the mantra of AGW that are the problem eh? Slightest error in math? ROFL, that's a good one, denigrate the people and their results, can't have the unwashed challenging our global warming masters now can we? You, like so many other gullible and credulous people, accept a priori that AGW is a fact, no matter how bad the science is, and then attempt to attack those who point out the flaws. Eh? You do know that this is how science works don't you? What a pompous, arrogant, and completely ignorant statement that is, and alas all too typical from uninformed non-scientists who seem to be compelled to argue about things they know absolutely nothing about. You apparently are of the it's OK if it's not right as long as the goal is, like, you know, important. Actual science is subjected to exactly these kinds of review, and if it can't pass muster, it either changes or goes away. But the AGW "science" just shrieks that it's being repressed and the critics are being mean and unfair, don't you know the science is settled?!?!? Oy! So far you're showing that you are a completely typical example of the modern, environmentally gullible, undereducated but opinionated person that I see over and over and over again. Ignorance is not necessarily a terrible thing, but it becomes one if you are ignorant and damned proud of the fact.

A good point, and the reason, in my opinion, for the ever more strident shrieks of the pro-AGW crowd to silence dissent and attempt to ram their policies thru the various world legislative bodies and such. The wheels are coming off the bus, and rapidly, and they feel the window for using this hysteria to force social and global government changes thru, or to turn a quick buck, closing. Back when, before a lot of people had thought deeply about this (although the simple fact of how atmospheric absorption works should have been a clue for anyone who actually thought about it, but I digress), CO2 seemed a reasonable enough hypothesis. Note the emphasis, hypothesis, that is an idea to be tested rigorously with full transparency to get others to reproduce results. After all, atmospheric CO2 had gone up, temp had gone up, and ice cores seemed to support the link. And it was very convenient to environmental activist types who thought human behavior needed restricting, they'd tried with other pollutants, but industry in the industrial world had done a bang up job of reducing pollution, and making CO2 a pollutant seemed an inspired idea to these people. But then, after people had raised an alarm and gotten lots of government funding streams up, closer examination showed very poor correlation between CO2 and temp, but strong correlation between other things, like solar and normal variability. The ice cores showed that CO2 lags not leads temperature, and all the other data that's been building up showed CO2 to be a minor forcing factor. It's there, but it is not the major contributor. Computer models are not the world, yet people cling to them even when they are shown to be drastically wrong. There is a kind of perverse pride of ownership involved, even if the thing you own is basically wrong and semi-useless apparently.

Oh my, another one. Breed like rabbits apparently. You're still attacking the messenger, not the message. Apparently you can't attack Monckton's message, so you whine about his credentials. I've seen this tact before, people ignoring the numerous references to papers and reports to say the person making the references has no standing, rather than address the argument said presenter is posing. Weak, very weak, and indicative that you either can't or won't take the time to understand the message. It's the old reverence for authority thing, only it only seems to happen if the authority is of the "right" type or opinion. I see this comment from a lot of people who idolize the Goracle, who got a C and D in the only two science classes (and wussy ones at that) he attempted in college, these same types rail on about people like Monckton and his credentials while giving the pro-AGW ones a pass. I also see it in people who support AGW but are attempting to appear "reasonable" while supporting the most unreasonable of positions. Can you address Monckton's arguments and the papers and data he presents. If you can't, you have no business attacking him personally for being unqualified. In other words, pot meet kettle. I've coined the term "ChickenHawking" out of respect to Stephen Hawking as a scientist to which I dedicate the term, and to point out it's the same behavior that anti-war people use when they call anyone who isn't in the military a "chickenhawk." A "ChickenHawking" is someone who, despite no qualifications of their own, attack another person for lack of qualifications while usually idolizing others with worse credentials. You're dangerously close to being a ChickenHawking here, take the time to think for yourself and look at the data and arguments, they aren't that complex, no matter what you may have been led to believe. I also note that complaining about the "tone" of a conversation when it's as mild as this is also a typical red herring people with no facts to back them up use to attempt to divert attention, misdirection again. Look, wiggles finger over to the right, while attempting to pull a rabbit out of a hat on the left. Again, an unworthy argument.

Hmmm...care to elaborate on how linear regression solves the "problem" of generating a rising temperature trend despite declining temperatures? I'm not talking arm waving, but what exactly are your equations and such. Or are you using "linear regression" as a "word of power" or totem against the inconvenient facts that temperature trends are either constant or declining in the past decade? Are you really familiar with mathematics, or are you just saying this as if it actually means something? You appear to be of the same view of Hansen, i.e. that numbers can be tortured into saying whatever you want them to. Oh my, I noticed the "exxon funded site" trope, how predictable and telling. In climate discussions, invoking the "exxon funded deniers" trope is exactly the same as calling someone a Nazi, it's a sure sign that the poster has nothing to his/her arguments, can't adequately defend the position, and now must resort to insults and hyperbole. It's a sure indication that your argument has jumped the shark and you've lost. There is just so much wrong with this line of BS, and it surely shows you have little to no understanding of what you're discussing, but feel compelled to act like you do for some odd reason. In other words, we have to arm wave and obsfucate to make it sound like we have a scientific basis for adjusting the data to match our conclusions. Misdirection is key in any magic trick eh? So, you want to filter out "anomalies" that don't fit the theory in order to make it appear like the theory has merit, shameful. Apply "best fit," I'm thinking you sound remarkably like a RealClimate/Hansen groupie here. If you manage to see the same warming trend in that data, you have a keen imagination. Oh my, more of the same. Just like Hansen. First, when the latest correction to the US is brought up, it's "that's not important." Then when it's pointed out that there are serious mistakes in the South American and African data, including no data, and stations with massive heat island contamination, and the non-contaminated stations showing temp declines or stability, then South America and Africa "aren't important." So, if the USA isn't important, and SA and Africa aren't important, what is? Hardly makes it qualify as "global" warming does it? AGW is most certainly not the best explanation of what warming we have observed. I think you're still buying into Lockwood and Frohliche's simplistic analysis of solar effects, but hey, it supports what you want to believe. Just as so often happens, you fail to make a credible case, but you obviously are a true believer. Why that is so is something that continues to perplex me as I watch this entire debate continue to unfold, and how the pro-AGW crowd react as their case continues to unravel at an ever increasing speed.