More Shark Chum for the Climate Debate

[Michael Hardner]

Weather makes up climate. I blend my own senses with knowledge of history, as well as read studies.

So ? It seems to me that you're being a bit of a clown on purpose. Would you say that's accurate ?

[Michael Hardner]

I ask because, otherwise, you seem to be serious much of the time.

[wyly]

So ? It seems to me that you're being a bit of a clown on purpose. Would you say that's accurate ?

almost the same question I've asked ...either he's scientifically ignorant or he feigns ignorance which makes him a forum troll, simple choice he refuses to answer ...

[jbg]

So ? It seems to me that you're being a bit of a clown on purpose. Would you say that's accurate ?

I ask because, otherwise, you seem to be serious much of the time.

I am serious on that answer. Weather is obviously a subset of climate. If I see some chart that varies wildly from my own knowledge of history, whether recent or otherwise, I check against actual events and temperature records. For example, agreeing with your view, it is clear from a review of U.S. Revolutionary War and Civil War history that snow and partially frozen rivers were a factor in areas far south of where they are factors now. So almost clearly there has been warming since that era. And I trust history books far more than reconstructed data a la Waldo for that information. Ditto explorers' accounts of the Northwest Passage, for Arctic conditions.

Almost all of the charts, from Mann's discredited "hockey stick" to Waldo's more plausible-looking charts, are based on one or another reconstruction.

[waldo]

Meanwhile I'll hunker down for our expected 35 cm. snowfall in about 48 hours, the second in two weeks.

Why do you talk about winter weather in the context of climate change ?

Do you think it's clever to do so ?

Saipans mentor no doubt...trolls or ignorant by design?

Weather makes up climate. I blend my own senses with knowledge of history, as well as read studies.

So ? It seems to me that you're being a bit of a clown on purpose. Would you say that's accurate?

almost the same question I've asked ...either he's scientifically ignorant or he feigns ignorance which makes him a forum troll, simple choice he refuses to answer ...

jbg as Saipans' mentor? No... I'd say his pimp-daddy! When Saipan first came on board back in late Sept, 2010, I had a brief exchange over his "where's the warm-up" idiocy. I was quickly put "in my place" by jbg (I haven't bothered to include subsequent posts where I 'mocked' jbg over his expressed, "Saipan seal of approval"... his, "Saipan sanction"... his, "Saipan recommendation".

it has been a while since I've seen such a lame attempt to punk a board.

Saipan has long been a thoughtful poster, at the now-defunct Sympatico and CBC Boards. Hardly a "punk".

JBG and Saipan both graduates from the school of scientific ignorance...

indeed! Again, I called it back early in Oct, 2010; mere days after Saipan arrived... he is 'punking the board'. Nothing says it any more precisely than the recent lengthy indulgence some are giving him in another thread, where he suddenly trots out several references to Greenland farming, growing grapes, MWP. These are well worn/tired denier talking points that assume a certain conservancy & (misunderstood) knowledge level well beyond the simpleton charade he presents with his idiotic one word/one sentence repeated post-bleating. I'd say Saipan has milked his troll-punking for all it's worth... few will/should indulge him further.

I am serious on that answer. Weather is obviously a subset of climate. If I see some chart that varies wildly from my own knowledge of history, whether recent or otherwise, I check against actual events and temperature records. For example, agreeing with your view, it is clear from a review of U.S. Revolutionary War and Civil War history that snow and partially frozen rivers were a factor in areas far south of where they are factors now. So almost clearly there has been warming since that era. And I trust history books far more than reconstructed data a la Waldo for that information. Ditto explorers' accounts of the Northwest Passage, for Arctic conditions.

Almost all of the charts, from Mann's discredited "hockey stick" to Waldo's more plausible-looking charts, are based on one or another reconstruction.

don't forget your 'eye-balling' prowess! ... why bother with your history books and explorer accounts, when you have the power of the jbg-eyeball. Nothing says knowledgeable, unbiased, relevant, interpretive accuracy like the jbg-eyeball going up against your reams and reams and reams of posted raw data (still one of the single most idiotic pieces of sequenced MLW posting history)... particularly raw surface temperature data from localized regional weather stations that you would presume to extrapolate for comment on larger U.S. contiguous and/or global commentary.

I mean, really... c'mon... who needs elaborate data processing, methodologies, reconstruction, etc.,; certainly not anyone with jbg-eyeball prowess - hey?

MLW has had long exhausted discussion concerning the 'hockey-stick' and various historical reconstructions from assorted players... as always stated, MBH reconstructions, in particular, are sound and have been repeatedly (ongoing, month-to-month, year-to-year) corroborated a brazillion times over. Wake me up when somebody manages to 'break that hockey-stick', hey jbg?

[bloodyminded]

sometimes when all else fails and playing nice doesn't work it's time to take the gloves off and be nasty...

Yep. I didn't mean it as denunciation.

[bloodyminded]

don't forget your 'eye-balling' prowess! ... why bother with your history books and explorer accounts, when you have the power of the jbg-eyeball. Nothing says knowledgeable, unbiased, relevant, interpretive accuracy like the jbg-eyeball going up against your reams and reams and reams of posted raw data (still one of the single most idiotic pieces of sequenced MLW posting history)... particularly raw surface temperature data from localized regional weather stations that you would presume to extrapolate for comment on larger U.S. contiguous and/or global commentary.

I mean, really... c'mon... who needs elaborate data processing, methodologies, reconstruction, etc.,; certainly not anyone with jbg-eyeball prowess - hey?

Well, to be fair, it's every bit as edifying as Saipan's daily "thermometer readings."

Oh, and the grapes.

[Michael Hardner]

jbg,

The mistake you're making is that you don't trust science to do it's job on climate, yet you live in a world where the process as a whole works nicely.

You have to understand your limitations: you're in no position to know the science better than PhDs who study and debate it for a living.

[wyly]

Well, to be fair, it's every bit as edifying as Saipan's daily "thermometer readings."

Oh, and the grapes.

did I mention that I had a good harvest of grapes this year? and the kiwi's were the best they've ever been as were the raspberries...but the saskatoon's not so good, the dog ate them again Edited January 10, 2011 by wyly

[bloodyminded]

did I mention that I had a good harvest of grapes this year?

and the kiwi's were the best they've ever been as were the raspberries...but the saskatoon's not so good, the dog ate them again

I love dogs, but they're always trouble!

Edited January 10, 2011 by bloodyminded

[jbg]

jbg as Saipans' mentor? No... I'd say his pimp-daddy! When Saipan first came on board back in late Sept, 2010, I had a brief exchange over his "where's the warm-up" idiocy. I was quickly put "in my place" by jbg (I haven't bothered to include subsequent posts where I 'mocked' jbg over his expressed, "Saipan seal of approval"... his, "Saipan sanction"... his, "Saipan recommendation".

********************

indeed! Again, I called it back early in Oct, 2010; mere days after Saipan arrived... he is 'punking the board'.

Do you have anything better to do than insult Saipan and myself. Do you work?

[GostHacked]

did I mention that I had a good harvest of grapes this year? and the kiwi's were the best they've ever been as were the raspberries...but the saskatoon's not so good, the dog ate them again

You can thank global warming for the bumper crop harvest of grapes!!

[jbg]

I love dogs, but they're always trouble!

So do I but two of the breeds either named after or originated in Canada, the Labrador Retriever and the Newfoundland are incredibly vicious animals that attack childen and tennis balls mercilessly.

[waldo]

Do you have anything better to do than insult Saipan and myself. Do you work?

simply re-quoting your statements - verbatim. You certainly have the prerogative to either reinforce your 'seal of approval, your sanction, your recommendation'... to retract them... or leave them intact.

[dre]

jbg,

The mistake you're making is that you don't trust science to do it's job on climate, yet you live in a world where the process as a whole works nicely.

You have to understand your limitations: you're in no position to know the science better than PhDs who study and debate it for a living.

The mistake you're making is that you don't trust science to do it's job on climate, yet you live in a world where the process as a whole works nicely.

Thats a very charitable assessment. The truth however is much more serious.

[jbg]

simply re-quoting your statements - verbatim. You certainly have the prerogative to either reinforce your 'seal of approval, your sanction, your recommendation'... to retract them... or leave them intact.

Are you giving me orders?

[waldo]

simply re-quoting your statements - verbatim. You certainly have the prerogative to either reinforce your 'seal of approval, your sanction, your recommendation'... to retract them... or leave them intact.

Are you giving me orders?

as I said, you certainly have the prerogative... to go here:

[TimG]

The mistake you're making is that you don't trust science to do it's job on climate, yet you live in a world where the process as a whole works nicely.

I am sick and tired of the idiotic truisms that are irrelevalent to the discussion.

Yes - science works - when there is a free market to mediate the ideas that have merit and those that do not. I mean the free market where engineers and doctors use the results of science to create real things that have to work as advertised.

Science does not always work when it consists entirely of ivory tower scientists in labs producing science that serves no purpose other than generating more government funding for those labs. Without the free market feedback science is like a open loop control system that can veer off into dead ends.

That said, we do need these pure research projects and they should be funded because maybe 1 out 10 or 1 or 20 times the scientists will not end up in a dead end and produce a useful theory. But you CANNOT use the fact that some unverified hypothesis turn out to be correct as an argument to say we should blindly trust all unverified hypotheses simply because "science works".

It is important to remember the CAGW narrative is an unverified hypothesis. It is not fact or even a testable scientific theory. The only part of climate science that deserves the label of 'scientific theory' is the radiative effect of CO2. But that theory is of limited use because there is no way to calculate the magnitude of the CO2 in the atmosphere on the surface temperature of the planet. The calculations the models use are 'guessestimates' - not numbers derived from first principles. The models could be off by factor of 2 or more and it would not invalidate the radiative theory.

At the end of the day all we can say is CO2 is a potential hazard and if eliminating CO2 emissions was free then we should do it just in case. But eliminating CO2 emissions is NOT free. It is rediculously expensive and likely technically impossible. Those facts make the science of CO2 completely irrelevant. If climate change is coming we must adapt and money spent on CO2 reduction schemes is money wasted. Nothing that any climate scientist says will change that.

Edited January 12, 2011 by TimG

[Michael Hardner]

I am sick and tired of the idiotic truisms that are irrelevalent to the discussion.

I use them when people openly just thumb their nose at science as jbg did.

Yes - science works - when there is a free market to mediate the ideas that have merit and those that do not. I mean the free market where engineers and doctors use the results of science to create real things that have to work as advertised.

There is a free market of ideas here too.

Science does not always work when it consists entirely of ivory tower scientists in labs producing science that serves no purpose other than generating more government funding for those labs. Without the free market feedback science is like a open loop control system that can veer off into dead ends.

That said, we do need these pure research projects and they should be funded because maybe 1 out 10 or 1 or 20 times the scientists will not end up in a dead end and produce a useful theory. But you CANNOT use the fact that some unverified hypothesis turn out to be correct as an argument to say we should blindly trust all unverified hypotheses simply because "science works".

It is important to remember the CAGW narrative is an unverified hypothesis. It is not fact or even a testable scientific theory. The only part of climate science that deserves the label of 'scientific theory' is the radiative effect of CO2. But that theory is of limited use because there is no way to calculate the magnitude of the CO2 in the atmosphere on the surface temperature of the planet. The calculations the models use are 'guessestimates' - not numbers derived from first principles. The models could be off by factor of 2 or more and it would not invalidate the radiative theory.

At the end of the day all we can say is CO2 is a potential hazard and if eliminating CO2 emissions was free then we should do it just in case. But eliminating CO2 emissions is NOT free. It is rediculously expensive and likely technically impossible. Those facts make the science of CO2 completely irrelevant. If climate change is coming we must adapt and money spent on CO2 reduction schemes is money wasted. Nothing that any climate scientist says will change that.

I don't know if the effect of CO2 can be said to be unverified if the correlation keeps checking out...

Also, we're talking about science and you bring up the costs of things... that's a different debate.

[TimG]

There is a free market of ideas here too.

A free market of ideas without some real world validation is as interesting as the various 'american idol' competitions.

I don't know if the effect of CO2 can be said to be unverified if the correlation keeps checking out.

Coorrelation means squat whether you are talking sunspots or CO2. All it does is suggest you might be on the right track. What matters are accurate predictions which are precise enough to be useful. So far, climate science has failed to deliver.

Also, we're talking about science and you bring up the costs of things... that's a different debate.

Nobody would care about climate science if it was not for the montetary implications. It is the only thing that really matters. Edited January 12, 2011 by TimG

[WIP]

I am sick and tired of the idiotic truisms that are irrelevalent to the discussion.

Yes - science works - when there is a free market to mediate the ideas that have merit and those that do not. I mean the free market where engineers and doctors use the results of science to create real things that have to work as advertised.

You got to be kidding? Science is about what can be observed and demonstrated, and repeated in other test results. It has nothing to do with this free enterprize crap!

Science does not always work when it consists entirely of ivory tower scientists in labs producing science that serves no purpose other than generating more government funding for those labs. Without the free market feedback science is like a open loop control system that can veer off into dead ends.

That said, we do need these pure research projects and they should be funded because maybe 1 out 10 or 1 or 20 times the scientists will not end up in a dead end and produce a useful theory. But you CANNOT use the fact that some unverified hypothesis turn out to be correct as an argument to say we should blindly trust all unverified hypotheses simply because "science works".

Well, you're the one who should be happy here! Research departments at major universities are becoming more and more coopted by corporations who are looking for "useful" theories, instead of doing what science is supposed to be for: discovery and pushing back the shadows of ignorance and superstition. But, I get the picture that the only useful science to you is whatever can be used to make crap. Science has other purposes than as a foundation for engineering.

It is important to remember the CAGW narrative is an unverified hypothesis. It is not fact or even a testable scientific theory. The only part of climate science that deserves the label of 'scientific theory' is the radiative effect of CO2. But that theory is of limited use because there is no way to calculate the magnitude of the CO2 in the atmosphere on the surface temperature of the planet. The calculations the models use are 'guessestimates' - not numbers derived from first principles. The models could be off by factor of 2 or more and it would not invalidate the radiative theory.

Is CAGW a typing error, or has something been added to AGW? Now I can see why you are so hostile to science. This is just like creationist tactics -- 'it's only a theory.'

At the end of the day all we can say is CO2 is a potential hazard and if eliminating CO2 emissions was free then we should do it just in case. But eliminating CO2 emissions is NOT free. It is rediculously expensive and likely technically impossible. Those facts make the science of CO2 completely irrelevant. If climate change is coming we must adapt and money spent on CO2 reduction schemes is money wasted. Nothing that any climate scientist says will change that.

We may have already reached the point where doing nothing has become more expensive than phasing out fossil fuels:

The Statistics

Every year climate change is attributable for the deaths of over 300,000 people, seriously affects a further 325 million people, and causes economic losses of US$125 billion.1 Four billion people are vulnerable to the effects of climate change and 500-600 million people – around 10% of the planet’s human population – are at extreme risk.2,3

Already 26 million people have been displaced as a direct result of climate change,4 by 2050, this number could grow to 200 million people.5

The most recent (2007) Assessment Report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that weather patterns have become more extreme, with more frequent and more intense rainfall events, more intense heat waves and prolonged droughts; the timing and location of rainfall has altered.6 Weather-related disasters (storms, hurricanes, floods, heat waves and droughts) have more than doubled in number over the last 20 years.7 There are now over 400 weather-related disasters per year and almost 90 million people require immediate assistance as a result; projections suggest that by 2030, this figure could be as high as 350 million.8

http://costsofclimatechange.org/index.html

Some fun facts to consider as damage from Australia's flooding is now estimated over $14 billion.

[wyly]

The Statistics

Every year climate change is attributable for the deaths of over 300,000 people, seriously affects a further 325 million people, and causes economic losses of US$125 billion.1 Four billion people are vulnerable to the effects of climate change and 500-600 million people – around 10% of the planet’s human population – are at extreme risk.2,3

Already 26 million people have been displaced as a direct result of climate change,4 by 2050, this number could grow to 200 million people.5

The most recent (2007) Assessment Report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that weather patterns have become more extreme, with more frequent and more intense rainfall events, more intense heat waves and prolonged droughts; the timing and location of rainfall has altered.6 Weather-related disasters (storms, hurricanes, floods, heat waves and droughts) have more than doubled in number over the last 20 years.7 There are now over 400 weather-related disasters per year and almost 90 million people require immediate assistance as a result; projections suggest that by 2030, this figure could be as high as 350 million.8

http://costsofclimatechange.org/index.html

Some fun facts to consider as damage from Australia's flooding is now estimated over $14 billion.

now add to that an estimate that food production will have to increase by 70% over the next 30yrs to feed the masses...greater demand and potential environmental disruption due to CC, I see potential problems on the horizon...

[WIP]

Nobody would care about climate science if it was not for the montetary implications. It is the only thing that really matters.

Exactly. It all comes down to the money.....the $200 million+ that the oil companies have spread around to sow confusion and doubt, and stymie any efforts to take action. Seven out of the ten largest corporations in the world today are oil companies. No small wonder that they would rather drive the world to extinction than part with billions in profits.

[TimG]

Is CAGW a typing error, or has something been added to AGW?

My dispute is not with the idea that humans are affecting climate via CO2 emissions since I agree that is likely happening. What I dispute are the endless claims of catastrophe as a result of climate change.

Hence I use the C meaning Catastrophic AGW to distinguish between the arguments that I dispute and those that I accept.

Every year climate change is attributable for the deaths of over 300,000 people

I think these claims are completely bogus and have no legitimate scientific basis. In fact, peer reviewed science constantly produces claims of cause and effect that turn out to be bogus - look at the recent retraction of the vaccine-autism link. I see no reason to take these CO2-population deaths claims any more seriously.

Some fun facts to consider as damage from Australia's flooding is now estimated over $14 billion.

Damage that could have been avoided if the government had spent money building dams instead of wasting it on anti-CO2 scams. Edited January 13, 2011 by TimG

[WIP]

now add to that an estimate that food production will have to increase by 70% over the next 30yrs to feed the masses...greater demand and potential environmental disruption due to CC, I see potential problems on the horizon...

And, it just can't be done......well, certainly not for very long. It seems we are already taking 25% more from the earth than can be replenished naturally:

Currently the 6.8 billion of us are consuming about 25% more resources than Earth is producing – during any given time period. For example, in the past twelve months we have consumed the resources that it took the planet about fifteen months to produce. We are consuming our resource base.